The Bizarre Detective Agency Chapter 49

Lu Li had decided to climb back to the surface for a moment, searching for something he could use to jam the elevator. Outside the hospital, the sky suddenly flashed with a deathly pale light, bathing the corridor in a stark, day-like brilliance before plunging it back into gloom. The eerie flashes foretold another downpour—and the shattering thunder that would follow.

A knot of foreboding tightened in Lu Li’s gut. Without a second thought, he released his grip and dropped back into the elevator car. The instant he landed, a deafening crack of thunder erupted.

The ensuing roar, seeming to come from just outside, rattled the windows and sent tiny pebbles on the floor skittering. The already rickety elevator car shuddered violently around him.

The thunder was all it took.

Crack!

From high above in the blackness of the shaft, a sharp crack of tortured metal echoed down. It was followed by the whistle of slicing air as a cable, thick as a child’s arm, snapped and lashed against the roof. The elevator plunged.

It all happened in a heartbeat. Lu Li’s feet had barely touched the floor, his body still off-balance, when the car gave way beneath him. He was seized by a stomach-lurching sense of weightlessness.

CRASH!!!

The elevator slammed into the first basement level. A deafening crash tore through the empty space, kicking up a thick cloud of dust. Amidst the swirling motes, a single spark of light flared and was instantly extinguished, plunging the world into impenetrable darkness. In that final glimmer, the silhouette of a human figure could be discerned, slumped against the elevator wall with its head bowed low.

A moment later, a ragged cough echoed from within the elevator. Lu Li lifted his head, forcing out the air that had been trapped in his lungs. All around him was a thick, cloying darkness. Something was stirring within it, growing.

With a trembling hand, Lu Li fumbled in his pocket for a matchbox. But his fingers, clumsy with adrenaline, refused to obey. With a soft rattle, the matches spilled across the floor.

Whether it was a trick of the darkness or a product of his fear, Lu Li thought he saw something coalesce in the gloom—bony claws, blacker than the surrounding void, reaching for him.

Ignoring the grime, Lu Li swept his hand across the cold floor, managing to gather a few matches. He scraped one against the metal wall of the car.

Scratch...

The flammable tip caught, and a sudden flare of light chased the shadows back. The ghostly claws vanished.

What had that been? Something lurking in the dark? Lu Li pushed the question aside. Before the match burned his fingers, he located the oil lamp where it had fallen nearby.

Thankfully, the lamp was intact, though a few cracks now spiderwebbed across its glass chimney. Lu Li removed the chimney and touched the flame to the wick. A weak flicker wavered, then caught, burning with a steady glow. The light pushed back the darkness, but a foul, fog-like dust still hung thick in the air around the elevator, so dense that the lamplight barely illuminated the space just beyond the car.

Lu Li frowned, dropping the match as it scorched his fingertips. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he stepped out of the elevator car. He was coated in a layer of grime, a pathetic sight.

His calm, dark eyes pierced the dusty veil, glancing upward. The elevator doors were sealed shut, and the ceiling offered no emergency hatch. His path back was cut off.

His way back was cut off. There must be another way to the surface...

“Ahem...” Lu Li coughed involuntarily. After a moment of consideration, he took up the lamp and moved away from the wrecked elevator.

In the silent, dark basement corridor, dust motes danced in the lamplight, swirling in small eddies with every step he took.

Peeling wallpaper exposed dark gray concrete walls beneath. The yellowed floor tiles were coated in a layer of some black substance. Rusted hospital beds and other debris were piled haphazardly along the walls. And lining the passage, the basement’s main feature: the iron doors of patient rooms, some gaping open, others sealed shut, stretching away into the gloom.

Lu Li was likely the first person to set foot here in years.

Lu Li’s hand tightened for a moment on the Spirit Gun, but he detected no ghostly presence. Malice, however, saturated the air.

He pressed forward, ignoring the rooms on either side. The priority was finding a way back to the surface.

As Lu Li ventured deeper into the basement, the temperature began to drop, and the corridor itself started to change. What looked like bloody scratch marks marred the walls, interspersed with rambling inscriptions. In the corners lay black plastic bags, their contents a mystery. Crushed tin cans and bottles were strewn about, suggesting that people had lived here for a time after the hospital was abandoned. This aligned with the rumors that the most seriously ill patients had been left behind when the facility was closed.

After walking about twenty meters down the corridor, past six patient rooms, Lu Li noticed the black floor ahead was uneven. Leaning against the wall was a black bag of the sort more commonly known as a body bag. Finding one in an abandoned psychiatric hospital did nothing to ease the sinister atmosphere.

Lu Li stopped. He glanced back down the corridor, thinking he’d heard a whisper—or perhaps it was just a ringing in his ears. He crouched beside the bag. The outline of a human body was starkly visible beneath the black fabric. Finding the zipper near the head, he set the lamp on the floor and grasped the pull tab. In the dead silence of the dark hallway, a lone figure calmly began to unzip the bag, which clearly held something inside.

It was hard to say which was more unsettling: the scene itself, or the man calmly investigating it. The top of the bag parted to reveal a shock of clean, black hair. The zipper, however, snagged at shoulder level. Unconcerned with preserving the bag, Lu Li simply ripped the fabric open. A pale hand flopped out. It was cold and rigid to the touch, like plaster. A sculpture. Lu Li tore the bag away completely, revealing that the head and torso were also carved from stone. The only feature that stood out—and sent a chill down his spine—was the sculpture’s eyes. They were filled with an unnerving expression of despair and malice. No sculpture should have eyes so lifelike. Most, like the one in his own home, had no eyes at all. Finding no clues and sensing no supernatural presence, Lu Li dismissed it as the work of some deranged patient. He carelessly draped the torn bag back over the statue, picked up his lamp, and continued on. He had gone only a few steps further when he spotted a bed to his right, covered by a grimy, yellowish sheet. Beneath it, another human form was clearly outlined. Lu Li walked over and, without a moment's hesitation, pulled the sheet away.

The instant he did, an indescribable stench of death flooded the narrow corridor.

On the bed lay a middle-aged man, unmistakably human. His skin had a bluish tint and was mottled with the tell-tale stains of decay. His eyes were half-open, just as the eyes of the dead so often are. From the state of the body, he had been dead for no more than a week.

Lu Li’s pupils contracted. This changed everything. Without a second thought, he snatched up the Spirit Gun—a weapon that could harm both the living and the dead—and opened his mouth to shout for Anna, who was waiting for him outside.

Suddenly, he heard the hiss of something slicing through the air behind him!

Thud!

A sharp, explosive pain erupted at the back of his skull, as if the blow had knocked the very soul from his body. Lu Li’s consciousness vanished in an instant as he pitched forward, collapsing onto the bed and sending it toppling over.

Splat!

Something red and white splattered across the floor.