Ghostly Whispers, A Night with No Way Out

At midnight, the Third Patrol Team was wiped out. Screams came over the walkie-talkie, followed by silence.

Evil ghosts never kill directly. They whisper, call you by name, and reveal the secrets you have buried deepest. Only when your own sins crush you do they take your final breath.

Chen Du is the captain of the Fourth Patrol Team. A changeling ghost speaks in his mother's voice. A baleful ghost rises from his shadow and asks on behalf of Lu Chuan, whom he left locked outside fifteen years ago: "Why didn't you open the door?"

Old Wei, the shelter's night watchman, gave him a snapped piece of locust wood. On the front was carved "Do Not Answer." It was how he had survived for three years: don't listen, don't think, don't respond. Shut himself away in a room without windows. On the back was carved "Turn Back." That was the direction he had fled for fifteen years. The iron door from fifteen years ago had a cold handle, its surface rusted. Lu Chuan had called to him from the other side. He let go of the handle.

Now the door has opened again. Beyond the gray-green iron gates of Seventh Middle School, in the final breath exhaled as Gate Zero closed, lie all the embers swallowed by the gates but never laid to rest. Lu Chuan is crouched deep inside the gate, his ash-gray hair trailing on the ground. He has been waiting for him for fifteen years.

Before dawn, he must go in and bring out what he abandoned.