Chapter 87: The Woman of the Soul 501
The next day, Lin Zhou's father changed into a clean blue and green striped shirt and was still excited to go to work.
At noon, Lin Zhou found Uncle Liu and asked him, "Do you think there's something wrong with my dad today?"
Uncle Liu took a bite of the crunchy salted duck egg with his chopsticks and narrowed his eyes. "No, you look pretty energetic. That's good. I guess your dad has really changed this time and is going to earn money for your tuition!"
Lin Zhou didn't believe it at all and sneered: "If he can reform himself, the water in Luhua River can flow backwards!"
"You can't say that about your dad," Uncle Liu advised. "I saw he was very active this morning, even asking me about bus tickets and stuff. Is he planning on taking you out to play or visit relatives?"
Lin Zhou was confused. "Bus ticket? To where?"
"Oh, what's that place called? Probably somewhere in southern Hunan," Uncle Liu said, unable to recall. "Your dad was so happy talking about it, he even sang a few southern Hunan folk songs. Hahaha, so his hometown is in southern Hunan? I didn't know that all these years."
Lin Zhou felt cold all over.
Shonan? He had never heard of Shonan, and his father had never been to Shonan either.
He recalled his father's limp that night and asked hesitantly, "Uncle Liu, did my dad fall a few days ago? He seems to be walking strangely."
"Ouch?" Uncle Liu slapped his forehead in sudden realization. "Did he trip on the steps while reeling in the rope? I didn't notice it today. If the injury is serious, I have some traumatic wine at home."
Uncle Liu continued to ramble on about something, but Lin Zhou was in no mood to listen.
So, his dad just fell? Then it was understandable that his clothes were soaked... Although he deliberately didn't think too much about it, why would he be soaked all over if he just fell on the shore, as if he had just climbed out of the water?
"By the way, is Uncle Zhong feeling better?" Lin Zhou asked, "I'll go see him someday."
Uncle Liu laughed when he heard this: "Hey, he was able to leave the boat yesterday. It's nothing serious. He might have scared himself. His wife went to Qingcheng Mountain to get him a peace amulet. Oh, Taoist temples nowadays, even a piece of paper sells it for fifty yuan..."
Lin Zhou returned home and took out the iron box from under the coffee table again.
He took out the paper and put it aside, then poured out the remaining debris inside. There were also a few marbles that rolled down unexpectedly, making a clattering sound on the floor.
After searching for a long time and finding no other information, he sat on the ground in frustration. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a brightly colored advertising leaflet at the bottom of the empty box.
Lin Zhou took great pains to pick out the flyer. Many words on it had been blackened with a marker, as if someone had always scratched it with a piece of waste paper when trying out a new pen. The black ink was spread out in a messy manner, and only one or two insignificant advertising words were vaguely visible, such as "brand new", "home", "immediately"... and so on.
In the lower right corner, there is a landline number circled several times with a black pen, and a "+3" is written at the end, which is so vivid that it can be seen through the paper, declaring the person's amazement.
Lin Zhou subconsciously took out his mobile phone and entered the number, which showed the location: Hecheng.
Hecheng? What kind of advertisement would be posted here, from a first-tier city thousands of miles away? Could that phone number in the diary refer to this number? How about calling and asking? But what could I ask...
Lin Zhou was still distracted when his palm accidentally rubbed the screen. When he reacted, the call was already connected. He tried to turn it off in a panic, but the phone immediately showed "Connected".
He breathed softly and didn't try to hang up. Instead, he put the phone to his ear and listened intently with bated breath.
A soothing and elegant ringtone rang out from the other end: "Welcome to 'All-round Housekeeping'. We will provide you with convenient and comprehensive housekeeping services. The call is being connected. Please wait..."
Lin Zhou suddenly hung up the phone.
He breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was just an advertisement. "All-round Housekeeping"? It sounded familiar; I seemed to see their promotions often. They probably offer home cleaning and air conditioner cleaning. Speaking of which, has this company been around that long? The owner seems quite capable.
But why was such a simple advertising call so prominently circled? Wasn't it just because they were worried they'd forget to clean?
Lin Zhou was full of doubts. He cleaned up and sorted out the remaining debris again, but found no more valuable information, so he had to put the box away again.
He lay on the sofa, his hands resting on his head. When he closed his eyes, he could see his father's limp back and the missing woman in the bay.
Lin Zhou bit his lips anxiously. The sunlight outside the window moved unconsciously, and most of the day had passed.
Telephone……
What does that “+3” mean?
This thought suddenly popped into his mind. He was puzzled, but he took the trouble to open the box, took out the flyer, and lay back on the sofa, staring at it in a daze.
The diary entry mentioned a "strange" phone number, but the number just mentioned was just a perfectly normal landline number, so it wouldn't indicate anything unusual. So, could there be an extra digit? Are landline numbers nationwide uniform in length?
Lin Zhou pondered this and accidentally shifted the angle of the flyer. Suddenly, he realized the "+3" had become "x3." The person had written it with some panic. If it were x3, the angle of 3 would have made more sense. But what did x3 mean? Was it the letter x, or the multiplication sign for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division?
Lin Zhou opened the dialing interface again and solemnly entered the landline number three times as if he was solving a math problem.
After entering the numbers, the phone interface could no longer accommodate so many numbers, and he couldn't help but laugh to himself.
How could there be such a strange number? I guess the x3 was just written randomly. How is that possible...
He pressed the dial button anyway.
As the waiting tone beeped, Lin Zhou's expression gradually became solemn, and goose bumps crept up his body again.
"...beep...welcome...hi...company..."
"...will provide all the help you need. The call is being connected. Kara will be a moment later..."
Lin Zhou felt a chill on his back.
How is it possible——the call actually went through? ! !
At the same time, in an office building in Hecheng, a "beeping" sound of a bell rang in the corner.
"Manager Hu, it seems like the phone is ringing over there..." The honest aunt was signing the labor contract. Seeing the woman in a suit skirt smoking in front of the computer without paying any attention, she plucked up the courage to stammer a reminder to the other party.
The woman in the suit skirt pushed up her glasses and typed with one hand, her eyes moving slightly to that place - in the corner of the narrow office where old printers were piled up, there was a red plastic-shelled landline that kept emitting annoying old-fashioned ringtones at intervals, as if it was calling the soul and making people feel uneasy.
"Don't worry about it," Manager Hu said, puffing out a smoke ring nonchalantly. "That phone is not my responsibility."
-
Lin Zhou was woken up by the alarm clock at 5:40 in the morning. He fell asleep on the sofa while thinking about something. After getting up, he went to the bedroom and found the bed was clean. His father had not come back all night - this was a common thing.
Yesterday afternoon, he finally hung up the strange call. What else could he have said if he had answered? He couldn't even understand the diary left by the suspected previous owner, and he had no idea who had left the phone number.
School is about to start and he hasn't finished his summer homework yet. He shouldn't waste time thinking about these things these past two days, as they clearly have nothing to do with him.
After going downstairs, he sat down at the door of the bun shop as usual and ordered two braised pork buns and two shepherd's purse vegetarian buns.
The boss opened the steaming steamer and glanced at Lin Zhou a few times, seemingly intentionally or unintentionally. After a while, he said, "Hey, Xiaolin, I think you live on the fifth floor, right?"
"Yeah, 501." Lin Zhou didn't think too much about it and buried his head in eating breakfast.
"Did any relatives come to your house?" the shop owner asked casually. "It was a woman. When I was closing my stall yesterday, she came to ask if the residents of 501 were still there. I thought she was looking for her relatives, so I said yes. Then I saw her walking into the community. It seemed like she was standing down there the whole time."
Lin Zhou's heart skipped a beat: "What woman?"
The shop owner laughed twice, as if he also felt something was wrong and was forcing himself to be brave: "I saw that woman standing there when I opened the shop this morning. She stood there all night and didn't go upstairs? Don't you know?"
Lin Zhou's expression turned grim: "Is it... a woman wearing a mask?"
The shop owner breathed a sigh of relief: "Yes, yes, I thought I was the only one who saw it. Did you see it too? Is he your relative? Why are you standing there all night..."
Lin Zhou was no longer in the mood to eat. He wiped his mouth hurriedly, mumbled that he would pay the bill when he got home, and ran towards the ferry.
While running, he was thinking about what his boss had just said. When he went downstairs today, he did not see the masked woman who was said to have been waiting downstairs in the tube building all night.
Who is she looking for? Herself? Her father?
Why? He was sure that he didn't have any such relative in his memory.
Could it be... that it really is the water ghost in that bay?
Lin Zhou shivered. Even though the sun had been out for a long time, he still felt cold.
The first person to see the woman was Uncle Zhong. Would he know something?
Lin Zhou's mind drifted to this thought, his aimless pace slowing. He hurried towards the spot where Lao Zhong used to attract customers, eager to find an answer. However, just down the street, an unusually large group of people gathered, all familiar faces. In the middle, a middle-aged woman with curly hair was crying. When they saw Lin Zhou approaching, they all looked over at him with complicated and strange expressions. Even Uncle Liu had a strange look on his face.
The crying curly-haired woman was Uncle Zhong’s wife. When she saw Lin Zhou, she stared at him fiercely with her bloodshot eyes, as if she wanted to eat him alive.
Lin Zhou had a growing sense of foreboding. He stood there, unsure whether he should continue walking over. "Uncle Liu, what's going on?"
Uncle Liu looked at Lin Zhou for a long time and asked tentatively, "Where is your father?"
Lin Zhou was confused: "My dad? He didn't come home yesterday. I don't know. Did he get into trouble?"
Uncle Liu's expression became even more strange, as if he had something to hide. He turned to look at the crying woman and said, "Sister-in-law, you first—"
Before he could even utter the word "calm down", the woman screamed heartbreakingly and rushed towards Lin Zhou: "Second Brother Lin! I'll let your son pay with his life!!"
Uncle Liu was quick and, along with a few others, stopped the woman. He kept winking at Lin Zhou, "Go back first! Oh, go back first!"
Lin Zhou's face turned pale: "What happened to my dad?"
Uncle Liu bit his words in his mouth, unable to utter them to the half-grown child, but a hot-tempered young man who couldn't stand it shouted, "Second Lin killed Old Zhong!"
——His father...killed Uncle Zhong?
Lin Zhou was shocked and his breathing became rapid.
No...that's not right.
He remembered that night, the puddle of water from the door to the bedroom, the lame... the water ghost...
Was it really Dad who killed Uncle Zhong?
-
Lao Zhong’s wife reported to the police that after Lao Zhong left the boat in the morning, he took Lin Laoer back home halfway, saying that the other party’s clothes were torn and he kindly wanted to mend them for him.
As a result, for some reason, Lin Lao Er suddenly went crazy and killed Lao Zhong with a pair of scissors. Blood splattered all over the floor. After killing him, Lin Lao Er stood there in a daze for a long time before disappearing in a hurry.
"When I went to the room to get a comb, Old Zhong was lying on the floor!" The woman wailed, "The only person who came in was Lin Lao Er. He must have been the one who killed us! What a bastard! We had no grudge against him. What a sin!"
Uncle Liu consoled him, "Don't worry, don't worry. The police are collecting evidence. We have to wait for the results of the examination. Lin Lao Er's sons are all in town. He certainly can't get far."
Lin Zhou was in a daze and was indeed called to the police station for questioning. He was a minor and had a sufficient alibi as he was at the bun shop in the morning. The police learned about his family situation and made some preliminary judgments. They asked him to go back and wait, and notify the police as soon as there was any news about his father.
Of course, his father is currently the only suspect and he will also live under surveillance.
He didn't know if it was because his experiences in the past two days were too bizarre, or because his relationship with his father had been worn away by the years, but he wasn't as frightened and sad as he had imagined. He was even able to think about some things calmly and calmly.
After leaving the police station, he "walked into a trap" and found Lao Zhong's wife Xu Caifeng.
Xu Caifeng was furious: "I didn't embarrass you, young kid, so why are you coming here?!"
"Aunt Xu, whether you believe it or not, I really want to know what happened," Lin Zhou said sincerely. "My dad is an alcoholic, but he's never hit anyone. You should know that, right? How could he walk into the house just fine one second and kill someone the next? Of course, it's also possible that they had a conflict, but I think there's another possibility that we haven't considered."
Xu Caifeng took a few deep breaths, unable to deny Lin Zhou's words: "What direction?"
Lin Zhou suddenly looked a little nervous: "Aunt Xu, I told you not to scold me. I can only say that I really didn't lie to you. If you don't believe me, don't think I'm playing tricks on you, okay?"
Xu Caifeng was a little confused. She nodded after a while and said, "You go first."
"Do you still remember the masked and lame woman that Uncle Zhong met before?" Lin Zhou asked cautiously and softly. Not surprisingly, he saw the woman's expression suddenly change.
Lin Zhou continued, "I also encountered that strange woman. I suspect... she turned into my father."
With Xu Caifeng's tacit consent, he stumbled over and recounted the bizarre things that had happened to him in recent days: the water in his trouser legs, the lameness, the folk songs from southern Hunan, the masked woman seen by the bun shop owner... and so on. Except for the matter about the tinbox at home, he told everything else without any reservation.
Even after she finished speaking, Xu Caifeng was still in a daze, as if lost in some memory. She slowly sat down on the chair, as if all her strength had been drained away in an instant, and whispered, "Let me take it slow, first..."
Lin Zhou looked at Xu Caifeng and always felt that in addition to confusion and doubt in the eyes of this middle-aged woman, there was also a bit of elusive tension and fear.
"Zhou!" Xu Caifeng suddenly grabbed Lin Zhou's wrist. Her tone was no longer as sharp as before. She raised her head and said bitterly, "I... I was just guessing at first, but you just said that the masked woman had inquired about Cuihu Community. I, I suddenly seemed to remember someone..."
"Seven or eight years ago, she also lived in Cuihu Community, in the same room as yours, 501."
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