The Yu Brothers’ Case Book

“The number you have dialed is currently unavailable, please leave a message after the tone…”

“Lin Yue, who are you calling?”

Yi Lin was biking on the slower side compared to the rest of the group. She told the person next to her who was currently riding with one hand, “That’s dangerous, you know. There have been quite a few biking accidents recently.”

“Don’t worry, I’m pretty skilled at this.” Li Lin Yue stuffed the cellphone back into her pocket as she grumbled, “I can’t believe that lazy-ass Yu Yin didn’t pick up my call.” What a waste of my good intentions to call him and flaunt about how fun it is over here.

After circling around the city and taking a look at the night market, the group of people began to ride back down the path lit by the dusky horizon before it went completely dark.

The grass on the field swayed with the wind, fluttering with tints of phantom colors.

They lingered to play around nearby and take some photos of the scenery before all moving towards the mountainous area. After crossing through the layers of trees and grass, they entered the large empty space.

Before they even stopped their bikes, someone already noticed something wasn’t quite right.

“Hey, this place prays to the dead.” Ah Guan, who had just escaped danger in the hospital a few months prior, was the first to speak when he saw the common person’s shrine at the end of the road.

“No shit, it was even written on the information packet,” someone answered.

There was an extremely old, iron-plated structure that had probably been built many years ago. The dark red paint was already beginning to fade, but even from the distance, one could tell that it had seemingly been repainted before. Underneath the botched traces were even older stains.

Aside from a single stick of lit incense upright in a copper pot, there were only two apples and a tangerine on display. Faint, white smoke coiled out and vanished in mid-air.

Along with its worn, wooden plaque, the small shrine gave off a gloomy and extremely quiet feeling.

“This place probably has someone taking care of it.” Ah Fang glanced around and noticed that the iron building had been cleaned pretty well.

“Haven’t seen anyone else around though.”

“Ah, is that a stage?” Yi Lin pointed across at a platform built on rocks and said, “I’ve seen something like it at the earthen shrine back home too. But why is this stage black?”

This question drew everyone’s curiousity. Encouraged by how many people there were, a few of the boys quickly hooted, “Why not just go over and check it out? It’s not dark yet anyways. Anyone that doesn’t have the guts to go is a coward.”

“Stop fooling around, that’s not something you should be joking about!” Some of the girls began to inwardly shiver when they looked at the sinister and eerie iron building.

“Yi Tai also said before that we shouldn’t fool around here. Let’s just hurry back, don’t we still need to grill the meat? If we play around here too long, it might go bad. Then we won’t have anything to eat tonight.” Ah Fang urged the people stirring up trouble with a stance of opposition as well. He shot a warning glare at the one initiating the clamour.

“Sigh…it’s not like Yu Yin came anyways…we wouldn’t be able to bump into anything…” The voice of the person being glared at gradually grew quieter. Finally, he shrugged, indicating that he would cooperate. However, his face still maintained an expression that clearly said: “So boring”.

“There’s someone inside.” Yi Lin was looking at the stage as she suddenly said, “Seems like they waved for help. I’m going over to take a look.” As soon as she said this, she began to bike forwards toward the stage.

“Hey!”

Upon seeing the girl advance by herself, several others quickly chased after her. Soon, all the bikes had pretty much surrounded the small and narrow stage.

The black stage wasn’t actually very large. Similar to the earthen platforms typically in front of small shrines, there was an open platform above, with a space for people to go in and prepare underneath.

There was a large patch of overgrown weeds on the side that blew with the breeze, seemingly able to cut anyone that touched it.

“Grandpa?”

Yi Lin jumped off her bike and dragged a boy to walk towards the dark space underneath.

They only managed to take two steps before a figure walked out carrying something on its back. It was also dragging a half-filled bag of garbage in hand.

It was a short, old man who did not have any particularly unique traits. He wore a dirty tank top and loose pants that had been folded up to his knees; even his feet had specks of dirt on them. He sported a furrowed expression on his nearly bald head. It was clear that he was an elder.

“Oho, to think some youngsters would even come to this kind of place. Do city kids not know to stay out of burial grounds?” The short old man coughed out with hints of Taiwanese in his speech. He held some cardboard boxes in his other hand.

“Grandpa, did you not wave and call us in?” Yi Lin froze. She had originally wanted to help carry some things for the old man but had ended up being rudely rejected.

“Who called you in? The sun’s about to set and yet you’re still running around all over the place. Hurry up and go home!” The old man waved his hand with an unkind tone. Then, everyone watched as he slowly dragged his feet up towards the stage.

The entire crowd blankly watched the old man walk up with looks of dismay. However, they did not dare to follow behind. After half or minute or so, people finally began to grumble in complaint.

“Hey, there’s something here.”

Ah Guan, who had been standing next to the entrance, caught sight of something from the corner of his eye. It was a bunch of items piled in the darkness. A few of his closer companions walked inside with him. “And there’s quite a bit too. Anyone bring a flashlight?”

Someone tossed a lighter over. After catching it, Ah Guan lit the flame amidst the darkness. Immediately after, the girls cried out in shock, and a few of the people who had been curiously leaning over to look unconsciously backpedaled. Even Ah Guan, who had quite the guts, could only stare in shock for a few seconds before recovering.

In the intersection of light and darkness were several broken, wooden heads – skulls made from wood. The faces that had mostly all been blurred by the shadows sported some horizontal cuts, which made the originally serious faces appear even more vicious.

“Aren’t these dolls for puppet shows?” Ah Guan picked one of the dolls up that still had half a torn piece of cloth dangling from it. Because it had been such a long time, the cloth had darkened so much that its original color was indiscernible. Ah Guan half-jokingly put the puppet on one hand. “Damn, could this get any dirtier?” However, when his hand touched some unidentifiable filth inside, he immediately retracted his hand and abandoned the doll with a toss towards the ground.

“So unskillful.” Borrowing the flame, Ah Fang saw piles of what mostly seemed to be similar puppets. Some of the piles contained stage tools and wooden planks that were also covered in a layer of dark filth. He could just barely recognize patterns on some, while others were not distinguishable in the slightest. “Aren’t there a bit too many? Was there a workshop that got abandoned and dumped all its stuff here?” He said as he glanced at the already deserted stage.

“It probably used to be a puppet theatre?” Li Lin Yue kept her gaze locked on the somewhat un-nerving puppets before turning around to notice that the girls that had come along had already retreated far away. The only ones that had stepped inside with her were boys.

Putting aside the discarded items, it was mainly due to the fact that the inside was very dirty and there were many mosquitoes that the girls had politely declined.

She glanced down at her shoes that were now mostly covered in filth and contemplated whether she should just dump these shoes after returning to the villa to replace them with a new pair.

“Look, there’s even a plaque here.” Someone managed to flip out a framed sign from amidst the filth. There were no longer any words on it. All they could faintly see was something like “XX Group”. “Seems like there’s a dented water kettle here and stuff too. There weren’t homeless people living here or anything, right?”

But once he finished this sentence jokingly, nearly everyone thought of the old man just now.

Someone commented, “No wonder he told us to hurry back home, we were intruding on his home.” This caused several others to laugh. At first, they were only chuckling, but then it turned into loud laughter. The abnormal eeriness faded and people began to play with the pile of puppets again.

“Wow, puppets used to be so small. A while back I went to see an awesome puppet show with my friend, and their puppets were crazy big. The puppeteer’s arm strength had to be super good.”

“Yea, that’s true. Someone I know had a family member buy one too.”

The mood was contagious; everyone began to chat and laugh together. Ah Guan and a few others lifted the boards on the ground and discovered half of a cloth screen. “I think they perform in front of this…”

The boys put the dirty puppets on their hands and began to laughingly wave them before the cloth screen, twirling the faceless puppets around in demonstration at the girls.

“As if they performed that horribly.” The girls in the distance began to giggle and also walked in to look more closely. The small, prepared space instantly became packed and lively.

Their playful laughter momentarily halted when they heard a humming sound come from the dark space.

Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing, and even the air seemed to freeze.

A moan was carried over by the wind. The noise from an unidentifiable life form passed through their ears and faded before they could even attempt to figure out what it was.

“Who was pranking around just now?” Yi Lin lowered her voice and swallowed hard before stiffly turning around and seeing everyone shake their heads.

“Wind…probably just the wind.” The boys tossed the puppets on their hands after feeling goosebumps starting to form all over their arms.

“Stop playing around, it’s already dark so we should hurry back!”

After nearly everyone agreed to Ah Fang’s shout, the crowd scrambled to race off the stage in fear.

The sun had set, leaving the sky completely dark. Aside from the dim light glowing inside the small shrine, there was quite a bit of distance before they reached a street lamp. This made it difficult to even see the road.

“The grandpa from earlier is gone!” They hadn’t seen any sign of the old man at all after leaving the stage, but although a few people were a bit panicked, none dared to speak out.

“Who cares! Is everyone here?”

“Here, I think we’re all here.”

After counting, it was confirmed that all twenty people were there.

They got onto their bikes, and following someone’s lead, pedaled as hard as possible. The people behind struggled as hard as possible to rush and keep up. The moaning sounds continued to leak out from the darkness enshrouding the small shrine and stage.

And in the distant night sky, there was a faintly discernible echo of a gong.

***

Whether it was because they had sped up or because they no longer had any interest in fooling around along the way, the return to the villa only took half the time it had taken for them to leave it. It was shockingly fast, but nobody noticed at that point. Only after stopping their bikes did they exchange glances with each other for a few seconds and laugh like they had in the past.

Likely in a rush to forget the abnormal occurrence just now, someone jumped off their bike and walked into the yard. “Weird, didn’t they say they would send the barbecue stuff over? How come I don’t see anything?”

There was nothing inside the house.

“They probably thought we wouldn’t come back from walking around the night market until very late,” Ah Fang said as he glanced at his watch.

“I remember there are some snacks and drinks in the house. Let’s go inside and wait.” The crowd of people was exhausted in many ways, including mentally. With heavy footsteps, they parked their bikes in a line and walked inside. Someone switched on the light.

Unlike the area in front of the door, the house had been completely cleaned…too clean, to the point where there was not even furniture. It was like the ceramic tiles had just been installed; they still sported a bit of dust, and the air was filled with the smell of paint.

“What the hell is this?”

They looked at other blankly with absolutely no idea what had happened.

“Let’s go see if our things are still here first!” Li Lin Yue immediately thought: Crap, we might have been scammed, as she hurriedly pressed the others.

As soon as she said this, everyone seemed to wake up from their dazes and quickly charged upstairs in fear, fighting to enter their own rooms.

“Fuck! The luggage is all gone!”

Putting luggage aside, there was absolutely nothing inside the rooms, just like outside. The emptiness faced them like it was all a stupid joke. “Everything’s gone. They must have used a spare key to steal everything while we were out!”

“Yi Tai!” Ah Fang, who hadn’t yet stepped into his room, heard the angry shouts from the others and directly raced over to the room that should’ve still had someone inside. He urgently knocked on the door, but the knocks quickly became bangs. The loud noises rang out from the wooden door, but no sound could be heard from inside. He could even vaguely hear the echoes inside, but no response from his friend.

The lights in Yi Tai’s room were not on.

Ah Fang looked around and directly walked over to the storage closet next door. Actually, there was nothing inside, just like the other empty rooms. However, there was a shaded window at the end.

If he remembered correctly, every room had a window. He might be able to climb into the adjacent room like this.

“Ah Fang, be careful.” Some of his basketball friends noticed his actions and immediately joined him, thinking about the safety of the sole person who had stayed behind. Someone passed over a flashlight.

“It’s fine, there’s an outer wall.” Although he couldn’t see through outside, there was a groove just large enough for one person to stand up on. Perhaps it was in fear of someone accidentally falling out, or maybe it was just the architectural design.

After standing on it, Ah Fang was more or less able to see outside. Although the villa was a bit far from downtown and the area where the other houses were concentrated in, he couldn’t see any lights outside. The surrounding darkness that wrapped around this place seemed to be as black as ink.

He suddenly felt extremely uneasy.

His instincts, as well as the hairs standing on end all over his body, were shouting at him to immediately leave this place.

It was too quiet. He could not even hear the sound of wind.

Ah Fang gulped and shook his head in attempt to stop thinking about it. He quickly bit down onto the torch to shift his body towards the window in front of the adjacent room, banging onto it a few times.

There was still no noise inside.

Ah Fang reached a hand out to move the window, unexpectedly discovering that it had not been locked. No, it would be more accurate to say that the strange part is the fact that it’s not open. Since he could not hear the sound of air conditioning inside, it made no sense to keep the window closed in this weather without any cold air inside. Although Yi Tai wasn’t exactly like a normal person, he definitely wouldn’t torture himself like that.

Ah Fang bit down hard on the bottom of the flashlight and lightly pushed the window open a small crack—

For a second, a pair of eyes appeared behind the window.

Caught completely off guard, Ah Fang nearly fell down from behind the window. By the time he had regained his balance and focused back on the window, there was no longer anything there.

However, when he shone the torch across the room, he saw a pair of glowing green eyes staring straight at him amidst the darkness of the empty room.

Whatever those were, they were definitely not the eyes of his friend.

Ah Fang bit down hard on the flashlight as he felt his body break out into a cold sweat. However, no matter how he tried, he could not shout out.

All he could do was slam the window shut and frantically retreat back into the storage room. There were still two people waiting for him there.

“Is Yi Tai not there?” His friends anxiously asked. Ah Fang spat out the torch, and the small light source crashed heavily onto the ground, bouncing a few times. His hands were still shaking. “Quick, quickly tell the others to leave this house! There’s something here!”

Most likely frightened by his ashen expression, the other two sensed the severity of the situation. One of them dragged Ah Fang out the door.

As soon as they rushed out, they nearly crashed into Li Lin Yue, who was just as frantic.

“All the luggage and money are all gone. There’s something wrong with this house.” The expression on Li Lin Yue’s face was not pretty. She was dragging Yi Lin with her as she said, “Let’s go report to the police first. I saw a local police station nearby today!”

“Tell the others to quickly head down.” Ah Fang pushed his friend forwards before turning around to face the storage room. However, he was suddenly stunned.

There was nobody inside the empty storage room. Nothing was there, and there were no people either.

His classmate who had just been standing there had vanished.

***

“Ah Fang?”

Li Lin Yue gripped the other’s shoulder, noticing his abnormal expression.

Sensing the trembling of the hand on him, Ah Fang forced himself to refocus. “Hurry up and go down.” He pushed at the two girls and pulled out his cellphone to dial a number.

The cellphone could not connect. There wasn’t any trace of signal at all.

As if to vent his feelings, he heavily smashed his useless cellphone onto the ground before following behind his classmates’ footsteps and stumbling down the stairs, fleeing from a the possible calamity.

The house was too quiet.

They bumped into Ah Guan at the staircase on the second floor.

“Some people are missing!” Ah Guan said with a pale face. “They aren’t inside or outside!”

“Huh?” Li Lin Yue froze for a moment before finally noticing that Yi Lin, who had been by her side the entire time, was also nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t sure how long it had just been her and Ah Fang running.

There’s something wrong with this house!

It was actually very obvious already. The three of them exchanged glances, having reached the same, silent answer.

“We need to quickly find the others.” Ah Fang took off his thin outer jacket and ripped it into shreds. He then tied their hands together with a cloth strip before they set off together.

The corridor through the villa was silent.

The small nightlights in the rooms were glowing dimly. The strange, yellow-orange glow penetrated through the paper door, but did not reflect anyone’s shadows.

The sound of laughter from earlier had completely disappeared.

They could only hear the sound of their own footsteps, along with a chittering sound that had started at some point without them noticing. The noise was pushing against the door.

It seemed as if someone was walking behind them, but when they abruptly turned their heads, they could not see anything.

After confirming that the second floor indeed had no people, Li Lin Yue grabbed onto the sleeve of the person next to her. “The others…”

“Don’t know.”

Nor do I want to think about it. Ah Fang tried opening one of the rooms, but there was only a small nightlight glowing inside. As he suspected, there was nobody around.

“This room, this room is…” Ah Guan began to stutter. “This room is ours.”

The other two turned around to look at him.

Ah Guan swallowed with difficulty and took two steps back as he continued, “When we left it just now it was a fluorescent light. Who changed it?”

“Huh?”

Upon the mention, the other two quickly dragged him to race up to the third and fourth floors as well. Unlike how it had been before they had gone down earlier, all the lights had been changed to dim, small nightlights. The room that Ah Fang and the others had left in a rush and had forgotten to shut off the fluorescent lamp was not an exception either. The rooms with open and closed doors all emitted the same colored light. Even Yi Tai’s room, which had not had any light on inside moments ago, had an identical glow.

Like a puppet show unfolding before them, humanoid shadows slowly materialized in the four bedrooms, gradually turning from the lightest shade of grey to the darkest shade of black. They then began to move until they were clearly reflected onto the door.

The moving shadows placed their hands on the door. With a clattering sound, the door was slowly pulled open a small crack. Someone’s eyes appeared behind the door to peek in on them.

Like a chain reaction, the double bedroom’s door was also opened a bit, then the storage room’s door.

Without any desire to know what was inside, Ah Fang and Li Lin Yue instantly snapped out of their reveries the second they met that gaze, as if they had been punched in the head. Only then did they also realise they were soaked in cold sweat.

Then, Ah Fang discovered that the cellphone he had tossed onto the ground earlier had vanished without a trace.

And nearly simultaneously, the two turned and advanced only a few steps before they finally had a delayed realisation regarding another matter—

Only the two of us are left.

Ah Fang instinctively reached out to grab his female friend who had completely frozen, and they charged downstairs. The slightly glowing, yellow lights that originally seemed to chase after them suddenly began to go out, one after another.

A soft chuckle came from each open door, as well as an indistinct discussion.

They ran extremely quickly, and nearly collided with the wall on the first floor as they staggered across the floor.

After straightening themselves up, they noticed that the windows and porch doors that had been opened when they had come back were now all tightly locked up. The front door was the only thing still open, and everything they saw was jet-black without the slightest hint of light.

The top of the staircase was also trapped in darkness, while the living room was still glowing that same yellow color.

A katcha sound came from inside the double on the first floor. A humanoid shadow appeared on the other side, so clearly visible that it was like a paper cutout stuck right on the surface.

Li Lin Yue covered her head and screamed, but Ah Fang persistently dragged her directly towards the main door and pushed her outside. “No matter who gets out first, we need to immediately notify the cops!”

“But I…”

Li Lin Yue turned to face a deserted entryway.

She was the only one left.

***

Thuds came from inside the house.

Someone was banging against the frail wooden door of the first floor double bedroom. It sounded extremely far away, as if coming from another world. Then, unrivalled footsteps shook the ceiling.

Li Lin Yue tightly clutched the clothing in front of her chest and backpedaled. Without enough time to even put on her dirt-crusted shoes, she turned and fled outside for her life.

A certain gaze made its aim on her.

She subconsciously looked back to see all the bedroom windows of the villa lit up by lights. There, standing closely together, were eighteen people.

The abnormally clear faces were both familiar and unfamiliar. They were the classmates she had just been playing around with happily half an hour ago.

Half an hour later, they now stood before the paper-covered wooden windows. Their pale faces held no expression, their empty eyes facing her way.

If this is prank, it’s going too overboard.

“Yi Lin!” Li Lin Yue shouted at her friend standing before the window. However, she did not call out a second time.

It seemed to take a few seconds for Yi Lin to hear. Her face as white as paper did not change expression. She only slightly raised her hand and continuously waved at Li Lin Yue. The yellow light of the room behind her displayed an extremely large shadow that similarly waved its hand at her.

Was this extremely normal action really something a human would do?

She covered her mouth and stumbled back a step, bumping into a certain person.

Frightened, she whipped her head around. This time, she really could not contain her scream. It echoed through the empty villa and back, a sharp and terrifying sound.

It was not someone she knew.

The stranger of unknown gender was wearing a thick, black outer coat that did not suit the season. He wore a bizarre, puppet-like mask on his face. Several white strands of hair stuck onto the plastic mask and waved about in an unnatural way.

She could hear the heavy, human-like pants from underneath the strange mask.

Ignoring the girl’s scream, the person who had suddenly appeared slowly raised his hand. The sharp blade he held glinted with a shockingly cold glare.

Li Lin Yue instantly understood his murderous intent.

“Let me go…don’t…” She kept shaking her head, unable to feel the boiling hot liquid on her face. All she could do was continue walking backwards, her footsteps gradually being forced to near the front porch of the villa once more.

An indescribable chittering laugh came from under the mask.

She stepped into the ice-cold room, still taking steps backwards. All she felt was the figure of the death god standing before her growing larger and larger in size, until it nearly covered her completely.

Why had all her classmates disappeared? She did not understand, nor could she fathom how they gotten into all of this.

Her back hit the wooden door of the double bedroom. The person with a sharp blade raised high in the air was right before her.

Just as she vaguely sensed something behind the wooden door, it suddenly made a strange series of sounds as the door to the double bedroom was abruptly pulled open. Someone inside reached out their hand and gripped onto her shoulders tightly.

Li Lin Yue instantly screamed in despair. Before she could even figure out what was happening, she was yanked backwards. Without any guard up, she crashed heavily onto the ground.

Finally, she noticed that she had fallen outside the door. Behind it was Yi Tai, who they hadn’t been able to find this whole time no matter how they searched. He stood there with the person wearing the mask.

“Hurry up and run!”

Yi Tai spat out before slamming the wooden door.

The sound of something being ripped apart rang out from inside the room. Dark bloodstains splattered onto the door before slowly dripping down.

Then, she was no longer able to see anything.