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墨書 Inktalez
Chapter 1: Nightmare Revisited
The sound of the keyboard suddenly stopped at three in the morning.
I stared at the envelope wedged in the crack of the door, its edges tinged with a corpse-like yellow. The hallway sensor light went out, and darkness licked at my feet like a damp tongue. When my fingers brushed against the paper, a clammy sensation sent shivers down my spine—this paper had clearly been soaked by rain, yet outside hung a ghastly pale moon.
"To Mr. Chen Mo."
The ink from the fountain pen spread across the crumpled letter like someone had written it while running. When I read the line, "Do you remember the rainy night five years ago?" the blue light from the screen shattered into fragments on my glasses. The air conditioning was set to 26 degrees, yet I could hear my teeth chattering as if an ice pick were prying at my molars.
The sound of rain from five years ago suddenly filled my ears. The sound of that man's nails scraping against the asphalt mixed with thunder, exploding in my temples. I instinctively tightened my grip on the mouse, the metal scroll wheel digging painfully into my palm. The QQ icon in the bottom right corner of the monitor bounced frantically, and my team leader's message popped up: "The server logs must be completed before three..."
"Honey?"
My wife's cotton nightgown brushed against my calf, nearly making me jump out of my gaming chair. The hot milk she was carrying spilled a halo on the table, and the scent of almonds suddenly made me nauseous—it was the same sour smell as that night’s trash can at the alleyway. Moonlight filtering through the blinds danced over her collarbone like a silver centipede.
"Just some overtime emails." I crumpled the letter into a ball, feeling a sharp sting where my fingertip touched the ink. "The server crashed again."
Her soft hand rested on my shoulder, but I flinched as if burned by a hot iron. Milk splashed onto the keyboard, and the ESC key got stuck between F and G, resembling that man's twisted fingers. Last year's team-building event had given me a mechanical keyboard that now smelled faintly of milk; I suddenly recalled that rainy night when blood flowed through the iron grates of the drain like a snake.
Shredded pieces of paper fell into the trash can like snowflakes. The greasy film from instant noodle soup climbed up the scraps, causing the words "rainy night" to swell and turn white. I stared at that mushy mass until my eyes felt sore but heard my wife sigh softly behind me. In the bathroom mirror, my face was three shades paler than her foundation, and veins bulged in my neck like misaligned contour lines on a map.
When I lay down, she instinctively curled into my arms, her shampoo scent mingling with her warmth. I counted the frequency of her eyelashes fluttering as moonlight sliced through the curtain seams like a scalpel. The wedding ring on her ring finger pressed against my chest; on that rainy night, I wore a wedding ring too—when that metal band struck against the man's temple, it left behind a crescent-shaped blood scab. The hum from the air conditioning vent suddenly morphed into an ambulance siren, piercing through my eardrums repeatedly.
As a scream lodged in my throat jolted me awake, I saw that the air conditioning display glowed faintly at 03:47. Cold sweat trickled down my spine to my tailbone; my nightgown clung to my back like a layer of skin that wouldn’t shed. My wife lay beside me, breathing steadily while remnants of dream sensations lingered on my fingertips—warm blood mixed with icy rain seeping from that man's shattered skull into my nails. The melatonin bottle on the bedside table reflected moonlight, its label's "sleep aid" slowly peeling away.
The humidifier on the bedside emitted white mist.
The mist in the darkness seemed to take the shape of a hand, with a dark brown mole on the second segment of the index finger—exactly like the hand of that man from five years ago when he held the umbrella. Suddenly, the monitor lit up on its own, and the image of Mount Fuji on the screensaver showed snow being stained crimson at an alarming rate.
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