Chapter Twenty-Two Hair

  Su Tong did not expect that even checking into a hotel would not be so smooth. Originally, she thought that this county town, which was completely not prosperous or lively, should not have many people coming to stay in hotels, but the result was that she and Zhang Min arrived at the hotel with fatigue, took out their ID cards to register for two rooms, only to be told that there was only one standard room left that had not been occupied, all the other rooms were fully booked.

  "Actually, we don't usually have many people coming here, but as a result of the county government organizing some kind of agricultural trade fair, a lot of outsiders came, and some factories that produce agricultural products were also arranged to stay here. Because our place is the best in the county, if it's really full, they'll go stay at other hotels or inns. These past few days have been quite full," said the front desk service staff, a young girl who looked like she was under twenty years old. She glanced at Su Tong and then at Zhang Min, "Anyway, you two can just take one room, opening two rooms would be a waste. Now it's just that there aren't many options, if you don't stay here, go take a look around elsewhere, the conditions are much worse than ours. If you go around in circles and still think our place is good, I'm not sure if we'll still have a room available when you come back."

  "We are just colleagues, not what you think." Su Tong felt a bit helpless about the girl's preconceived notion. As a journalist, his questioning spirit emerged again, "If all of you couldn't fit in and someone went to another hotel to find a place, why is there still an empty room here?"

  The girl was taken aback, seemingly unaware of the issue until Su Tong asked her. She looked confused and glanced at the computer monitor in front of her: "I don't know, I just got to work not long ago, this meeting seems to have been arranged a long time ago, I wasn't even here yet. Who knows if someone suddenly didn't show up or what. Anyway, there's only one room now, are you two going to leave one person behind to stay here, or both of you will leave? If staying, I'll help with the check-in, otherwise, forget it."

  "Why don't you just stay here, it's not early anymore. I'll go out and find a nearby place with an empty room. We can just make do for one night, or else we'd have to consider only opening one room?" Zhang Min's first half of the sentence was quite good, showing some courtesy, but as he got to the second half, his careless words slipped out again, completely lacking in tact and making a somewhat off-color joke with Su Tong right in front of the service staff.

  Su Tong didn't want to bother with him, but the inquiring and guessing expression on the waiter's face made her very uncomfortable. She put on a stern face and glared at Zhang Min: "Don't make random jokes."

  Zhang Min touched his nose awkwardly, feeling a bit embarrassed. Without asking Su Tong what she meant, he turned to the front desk service staff with an impatient tone: "Alright, we'll take that remaining room. She'll stay here, you handle the registration!"

  Su Tong was about to say a few more words, but then thought better of it and decided to just stay put, after all, it's better than wandering around with him to find another hotel. In front of others, he would often crack jokes uncontrollably, who knows what he'd be like when they're alone? Su Tong couldn't help but feel that Zhang Min had been giving her a very complex look throughout the day, a look that made her feel extremely uncomfortable, and she couldn't quite decipher its meaning.

  The waiter, hearing this, looked at Su Tong herself and saw that she didn't seem to have any objections, so he took her ID from the counter and started checking her in. Zhang Min stood aside, feeling a bit awkward, and decided to leave on his own to find another hotel with available rooms. Su Tong didn't even think about asking him about their plan to meet up the next morning; in fact, if she could, she would have rather taken the commuter bus back to the city by herself.

  The receptionist completed the check-in formalities for Su Tong, returned her documents to her, and then went back to the rest room behind to call out another service staff who was slightly older than her to take Su Tong to her room.

  The older waiter, upon hearing that someone had checked in, initially appeared to be quite surprised: "What are you checking in for? We're already fully booked here. Which room did you register the person in?"

  "What's going on here? I haven't even asked you yet, and there's still one room that hasn't been occupied, it's empty. If I hadn't discovered it today, you would have all thought it was fully booked already, right?" The waiter said with a sense of pride.

  "Which room are you in?" The waiter asked, and even the older waiter was stunned.

  "What else? Isn't it just 11?"

  "Ah?" The older servant was taken aback, his eyes darting to Su Tong who was waiting to go to her room, "You've already completed the formalities for her? And she's going to be living alone?"

  "Yes, it turns out there was a man too. As a result, the two of them weren't even a couple and didn't live together. The man had already left to find an empty room in another house." The waiter asked inexplicably.

  The older waitress hesitated for a moment, then simply shook her head, took the room's magnetic card key and gestured for Su Tong to follow her to the room.

  This hotel, despite its beautifully decorated lobby, is actually very old. Walking along the winding corridors, the air doesn't circulate well and the hallway is filled with a mixture of smells, including dust and the musty scent of old carpets. The wooden floorboards under the carpet seem to be quite worn out too - if you accidentally step on the wrong spot, they let out a loud creaking sound. But what's even more frightening is the trembling feeling that comes from beneath your feet.

  The building layout of this hotel is a bit strange, divided into two buildings in the front and back, connected by a corridor in the middle. The corridor winds around like a maze, if it weren't for the service staff leading the way, Su Tong estimated that he wouldn't be able to find his room smoothly even after staying overnight. Finally, the older service staff stopped at the door of a room at the end of the first floor corridor of the building in the back, handed over the magnetic card and instructed him to go to the front desk if there was anything, then quickly walked away. Su Tong was somewhat dissatisfied with her irresponsible attitude, but thinking about it, in a county town, usually not many people stay in hotels, recently suddenly the county government organized an event, so many people came, estimated that the service staff here were busy to death, maybe they didn't have patience because they were too tired. Many times, still need to put yourself in others' shoes and be more considerate.

  She stood at the door, looked around and found that the room opposite to her own was not a guest room. On the tightly closed door hung an old golden sign with three words "Spare Goods Room". Looking in another direction, it was also a spare goods room, even the one opposite to that spare goods room was still a spare goods room.

  The person who planned this place must have had an IQ surplus or was simply short-changed. Su Tong silently cursed in her heart, swiped the magnetic card to open the door, but after several attempts, she still couldn't get it open. She considered calling a service staff member, but felt that the route back and forth was too complicated, so she tried again a few more times, and finally managed to open the door.

  The room hadn't been cleaned for a long time, the bed had a cover on it but there was a layer of dust on the bedside table. The air in the room was also very stale. Su Tong didn't care if she would feel cold at night during this season, the first thing she did was open the window to ventilate. Fortunately, outside the window was the hotel's backyard which was quiet and she didn't have to worry about people passing by making noise or peeking in. Then she went to the bathroom to try out the water heater to see if it was working normally, planning to take a hot shower to refresh herself. The hot water was supplied normally but there were no disposable toiletries provided in the bathroom. Su Tong hesitated for a moment, really didn't want to go back to the front desk again and she hadn't prepared mentally to spend the night outside, also didn't bring any toiletries with her. In the end, she decided to just make do for one night and didn't take a shower, simply washing her face with clean water.

  Nor did she know whether it was a psychological effect or the hotel's old water pipes, but when Su Tong washed her face, she felt that the tap water had a faint smell of rust, and she didn't think much about it, simply washing quickly before leaving the bathroom.

  It's okay, the bedspread on the bed was dusty, but when she lifted it up, the quilt and pillow inside were not too dusty. If they were, she wouldn't have known how to sleep that night. Su Tong pulled off the bedspread, folded it up and put it on another bed beside her, sat back against the headboard, turned on the TV, planning to watch a show before going to sleep. This hotel probably didn't provide cable TV in order to save expenses, only wireless signals were available, and there were very few channels that could be received, with poor reception, many snowflakes on the screen. Su Tong's interest was waning as she watched, when Tang Wei sent her a text message asking if she had gone home for the night. Su Tong replied to him saying she hadn't caught the last bus and could only spend the night in the county, staying at a hotel. Tang Wei didn't send another message back, and Su Tong didn't dare to send any more either. She held onto her phone for a while, but it was just quiet, so she put down the phone and tidied up her pillow preparing to go to sleep. Before falling asleep, she glanced at her phone on her pillow again, feeling slightly disappointed in her heart.

  Lying on the bed for a while, Su Tong's brain was gradually overwhelmed with drowsiness and she fell asleep in a daze. She didn't know how long had passed when she heard intermittent knocking sounds coming from beside her ear. Su Tong didn't want to pay attention to it, but the knocking sound just wouldn't stop, disturbing her sleep so much that she could only open her eyes, sit up, and ask in a daze: "Who is it?"

  "It's me, open the door." A woman's voice came from outside the door, with a strong accent that was hard to place. Her voice sounded hoarse, it was unclear whether it was due to overuse or excessive smoking and drinking.

  "Who are you? What do you want?" Su Tong's first reaction was that he wouldn't be so lucky as to have encountered a woman who goes around making deals in various hotels at night. If it really was, then this would be an eye-opener and might even make for some good news material.

  The woman whispered, knocking on the door while saying: "You open the door, I'll go in and look for something."

  What? This reason is quite novel. Su Tong thought for a moment and felt that it wasn't right either. If she were a man, the other person might be looking for an excuse to come in, but she was a woman, after all. The woman outside clearly knew there was no business to be done, so why did she still want to come in? And what could she possibly be looking for?

  "I don't know you, leave now, I don't have what you're looking for here!" Su Tong suddenly became vigilant, remembering previous reports of people making excuses to enter others' rooms and stealing from them. She immediately spoke up, using a very stern tone to demand that the person leave at once.

  The woman, however, did not give up so easily. She continued to knock loudly on the door. At first, Su Tong was a bit nervous and scared, and he shouted at her several times. But later, perhaps annoyed by the knocking, he gradually became angry. He got out of bed and rushed to the door, pressing his eyes against the peephole: "I'm warning you, if you continue to harass me, I'll call the police..."

  Her words were cut off as she choked, because through the peephole, she didn't see anyone, all she could see was the empty corridor and the closed door of the storage room on the other side.

  Did he leave? Did he hear that I was going to call the police, so he immediately ran away?

  No matter what, as long as she's gone, that's good. Su Teng let out a sigh of relief and turned to go back to sleep, but after taking only two steps, her feet came to a halt, her eyes fixed intently on something in front of her, her heart pounding like it was about to explode.

  The room had somehow gained a woman, who was crouched down with her upper body poking under the bed, searching for something. Su Tong didn't dare make a sound. Her first reaction was to glance at the window - she was currently staying on the first floor. If someone had climbed in from outside, the most sensible thing to do would be to consider making a run for it out the door. Even if they had accomplices, like the person who had knocked on the door earlier, waiting outside, at least in the crowded hotel corridor, no one would dare make too much noise.

  But outside that window, there are clearly bars with gaps that are too narrow for even a few-year-old child to squeeze through, let alone an adult.

  In this case, the possibility of someone coming in is almost zero, unless she's not human at all.

  Sutong's palms were sweating, she tried to adjust her breathing and calm herself down while quietly retreating backwards. Just as her feet had just started moving, the woman who was hiding under the bed suddenly stood up, holding a dark object in her hand.

  At this moment, it's probably most appropriate to call her a female ghost. What she was holding in her hand wasn't anything else but a long, black lock of hair.

  The hair was still connected to a large piece of scalp, which was dripping with blood. The blood dripped onto the female ghost's feet, wetting a large area of the carpet beneath her.

  "I've found it! I've found my hair!" The female ghost held her hand high, hoarsely shouting at Su Tong. Her head was almost completely bald, with most of the scalp gone, and a bloody mess remained. Only a small part of the scalp still had some sparse hair on it. Where there was no scalp, a thick, dark red blood congealed, and the flesh seemed to be rotting away. A trickle of blood ran down her forehead, along the bridge of her nose, and down her cheek, making the female ghost's already terrifying face even more gruesome.

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