Chapter 46
“Dr. Nguyen? Are you home?” after checking a coffee shop down the street, a Vietamese restaurant and a musical store, the five person team composed of Caroline, Jason, Detective Marcus, Detective Jamerson and Erika knocked on the door to Dr. Nguyen’s residence - a high end apartment home.
The door was not locked, so Detective Marcus and Detective Jamerson quickly drew their guns, told Caroline, Jason and Erika to stay put and entered the room with tactical entry techniques.
“Clear!” after a short while, Detective Jamerson’s voice came from inside of the apartment.
“Was she here? Why would she leave the door unlocked?” Erika asked.
The moment Caroline and Jason stepped into the apartment, they felt an uncomfortable chill breeze blowing right through them. The feeling was not that unsimilar to the kind of chill they felt when they were facing off against the large spider in the limbo from the Prime Royals Hotel.
Jason was particularly affected by the chill - extreme dizziness struck him out of the blue, almost causing him to fall down on his back. Yet it went away as quickly and unexpectedly as it came, by the time he got his hand on the door knob, the dizziness was completely gone.
“What’s wrong? ” having noticed Jason’s sudden reaction, Caroline grabbed onto his arm and helped him straighten his body, “Did you find something?”
“Nothing… just … suddenly felt dizzy.” Jason scratched his head while his brows clenched, for he saw a blurred and shadowy figure seemingly made of black smoke in front of him, he could barely make out that the figure took the shape of a human. The most noticeable trait of the figure was its leg and feet - the figure’s shape was clearer on the lower parts of its body, and its legs and feet were displaying a posture that Jason almost forgot about: it was standing on its toes.
“Do you see this?” Jason gently nudged Caroline’s elbow, inconspicuously pointing at the middle of the room and asked.
“See what?” Caroline looked at the direction, but she could not see what Jason was referring to.
“Okay, I am having a vision. Let me tell you in a bit.” Jason nodded, as the figure moved towards a side of the apartment, and stopped in front of one of the tall shelves with open drawers.
The figure stood there for a few moments, then it turned around and walked towards the door and disappeared right when it got into the hallway.
“She might have come back and taken something from the shelf.” although not yet certain on what the vision meant, Jason voiced his theory pointing at the tall shelf: “I think - I think she came back here, found something from that shelf and then left.”
“Okay…? How do you know that?” Erika squinted at Jason: “Have you been here before, or… do you know Dr. Nguyen personally?”
“No, no… just a hunch.” Jason was not sure how to explain, “Just… just check the drawers!”
“They’re empty.” Detective Marcus was already at the shelves as he pulled out some of the drawers completely: “From the look of them it looks like she took everything away? What was in them?”
Jason shrugged, he did not see anything from the strange vision he just saw.
“Let’s check the whole apartment, see if we can find anything.” Detective Jamerson exchanged looks with Detective Marcus, then she looked at the 3 civilians in the room: “Be careful, if you found anything let me and Raymond handle it first.”
“No problem. Forensic basics.” Erika nodded.
Shortly after all five people in Dr. Nguyen’s apartment dispersed, Erika called out to everyone in the apartment from the bathroom: “Hey guys! I think I found something...”
When Caroline and Jason got into the modern, spacious and well decorated bathroom, they immediately saw what Erika found: bunches of hair in and near the sink, and two teeth inside of the sink.
“Holy… ” both detectives did not say anything and were just stunned at the sight for a short moment.
“These are quite fresh - the blood on the teeths hasn’t even dried. ” Erika put on a pair of gloves and picked the teeth up, “The blood looked a bit dark for oral wounds though… not sure if it is because of something in the sink, or is it because of Dr. Nguyen is REALLY unhealthy...”
“That does not sound good...” Both Jason and Caroline looked at each other with great worry in their eyes.
When Jason took an unintentional glance at the mirror, he caught Dr. Nguyen’s pale and crying face on it. But the vision quickly went away as well.
“Shit, I just had another vision.” Jason whispered to Caroline.
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The day was getting late, a movie set of “The Haunting Crescent” almost wrapped up the shooting work for the day. Today, like many other days before, was full of small accidents and unintentional hishaps. Another staff on set got injured from a falling prop vase, and to no one’s surprise the set supervisor yelled at almost everyone for the rest of the day.
Finally, the last group of staff left before the sky went completely dark. But as the lights inside of the set flickered, a woman figure appeared inside of the set, right at the centre.
The woman was walking on her toes, there were a couple of bloody bald spots on her head, the base of her neck had a huge opening like someone cut her throat open, her clothes were bloodied from the inside, and her upper body was contorted and mangled like a poorly assembled doll. The woman’s eyes were cloudy, like a stereotypical blind person. This was one of the lead forensic scientists in the SFPD, Dr. Nguyen. But now she was clearly no longer herself.
With another flicker of the lights, a tall and slim figure of a man appeared in front of the woman. This man was surrounded by black smoke, his eyes were missing and the area on his face around his eye sockets is crawling with dark veins. The black and white rags on this man’s body vaguely resembled the appearance of a suit, and on his neck was a dusty but undamaged black tie.
Dr. Nguyen’s neck cracked as she raised her forehead and opened her mouth, so widely that her jaw got dislocated and thus producing more cracking sound. A giant eye with shiny yellow and green iris emerged from her mouth and stared at the man that appeared in front of her.
The opening on Dr. Nguyen’s neck started moving, like a big bloody and ugly mouth, and a low, echoey and blurry voice with two tones came out: “Pitiful apparition… useless and weak… ”
Before Dr. Nguyen could finish, the man let out a low roar and lunged towards her. Yet he was not able to close in on her and was frozen in mid air by an invisible force.
The black smoke surrounding the man’s body, as well as parts of his body started getting squeezed into a thin stream and sucked into the mouth on Dr. Nguyen’s neck. The man started screaming and struggling in pain while Dr. Nguyen seemed to be enjoying the ghost milkshake.
A loud scream from someone else rocked the whole set, a staff on the set was at the door and fell backwards on his back. This, however, did stop what Dr. Nguyen was doing to the slim man. The man took the opportunity and disappeared into thin air. Dr. Nguyen then gave out a furious low roar, and disappeared in the night as well.