Love in Cthulhu

Chapter 6 Possession
The door to Jian Xi's guest room was tightly closed. Zhou Nan was curled up in bed, using the thick quilt to block the light from his phone screen.

For the past two hours, he had been tirelessly tinkering with Jianxi's phone. It was probably waterlogged, and the system had some problems. Not only was it extremely slow to boot up, but even when fully charged, it would often freeze within ten seconds of entering the home screen.

This caused him to spend so much time without getting any information. The only good news was that it proved that this was at least not a brick that had been conjured up.

Meanwhile, Jian Xi, who was next to him, had a similar problem with her phone. When she came back at night, she charged her phone in front of him, and Zhou Nan saw the screen light up and then immediately freeze. Jian Xi was so angry that even physical therapy couldn't cure it.

It works, but not completely. In other words, it's not just a fake phone that looks like a phone; both are genuine smartphones, and they even have the same problems.

This led him to a bold hypothesis: the fake Jian Xi might possess not only Jian Xi's body and personality memories, but also all the items she had on her in the mountains, from clothes to keys or even sophisticated machines like cell phones—anything could be in duplicate.

What is this? A magic trick of perfect replication?

It is simply impossible to break through and distinguish the real from the fake by means of something with such capabilities.

This is like that extremely malicious rumor: the real Sun Wukong was killed by Buddha long ago, and from that moment on, the Six-Eared Macaque took his place. From then on, there will only ever be one Great Sage Equal to Heaven in this world.

Zhou Nan disliked such stories. The first time he heard them, he hated the person who first made up such a lie.

The original will always be the original, and no matter how good the successor, they can never replace it.

As he pondered, a wave of weariness washed over him, and he drifted off to sleep. He had experienced so much that day.
…………

When Zhou Nan opened his eyes again, he found himself hanging on the wall, surrounded by darkness, with only one or two lights on in the upper floors of a small building a little further away, and the air filled with a strong and familiar stench.

It was indeed hanging, a very delicate posture. He felt like a piece of cured meat drying on a rope in the yard in winter, his waist aching from the pressure.

He was fully conscious, but this was clearly not a place where one could sleep comfortably, and he realized he might be dreaming.

But this dream is too real. Aren't they saying that you don't feel pain in dreams? It's not just the pain, the stench also seems familiar, like... an open-air latrine?

Before he could think any further, he found himself moving inexplicably. First, he pushed off the wall with his feet to increase friction, then used his arms to push himself up the wall. He carefully squatted down and jumped off.

I immediately felt a soft, yielding sensation under my feet. If I hadn't reached out and grabbed the wall in time, I would have definitely fallen flat on my face.

"Damn, I stepped in poop!"

Zhou Nan heard a man cursing angrily.

It wasn't someone speaking; it just flashed through his mind like an electric current, but he could hear the sound of that current.

Zhou Nan seemed to understand something. He thought to himself that his dream was interesting. Most of his previous dreams were bizarre and fantastical. He was either wearing some kind of magic robe and fighting demons, or jumping off a helicopter with his arms outstretched in the raging wind. Today, however, he was able to have a first-person perspective, as if he were playing a super realistic version of CF (CrossFire).

He felt a little regretful; he'd had such a vivid dream, why couldn't it have been about spending the night with a bespectacled, literary-minded girl? Even if he didn't have a role model, someone from a manga would have been fine.
His mind was filled with random thoughts, but that didn't stop his body from acting on its own. The man turned around and rubbed his shoes hard against the wall until he felt he had done enough before groping his way out of the bathroom in the dark.

Before me lay a dark but familiar street scene. Today's dream was actually a real-life version of reality. To my left was a row of old houses, to my right was the emergency exit behind the theater, and in front of me was a smooth stone road with mud on both sides where the grass had been washed away by the rain. Wasn't this the courtyard of the cultural center? So, I actually climbed over the wall of the public women's restroom?

It instantly made me feel nauseous; even my dreams were so perverted.

The man didn't walk forward, but instead turned into the depths of the alley on his left.

He stopped in front of the innermost house, turned around and looked at it, then took out two thin wires from his pocket and skillfully inserted them into the keyhole.

"Holy crap, this guy's a thief!" Zhou Nan exclaimed in shock.

He could feel the resistance coming from his fingers. The wire touched him from left to right, scraping him slightly. The groping only lasted for about ten seconds. With a light click, the door of the old house popped open a crack.

The man opened the door a crack, easily squeezing in with his slender frame, and then closed it behind him.

The faint light from the night-vision watch illuminated the corner of the wall, and the man used this small amount of light to grope around in the house. The air was filled with dust and the rotten smell of old furniture. The collapsed beam above his head had not been repaired, and drizzle was pouring into the room through the hole there.

These old houses were all uninhabited. When they left, they had taken almost all the valuables. The man searched the place and found only a few coins and some tattered paper money.

However, he was not discouraged. After leaving the house, he continued to do the same thing, prying open doors one by one and ransacking the place, seemingly without any concern that he might suddenly bump into the homeowner after entering. His audacity was astonishing.

Zhou Nan figured this guy must have scouted the place during the day and knew that no one was around now, so he came to make his move at night.

This experience was quite novel, especially since it was in a dream. Since he couldn't do anything about it and it was all automatic, Zhou Nan began to watch with great interest how he opened those dusty old drawers. The whole process was like digging for treasure, and he never knew what he would find next.

Twice the man actually found some valuable things: a silver pocket watch abandoned under a magazine, and a veteran's medal. The man was very happy, and Zhou Nan was also very happy. The first-person experience felt like he had done it himself. As a top student, he had not had any unconventional experiences since junior high school.

But his happiness vanished quickly, because the man's movements were practiced and efficient; he quickly ransacked the row of houses, and his gaze naturally fell on the last one.

That was Zhou Nan's old house. "Haven't you stolen enough for so long? Even in a dream, you dare to touch anything in my house!" Zhou Nan shouted angrily.

But he couldn't speak at all, and the man couldn't hear his inner monologue. In just a few steps, he had already crawled under the bare grapevine and started to pry open the door with practiced ease.

Zhou Nan was furious. He was a skilled Sanda fighter and confident that he could take down the thief in no time. But in his dream, he was powerless to do anything. Without a body, he could only watch helplessly as the thief was about to steal the things that held his memories.

The heavy lock made it a little difficult for the man, but his calm demeanor indicated that he knew this kind of thing very well; it just needed to take him a little longer.

He then pulled out a new tool, instead of using finesse, he directly destroyed the latch structure, producing a grating squeaking sound that made Zhou Nan's heart sink with each sound.

After a minute of frantic activity, the door lock finally popped open, and the man was overjoyed. He pushed the door open and went inside.

In an instant, his heart pounded wildly, and Zhou Nan's heart pounded wildly along with it.

There was a figure standing inside.

The only word to describe that thing is "shadow," because it is a two-dimensional plane. Its surface is like an old television screen, covered with dense static. It is entirely black, yet deeper than the deepest night, as if it could extinguish all the light in the world.

There was no light source around, but the two consciousnesses who saw it could feel that there was something there, and that this thing seemed to be staring at them. It was a stare that didn't even have the concept of a gaze, but it gave them a suffocating feeling of being enveloped by some kind of viscous, invisible substance.

Even Zhou Nan, who had watched countless horror movies, felt a chill run down his spine, as if he had been thrown into an ice cellar.

The reason why horror movies are not scary is that you know that no matter what kind of atmosphere is created, eerie background music, or deliberate suspense, it is all just for the sudden appearance of something. You will have a sense of anticipation and vigilance, and you will look forward to its arrival at a certain moment. Once you get used to it, it is hard to be frightened.

But this thing in front of me is completely different from all those demons and monsters. I can see it clearly, but I can't see it clearly. It's like a silhouette of an image cut out of three-dimensional space.

But Zhou Nan had a vague feeling that the thing was quite beautiful... He thought that if he could see it clearly, it would definitely be a beautiful thing.

This idea was completely unfounded and extremely bizarre, yet he wasn't disgusted at all; in fact, he even liked it a little.

Wait a minute, isn't my hobby supposed to be girls with glasses and literary flair? I don't even get interested in girls like Jian Xi, but now I'm staring longingly at a shadow... Damn, could I have some weird fetish?

Since it was all a dream, after the initial panic upon meeting, Zhou Nan calmed down and returned to his usual carefree and clueless state.

But he wasn't alone. He could feel how nervous the man he was leaning over was, his chest filled with immense fear, so much so that he couldn't utter a single word.

Zhou Nan wanted to look at it a little longer; he wanted to try harder to see if he could make out the thing, and it would be best if he could turn on a light or something. But the man clearly didn't have that kind of courage; the most instinctive action for anyone when scared is to run away.

The man reflexively took a step back and took a stride—but missed his footing and fell heavily to the ground.

Even Zhou Nan didn't realize what had happened. His vision and senses were focused on the man. Suddenly, the world spun around him, and it felt like the whole world had fallen into a pocket of silence. He could hear nothing: heavy breathing, the soft patter of raindrops on the awning, the dull thud of the fall.

His face was pressed against the cold ground, and he felt something around him. All the blackness was writhing, as if it had grown thousands of tiny legs. The projections of the houses distorted, crawling across the concrete, climbing the walls of the small buildings, and finally even swallowing the sky, along with that faint glimmer of light.

Everything happened in a very short time, followed by the excruciating pain of the body being completely torn apart; the killing came faster than the nerves could process it.

The first thing to fly out was the severed arm, followed by blood and bone fragments. It was a pure and violent massacre. The dark shadow was no longer visible. It seemed to be gone, yet it was everywhere. Otherwise, there would be no reason for such heavy blows. It was as if someone was wielding an invisible club at extremely high speed.

Zhou Nan felt the intense pain as if it were him, not the man. The pain was so intense that he couldn't even scream. He instinctively wanted to curl up and hide, but he only had his spirit there. All the physical pain came from the man himself. He had unfortunately become another lamb on the chopping block.

All the joy was forgotten amidst the immense pain. Zhou Nan now only wanted to wake up from this utterly stupid, real dream, otherwise he would die from the pain.

As if heaven had taken pity on his misfortune, the thing that was slashing at him suddenly stopped for a moment. The man involuntarily raised his head, and on the border between death and extreme terror, his retina reflected the fleeting outline of that dark shadow.

His long, dark hair fluttered in the wind, as if dancing in the wind. He was just a blurry black dot of snowflakes, but a certain concept entered his consciousness. It seemed that the thing that looked like a person but was not a person had finally taken on a human-like appearance.

A question arose in the man's mind. He still couldn't see the thing in its entirety, but he felt as if it were surprised, so surprised that it even touched its cheek with its hand, the slender part like a fingertip probing into the boundless darkness.

It looks somewhat...familiar?
The man instinctively wanted to call out Zhou Nan's name.

These past few days, he had been thinking about her safety constantly. People say that what you think about during the day, you dream about at night, and that's really true. In such a terrifying and bizarre dream, the obsession he cared about most would reappear in a unique way.

But that vague impression only lasted for a very short moment. Before Zhou Nan could even utter that name, the man's body twisted and contorted. What was originally a pure outpouring of violence turned into a destruction aimed at strangulation in that instant. Blood gushed out and internal organs scattered.

The link to consciousness was completely severed. Witnessing his own death, Zhou Nan sat up abruptly, opened his eyes in the dim light of dawn, breathing rapidly, his whole body covered in cold sweat.

He pressed his forehead, his head throbbing as if it were about to split open, as if something was about to burst out of it. Flashes of light flickered in his pupils, those chaotic lines, like ink outlines, twisting like snakes, seemingly containing a huge amount of information, and lingering on them for even a moment would cause his head to explode.

(End of this chapter)