章 3690: Chapter 2815: Phantom Murder Room (Part 5)
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Shiller walked up to the door of Room 1900. This time, the door didn't open. On the contrary, it was firmly shut. Shiller tried turning the doorknob but it wouldn't budge. Bending down to peek through the crack of the door, he wasn't able to see anything.
He took out a sticky note and tried to push it through the crack, but it seemed like something was blocking it from the inside, crumpling the edge of the note. It wouldn't go all the way through.
The space under the door was tight, not wide enough for a finger to slip through. The hotel's hardware was relatively advanced; it used door thresholds instead of keys, so there was no keyhole to peek through and no way to pick the lock.
Shiller thought for a moment, then his gaze fell on the door sign of Room 1900. Oddly, only two screws remained on the upper part of the door sign; the two screws that should have been at the bottom were nowhere to be found.
Shiller turned to look at the door of Room 1901 across the hall to confirm that the sign was indeed fixed with four screws, not just two. So where were the two screws from the door of Room 1900?
All the signs looked exactly alike, so it was possible that a sign might have been swapped. But could these screws really be removed with ordinary methods?
Shiller went up and touched the screws with his hand first—no reaction. Then he tried prying gently with his pen and found they wouldn't turn. However, they probably could be unscrewed with a screwdriver.
Shiller didn't have a screwdriver, but he did have a small knife. He opened his overcoat and pulled out the thin-looking knife from an inside pocket. Despite its appearance, it was crafted from sound-absorbing steel called "Vibranium".
The biggest benefit of this material was that it could absorb sound, so even if it was used to pick a lock or strike something, it would make no noise, which was perfect for various supernatural scenarios. However, its offensive capabilities were nothing special—a blade two knuckles in length was hardly lethal.
Shiller inserted the tip of the knife into the Phillips screw head and gave it a hard twist. To his surprise, it rotated. He began twisting the knife with some difficulty, and after three or four minutes managed to remove one screw.
But Shiller didn't hurry to remove the second screw, because now the door sign was left hanging by one screw, meaning he could now rotate the door sign.
Shiller turned the sign downwards, exposing the hole of the screw he had removed. He shone his flashlight inside and saw messed-up screw threads, indicating that someone had previously unscrewed the original screw and replaced it with a new one.
The door sign had indeed been switched.
Now the question was, which sign had Room 1900 been exchanged with?
According to numerical sequence, the 00 sign should be here, as it faces the 01 sign across the corridor.
But common sense suggests that a 00 sign shouldn't be in any location, as no normal hotel would have a room numbered 00, so it would make sense to replace it with any other sign.
Shiller unscrewed the remaining screw. But the moment he took the sign off the door, he saw the door before him begin to age rapidly. The paint on the wooden door started to peel, and the wood itself turned rotten and decayed.
After half a second of hesitation, Shiller put the door sign back in its original place, and the aging stopped, slowly reversing itself.
It seemed that the door sign couldn't be tampered with, or at least couldn't be taken away for long. Estimating the rate of decay he had just witnessed, he reckoned that with a proper screwdriver, he might be able to swap the sign before the door decayed completely.
Given the current situation, it seemed someone might have already done this. Why, then, would someone want to switch the door signs?
No supernatural phenomena were evident on the door sign, so the issue lay with the door: the door would begin aging rapidly once the sign was removed, and what it might turn into upon full decay was anyone's guess.
Would the room age along with the door?
Someone was willing to risk the door disintegrating through aging to mix up a room sign, suggesting that confusing a room was more important to them than whether the contents inside remained safe.
Shiller had not seen any sign missing screws in the left-hand corridor. He remembered clearly, as he looked earlier, that all signs were affixed with four screws.
Yet Room 1900 was missing two. Where had these screws gone? And why hadn't the person who exchanged the signs put all four screws back?
Too many unanswered questions made Shiller feel uneasy. He had never been one for following the rules, but rather the sort who made the world miserable if he couldn't get satisfaction.
Shiller walked up to the door of Room 1902.
He used his small knife to remove the two screws below Room 1902's door sign, then he moved to the door of Room 1901. Ignoring the thumping of a head against the door, he also removed the two screws at the bottom of the door sign before heading towards Room 1903...
That's right, if the person who switched the signs could remove two screws, then Shiller could remove every lower screw from all the door signs.
The two screws weren't important, but not having them was very important to Shiller's mood.
The question was, were all the Shillers mad?
One could only say that Shiller, standing in the hallway in the middle of the night, moving from door to door, prying out screws, now looked like the most ghost-like being in the entire hotel.
Just as Shiller was about to remove a screw from the sign on Room 1903's door, he suddenly heard a noise inside Room 1903. Quickly, footsteps approached the door from within.
Without pausing, Shiller increased the speed of twisting his knife. Soon, he had taken off one screw.
"Hey, what are you doing?!"
A voice suddenly came from behind the door. A shadow flashed across the peephole as if someone was peering out.
"I'm working," Shiller said.
"You can't take that thing off, get away from there!"
"Are you the person who's checking out today?" Shiller recognized the voice, but his work did not falter. He said, "How come you're back?"
"Did you hear what I said? You can't remove that screw, screw it back in now!"
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"Why?"
The person on the other side seemed taken aback by the question, speaking in an agitated tone, "Then why did you unscrew it? Are you insane?"
"I noticed that room 1900 only had two screws, and since I have OCD, I decided to make sure all the room numbers only had two screws too."
This explanation clearly shocked the person behind the door, but he quickly spoke again, this time with a sense of urgency, "You can't do that, listen to me, screw it back in right now. These things are very important, without the room number, something terrible will come in."
Shiller had already taken two screws from room 1903, and weighing a screw in his hand he said, "That's perfect, I've decided to put all the screws on my own room number."
"You..." The other person was at a loss for words, and after a long silence he finally managed to say, "You don't need that many screws, four per room number are enough, give mine back to me now!"
"Do you know the guest in room 1901?" asked Shiller.
The person on the other side suddenly fell silent, and didn't mention getting the screws back anymore.
Shiller began to unscrew the remaining two screws.
The person inside, hearing the noise, yelled in panic, "Have you gone mad? Are you trying to take down the room number???"
"Is there a problem?"
"Don't, I beg you," the person inside clearly sounded flustered, he said, "You can't do this, something terrible will happen."
"Then tell me what's the deal with 1901 first."
"Alright, alright, I'll tell you, just stop unscrewing," the other person said in a hurry, "I only saw that man on the first day I checked in, he looked like he had a severe illness, he was pale, and right after I saw him, he ran to the bathroom and threw up."
"I suspect he might have already died; the thing knocking on the door now might not be human, whatever you do, do not open the door for it."
Shiller stopped turning the screw, and after a moment of thought he said, "Didn't you check out? Why haven't you left?"
"I can't leave." After saying that, the person went completely silent, no matter how much Shiller turned the screws after that, there was no response.
Shiller stopped turning the remaining two screws, but he didn't return the ones he had already taken. He glanced at his watch only to find it was already 11:45, just 15 minutes until midnight.
Shiller went to the door of room 1904. He was extremely careful not to touch the carpet with the half footprint on it; instead, he began to unscrew the two screws on the door of room 1904. This time, no one spoke out and Shiller managed to remove the screws from room 1904's number without any obstacles.
Now, aside from room 1905, all the room numbers in the right corridor had only two screws left.
Shiller returned to the door of room 1905 but he did not hammer all the screws onto his own door, instead, he took the screws back to his room.
He summarized what he had learned from his little excursion, first realizing that the hotel's elevator was likely out of service after 11 pm, and secondly, he clarified that the structure of the corridor on the left was almost the same as this side, with the inclusion of a room 13.
The situation on the right side was a bit more complicated: the room number plate on door 1900 might have been tampered with, someone was using their head to knock on the door from behind room 1901, room 1902 was silent, the resident of room 1903 claimed they couldn't leave, there was a half footprint in front of room 1904, and he himself resided in room 1905.
Moreover, he had removed two screws from the room number plates of all rooms, except his own, on the right side, and according to the person in room 1903, the room numbers might serve some special purpose and the screws holding them were important too.
He guessed that something terrifying might happen in the corridor after midnight, and now that he had unscrewed the number plates on the right corridor, would some peculiar event occur?
Shiller waited patiently in his room for a while, and before long, he heard a 'ding' sound from outside the door.
It was the sound of the elevator opening on his floor, which he had heard during the day; it meant the elevator was operational again, or more likely, that something had come up.
There were no footsteps or any other sounds. Shiller checked his watch and saw it was now 12:01. Everything was very quiet, as if nothing unusual had happened.
Another 'ding' echoed, as though the elevator had opened again, then silence for at least a minute, followed by another 'ding'.
But Shiller noticed keenly that aside from the first sound, the other dinging noises were probably not coming from the elevator. Despite the identical sound, the source seemed to be getting closer.
Ding!
This was the fourth sound; Shiller could clearly hear that it came from next door, room 1903.
Ding!
In his own room.
Shiller immediately turned and walked towards the source of the sound. He opened the bedroom door to find nothing that could make such a noise. He began searching and after a while found an alarm clock in the lower part of the wardrobe.
This alarm clock was the very ordinary kind where a small hammer would hit the ears to indicate the time, and it was the only thing in the room capable of making such a metallic noise.
After examining it, Shiller found the clock quite ordinary, keeping time accurately, and without any alarm set—if the noise had come from this, it was hard to guess who was behind it.
Shiller held the alarm clock to his ear.
He listened intently, initially only hearing the ticking of the second hand, but as he listened, the sound seemed to transform from a dry mechanical noise to something more like the sound of dripping water.
Drip-drop, drip-drop, drip-drop...
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