Roommate

I just came to this city to work hard, and my wallet was empty. Finding a house became a really troublesome issue. I flipped through a lot of information online and finally found a shared rental house with an affordable price. This house was in an old residential area. The building looked shabby, and the wall paint was peeling off in patches. But the rent was incredibly cheap, so I gritted my teeth and decided to rent it.

On the day I moved in, I met my roommate, A Qiang. He was tall and thin, with a face as pale as paper. His dark circles under the eyes were so heavy that it looked like he had been punched twice. His eyes were shifty. I greeted him with a smile, "Hello! We'll be roommates from now on!" A Qiang just nodded, forced out a smile that looked worse than a cry, and replied in a low voice, "Um, hello." At our first meeting, he gave me a really eerie feeling, but since we were just roommates, I didn't think too much of it.

In the evening, after a tiring day, I went to bed early. I was half asleep when suddenly there was a noise coming from the living room. The sound was sometimes like someone crying in a low voice, and sometimes like sighing, going up and down. I thought it might be the wind outside, turned over and tried to go back to sleep, but the sound became clearer and clearer. In the quiet night, it made my heart feel creepy.

I summoned up my courage, put on my clothes, and opened the door. The living room was pitch-black and I couldn't see anything. I reached out and found the switch, and with a "snap", the light came on. When the light came on, I was really scared out of my wits—A Qiang was standing stiffly in the middle of the living room, staring straight at the ceiling, opening and closing his mouth, mumbling something, and his body was trembling slightly.

"A Qiang, what... what are you doing?" My voice was trembling. A Qiang seemed not to have heard me and just ignored me, still muttering to himself. I slowly walked closer to him and gently patted him on the shoulder, "A Qiang, wake up!" Only then did he slowly turn his head and look at me expressionlessly. His eyes were empty, as if he had no soul. It made my heart turn cold, and it seemed that he didn't recognize me at all.

"Go back to your room... It's dangerous..." A Qiang suddenly blurted out these words. After that, he gave me a hard push, turned around and staggered towards his room, and slammed the door shut. I stood there stupidly, my mind in a complete mess. What on earth was going on here?

In the next few days, it was like this every night. As soon as it was midnight, A Qiang was like possessed, making strange noises and movements in the living room. During the day, I talked to him, "A Qiang, are you too tired at night recently? You seem to be sleepwalking all the time." A Qiang looked confused, "Sleepwalking? I didn't know that. I slept quite soundly at night." Judging from his expression, he didn't seem to be pretending, but this thing was really too strange.

One evening, I came home from work. As soon as I got to the door, I heard "bang bang" noises coming from A Qiang's room, as if someone was tossing around inside, and the commotion was quite loud. I was worried and shouted loudly, "A Qiang, are you okay?" I shouted several times, but there was no response from the room. I panicked and quickly found the spare key. My hands were shaking so much that I couldn't insert it into the keyhole for a long time.

As soon as I opened the door, a pungent smell rushed towards me, and I almost vomited. The window was wide open, and the cold wind was blowing in. Looking at the floor, A Qiang's limbs were twisted in an extremely strange posture, his eyes were wide open, and his face was filled with a look of horror. I quickly ran over and squatted down to check his breath. My hand touched something icy cold. A Qiang was already dead.

I was so scared that I sat down on the ground with a thump, my heart pounding wildly, and my mind went blank. At this moment, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a new painting on the wall. It was a woman with a horribly distorted face. Her eyes were staring straight ahead, as if she were alive, and she was staring at me viciously. I quickly turned my head and then saw some strange symbols drawn on the floor in the corner. They were bright red and made me feel creepy just looking at them.

I took out my phone tremblingly and called the police. The police arrived quickly and checked the inside and outside of the house. A policeman came over and said to me, "There are no abnormal situations found at the scene, and it's not easy to determine the cause of death of the deceased at present. It is preliminarily speculated to be an accidental death." I was anxious, "Accidental death? How is that possible? He was in good health, and there have been a lot of strange things happening here before!" The policeman frowned, "Calm down first. There is indeed no evidence to suggest any other problems at present." I was angry and scared, but there was nothing I could do.

After A Qiang died, this house became a veritable haunted house. Every night, all kinds of strange noises never stopped. Sometimes it was a faint crying sound, and sometimes it was the sound of tables and chairs being moved. It felt like there were always a pair of eyes staring at me in the dark. Once in the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up from a dream and vaguely saw a dark figure standing by the bed, with long floating hair, and I couldn't see the face clearly at all. I let out a terrified shout, and the dark figure disappeared in a flash.

I really couldn't stand this kind of torment anymore and decided to move out immediately. When I was packing my things, I found a diary under A Qiang's bed. After hesitating for a moment, I still opened it. The first page of the diary read: "I really shouldn't have been greedy for the cheap rent and rented this house. I had heard that it was not clean here long ago..."

When I flipped further, A Qiang had recorded in detail all the strange experiences he had after moving into this house. It turned out that even before he moved in, he had heard from the surrounding neighbors the terrifying rumors about this house. Many years ago, a woman was brutally killed in this room, and the murderer had never been caught. Since then, this house had been really eerie, and there were hauntings from time to time. At that time, A Qiang was short of money and thought there was no such thing as a ghost, so he moved in.

The diary also wrote that just a few days after he moved in, he felt someone blowing in his ear at night and heard faint cries for help. At first, he thought it was due to his high pressure and he was having hallucinations, but later the situation became more and more serious, and he was haunted by nightmares every night.

When I saw the last page, it was written in blood-red words: "No one can escape..." My hand shook, and the diary almost fell to the ground. I didn't dare to stay for another second. I casually packed a few things and rushed out of the door.

After leaving that house, I thought I had finally gotten rid of the nightmare. But unexpectedly, the shadow of this horror has been haunting me. When I'm walking on the road, I always feel like someone is following me; when I go to bed at night, as soon as I close my eyes, all I can see is A Qiang's terrified face and the ferocious appearance of the woman in the painting. This terrifying experience of sharing a house will always be engraved in my heart and can never be erased.