Episode 3 Chapter 022 Monitoring
I called Shi Hu early the next morning because I really didn't know what to do about what happened last night. Besides, I had no idea what to do with the paper man. My mother said it would be inappropriate to just throw it away or burn it rashly.
Shi Hu came very quickly, but he came alone. He said that Master Nan had something to do and might not come until the afternoon. After Shi Hu came, I told him what happened last night. Even if it was during the day, it would be scary to talk about such things, let alone at night.
Shi Hu said that there are surveillance cameras in the community, and what happened last night should be recorded in the surveillance. He said that if owners like us go to ask for it, we will never get it, so let him do it. I know that Shi Hu has connections with the Public Security Bureau, so I didn't care.
Originally, I wanted to tell Shi Hu about my mother's strange behavior last night, but my mother and father were around at the time. The situation was already chaotic enough, and I didn't want to add more mental burden to them. I just thought about what to say when Master Nan came in the afternoon.
Shi Hu got the surveillance CD. What was surprising was that there were no cameras in most community elevators, but ours was installed. He copied the surveillance video on a CD, but he told me about it over the phone and didn't come up to our house again. I asked him where he was, and he told me that he was at the entrance of the community and asked me to go down.
I didn't quite understand what Shi Hu was doing, so I told my mom and others that I was going to go downstairs. After what happened last night, my mom and dad were a little depressed, so they told me that I went downstairs only after they understood. After meeting Shi Hu, Shi Hu asked me to go to his car to talk. After getting in the car, I sat in the passenger seat. Shi Hu gave me the laptop and told me to take a look at it myself first.
I felt that Shi Hu's expression was a little different. Realizing that something might be wrong, I asked him guiltily what was going on and why he was being so mysterious. And when I came down, I realized that Shi Hu was obviously doing this to avoid my dad and mom.
Shi Hu asked me to watch the surveillance video from last night first. What he saw was a little different from what I said. He said that I should not have lied. If I did not lie, then it was my father who deceived us , although we still don’t know whether he did it intentionally or unintentionally.
The video on the laptop was paused. I clicked to play it. This was the front view of the elevator, except that the elevator was empty. However, I saw the elevator open and close by itself and then closed again. Normally, the elevator is closed and will only do so when it receives a command.
I looked at Shi Hu who was reminding me to pay attention to the keypad in the elevator. Although it was a little blurry, I could still see it clearly. Before the elevator closed, I saw a button suddenly light up. It seemed to be the button for the seventh floor.
There was clearly no one in the elevator, but how could this happen? It was just like last night when my mom and I stood in front of the elevator without moving, but the down button lit up by itself. I watched the elevator go up to the seventh floor and soon stopped. After the elevator stopped, I saw someone standing at the elevator door, and soon he came in and pressed a button at the bottom of the elevator.
Of course this person is my dad. When I saw this, I recalled in my mind what my dad described to us last night. This is different. My dad said that he was in the elevator when he woke up. Could it be that he was not awake at this time? Then how could he get in from the seventh floor?
I felt a chill down my spine, but I continued reading without saying a word. Shi Hu was also watching from the side, but he didn't say anything either. Since he didn't say anything, it meant that I should continue reading.
The elevator should have reached the first floor, then the door opened, and my dad walked out. Judging from the corridor outside, it should be the first floor instead of -1. After my dad walked out, the elevator closed, and then went up again. I saw that the button for the seventh floor was still lit, and then the elevator opened and closed like this, but from the scene outside, it was always going up and down between the first floor and the seventh floor , without stopping in between.
When the scene reached this point, Shi Hu asked me to fast forward a bit. I asked how much to fast forward, and Shi Hu drew a line on it himself. It should have fast forwarded about ten minutes. During this time, the situation in the elevator should have been repeated like that. After fast forwarding, I soon saw my father coming back. He should have gone out of the community just now.
Then Shi Hu reminded me to pay attention to my dad's hands, so I moved closer to the screen to look. It was blurry and I couldn't see clearly. I could only vaguely make out that my dad's hands seemed a little twisted and looked unnatural. Shi Hu said that most people walk with their palms facing inwards towards their legs, but when my dad came in, his arms were twisted and his palms were facing outwards.
This is why you might think your dad’s posture is a little weird, but because the surveillance camera is shooting from the top, if you don’t look carefully, you really can’t notice this detail.
After my dad came in, he stood motionless in the elevator with his head down, as if he was sleeping, until the elevator reached the seventh floor again. Then he walked out. When he walked out, Shi Hu suddenly pressed the space bar to pause, and then asked me to look at my dad's feet. I saw that my dad's feet were on tiptoes.
I asked what was going on, and Shi Hu said that it was obvious that this was not my father's own action, but that something was controlling him. Then Shi Hu pointed to the side of the elevator. It was just that the video was not very clear, so it was not very clear here. However, it seemed that Shi Hu should have studied this kind of thing frequently, and was very sensitive to such abnormal places in the video. He pointed to the shadow on the wall of the elevator and said to me: "Don't you think there are two people in the reflection?"
I was startled by what he said, and suddenly felt like someone was watching us from behind, so I looked back involuntarily. Shi Hu noticed my action and asked me what was wrong. I recovered from my shock and said it was okay, I was just scared by his words.
But even though Shi Hu said this, I only saw a blur. Perhaps it was because my eyesight was not as sharp as Shi Hu's, so Shi Hu postponed the video. Perhaps because time was limited and the video was too long, he did not let me watch it from beginning to end, but only played the important parts for me.
I thought that the next scene should be the familiar one, but it was not. Shi Hu dragged the progress bar there, and it was still the empty elevator. But within a minute, the video suddenly went black. I asked what happened, and Shi Hu said that for some reason, the video had been missing for two minutes. So I watched the dark picture for two minutes, and then the picture suddenly brightened again, but it suddenly scared me, because when the video reappeared, there was someone in the elevator. It should not be said that there was someone, but there was something, because I recognized at first glance that it was not a person, but a fake person I had seen before.
I saw that one of the two dummies that were reflected from the water tank on the roof was now placed in the elevator. I knew that these two dummies were obviously stolen inexplicably, so how could they appear in the elevator for no reason? And this time I saw that the operation of the elevator was finally different. The button that was lit was for the twelfth floor!
Why the 12th floor?
I was a little confused for a moment, but Shi Hu reminded me to keep watching. When the elevator reached the twelfth floor, the elevator door opened. From the video, I could just see a person standing outside, but this person was definitely not my dad, because you could tell from his clothes. He was wearing white casual pants and a pair of white leather shoes, but because of the angle, you could only see below the knees. Then I saw the weirdest scene I had ever seen in my life, that was the dummy in the elevator, actually walked out by itself!
I was secretly thankful that I watched this video during the day and there was someone next to me. If I had watched it at night or alone, I don’t know if I would have dared to continue watching it. But at the same time as I was afraid, I also began to have new doubts. Who was this person in white pants, and why was the dummy transported to the 12th floor?
The video was still playing, and soon I saw a familiar scene. After that, I saw my father enter the elevator from the seventh floor again, but this time the scene was exactly the same as my father said. Seeing this, I realized that my father did not lie, but he didn’t remember what he had done before. He only remembered that he suddenly woke up in the elevator, and then what happened next happened.
Seeing this, Shi Hu paused the video, then closed and ejected the disc. He took out another disc and asked me to look at something else. He said this one was the elevator surveillance, and the other one was from the corridor.
He put the CD in, and the scene that popped up was of my mother and I standing in front of the elevator, the same as when we met, there was no big difference, including the down button that lit up inexplicably. It was all the same, but when the elevator door opened, Shi Hu pressed pause, and pointed to the side of the elevator facing us and said, let me see the image inside. It was still a blurry mass. Shi Hu said that there seemed to be other things besides us, but we were too far away to distinguish them clearly with our eyes. Now he was outside, so it needed the help of some software and equipment to extract and separate them.
Shi Hu played the video again and said that if this part was still a little unclear, then the following part should be very clear.
