Chapter 5: Dormitory 505

Chapter 5: Dormitory 505

Even now, I cannot speak casually about my days at Luxi No. 2 High School in Hunan. I am even less able to talk about Dormitory 505. The moment I let my mind drift back there, a chill starts somewhere deep in my bones. Every detail of that room has stayed with me, cut so deeply into memory that time has done nothing to soften it. That dormitory building stood alone in a neglected corner of the campus, and whatever shadow lived inside it followed every girl who once slept there.

It happened during my second year of high school, when we were divided into arts and sciences tracks. I moved out of my old dormitory and into Room 505. The building had only five floors, and we were assigned to the top. It stood off by itself, with nothing around it to block the wind. At night, the whole place seemed to sink into a bleak, hollow silence. When the wind slid past the windows, it made a thin, mournful sound, like something crying far away with its mouth covered.

The girl in the bed beside mine was surnamed Li. She was pretty in a clean, delicate way, with fair skin and quiet features. Her home was not far from mine, so the two of us grew close quickly. She was also a complete atheist. On our first night in the room, several of us sat together talking about horror movies, scaring ourselves into shrieks and laughter. Li was the only one who scoffed.

“Ghosts?” she said. “If ghosts were real, do you think any of us would still be lying here sleeping?”

That night, she finally had enough of our noise. She took a towel and went to the washroom for a shower. The rest of us kept talking until sometime after midnight, then drifted off one by one. Half asleep, I thought I heard someone muttering angrily. I assumed Li had finished washing and was complaining about us, so I turned over and ignored it.

I have no idea how long I had been asleep when my bed suddenly began to shake.

It was not a small tremor. The whole frame rattled violently beneath me. I woke in a flash, irritated and confused, and grabbed the small lamp beside my pillow. When I sat up and shone it toward the next bed, all the anger drained out of me.

Li was shaking from head to foot. Her teeth were clenched so hard I could almost hear them grinding. Both of her hands thrashed wildly in the air, and her eyes were open but empty, fixed on nothing. She looked as though something had reached inside her and taken hold.

Everyone in the dormitory woke up. The others stared from their beds, stunned and terrified, none of them daring to go near her. I do not know where my courage came from, but I climbed over, grabbed Li by the hands, and shook her as hard as I could. After what felt like ages, she suddenly came back to herself. The moment her eyes cleared, she clutched her quilt to her chest and began to sob.

The girl from the upper bunk hurried down and held her. “It’s all right,” she kept saying. “It’s all right. You just had a nightmare.”

I tried to look calmer than I felt. Copying something I had once seen my mother do, I picked up Li’s pillow, slapped it three times, turned it over, and announced, “Evil spirits, begone!”

The others laughed at me for being superstitious.

Li did not laugh.

She seized my hand and looked at me with such terror that I can still see her face clearly.

“Let me sleep with you,” she whispered.

That night, she clung to me so tightly I could barely breathe. She did not sleep at all.

By the next day, she was ill. Her face had gone bloodless, and her eyes looked dull and far away. Still, no matter how we urged her, she refused to ask for leave. She forced herself through classes. At noon, during the break, she suddenly gripped my hand and pleaded in a broken voice, “Please help me.”

We gathered around her. Only then did she tell us what had really happened.

The night before, while she was showering, she had heard someone call her name. At first she thought it was one of us and answered several times, but no one replied. Near the end of the shower, she began to feel that someone was watching her from outside the window.

But we were on the fifth floor.

There was nothing beyond that window except the dark sky.

She was frightened enough to curse under her breath, then hurried through the rest of her shower and rushed back to the room.

After climbing into bed, she could not fall asleep. She kept hearing faint voices, as if people were talking nearby. When she looked out, she saw all of us sitting together on Liyao’s bed, laughing and chatting. She called to us several times, but none of us answered.

Then, just as she was about to lie down again, the dormitory door blew open.

Someone wearing sneakers walked in.

At first, Li thought it was the dorm supervisor. But the person did not scold us for making noise, the way the supervisor always did. When Li looked more closely, all of us had vanished.

In our place stood a girl dressed in green.

The instant the girl saw Li, she lunged.

She threw herself onto Li’s bed, wrapped both hands around Li’s throat, and screamed at her to get out. She said the bed was hers.

By the time Li finished telling us, every one of us was numb with fear. So Room 505 really was haunted.

I gave her the protective charm my mother had once prayed over for me. That same day, I went to ask some of the older girls whether they had ever heard anything strange about our dormitory. But none of them knew any stories connected to Room 505.

The days went by. The charm did not seem to help much. Li kept squeezing into my bed every night, while the bed by the window—her old bed—remained empty.

After she stopped sleeping there, nothing strange happened to her again.

Instead, the rest of us began to suffer.

Jing was the first.

One evening, she skipped night study because she wanted to go back to the dormitory and rest. She had the key, but no matter how many times she tried, the door would not open. As she stood there, confused, she suddenly heard the sound of water being drawn in the washroom.

Splash.

Splash.

The sound was so clear it seemed to be right beside her ear.

The key slipped from Jing’s hand. She screamed, turned, and ran all the way back to the classroom building.

The second was Xiaoyan.

She loved hiding under her quilt and playing on her phone until late at night. Once, she was lying on her stomach, scrolling through her phone, when she suddenly heard footsteps outside the room. Panicking, she switched off the screen and pretended to be asleep.

The footsteps stopped at the doorway.

She held her breath, not daring to move.

After a while, they started again. Slow. Measured. Coming closer and closer to our door.

From the upper bunk, Liyao called out foolishly, “Who is it?”

The moment she spoke, the footsteps disappeared.

Xiaoyan lay trembling under her quilt until dawn. She did not dare open her eyes.

But the worst of it happened to me.

Around that time, there had been a stretch of heavy rain. The river rose so high that water flooded into villagers’ homes. Our school was built on higher ground and escaped the flooding, so the teachers let us return to the dormitory early to rest. I was unusually tired that night. The moment my head touched the pillow, I fell asleep.

The next morning, my roommates woke me up. They were looking at me strangely.

I kept asking what was wrong. At last, they told me.

The night before, while they were all sitting on their beds talking, I had suddenly sat up. Without a word, I put on my white school uniform. My hair hung loose over my shoulders. My eyes were half open, but unfocused. Then I climbed down from my bed and walked over to the empty bed by the window.

I stood there for a while.

Then I sat down.

I picked up a comb and began combing my hair, slowly and softly, stroke after stroke.

After only a few passes, I suddenly threw the comb aside. Then I gave a small, cold laugh and muttered, “Rain. Rain. Let it rain harder. Let the water rise and drown you all.”

After that, I stood, returned to my own bed, lay down, and went back to sleep.

From then on, every month or two, my roommates would find me sleepwalking. Each time I woke, my whole body ached, and my mind felt drained and heavy, as if something had been feeding on me in the dark.

The stories spread through the school. With each retelling, they grew louder and more frightening. Before long, the school moved us to another dormitory.

After we left Room 505, everything stopped.

But later I heard that the younger girls who moved in after us also encountered strange and terrifying things. Several were so frightened that they applied to change rooms.

To this day, none of us knows who the girl in green was, or why she attached herself to Dormitory 505. Perhaps I am more willing than some people to fear such things because of something that happened to me in my first year of middle school.

Back then, I came home from evening study and found no one there. After washing up, I went to bed. In a daze, I heard someone calling me.

“Xiaomei, your little sister is waiting outside. Come quickly.”

I thought my sister had come back from Chenxi. Still half asleep, I opened the door and went out. Then my foot missed the ground, and I fell.

The pain jolted me awake.

Only then did I realize I had somehow wandered all the way to the Earth God shrine outside the village. I was barefoot, my feet caked with mud.

Later, my mother told me the Earth God had saved me. Otherwise, she said, I might have become a substitute for the dead.

I have never dared invent stories about these things. My old classmates from Class 171 at Hunan Luxi No. 2 High School can bear witness.

There are things in this world you may choose not to believe in. But you should never treat them without reverence.

Room 505 was one of those things.

So was the girl in green.

Even now, she remains a wound in our hearts, a place none of us dares to touch.