NABC Chapter 100: Knocking on the Door
Chapter 100: Knocking on the Door
at the same time.
Building 3, Fanghuayuan Residential Area.
Several crows flew over the neighborhood, seemingly ignoring the building.
As night fell, people began to enter the elevator.
Until a man in a doctor's uniform, wearing a mask with an extremely distorted face and eyes that seemed to be torn apart by a device, walked into the room at the end of the corridor with a hunched back.
"The third newcomer today has arrived at just the right time."
"Next, you will need to tell stories of ghosts that you have personally experienced; this is the prerequisite for joining the Ghost Story Association."
"Don't try to make up lies; we have our own ways of detecting them."
A gaunt man wearing a medieval bird-beak doctor mask opened the door for the person in the doctor mask while laughing. The room was large, several meters long like a dining table, with a total of ten people sitting on both sides of the table.
All ten people were wearing masks, giving off a strong sense of death, making it almost impossible to imagine what kind of faces were behind the masks.
"Newcomer, tell your story."
……
……
The first two newcomers finished telling their stories.
"Yes, the story is true, it's just a bit bland."
"This story is a bit vulgar and has poor taste."
"Oh? That's interesting."
The members of the Ghost Stories Association commented on the stories of the two newcomers, and finally it was the turn of the remaining new member, the hunchbacked man wearing a doctor's mask.
The hunchbacked man spoke in a hoarse voice.
His voice was high-pitched and thin, as if he were speaking with his throat constantly strained, and his words sounded like sharp knives slicing through glass.
"I am an attending physician in a psychiatric hospital. In my job, I often have to deal with mental patients. People often misunderstand mental patients, thinking that their suffering is faked, but that is not the case."
"Everyone has a demon hidden in their heart. When long-term repression, pain, anger, hatred, and resentment accumulate, they will destroy a person's rationality and turn them into a monster in the eyes of others."
……
"That's right."
"Number 10, you seem to agree with what he said?"
"I'll tentatively agree. As the introduction to the story, I'm willing to give it a high score."
Although the story hasn't officially started yet.
The hunchbacked man threw out a catchy gimmick, and the expressions of the other two newcomers behind their masks immediately changed. They clearly felt that the story the hunchbacked man was about to tell was far more terrifying than their petty squabbles.
The hunchbacked man let out a sinister laugh and continued:
"One day, I saw a patient who was suffering from severe depression and high anxiety, which triggered many somatic symptoms. The most serious was auditory hallucinations. He said he often heard someone knocking on the door. When he was sleeping at night, he could clearly hear the knocking coming from the living room, but he lived alone and there was no one in the living room. If he was watching TV in the living room, he would hear knocking coming from the hallway outside. When he looked through the peephole into the hallway, he could not find the source of the knocking."
"I have encountered many patients like this. As long as they take their medication regularly and receive appropriate physical therapy to restore brain nerve function, they can gradually reduce auditory and visual hallucinations and control their condition."
"So I gave him the treatment I do best."
"MECT (Mechanical Electroconvulsive Therapy)"
"After the treatment, the patient's symptoms were indeed greatly reduced. He stopped self-harming and other extreme behaviors, and his somatization was relieved. I prescribed him quetiapine fumarate, buspirone, and clonazepam. As long as he takes the medication on time, everything will be fine."
"But……"
"A few days later, the patient blocked my office door, crying and saying that he could still hear the knocking."
"I thought his condition was relapsing, so I conducted psychological counseling again and a series of physical examinations to confirm that he himself had no physical problems and that the knocking was just an auditory hallucination caused by mental illness."
"So I performed MECT electroconvulsive therapy on him again."
"This time I used a current of over 100 milliamps. After the patient got off the operating table and the anesthesia wore off, he covered his head and said he had a headache, but finally he could no longer hear the strange knocking sound."
"I prescribed him a higher dose of medication, which, in addition to treating depression and anxiety, also included some sedative ingredients."
Just when I thought everything would be alright.
"The next day...the patient reappeared."
"He blocked my office door, crying and saying that the knocking was still going on. He could hear the knocking all the time. He couldn't sleep day or night, and was almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He couldn't even distinguish between dreams and reality, and would always break out in a cold sweat with dark circles under his eyes like two bruises..."
"I had no choice but to continue treating him."
"The second time, the third time, the fourth time..."
"I can't even remember how many times I've treated him. Even my resident trainee left me. The nurses at the hospital all avoid me. They all say I act very scary and that I always flip through books at night, trying out treatment equipment and activating electrical currents."
"I want to cure this patient..."
"Finally, I increased the current to 500 milliamps, and this time, the patient was completely cured."
"He smiled, bowed to me, and thanked me. He was so happy that he seemed like a completely different person. He said he could no longer hear the knocking on the door, and he no longer needed to take medication. He felt lighter than ever before and experienced a rare sense of joy and happiness."
"My mission is complete."
"That day, I came home from get off work as usual, took off my uniform, took a shower, and lay down on the bed to go to sleep. I live alone in my studio apartment."
I heard two crisp sounds coming from the doorway...
As the hunchbacked man finished speaking, he stretched out a hand and tapped it twice on the table.
"Thump, thump-thump!"
The story ends.
The members of the Ghost Stories Association savored the story.
This story can be interpreted in many ways; the hunchbacked man could be the doctor, the patient, or even the thing that made the knocking sound.
"Excellent, very good."
"The stories of the three newcomers are all excellent and equally outstanding. You have all passed the test. From now on, you are the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth members of the Ghost Stories Association."
"Number 11, Number 12, Number 13, these are your code names."
"Remember, do not reveal your real identity. Here, only code names are allowed."
The man with the bird-beak explained the rules.
The hunchbacked man seemed quite satisfied with the result, his body twitching uncontrollably and emitting laughter. But soon, as if sensing something had happened, he froze on the spot as if struck by lightning.
"What's wrong with you, number thirteen?" the bird-beaked man asked, grinning.
"A new patient has arrived."
"I will heal them."
"That's the end of today's story. Next time, there will be a new story."