Clown Game
Chapter 153 - 153 148 Numbers Two

Chapter 153: Chapter 148 Numbers Two Chapter 153: Chapter 148 Numbers Two A window quickly appeared on the screen with its contents entirely composed of video files, and the filenames were all dates.

These videos were copied from the surveillance room. As doctors in psychiatric hospitals need to understand the daily behaviors of patients, copying surveillance videos is a common practice.

Dr. Zhang opened a video, and the date below…

was yesterday.

The video playback began…

The screen displayed an image of a ward. Since it was in night vision mode, the footage was black and white. The camera angle was tilted from above, focusing on the center where a bed lay, with a person on it.

It was the patient who had been admitted to the intensive care area yesterday due to a relapse of mania…

Ever since the person with a scar at the corner of his mouth was admitted, this was already the third patient who had suddenly started behaving strangely.

The time in the video was 4 a.m. At this point, the patient was sleeping, so the scene was as still as a photograph.

Dr. Zhang glanced at the date and time with his peripheral vision, made sure he wasn’t watching the wrong video, then pressed the fast-forward button.

After that… nothing changed.

If not for the numbers representing seconds that started accelerating, one could even have the illusion of looking at a still-life photograph.

…

…

This stillness continued until seven o’clock in the morning when the person in the bed suddenly sat up sharply, as if jolted awake.

Immediately afterward, he began to brush his teeth and wash up at a “fast-forward” pace, moving in and out of the ward. His movements, sped up, became twitch-like.

The patient in the camera’s frame was in the “mild condition area,” so his behavior wasn’t as bizarre as those in the intensive care area who constantly wanted to cut people or the exhibitionists who refused to wear clothes and liked to display their genitals,

… he was just a patient with hardly any psychiatric symptoms… these actions all appeared exceedingly ordinary.

This was also why Dr. Zhang increased the playback speed, knowing there was nothing of interest in this part of the video, and another reason was that he had already watched this segment three times today…

After about fifteen minutes, the time on the screen reached three o’clock in the afternoon. The patient was sitting on his bed idly when suddenly, his head inexplicably lifted slightly.

Although the surveillance image was a bit blurry, it was vaguely discernible that he was looking in the direction of the door to the ward…

Dr. Zhang frowned again and slowed down the playback speed…

“What… exactly did he see?”

This was the third time today that he had asked himself this question. But he still had no answer.

Then, the patient in the frame stood up. His head was leaning forward, and he walked out of the camera’s range with an unsteady gait. It seemed like he had stepped outside the door… but less than a minute later, he reappeared in the frame.

Dr. Zhang rubbed his dry eyes and stared intently at the screen.

The man came to the edge of the bed, sat down, and lowered his head slightly… motionless.

Suddenly, his head jolted up at an incomprehensible angle, and he began to wave his arms wildly, opening his mouth wide and screaming.

This change was so abrupt that Dr. Zhang himself had been startled the first time he saw this footage… but now, he was prepared and was watching the screen unwaveringly.

The ward’s video could only record images, not sounds, so Dr. Zhang could only see the patient’s frenzied state but could not hear what he was shouting…

After a while, a group of staff in medical uniforms rushed into the frame and clumsily restrained the patient with straps… a few minutes later, he was loaded onto a gurney.

During this time, he kept violently twisting his body, forcefully howling, with saliva flinging everywhere, like an enraged beast, a stark contrast to his former self.

…

Dr. Zhang, having been in the psychiatric hospital for some years, could tell from this series of behaviors that the person was in a severe manic episode.

Although the patient had a history of mania, it was only a very slight tendency, and not necessarily triggered by any significant stimulus; moreover, recent examinations indicated that he should have been completely free from the condition by now.

“Is there something outside the door?” Dr. Zhang muttered to himself.

At that moment, the video abruptly ended.

He released the mouse and leaned back in his chair, going over the video’s sequence once again in his mind.

“Until three o’clock in the afternoon, everything was normal with the patient. It seemed he suddenly noticed something, then left the room. A minute later, he returned to his seat.”

And then… suddenly went mad?

That is to say, in that one minute outside of the camera’s view,

What was it?

Although he didn’t know the answer to the question, instinctively, he thought of that disgusting face… For some reason, from the first moment he saw him, he knew that all of this definitely had something to do with him.

Dr. Zhang glanced at the time, which showed 8:00 PM. Outside the window was pitch black, and he looked at his own reflection in the darkness of the glass, his eyes full of exhaustion and confusion…

“No, I must figure it out!”

Once again, his face twisted into a fierce expression, and he grabbed the keys from the desk and walked out of the office.

Of course, he wasn’t going to go directly to the ward to confront the new patient with the scar at the corner of his mouth and question him; that would be no different from acting like a fool.

He intended to visit the room shown in the surveillance footage.

A few minutes later, he arrived at that ward… opened the door, and began to feel around the wall with his hands.

With a “click,” the lights in the ward were turned on.

Under the light, there was a neatly made bed, and on the other side, a casement window, wrapped with an iron grid as required. On the left side of the room, next to the wall, there was a table and a row of wardrobes, and on the other side, a fairly decent washstand. The floor was made of white tiles, some cracked, but still clean.

Clearly, a cleaning had taken place after the suddenly deranged patient was carried out, and now the room contained only these items, almost everything visible at a glance.

But Dr. Zhang still carefully looked around, touched the door frame twice, and then approached the bed…

In fact, he had wanted to do this during the day, but the continual flow of people around and the myriad of chaotic tasks had prevented him from carrying out this plan. Now, as the only doctor on duty in the hospital, it was almost the perfect opportunity.

He sat on the edge of the bed, recalling the position of the patient in the video, and shifted his seat to the left.

Next, he imitated the picture of the patient in his mind, bowed his head, and then suddenly lifted it.

From his recollection, the patient’s head should be at this angle.

However, at that moment, Dr. Zhang was surprised to find that the spot he was looking at was actually quite a distance from the door

…

What he was looking at this moment… was the wall of the ward.