186 Hypnosis

 

I couldn’t help but counter, “Then what about you? Are you also afraid of something since you’re hiding here? You should be able to live outside just fine but you enjoy the environment here. Or you are afraid of crowds, you like to face people one by one. You’d get anxious when there are too many people.”

The elder looked at me gently and raised his brow at me, as if encouraging me to continue. And I did, “You enjoy being alone, you’re antisocial so you are living in a situation where you can always control. It is why your hobby is to expose other people’s secrets. You hide here to research psychology, sociology and criminology. It’s for that purpose too, right?”

The elder didn’t answer. Naturally I wouldn’t abandon my upper hand so I pressed, “So you came to hide here. You thought you had everything under control but you’re just afraid of facing the people. Am I right?”

For a moment, no one spoke.

After a long silence, the elder spoke, “You are young but you have read a lot of literature on psychology. In a few minutes of interactions, you have exposed many things about me and I do admit they are true. Your observation skill is good, no wonder you’re with the police. But so what?” The elder looked at me, “I do have those problems but I can face them head on. I know my weakness and my strength. It is why I found this place for me. Do you know, this is my way of facing my problem?

“But.” The elder’s tone suddenly sharpened, “You’re different. You can’t see yourself. Perhaps you believe you know yourself but you can face yourself. Ask yourself, what is it that you really want in your life now?”

Suddenly I felt like something in my heart was hit. It was the softest part of my heart. I was all of a sudden so tired. The elder grabbed the pen and started to draw circles on the paper. As he drew, he said, “You do not trust anyone but you have to pretend to be close to people. You are afraid of loneliness but you are also afraid of getting too close to others, because you understand that once you get too close to someone, the ultimate ending is separation.

“So why can’t you admit it?” The elder passed me a pen and paper. Then he continued, “We are actually kindred spirits. You do not socialize because you are fearful of loneliness. We are people who enjoy loneliness, what’s wrong with that? Because we’re abandoned, we have to give up? No, we have to resist.”

The elder said, “Draw me a house and tree.”

I drew a tree and then after some thought drew the house in the middle of the tree. So the picture showed a tree growing out from the house. The elder looked at my drawing and said, “You are the tree, but you’re trapped inside the house. But your heart is yearning to leave, can’t you feel that? You shouldn’t limit yourself inside this frame.” The elder slowed down, “Do you understand me? Putting on that disguise won’t help you release yourself. Human lives are only less than 100 years long. Some people lived for 100 years and did nothing with it; some lived for only 30 years but they would be remembered forever. Being infamous is better than being forgotten.

“What do you want to ask me already?” The elder sat upright and asked seriously.

I was silent before I took out my phone and showed him the English message, “This is it. We suspect the killer is also a psychopath. We’ve searched for the messages online but we found nothing. So the killer probably came up with them himself. You study psychology, can you tell what he is trying to say?”

The elder continued to draw circles with his pen. He read the messages as he looked at my phone. After he was done, he asked, “Don’t you think your translation is seriously wrong? Who translated these messages into Chinese?”

“You don’t need to know that.” I said, “I only want to know what is on the killer’s mind.”

The elder was silent before he said, “This is simple, can’t you tell? It’s so obvious. He left behind so many traces because he wanted to prove his existence. It’s like people writing their names at famous tourist spots, it’s for others to see their existence. If the victims die but you can’t find any trace of the killer, then his sense of existence would be too low.”

Suddenly the elder leaned forward. “I’ve already told you, the more one is missing something, the greater one would manifest it. He is lacking in presence. When the killer was small, he must be consistently ignored. He might be abandoned. Think about it, who could the killer be?”

Listening to him, I felt a strange feeling in my heart. My brain buzzed and there was a sudden headache. I pressed against my temples hoping to smooth out the headache.

“He’s abandoned and unloved.” The voice was fleeting but it travelled into my ears. “He doesn’t fit into this world, he is never accepted by this world. Everything that he sees is fake. The friends around him, the people he loves, the people who love him are all fake.” The voice rose a tempo. “This world is fake so you have to shatter it and find your own world. Remember your prompt is…”

In the blurriness, there was a ringing siren. I suddenly snapped out of it. The elder had mysteriously left the table and was standing before me. He was holding the pen in his hands. At that moment, I heard the ramming on the door behind me. I turned around and saw the door was locked. But I remembered leaving the door unlocked. When was the door locked? I turned around and saw an inexplicable darkness in the elder’s eyes.

It was completely different from the kind old man who greeted me when I first walked into the room. He charged at me with the pen but he was no match for me, he was in his twilight years, I was in my prime years. I might be thin, but I could still handle him. The elder grabbed my collar and shouted, “Remember, you’re an orphan, you want to die, you don’t want to live anymore, remember that!” The ghastly expression on his face made him look like a demon. The capillaries on his face bulged and his face was red like he was using all of his energy to fight me. But suddenly he stopped struggling and mumbled to himself, “No, wrong, I can’t do this. I’m not someone like this, but so what? No, wrong, what?”

Then the elder appeared to be caught in some spiral. He ignored me, and started to pace around, talking to himself.

I hurriedly ran to the door, opened it and rushed out.

When I was out, the people looked at me like I had survived a brush with death, which I probably did.

“What really happened?” I asked.

The chief nurse said anxiously, “I told you not to do this, you had to. You almost ended up in the same fate as those who went in before you. But I have never seen him like this before, kid, you must be special. Your predecessors were all hypnotized by him, but he was never so open about his hypnosis before…”

I was confused.

Guan Zhenglin explained. “You almost scared me to death. We were waiting for you but suddenly you stood up to lock the door from inside. We called your name but you didn’t respond. Then the elder walked to stand before you, telling you something.”

I frowned and then realized the severity of the situation. I was reminded of how many times the elder had drawn circles with his pen. I now understood that was not a habit of his. He was hypnotizing me. At the same time, he used his words to draw me further into his control. Without even realizing it, I was hypnotized. The scariest thing was, if not for the siren, he would have reached the most vital step of hypnosis which was to set the prompt.

Like Captain Zhao said, without the prompt, the hypnotized person might not wake up from the hypnosis for life. The prompt wouldn’t be some everyday phrases, and it would normally be less than 5 words. With the prompt all set up, I would have fallen fully under the old man’s control. During my state of hypnosis, I had no idea what the old man told me.

The chief nurse sighed, “Thankfully someone was clever enough to ring the siren or else you wouldn’t be alive for long. Either you’ll be detained back here or you’d kill yourself. I’ve already told you, these people are mentally deranged. Do not attempt to converse with them. Only psychopaths can understand psychopaths.”

“So who rang the alarm?” The chief nurse looked around and asked, “I need to praise him for his brilliance.”

People looked at each other and no one spoke. The situation turned quiet and eerie.

“It has to be us, right?” Gu Chen began slowly, “There’s no one else in the corridor.”

“Or could it be…”