The blockade of Room 369 has been lifted, yesterday's blood has been cleaned up, and the cabin has regained its tranquility. However, the door into the house was torn by bullets and can no longer be closed.
The two entered the house and first opened all the curtains on the upper and lower floors, opened the windows for ventilation, and let the warm sunlight illuminate all rooms and areas.
Dean put his hands on his waist and turned his eyes,
"Let's search together this time. You go to the second floor. By the way, does this house have a basement?"
"I don't remember it." Alvin shook his head firmly.
After dividing the work, Dean stayed on the first floor to search.
This is a very standard living room + kitchen structure.
Dean kept the "God's Perspective" on, and every time he moved a certain distance, he would observe everything within a five-meter radius.
The front, rear, left, right, ceiling above your head, the wooden floor under your feet, and possible basements and hidden compartments:
On the right side of the hall, there are black sofas, coffee tables, and TV sets on the inside, and a square dining table and two chairs on the outside.
Next to the dining table stood a large cabinet full of cups and plates against the wall. The wooden knives and forks in the cabinet were strangely broken into two pieces.
The kitchen on the left is small and exquisite, with a stove, cabinets, refrigerator and cupboards, but it has a thick layer of dust and is hung with cobwebs.
It is in line with the previous situation that no one has stayed in for five years.
Dean gathered information and gained insights.
The "God's perspective" is more detailed than observation with the naked eye, with no blind spots at 360 degrees.
Not even a fly on a chair or a ball of string on the floor can escape insight.
"Yes, God's perspective can not only cooperate with the 'Shadow' to carry out sneak assassinations across floors and obstacles, but it can also be used to find clues at the crime scene."
Dean turned his attention to the refrigerator.
The door of the refrigerator room was violently removed, and the interior was empty and could be used as a storage cabinet. In addition, the refrigerator was plugged in with a power cord but was not powered on.
The ceiling lights couldn't be turned on, the TV screen in the living room had a big hole, and all the electrical appliances couldn't work properly.
The power to the entire house was turned off.
"Is it because the property and electricity bills have not been paid for too long? But why hasn't the house been auctioned? Isn't it said that property in America is greater than God?"
"What mark is this?"
Dean walked to the dining table and found a simple symbol on one of the table legs - a circle of black swirling patterns.
It felt to him like a meaningless doodle drawn with a black pencil by a child with ADHD.
Dean searched carefully again, and was surprised to find that similar symbols could be found on coffee tables, chairs, TV cabinets, and even wooden floors. Some were extremely inconspicuous, only the size of a fingernail, and some were as big as a palm. Circle it in a circle and draw it with such force that the pencil lead breaks inside...
Dean made an estimate and found that there were hundreds of similar symbols on the first floor?
"Alvin! Has a child ever lived in this house?"
Dean shouted to the second floor from the stairs,
"Child? No!" Alvin's determined voice came down. "Didn't the neighbors tell me that Panon has been living alone and has never been married?"
"Damn it! It couldn't be that Panon drew these symbols himself?" Dean thought and asked, "How old is your brother this year?"
"Same age as me, forty-eight."
"How long has he lived in this house? Oh, by the way, I forgot that you haven't been here for a long time, you don't know, right?"
"Panon and I grew up in this house together. Later I moved to Compton, Los Angeles, and he lived alone for many years." Alvin walked down from the second floor with a depressed expression.
"What do these symbols mean?" Dean nodded and pointed to a black circle at his feet.
"Panon drew it when he was little. He would draw it when he was nervous or in a bad mood."
"It's really him."
Dean was lost in thought.
Children are naughty and restless, and it is normal for them to graffiti a few symbols on furniture.
But there are hundreds of symbols appearing on this floor, which is too many to be normal, which is enough to indicate that the person who painted has a psychological problem.
Then think of the information collected from previous visits to neighbors.
Panon lives in seclusion and only goes out shopping once a week or two wearing thick clothes.
The children regarded him as a weirdo and broke into his home to tease and bully him.
This doesn't sound like a normal adult.
"So, Panon has been different from ordinary people since he was a child?"
This idea came to Dean's mind, and the system immediately shook, and the investigation progress jumped from 10% to 15%.
Does this mean my inference is correct?
But he didn't know how to ask Alvin for a while.
You can't just ask others directly - Is there something wrong with your brother?
"Anything found on the first floor?" Alvin interrupted his thoughts.
"No, let's go take a look at the second floor."
…
Three bedrooms and one bathroom on the second floor.
Alvin took Dean straight into the bedroom on his right. The place was not big. A row of empty wardrobes stood against the wall on his left, but there was no clothes in them.
Dean guessed that most of the clothes should have been purchased by the intruder for zero dollars.
The sunlight through the window illuminated a single bed in the center of the room. The quilt and blanket were gone, leaving only a dirty mattress and bed frame.
"I used to live in this room."
Alvin didn't mind being dirty, so he sat down on the mattress and looked around with emotion in his eyes. It was obviously empty, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
"I lay on it every day from birth to twelfth grade... I didn't expect that after so many years, the decoration structure of this home has not changed at all. Panon has kept it the same."
"It's like I'm back in time."
Alvin touched the moisture at the corners of his eyes with emotion.
At this time, Dean picked up a football from a row of shelves beside the window sill. He said it was a football, but at best it had a hard black and white outer shell, and the gas inside had long since gone away with the passage of time.
Alvin noticed his movements;
"When I was little, Panon begged me to accompany him to play football on the lawn outside the house every day. He would usually be the goalkeeper and I would shoot the ball."
"You two have a good relationship?"
"Of course, we are twin brothers. We were both born on May 23, 1932. Did you know that he was born half an hour earlier than me... and then he became the older brother sitting on my head."
Alvin recalled with a smile,
"We eat, live and play together, and are almost inseparable. Sometimes, I even feel that I have some kind of special telepathy with him. It sounds incredible. But I can guess what he is thinking by looking at his expression. , he is the same."
Then why didn't you sense his whereabouts?
Dean sighed and asked a cruel question.
"If we have such a good relationship, why haven't you come to visit him for so many years?"
As soon as this question came up.
Alvin seemed to be under a restraining spell. The smile on his face froze and disappeared, his breathing stagnated, and then he tightly covered his upper right abdomen with both hands.
He was breathing rapidly, the nasolabial folds on the bridge of his nose were shaking with his muscles, and his face was as pale as a black and white photo frozen by a camera.
"Shet! Man, what's wrong with you? Don't scare me!"
Dean helped him lie down on the mattress and hurriedly took care of and checked him.
In less than a minute, Alvin returned to normal, his clothes soaked with sweat, and his whole body looked like he had been fished out of the water.
"Sorry, I have this old habit that happens several times a day. Dean, why don't you go check out the other room?"
Dean gave up the plan of persuasion. Alvin himself didn't care about his illness. Why should he, an outsider, talk too much?
The two checked the remaining rooms.
In the bathroom, Panon's bedroom, and the bedroom of the two brothers' father, there were more circles of black line symbols than on the first floor.
"Besides you two brothers, your father also lives in this house?"
"Well, when I was in high school, our father, David, fell ill and passed away. It has been more than twenty years now."
"I'm sorry...so you brothers have been living together for a long time?"
Alvin nodded and stroked the bookshelf, with a complex expression on his face that was both moved and a little unclear.
Dean began to summarize the clues he had already grasped.
Alvin and Panon, two brothers whose father died young, depended on each other in this house.
Later, Alvin went to Los Angeles to develop, and Panon stayed alone in the old house.
For some unknown reason, the two brothers had not seen each other for a long time, at least ten years.
Panon has a weird personality and is not popular with the residents of the community. When he is in a bad mood, he likes to draw a lot of strange patterns at home. Extremely introverted, suspected of suffering from excessive obsessive-compulsive disorder or other mental illness?
Panon disappeared five years ago and never appeared in the community again.
"That's all for now."
Dean memorized it silently.
"Wait, this house has an attic?"
Dean looked up and found a narrow and dark space behind the right corner of the master bedroom ceiling with his always-open perspective.
It was very hidden, between the ceiling and the beams. If Dean hadn't mastered the special observation ability, he wouldn't have been able to find this place even after searching for a month.
But there was no light inside, and it was too dark to see clearly in winter.
"Wait a minute, I don't remember that there is an attic at home?" Alvin looked surprised.
"Find a ladder and come with me to have a look."
…
A quarter of an hour later, Dean, who had exhausted all his strength, pushed open a wooden board on the ceiling that fit tightly with the surroundings, and entered the attic as he wished.
It was cramped and cramped, only half the size of a bedroom.
There were no windows, and it was so dark that I couldn't see my fingers.
The air was stagnant, the sweltering heat was filled with an extremely mild musty smell, and thick dust accumulated everywhere.
There was no sound, it was eerily quiet.
Both of them had a delusion.
In the depths of this darkness, there is a bloodthirsty demon hiding its teeth and claws. It is about to pounce out and devour all intruders.
Dean held the Colt in one hand and the flashlight he took from the car with the other.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
There was only a large dark bed in the attic, and a pair of unlocked wooden storage boxes beside the bed.
The styles of both are full of a sense of age, like some kind of antique or old object.
"Dean, how did you do that? I lived in the house for years and didn't even know there was an attic."
"I'm better at finding things." Dean explained casually.
Alvin's attention was firmly attracted by the dark bed in the center of the attic. It was two meters long and one meter wide, placed directly on the floor.
He approached like a man possessed, stretched out his hand to touch the edge of the bed, and brushed off the dust. The feeling was very strange.
It is as cold and hard as cement, with some curved lines carved into it.
He murmured in a low voice, with a ghostly expression on his face, as if he had seen something extremely ridiculous and unbelievable.
I was so nervous that cold sweat ran down my face.
And Dean knocked on the bed, which seemed to be completely solid.
Looking inside from God's perspective, you can't see anything without light.
He could only give up the bed and walk towards the wooden box at the head of the bed with the flashlight. The wooden box was reddish brown in color and was as high as his knees.
When he reached out and touched it, there was a layer of dusty, warm fluff. It was like he was touching a living animal!
Dean let go as if he was electrocuted and walked around the box. From the perspective of God, he discovered two strange wooden boards, and there was a delicate and peculiar pattern inlaid on the back of the box——
A pale eye the size of a palm, with a circle of pale eyelashes, is like a pale sun radiating countless rays of light.
Dean was about to open it.
"Dean, Alvin, where are you?"
Holden's voice suddenly came from under the attic, like a thunder, exploding in the hearts of the two of them.
Alvin woke up as if from a dream and quickly left the bed, staggering.
And Dean picked up the wooden box and climbed down the stairs.
