A suffocating heaviness settled over Wang Wenlong the instant his feet touched the sand, as though the well had suddenly filled with invisible water and he was sinking fast. His lungs burned; the walls seemed to pulse inward. He forced himself to move, crouching to snatch the two nametags. When his fingertips scraped the bottom, they brushed something that definitely wasn't sand (something small, hard, protruding like a knuckle or a knuckle-sized stone). "Trap?" he muttered, heart already racing again. He swept the sand aside with trembling fingers.
The grains slid away too easily, almost eagerly, revealing pale, cold skin. A human nose emerged first, then closed eyelids, then a full face (a girl, no older than high-school age, lips slightly parted as if she'd been buried mid-breath). Wang Wenlong recoiled so hard he slammed his back against the opposite wall. "F*ck!" He had inspected every inch of this well before jumping. There had been nothing but clean sand.
He flung the nametags upward. "Pei Hu! Pull me up now! There's a mannequin buried down here!"
"Another mannequin?" Pei Hu's flashlight beam stabbed downward. The buried face tilted, sand cascading from its cheeks, and stared straight up at him with flat, glassy eyes. Pei Hu's scream came out more like a squeak. "Why is the well deeper now?!" He dropped to his knees and shoved one beefy arm into the darkness. "Grab on!"
Wang Wenlong seized the offered forearm and scrambled, boots scraping desperately against the claw-marked bricks. He was almost at the rim when something ice-cold clamped around his left ankle. His grip slipped; gravity reversed. He crashed back down, sand exploding around him.
"Wenlong!"
"Something grabbed me!" He stared at his leg—no hand, no rope, nothing visible. Yet the chill lingered like frostbite.
The sand was moving on its own now, sliding away in steady streams. The mannequin's shoulders appeared, then arms folded neatly across a blood-stained uniform blouse. It was sitting up slowly, mechanically, the way a corpse might if strings were pulled from above.
"It's moving by itself!" Wang Wenlong's voice cracked. "That's not an actor—no one could stay that still when I landed on them!"
"Hand! Now!" Pei Hu lay flat on his belly and plunged both arms into the well like he was trying to fish a drowning man from a frozen lake. Wang Wenlong lunged, fingers locking around thick wrists. He kicked off the wall, using every ounce of strength to haul himself upward.
He was halfway out—chest clearing the rim—when the grip on his ankles returned, tighter, colder, joined by a second and a third. The buried girl's plastic hands had broken free of the sand entirely and were now clamped around his legs, dragging him down with steady, relentless force.
Wang Wenlong twisted in panic and met the mannequin's eyes. They were no longer glassy; something dark and wet flickered behind the painted irises, watching him the way a child watches an insect it has decided to keep.
The mouth of the well stretched farther away again, light shrinking to a distant coin.
"I can't hold on!" Wang Wenlong screamed.
"Shut up! Someone's coming!" Pei Hu hissed suddenly, eyes wide with fresh terror as soft, deliberate footsteps echoed from the corridor behind him. He redoubled his grip, veins bulging in his forearms. "One more try—together!"
Pei Hu's thick arms trembled as he hauled upward with every ounce of strength in his body, veins bulging, sweat dripping from his chin onto the stone rim. Wang Wenlong rose a few precious centimetres, then jerked to a sudden, sickening stop. Something below had tightened its grip.
Wang Wenlong twisted cautiously this time, afraid of what he would see. Nothing clutched his ankles; the hands had vanished. But directly beneath where he had been standing moments earlier, the sand had parted again. Another pale female face now stared up at him, lips blue, eyes wide and unblinking. "There are two mannequins in here!" he shouted, voice cracking into a high-pitched whine. "I was standing on her head this whole time!" The thought that he had been treading on a buried body (even a fake one) sent ice water flooding through his veins. How many more were packed beneath the sand, waiting for someone stupid enough to jump in?
He kicked frantically, legs scissoring in the air while clinging to Pei Hu's wrists like they were the only solid thing left in the universe. "Don't move so much! I can't hold you!" Pei Hu roared, face turning the colour of raw pork. He slapped one palm onto the well's edge for leverage and heaved again. The extra pull lifted Wang Wenlong another inch, but Pei Hu's gaze kept darting nervously over his shoulder. The bad feeling that had been crawling up his spine finally crystallised into pure terror when he glanced back down the left corridor.
At the junction, half-hidden in shadow, stood the blood-soaked girl mannequin from the sealed classroom (head perfectly reattached, uniform dark and dripping, skin unnaturally pale against the crimson stains). Her chin rested on her chest as though she were asleep on her feet.
"That's the one whose head came off!" Pei Hu's breath came in shallow, whistling gasps. "A worker must have fixed her and left her there as decoration. Mannequins don't walk by themselves!" He repeated the sentence like a prayer, trying to convince his panicked brain.
From inside the well came a desperate, sobbing scream. "Pull me up! Their eyes just opened!"
At that exact moment the girl at the junction raised her head with a slow, deliberate creak. Purple bruises bloomed across the once-smooth cheeks; blood vessels stood out like black threads beneath the skin. The painted smile stretched wider as her gaze fixed on the well.
Pei Hu's rational explanations shattered. He sucked in a lungful of freezing air and forced his eyes back to Wang Wenlong. "Almost there, just hold on—"
But his peripheral vision betrayed him again. The girl was no longer at the junction. She now stood in the centre of the left corridor, closer, head tilted at a curious angle, smiling directly at him.
Pei Hu's heart slammed against his ribs so hard he felt it in his teeth. His palms slipped with sweat; every roll of fat on his body quivered like jelly. Cold sweat poured down his back.
"Stop spacing out!" Wang Wenlong shrieked, legs now wrapped in invisible bindings that felt like wet seaweed tightening with each second.
A soft thud echoed behind Pei Hu. He didn't want to look, but his eyes moved of their own accord.
The girl mannequin had fallen forward onto the floor. Her severed head had detached again and was now rolling (fast, too fast) along the corridor tiles, propelled by some unseen force. The bruised, smiling face spun closer and closer to the mouth of the well, eyes wide, mouth curved in that gentle, curious expression that no longer looked painted at all.
Pei Hu's survival instinct finally overrode everything else. With a strangled wail he let go of Wang Wenlong's wrists and bolted, his heavy body moving with impossible speed. He barrelled into Room 303 and slammed the door so hard the frame rattled.
Inside the well, the circle of light that had been inches away vanished as Wang Wenlong plummeted. Sand rushed up to meet him. The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him whole was the rolling head dropping over the rim above, still smiling, as the buried mannequins beneath him opened their eyes in perfect, welcoming unison.