The bone-chilling cold, as if the heavy snow outside had frozen heaven and earth, was also gradually freezing Steve's heart. Steve's breathing was rapid. He suddenly understood something from Richard's words and turned to run upstairs. "I'm going to check on my mother. Richard, please take care of things outside."
Richard nodded, picked up the oil lamp on the table, gripped the fruit knife in his hand, and walked outside through the back door of the pantry, slowly heading toward the two swaying lights in the snow... "Mom!"
Steve ran and burst into his parents' bedroom. Mrs. Harrington, who was sitting on the bed preparing to undress, was startled by her reckless son.
Mrs. Harrington clutched her chest, calming her startled heart, and said with annoyance, "Steve, can't you fix your bad habit? Please knock before entering the room every time."
"Sorry, Mom." Hearing the familiar scolding, Steve breathed a sigh of relief, but his heart remained suspended. He followed up urgently, "Where's Dad?"
"In the bathroom," Mrs. Harrington said, pointing to the lit bathroom. "He needs to change his clothes."
Steve nodded, then walked to the bathroom door with slightly trembling steps. With his back to his mother sitting on the bed, he knocked on the door. "Hello?"
Upon hearing the knock, the person in the bathroom immediately gave a muffled reply in a familiar tone, like an exquisite woman doing her pre-sleep skincare. "Sorry, honey, if you're in a hurry to use the toilet, could you please go to the one in another room?"
"Mom?" Steve's lips trembled, he gasped for air, and his eyes were bloodshot. Terror projected from the depths of his heart into his gaze.
If the person in the bathroom was his mother, then who was the "mother" sitting on the bed behind him?
Steve whipped his head around to look, only to find that the "mother" on the bed had vanished without a trace. Fear, like a swarm of ants leaving their nest, crawled all over his brain, gnawing at his sanity.
Sometimes, people aren't afraid of seeing terrifying things, but rather the realization that after a terrifying thing is noticed, it has already vanished from sight and escaped into the unknown.
Like a cockroach—a southern cockroach.
Except what had escaped from under Steve's nose was something far worse than a cockroach.
"Mom! Something's happened!" Steve pounded on the bathroom door a few more times, then grabbed the desk lamp from the bedside and chased outside. He didn't know where the monster that could disguise itself as his parents had gone.
Running into the hallway, a feeling of suffocation surged into Steve's heart again. The hallway was currently dim, and the only light source on him was the light from his parents' room behind him. He panted heavily, looking at the all-consuming darkness at both ends of the hallway. Even with a weapon in hand, he still couldn't feel at ease.
"What on earth is going on, Steve? And... where's your father? I clearly told him to take off his snow-covered clothes and put them aside for me to clean before I finished my skincare." Mrs. Harrington, wearing a facial mask, walked out of the bathroom. Seeing Steve standing at the door holding a desk lamp, she couldn't help but ask in confusion.
Steve turned back to look at his mother, suddenly at a loss for how to explain this absurd and eerie event.
"Damn it, we went out to check, and the door actually got locked. Luckily, I still remember a hidden dog hole outside our manor, so we didn't freeze to death outside our own home." Mr. James was furious and shivering at the moment as he and his brother Howard supported each other while walking toward the house.
"Fortunate that my figure hasn't changed too much, or I'd have been stuck in that dog hole." Mr. Howard's teeth chattered.
The two middle-aged men, who had almost "discarded their armor" by taking off their warm outer clothes, were now walking with difficulty through the snow. The short hundred-meter distance felt like walking on thin ice to them. The low temperature of the wind and snow consumed their lives almost every second. Recalling what happened a few minutes ago, they were still fuming with rage while also feeling a lingering fear.
They had taken their gun barrels and flashlights outside to check the iron gate. Fearing that their limited perspective and field of vision would affect their judgment and cause them to miss a living person's presence, they had stepped outside to check.
As a result, after a brief inspection, the gate—which had clearly been propped open with a stone—miraculously closed. The two pounded and knocked on the door desperately to no avail, and when they tried to ring the doorbell, they found that the wires connecting it had been deliberately cut.
What a malicious act!
To get back inside the villa, they remembered the dog hole they had crawled through as children. Fortunately, no one had ever filled it in. However, they had indeed grown quite a bit, and with so many thick clothes on, it wasn't feasible to crawl through directly. So, they had to take off their clothes and temporarily "slim" themselves down to squeeze into the manor.
Unfortunately, after squeezing into the manor, they couldn't get their clothes back from outside the wall. The two could only shiver and trudge through the snow, struggling to move quickly even though their bodies wouldn't let them.
"Mr. James, Mr. Howard?" Just when the brothers in misfortune felt the journey was long, a figure appeared before them at some unknown time. Their spirits slowly focused, and upon looking closely, they realized it was the Chinese friend Steve had brought back.
"Chade? Oh my god, thank you for finding us." They were instantly revitalized, as if they had found a literal lifesaver, and quickly walked toward Richard. They were too excited to notice that this gentle-faced Eastern youth was still clutching a sharp fruit knife in his hand.
From the two men's disheveled appearance and the gun barrels in their hands, Richard was certain they were the two people he knew. So, he silently hid his dangerous weapon and went forward to support them, returning to the villa through the back door of the pantry.
As soon as the two nearly frozen uncles entered the warm house, they breathed a sigh of relief as if they had escaped death. But they were still shivering violently from the cold and sat huddled in chairs, unable to move for the time being. It wasn't until Richard wrapped them in blankets from the pantry and poured each of them a cup of freshly boiled hot water that they warmed up and slowly recovered.
Looking at the two disheveled middle-aged men covered in cold sweat, Richard had no intention of letting them rest there. He told them about how "they" had already returned home ahead of them.
Hearing that two people identical to them had taken their places and returned home, the two middle-aged men who had just escaped death felt another bolt from the blue. This time, the chill seemed to pierce through their skin and into their very marrow.
"You're not joking?" Howard suppressed his wild thoughts and asked Richard repeatedly, "Are you sure you're not joking?"
"Think calmly, sir. If we hadn't confirmed that 'you had already returned,' why would we have not gone out to look for you for so long after you went missing, and even heartlessly turned off the lights to rest?" Richard calmly led the two uncles to think, and both Howard and James fell into silence.
James stared intently at Richard, then suddenly stood up, intending to leave while draped in his blanket.
"Where are you going, Jim?" Howard called out to his older brother.
James looked back with a furious glare: "I don't want to consider whether it's true or not. If it is true, I don't want him alone in a room with my wife."
"*uck!" Hearing this, Howard—not sure who he was cursing at—also jumped up and chased after him.
Richard put his hands in his pockets and silently followed the two middle-aged men who were worried about being cuckolded.
Upon reaching the second floor, Howard and James split at a fork in the path. Richard glanced at James and unhesitatingly chose to follow Steve's father, Howard, into the room he shared with his wife.
"Jenny! Jenny! Oh, honey, I'm so..." Howard pushed the door open like a madman. When he saw his wife sitting on the bed with his son Steve, both looking uneasy and talking about something, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Just as he was about to go forward and hug her, Richard, behind him, grabbed his shoulder with a hand as strong as iron pincers.
"Calm down, Mr. Howard." Richard's voice was like the cold wind outside, always able to make one shiver, but also making one pull themselves together.
"Look closely at your wife and son. Don't their heads, hands, and shadows look a bit... deformed?"
Howard shifted his gaze following Richard's words, every pore on his body trembling as he caught sight of an abnormality. He saw his wife and Steve on the bed; upon hearing Richard's words, their expressions instantly turned dark, their eyes became hollow, and the backs of their strangely swollen heads bulged with several black tentacles. The "mother and son's" hands seemed fused together, tightly connected without any gap. Their shadows were shapeless and seemed to have a life of their own, not changing with the physical bodies but twitching as if they had their own consciousness.
Howard's breathing became heavy, and he backed away in slight terror. "You... you're not Jenny and Steve. Who on earth are you!?"