Chapter 2: chapter 1: The Mystery of the Prison Cell

The midnight silence at the police station ended when the patrol car arrived. Two police officers entered with the detained young man, and explained that he was accused of murder. But the police officer on duty at the police station had some doubts, since the young man seemed innocent.

The atmosphere inside the police station was so quiet that you could hear the sound of shoes echoing every time your feet touched the ground. The young accused looked left and right in fear. Walking towards the front of the cell to the back, a pair of beautiful eyes caught sight of a corner of the inner wall. The atmosphere of this prison cell was different from the cells he had passed through before: dark, cold and silent.

The sound of the steel door opening creaked loudly, hurting his ears. The police officer in charge removed the handcuffs and pushed him on the back to get him inside.

Once inside, the young man begged him not to leave him alone in the cell, but the police officer did not listen to him. The young man slowly sat down on the ground. His hands gripped the steel bars tightly, as his eyes trembled slightly before he began to sing softly.

“Namothassa bhagavato araha-”

'I should kill everyone. There should be no one left!'

“Arahato sammasambuddassa namodassa-” The young man recited the mantra while looking at his toes.

'I don't want to be locked up, let me go!!!'

“Bhagavato a Arahato sa sammasambuddhassa.”

The young man began to recite incoherently, while suffering chills. The sound of body movements coming from something made the blood vessels stand out in her beautiful palms.

The sound of movement behind him grew louder, but the young man tried to ignore it. It sounded like something was being dragged, and like someone was trying to fight.

A loud, piercing scream sounded, causing the young man to hastily cover his ears. The sound of clothes rubbing against each other, and bodies colliding, plus screams full of agony, gave the feeling that someone seemed to be being strangled.

The sound continued to echo for almost four minutes until finally everything returned to silence.

The trembling young man slowly removed his hands from his ears. Out of the corner of his eye he couldn't see anything in the distance, and little by little he dared to look back. But all he got was an empty space and the young man let out a sigh of relief.

But then, a drop of water fell on his forehead, making his heart beat rapidly again. The young man took a deep breath and slowly looked up, what he saw made his heart almost stop beating and his body go numb at the same time.

It was the image of a man dressed in torn clothes, hanging from a beam above, with a thick rope holding his neck.

His eyes were bulging and his face was dark green, unlike someone who had just died. And the water that dripped on his forehead came from an open mouth with the tongue hanging out.

The image he saw made the young man tremble with fear. He frantically rushed to the inner wall. Both eyes widened as the hanging corpse swelled and finally fell to the ground. The corpse in front of him moved slowly, its swollen face staring at him with piercing eyes, before crawling towards him. A thin tongue darted back into his mouth, trying to form words he could understand.

' Die...die with me...'

“Please, please don't come closer!!!” the young man pleaded with his fists clenched, as the ghost in front of him grew closer and closer.

'Live with me, come with me, die with me!!!'

Thup closed his eyes tightly as his body trembled. If he still had the amulet he got from Luang Por, his life would have been different.

All he could do was sit, hug his knees, squeeze his eyes shut, and wait for the nightmare to end. And then, a cool breeze blew, like that time... like in the forest.

Suddenly, the young man opened his eyes and saw the tip of a pair of sneakers on long legs dressed in dark pants and a tight T-shirt that accentuated his abdominal muscles.

“Get up and follow me. If you're thinking about running away, don't expect to survive.”

He's gone... The ghost is gone...

Singha watched the young man who seemed to be searching for something frantically, looking from left to right, just like when they first met in the forest.

After giving instructions to his men, Singha headed to the cell to see this young man, but on the way, he could hear the sound of sobbing and screams coming from the solitary cell, and imagined that it was the detainee.

Singha took the young man to the examination room. The room was pure white, upon entering, they met a man with thick-framed glasses. He was Darin, a former medical examiner turned general practitioner at the hospital, because he couldn't stand the fear of ghosts.

Darin, who had learned about the incident in the forest from Dr. Say, Singha's friend who was the new forensic doctor in charge of the case, could not believe that the young man the inspector brought was the main suspect. He even almost assumed that some invisible things might be involved in this case.

However, of course, Singha was adamantly opposed to this, because he did not believe at all in things that were beyond common sense.

The physical examination was performed carefully, following predetermined procedures. And when he was done, Darin recorded all the inspection results in a file. Then, the next process was interrogation.

As soon as Shingha was about to take him to the interrogation room, Thup begged him not to be taken to the same solitary cell. He said he was afraid because he felt like something was there, but of course, Singha didn't believe the nonsense about ghosts this young man always told him, even when his own best friend told it to him.

“If you don't believe me, I don't care. But how do you explain the prisoners who were captured in the same cell and hanged themselves?”

"How do you know?" Darín asked surprised.

“A long time ago, there was a man who was arrested and imprisoned for murdering an entire family. He used his own blood to write a confession on the ground, before using a rope he had hidden in his pants to hang himself. After that, another suspect who was locked in the same cell attempted suicide. This happened five years ago, am I right?”

Both Singha and Darin looked at the young man at the same time because they were surprised.

“Stop talking nonsense, wake up!” Singha ordered the young man. “When the test results come out, give them to me immediately. And if Say comes back, tell him to come see me.” Singha said before taking Thup to the interrogation room.

….

“Thup Ramawat Veerakitthada, twenty-five years old. Independent artist. “He lives alone and has no criminal record.” Singha read the history of the person sitting in front of him. As for Thup himself, he just sat there and listened while he nodded. “His current residence is twenty kilometers from the crime scene. Can you tell me why? And how did it get there? Because I couldn’t find any record of him having a driver’s license.”

Singha began to question Thup, who explained that he had dreamed that something bad would happen in that place, and something invisible prompted him to get there. He also explained that he did not know how to drive and that he had gone to the scene by taxi. At first, the police inspector did not believe him, but Thup insisted that he was telling the truth and assured him that he still remembered the license plate and the face of the taxi driver who took him. Then he confidently gave her the registration information.

“After getting out of the taxi, I saw an old woman walking towards the forest, so I followed her. The deeper it went, the more I felt like I was slipping into a place I shouldn't be. When I realized it, I was so surprised that I tried to run away, but no matter how hard I tried, I kept coming back to the same place, until I tripped over a branch and fell, then the police found me and immediately arrested me.”

“You say you saw an old woman, who was she and where is she? Are you telling me you followed a stranger into the woods?”

“I couldn't see her face, but she was wearing a blue blouse and a green floral sarong. And he was holding an old-fashioned lantern. But, when I turned to check for some noise, it disappeared.”

Singha sighed before using his tongue to press her cheek and vent his frustration.

“Do you think anyone is stupid enough to believe what you say?” Singha stood up before slamming the file he was holding on the table, causing the boy to flinch. “Do you think you're going to get out of jail with this stupid story?!”

“I'm serious, I'm telling the truth!”

“To hell with it!” Singha came out upset. It wasn't the young man's words that angered him, but his gestures while he spoke were not at all suspicious. What he said was not a lie. And if what he said was not the truth, then the young man was a professional liar.

Singha ordered his men to investigate the license plate of the taxi given by the young man and called the driver for questioning.