“Wait - what?” Wu Xiaoming had no idea what was happening.

“I - I swear I didn’t know! They just handed me the - the E and I didn’t know, because we used to buy from him - ” Matthew Anderson wiped his tears, trying his best to look Wu Xiaoming in the eyes: “I - I tried to find him after, but - he just disappeared, and - ”

From the stammering apology of this cameraman and apparently a member of his former entourage and former friend, combined with very vague memories of what happened before he came to this world, Wu Xiaoming pieced together what the man was apologizing for.

Apparently, Malcolm Carter was the one who helped the previous Wu Xiaoming pick up the small bag of ecstasy from the dealer. He gave it to the previous Wu Xiaoming, without verifying what was inside. But as the previous Wu Xiaoming exited the club along with the rest of the group, having taken a pill or two from the bag, he began showing symptoms of overdose - and pretty severely as well. The whole group panicked, none of them knew what to do. And like a group of cowards, they ran, leaving the previous Wu Xiaoming by the side of the road. Someone in the group called an ambulance, but did not stay around.

“Okay. Okay.” Wu Xiaoming raised his hands, and stopped his former friend from apologizing some more: “Okay - it’s a lot to process. But for now - let’s keep it professional, alright? Let’s talk about things after we wrap things up.”

“Alright. Alright.” Malcolm Carter stood up, wiping his face: “Thank you. I gotta say - I kinda took this job because I wanted to tell you this. I - I could use the gig but still - ”

“Yeah, yeah it’s okay. Let’s get to the project first, shall we?” Wu Xiaoming took a deep breath. It was indeed a conundrum. In a way, this man did contribute to the death of a person. But in another way, it was only because of this man that he got to live another life in this different world.

“Hey, you guys ready? ” Jake asked when Wu Xiaoming came back into the house.

“Ready.” Malcolm Carter nodded as he grabbed his backpack and took out his handheld camera from his duffle bag.

“Let’s start by getting the opening ready.” Wu Xiaoming looked up at the sky: “ - while we have some good lighting.”

Both the sound guy and the cameraman agreed.

“Hi there, my fellow morbidly curious watchers.” Wu Xiaoming tried his best to act natural when reciting the opening phrase designated by Tammy and Timothy Manchester: “Welcome to your latest episode of Unwise Encounters! Today, we are here at the somewhat famous ‘That haunted house in Monterey woods’! Also known as ‘The Pine House’, due to it being in a woods full of pine trees and whose first owner was named Albert Pine. Though humble and normal at first glance, there had been many mysterious missing persons cases associated with this house. Most of which, were actually the people who had lived here, including the first owner, and the one who built it, Albert Pine.” He paused to catch his breath - even fighting spirits wouldn’t be as stressful, then asked Jake and Malcolm Carter: “How was that?”

“Looking good.” Malcolm Carter raised his right thumb.

“Alright with me as well.” Jake nodded.

“Just to be safe, let’s have two more takes?” Wu Xiaoming scratched his head. Without the guidance of the director, it was rather strange that he had to manage the scene by himself.

Two more takes later, Wu Xiaoming decided to take a look around - to capture some “normal” footage of the area, as per the instructions of Tammy and Timothy Manchester - the footage would serve as “setup” for the audience to gradually prime them in the right mood.

“Now, as you can see, the house itself is surrounded by trees - pine trees, cypress trees, and - heck I don’t know what trees they are, I am not a tree expert.” Walking along the surrounding area with the camera guy and Jake behind him, Wu Xiaoming pointed at everything he felt worth mentioning: “But - as you may have noticed - the trees around the house don’t seem to be doing so hot.” He mentioned as he approached one of the pine trees in front of him - one with many loose and corroded barks, and large patches of bare spots. And as he looked up, the camera focused on the branches - the weather condition was not bad by any means, but this tree only had less than half the needles as one would expect from a pine tree.

“Now, you might want to say: ‘oh, it’s just this one tree’, but look.” Wu Xiaoming pointed around. The closer the trees to the house, the worse the states they were in. It was as if some kind of blight or disease was spreading from the house. “As you can see, the trees closer to the house are more sickly looking, while the ones further away seem better. So - maybe there’s something to it.”

In his mind, Wu Xiaoming wished he was exaggerating. The pattern was beyond obvious to him, and it seemed to be the same case for Jake and Malcolm. He focused his sight on some of the worse looking trees, but nothing stood out, even while the lighting was good. Maybe it was precisely because the sun was out high and it suppressed the dark energy from surfacing.

“Oh look!” As Wu Xiaoming walked past the empty area behind the house, just outside the broken down fences, he noticed something on a tree that was almost completely bare - no flowers, almost no leaves or needles, barely any bark on the trunk.  On the blackened, barkless trunk, facing away from the house, was an old claw mark at a height that was roughly Wu Xiaoming’s height, or slightly higher - three nails, covering half the circumference of the tree trunk. “This looks like a claw mark? Can we get a closer shot at this?”

Malcolm came over and pointed his camera at the claw mark. The tree was thicker than most in this area, making the claw mark seem particularly long. But the distances between the single claw scratches were relatively small, indicating that the claw itself was not that big.

“What animal do you think this is?” Wu Xiaoming asked both Malcolm and Jake: “A bear? Or - like a honey badger or some other kind of big rodent?”

“I - I think it might be too small for a bear that could stand that tall.” Malcolm hesitated for a moment before answering.

“Yeah - I think so too. It’s kinda weird. ” Jake nodded: “Bears don’t usually leave marks this high - unless it’s a really big one. But there’s only black bears in this area, and black bears aren’t very big, so - ”

“Okay! I think this would be one of the creepy things.” Wu Xiaoming took out his phone and snapped a picture.

Just as they circled to the front of the house, Matthew Anderson came out and waved at them, signalling them that the house was ready.

“Alright! Let’s go in and check.” Wu Xiaoming clapped his hands.

They went in, and most of the house was still in its original state, aside from a small area that had been cleared up to place their supplies.

“There’s no snake or other dangerous animals now, so you guys can freely record the interior. When you’re done recording, we can go ahead and clean the house up so it’s more livable.” Matthew Anderson lit up a cigarette: “Go ahead. If you see anything just call out to me. I will need to set up a communications center here, so don’t take too long.”

“Will there be cameras outside?” Wu Xiaoming asked.

“I’m gonna set up trail cameras around the house. And with the communications center set up we can stream the footage to the director and backup the footage.” Matthew Anderson shrugged: “After you’ve got your in-house footage, you can review everything then.”

“Okay.” Wu Xiaoming shrugged.

They proceeded to tour around the house while Wu Xiaoming narrated what the condition of the house was like and retold what had happened to the previous residents. The living room and kitchen on the first floor were both messy, with all kinds of abandoned in-house items lying about: from tissue boxes to plastic buckets, from rusty cookware to broken cupboard doors. The only thing relatively clean was surprisingly the oven. On the side of the kitchen was a storage room with two metal shelves, on which were some glass canisters, plastic containers, cardboard boxes and a few dusty, old electronics. And on the opposite side of the kitchen was a small bedroom - one would assume either a home office or a guest bedroom.

The second floor was better but only slightly. There were a total of four bedrooms, one narrow walkway connecting all of them. Two of the bedrooms still had their beds left - though their mattresses were worn and dirty beyond use. Two were empty, each with a set of one chair and one table remaining.

They checked all of the closets, only to find some old, worn clothes and cardboard boxes with tarnished pictures inside - these pictures had lost almost all color, only vague silhouettes of people in them, they could not even tell if any of them were men or women. 

“Okay, creepy” Wu Xiaoming showed the pictures to the camera: “I hope we can show this on TV. But - right now I’m pretty sure we’re not exposing anything private here. We can’t even tell if these are people or - you know, not people.”