The two bedrooms without beds did not have carpet - which saved them a lot of effort in cleaning them. Wu Xiaoming did not even want to think about how they could clean up decades old carpet.
They made a simple sleeping arrangement while they were shooting: Wu Xiaoming and Malcolm would take one room, while Jake and Matthew would take the room on their side, which was closest to the stairs.
“Mr. Wu?” Just this moment, Matthew called out to them from outside the house.
“Yes?” Wu Xiaoming pulled open the rusty window in his room.
“Come out here, I have something to show you. All of you.” Matthew was standing beside a tree on the side of the house, a little bit further away from the range Wu Xiaoming had checked earlier.
Wu Xiaoming, Jake and Malcolm rushed out of the house towards Matthew. Matthew raised his hand at them to tell them to stop before they would get too close, as he pointed at the ground with his other hand. He was pointing at a bear trap, with its jaws already closed.
“What the - a bear trap?” Wu Xiaoming frowned.
“Yes, and it’s like this when I found it.” Matthew nodded: “And I just tried, it might still work. So, please be very careful and watch your steps. If there’s one, there might be more.”
“Jesus.” Jake shook his head.
“And - look over there.” Matthew pointed at the base of a tree further away.
A piece of silver plastic half buried in leaves, with black handle protruding. A handheld camera.
Wu Xiaoming went over, one careful step at a time, swept away all the fallen leaves around and on it, before picking the dirty and heavily scratched camera up.
“Do you know what kind of camera this is?” Wu Xiaoming handed the camera to Malcolm
“This is - uh - probably from the Sonix SharpEye series.” Malcolm checked the camera up and down while holding this camera with his right hand and pointing his own camera at it with his left hand: “I can’t tell when this one came out - but it’s definitely from this couple of years. At most five - no, eight years.”
“So - it’s very new?” Wu Xiaoming frowned: “I don’t remember reading anything about when it was declared deserted from the documents. Is it possible to see what it recorded?”
“Sonix SharpEye series all use standard storage cards, and support standard USB sockets. So we can read it once - once we hook it up to the computer.” Malcolm shrugged.
“Okay, let’s check around one more time, and then head back?” Wu Xiaoming asked.
The group, with Matthew accompanying them, checked out the further surrounding area. They found three more bear traps, one of which was still open when they had found it. Matthew tested it with a simple stick - its jaws clenched and broke it.
“Is it possible to tell how old these bear traps are?” On their way back, Wu Xiaoming asked Matthew.
“Unfortunately no, unless they have some kind of special marking or sticker somewhere. But they are made to be sturdy and able to last a long time. So it can even be decades old - provided these are of good quality, which I mean - they feel like they are good quality.”
“But whoever placed them was surely trying to defend against something. And to be honest, I would say probably not just bears.” Wu Xiaoming shrugged at the camera. He actually meant part of it - the claw mark from the tree just gave him a bad feeling.
The sun began to set when they got back. So they just spent most of the time cleaning up the house and setting up a work station - which was to say, they pushed most of the trash to the corners or into the rooms they were not going to use. Their work station was placed in Matthew and Jake’s bedroom. The setup was pretty simple, one table, one computer, one satellite signal receiver and router that would provide everyone with basic wifi, and a relay wirelessly connected to all the trail cameras.
Matthew and Malcom cleaned up the dirty and scratched camera, then they hooked a card reader and connected to the computer. The memory card was still usable, which was somewhat of a surprise.
Only three videos on this memory card and no pictures - all of which were around one minute long.
“This is - this is some amateur shit.” Malcolm frowned: “Only three? ”
Wu Xiaoming took a deep breath, watched Matthew click on the first video.
The video was shot from inside the house, and pointing from one of the windows on the first floor, either late in the afternoon or very early in the morning. The camera focused on the space between two trees at a distance, and at the center of the shot, was a human-shaped shadow - tall, slender, blurry. The shadow walked through the woods, stepping on grass, pushing low-hanging tree branches away, and eventually walked close enough to block out half the moon. But no matter how close it was, its figure was still blurry.
The second video was shot from the hallway on the first floor, aiming right at the window at the end of the hallway, which faced the back of the house. It had the same kind of lighting as the first video. Through the slightly dirty window, they could see faint and semi-transparent human-shaped shadows in the backyard. One was clearly a woman with long hair and in a sundress. Another was clearly a tall man with a mustache. But still it was very blurry, almost like someone put an “vintage film” filter on the footage.
“Bro this image quality sucks ass.” Jake joked, but his voice was trembling.
“It could be some amateur movie project.” Wu Xiaoming shook his head: “But just to be safe, let’s back up and send this to Tim and Tammy, we should be able to do that, right?”
“Yeah, we can, might be a bit slow because we don’t have good cell signal here so we’d have to use the sat signal. ” Matthew shrugged, then typed on the keyboard and kicked off a progress bar: “Okay, sending it now. It won’t be quick though, might take a while depending on transfer speed. ”
“Let’s - uh - let’s check out the last one?” Jake asked, his voice was still trembling.
Matthew and Malcolm took a look at the sound guy, then Matthew clicked on the last video.
This video was shot from inside the house, aiming at the interior. In fact, it was focused on a door in this house. The door was open by a crack, and right outside was a tall, black shadow, peeking into the room where the camera was with a green glowing eye. It took a second but chills shot down Wu Xiaoming’s back - from the look of the position of the walls and the closet, the video was shot from the bed in the master bedroom.
Everyone realized this. And no one said anything even when the video ended and froze at the last frame - the eye outside the door still peeking inside.
“Hey guys, I just got the footage.” Matthew and Wu Xiaoming’s handheld radio sounded at the same time, and out came Tim’s excited voice: “ What the hell is that!?”