“I don’t know if you can see in the shot or not, but everything around me seems - just a little bit darker when I went through the ‘gate’.” Wu Xiaoming turned and faced the camera: “Alright, I will try and check out the surroundings, cameraman, please stay away from the gate and try to capture the footage without setting your foot in.”

He looked around, finding more sickly looking trees in the process and a lot of dried up and somehow ashened bushes. He picked up some dried up tall grass by his right foot that was almost completely darkened with pale gray spots sprinkled about and studied it slightly, before noticing a dark mark under the entire bush.

“Hold on, there’s a dark mark here. Give me a sec.” Wu Xiaoming raised his hand at the cameraman and the sound guy before sweeping away the almost completely flattened grass and shrubs. The dark mark went through grass and into the dirt, it was a footprint. “Umm - this is a footprint. ” He waved his hands at Malcolm and Jake: “Come closer - but don’t go through the tree gate. Stay as far away as possible. Something’s not right here.”

Malcolm and Jake exchanged looks, then went around the two trees to approach Wu Xiaoming from behind him. They did not go into the space behind the “gate”, just close enough for the camera to pick up the foot print on the ground.

“Oh, shit - there’s more.” Wu Xiaoming took out his phone: “Jake, Malcolm, please stay where you are. I don’t have a good feeling about this, but there are more footprints here. Do you recognize what kind of footprint they are?”

“It’s really far! I can’t tell!” Malcolm responded with a raised voice and stepped forward.

“Huh? Wait! Wait!” Jake tried to stop Malcolm, but the eager cameraman already ran past him and made it to the “path” formed by flattened grass and bushes behind the “gate”, just to take a clear shot at the footprints found by Wu Xiaoming. He hesitated, but decided to stay where he was and observe from a distance - Wu Xiaoming already had a portable mic, there was no need for his boom mic anyway. “I’ll - I’ll stay here! Don’t go too far guys!”

“What - why are you here?!” Wu Xiaoming frowned at Malcolm.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t get a clear shot. And footage from your phone isn’t gonna cut it.” Malcolm shook his head: “It’s broad daylight right here, so I don’t think anything’s gonna happen.”

“Alright.” Wu Xiaoming sighed. He could not change what had already happened, so he just raised his voice at Jake: “Yo, Jake! Don’t come over here! I need someone who hasn’t crossed the gate as the control group! If you come here then there’s no comparison data!”

“Okay! Will do!” Jake responded and walked back to their initial position in front of the “gate”.

“Hey, do you feel chilly here? Or do you feel things are a little darker here?” Wu Xiaoming asked Malcolm.

“Chilly? A little, but dark - I am not seeing it.” Malcolm shook his head.

“Okay, I was just checking. ” Wu Xiaoming thought for a moment, before tracing the trail of footsteps slightly further into the woods. The footprints were heading towards the house, and stopped just a little bit before they would pass the “gate”.

“These don’t look like human footprints.” Malcolm said.

“No they don’t. But I can’t tell what it is - and why it’s so dark.” Wu Xiaoming frowned. He tried to see if there were any traces of energy as well, but got nothing. He looked up and gazed upon the distance - the footprints led even deeper into the woods, and from the looks of them, they seemed to be going uphill. And somewhat observably, the trees along the path seemed to be suffering from the same kind of corrosion or illness as well.

“Hey guys, don’t go too far into the woods! There might be bear traps!” Jake yelled at them.

Wu Xiaoming raised his right arm at Jake with his thumb up - he was not planning on going deeper anyway. Their designated shooting site was the house, and if possible, he would rather go explore alone instead of bringing in all of these “civilians”.

When Malcolm had captured all the relevant footage, they walked back to the side of the house, through the “gate”. And Wu Xiaoming deliberately slowed his steps, just to measure if crossing the gate itself would warm the temperature and brighten the lighting around him.

There might have been a difference, but he could hardly tell.

Matthew was apparently still struggling with the transmission - he rebooted the router and relay a few times, short of pulling the machines apart he did everything he could.

“Alright, I think you might have to come and get the footage. I don’t think I can fix it.” Matthew sighed and spoke to Timothy through the handheld radio: “When do you wanna come up here?”

“Shit - alright, I will drive up right now, should be about 10 minutes.” Timothy sounded irritated. “Keep doing what you’re doing, thank you.”

While they waited, Malcolm made copies of all the video files they captured until now. Wu Xiaoming scoped around the house and tried to find some other angles or areas where they could record more footage without having to go too far into the surrounding woods.

“Hey, guys. Thanks for waiting.” Timothy arrived in a van: “Also - I brought something that I forgot I brought - an EMF reader!”

“Oh, wow.” Wu Xiaoming raised an eyebrow: “Does it work?”

“It does as long as there’s no heavy electronics around.” Timothy shrugged: “So, keep it away from the laptop and the router.”

It took the director, Malcolm and Matthew more than half an hour to copy all the files. That was relatively fast, considering they copied all the footage from the night cameras, the latest footage recorded by Malcolm, and the footage from yesterday.

“Hey, sir, can I talk to you? ” Wu Xiaoming waited outside the door for the director to finish up.

“Sure - what’s up?” Timothy frowned slightly.

“Okay, I’m gonna be honest with you.” Wu Xiaoming frowned and sighed: “I’ve gotta tell you, this house is giving me a pretty bad feeling.”

“What?”

“This house is not right. And I think - even more than the Sproutlinger Hotel, it’s way worse.” Wu Xiaoming tried to make his tone sincere and stern. It was a bit difficult, because though he had all kinds of gut feelings, he did not have any concrete proof. And it was only the second day, after all.

“So - you’re worried?” Timothy’s frown deepened: “Do you have anything concrete? Did you see anything unnatural? Any strange sounds? Or any strange things that happened?”

“No - not yet. But - ” Wu Xiaoming weighed his words: “ - it’s just some vibes I got, I can’t really say for sure right now. But - I think we can’t stay here for too long, if we do something bad will happen.”

“So - it’s just a gut feeling, right?” Timothy nodded: “I can imagine the place having a bad vibe - but - if you don’t have anything concrete, we can’t just pull the project just because.”

“Okay? But we should have an exit plan, right?” Wu Xiaoming sighed. He did not actually plan on the director agreeing to his request right away. He was mostly just trying to lay the groundwork for when something actually happened.

“We do. This van was not a regular van - it’s modified for heavy duty and can easily handle different terrains.” Timothy knocked his fingers on the door. Then he smiled at Wu Xiaoming: “But - please keep an eye on things, if there’s anything abnormal please let me know. I - I want this project to go well, I really need it. But I don’t want to risk too much - ”

“Understood.” Wu Xiaoming sighed.

“Eh! Eh eh! What the fuck!” Just this moment, the yelps of Malcolm and Jake caught Wu Xiaoming and Timothy’s attention. “What is that! What the fuck!”

Wu Xiaoming and Timothy exchanged looks, then rushed into the house.

All three men in the house gathered in front of the laptop. Wu Xiaoming stood beside Malcolm and fixed his eyes on the screen.

A video was playing, from the looks of it, it was the footage they had recorded earlier, while Malcolm was with Wu Xiaoming behind the “gate”.

In the video, Wu Xiaoming was looking at the ground, studying a patch of flattened bush, frowning and scratching his nose. And in the upper left corner of the screen, which would be where the “path” leading further into the woods and uphill, was a slender, blurry semi human-shaped figure standing amongst three or four trees. Its eyes appeared to be glowing, and fixed on Wu Xiaoming from a distance.

“Holy crap - what the fuck!” Timothy could not contain his excitement: “Show me more! Show me more! Did you capture more of it?”

“I - let me check - I don’t think I noticed it while I was recording.” Malcolm flashed-backward a few minutes. It would seem that the figure only appeared for a few seconds, and then as the camera changed position, it disappeared.