With flashlights in their hands, the group of four began their sweep. First it was the smaller bedrooms on the second floor, one with a bed and they did not occupy. The room was now full of garbage - empty cans, water bottles, plastic bags and containers, and torn clothes, as they had swept half the trash in their occupied rooms here. The bedframe was moldy, half corroded and one foot of it was already crumbling.

They did not see anything of note, not with their eyes, neither from the screen of the camera. So they proceeded to the next room - the master bedroom.

It was bigger, and had a bed enough for two people, as one would expect from a family master bedroom. It was covered in garbage, enough to make up two small piles. The mattress was moldy dark green, one could barely see its original color. The closet had more space, and now was filled with garbage as well - mostly plastic bags of different sizes and colors, some cardboard boxes, newspapers and old, ragged clothes and shoes.

Wu Xiaoming pushed his ability to see supernatural energy to the fullest, and paid attention to the mark on the doorframe as well. Still, nothing stood out. Malcolm swept almost every corner he could, with his eyes fixed on the screen of the camera. Yet he was not able to catch anything either.

“Wait, I’ve been wondering.” Wu Xiaoming looked up at the ceiling: “Will there be a hidden space above there as well?”

“You mean an attic?” Matthew also looked up: “It’s possible but not very likely, the roof did not have that big of an angle, so even if there is, it would be a very small space.”

“Hmm, okay.” Wu Xiaoming nodded and did not dwell on the question too much.

“But we can check it out tomorrow, just in case there is.” Malcolm said as he pointed the camera at the ceiling in the closet: “Like here, the ceiling is lower in this closet, so there could be some space up there.”

Still, they did not find or see anything, so they just left after checking the window.

What they did not realize was that, just when they headed off, an eye buried in the bigger pile of garbage opened up and stared at the doorframe through which they had left.

The group of four went downstairs, and the first place they checked was the home office/guest bedroom beside the kitchen.

This room was the smallest of all rooms, barely enough to fit one small, single-person bed. It had a blurry window, and a very old carpet. The moldy smell of the carpet filled the room, and the whistling sound made by the wind blowing through the slightly leaky window only added to the discomfort. Only a very small closet in this room, with an old, open suitcase inside. From the looks of the suitcase it should have four wheels, while right now there was only one.

“Okay, let’s lock this door up.” Wu Xiaoming sighed at everyone.

“Agreed. The window is a bit too loose.” Malcolm said.

“With what?” Matthew asked.

“Umm - how about the oven from the kitchen?” Jake asked: “I think it’s still there, but we need to rip it out - ”

“Yes, but the door opens inward, so it won’t be super effective.” Matthew shook his head: “We need some kind of rope to tie it up.”

“I have rope. ” Jake and Malcolm answered at the same time.

“Okay, then that’s it.” Matthew raised an eyebrow.

Wu Xiaoming went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard underneath the cooktop, and behind it was indeed an oven - a very old one, with quite a lot of burned and charred food residue inside.

“Okay, this one looks heavy. But it will do.” Wu Xiaoming grabbed onto the sides of the oven and pulled. With a simple cracking sound, he pulled the oven out of its slot. It was not that heavy overall, though slightly wider than what would make him conformable. But he managed to push it to the side of the door. 

“Dude, nice.” Matthew nodded at Wu Xiaoming: “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“Eh, it’s not super heavy.” Wu Xiaoming shrugged.

Malcolm and Jake came down with their rope, then tied the doorknob to the oven, to make sure that no one could easily open the door from the other side without pulling extra weight.

They then swept the kitchen and the storage room. The kitchen pretty much needed no inspection, while the storage room was simply too small for everyone to fit in, so Wu Xiaoming and Malcolm just did a cursory check from the door - the room had no window, so it wouldn’t be at risk of being an entry point for an intruder anyway.

But - the EMF readings died down and did not jump back up for the rest of the sweep - even when they came back to Wu Xiaoming and Malcolm’s room. Then they gathered their sleeping bags and their anti-evil supplies and divided them up so that everyone would have something. Wu Xiaoming shared everything “basic”, and after some consideration, he kept the fire talismans to himself - he did not want others to know of his abilities or question the sources of these talismans. As for the black dog urine - 

“Uh - no.” Jake grimaced and shook his head.

“Yeah - no for me.” Matthew did the same: “Maybe just put it somewhere where it can block the intruder’s way?”

“I agree. I know this could work, but it’s weird, man.” Malcolm disagreed with Wu Xiaoming for the first time since they had been here.

“It’s fine, we’ll keep it in the other room.” Wu Xiaoming shrugged. 

“Just out of curiosity, what would it do?” Malcolm asked.

“Ugh - I have it on good authority that it will burn whatever evil spirit it touches.” Wu Xiaoming chuckled.

“So it’s like - pepper spray?” Matthew nodded.

“More like boiling hot water or - acid.”

“Then - let’s still keep it close then.” Matthew took a deep breath: “I mean, don’t spill it but - I just got reminded of that movie where the kid uses dyno-pee - ”

“Then - somewhere besides the door?” Malcolm nodded.

“Sounds good, alright.” Wu Xiaoming placed it beside the door, on the side where the door would open so it wouldn’t be swept to the side when the door opened too wide. He also placed some empty containers and paper to help support the canister so that it wouldn’t accidentally tip over.

“How are the cameras looking?” After collecting all their trash, Jake went to Malcolm and Matthew and checked out the laptop from behind them. Right now several screens were being shown, coming from different cameras pointing at the surrounding area.

“Nothing much. Night vision turned on so it could help. ” Matthew sighed.

“But it will be hard to distinguish animals from other - other stuff right?” Jake asked, his voice slightly trembling, “Especially when we don’t know what we’re looking for?”

“We’ll see. We’ll just have to record everything we can and maybe something will turn up and someone can notice something.” Malcolm shrugged, then pointed at the screen: “Oh look, here’s a deer - maybe.”

It seemed like a deer, with a pair of green glowing eyes looking around.

“Looks like a doe. And injured.” Matthew narrowed his eyes at the way the deer walked across the screen: “Hmm - yeah, looks like it’s injured.”

“Should we go out and rescue it?” Jake asked.

“No. It’s nature, let nature take its course.” Matthew shook his head: “Also let’s not forget we’ve locked down every entry of the house, bringing it means we have to redo everything.”

“I agree. Let’s watch out for the night, and see if we can help it tomorrow. We don’t have anything to help it here.” Wu Xiaoming frowned.

The deer stumbled around, then fixed its eyes on the direction of the camera. Its two eyes glowed brighter in green.

“Holy fuck that’s creepy.” Jake shivered, but still kept his eyes on that mini screen: “I don’t know, man. I don’t think we should take it in, at all.”

“It’s just the night vision.” Malcolm shrugged.

Wu Xiaoming scanned through the other screens, aside from the doe, nothing strange or abnormal.

Just this moment, the doe turned its entire body towards the camera - or to be precise, the house. Wu Xiaoming immediately fixed his eyes on the mini screen. He did not have a lot of experience dealing with wild animals, but somehow this move just seemed quite unnatural.

As he checked out the background of this screen to locate where the camera was and where it was pointing at. It did not take long before he found that out - the two trees at a distance behind the doe were simply too memorable. And the camera seemed to be on the roof, and thus it covered only the more distant area and not the close up range near the house.

“Wait - ” Just as he was about to ask Matthew and Malcolm to open up the screen of a camera with a lower height, or pointed at the close up range, the doe took off from where it was, charging right at the direction of the camera.

“Shit!” “What the - ” “What!?” The others yelped. And the doe simply disappeared at the bottom of the mini screen.

“Pull up a camera pointing the same way but closer up, now!” Wu Xiaoming barked.

Malcolm tapped the keyboard and switched to another set of mini screens. He then enlarged one of them - it was placed behind a window on the first floor pointing right out the window, at roughly the same direction. But right now there was nothing there. He scrolled back the footage to almost a full minute back and replayed, but still, nothing was there.

“A blindspot?” Wu Xiaoming asked.

“Yes, but not big enough to miss a whole fucking deer that size.” Malcolm frowned and scrolled back again, then placed the two mini screens side by side on the same time frame. But still the same, when the doe disappeared from the bottom of the higher up camera, the lower camera caught nothing, even though the angle they covered had a pretty big overlap.

“Perhaps it slipped to the side?” Jake asked.

Malcolm pulled up a few more mini screens, none of them showed the doe anywhere.

“Let’s check tomorrow for the tracks.” Wu Xiaoming forced a calm, nonchalant tone: “It probably slipped through a blind spot - it’s not that big, actually.”