Horror Short Story | The Fan

Chen Cheng found an old electric fan in the storage room of his rented apartment. It had green blades and a rusty metal grille, looking like it had been there for a long time. He wiped it clean and plugged it in. Surprisingly, it still worked, though it made a bit of noise. That night, he slept with the fan on. He woke up in the middle of the night, freezing, and found the fan still running, but its direction was facing the wall, not him. He got up, turned the fan back towards him, and lay down to sleep again. Not long after, he woke up cold again. The fan was once again facing the wall. He thought the vibration might have caused it to turn, so he didn't think much of it. This time, he secured the fan before sleeping. The next morning, he woke up to find the fan off. The plug had been pulled, and the cord was neatly wrapped around the base. He was sure he hadn't unplugged it. That night, he decided not to turn on the fan. In the middle of the night, he heard a buzzing sound coming from the storage room. He opened the storage room door. The fan was plugged in by itself and was running, facing a corner of the storage room. There was nothing in the corner. He unplugged it, moved the fan outside the main door, and locked it. The next morning, the fan was in the storage room, plugged in, and facing the same corner. Chen Cheng felt something was wrong. He crouched down to look at the corner. There was a patch of floor in the corner that was a different, darker color, as if something had been pressing on it for a long time. He used a screwdriver to pry open that section of the floor. Underneath was a yellowed photograph. In the photo, a little girl was squatting on the floor, facing the corner, her back to the camera. On the back of the photo was written: "She gets hot easily, so we need to run the fan for her in the summer." Chen Cheng froze. He remembered the landlord saying that a family used to live in this studio apartment before they moved out. But he didn't ask.