The Vanishing 13th Step：Chapter 3

2013.10.13 03:15

The dripping sound in the attic started again. This time I brought a building decibel meter, and the data showed that the sound source was in the load-bearing wall in the northwest corner, but there was no water pipe there at all. The thermal imaging camera showed that the wall temperature was 4.2℃ lower than the surrounding area. Wait, there was an inverted 13 in the lower right corner of the instrument panel.

03:29

The mirror was fogged. The breath test showed that the condensation area was distributed in a stepped manner, with the coldest point in the center of the mirror (12.3℃). When I used my grandfather's Swiss Army knife to pry open the frame, the brass edging suddenly became hot, and the fingerprints instantly evaporated on the metal surface, leaving scorch marks. The knife of the person in the mirror was reversed - wait, I was clearly using the Victorinox Climber series, why did he have the butcher model that was discontinued in the 1970s?

03:41

Experimental record:

Mirror delay increased from 0.7 seconds to 1.3 seconds (calibrated with a metronome)

The heat source movement trajectory shows that the person in the mirror made a move 0.5 seconds earlier than me

When playing the recording of my grandfather's birthday in 1979, he covered his ears and knelt on the ground twitching

03:55

It was not just the 1912 newspaper that shook out from the interlayer of the frame. There was also a Polaroid photo: I was standing at this moment in 1997, with no one in the mirror behind me. The lead type on the newspaper fragments was reassembled under ultraviolet light, showing that the hospital used the patient's ashes to make a "space stabilizer" that year, and the signature of the attending physician... was Howard, the lawyer who died in front of me three hours ago.

04:08

New discoveries in the basement camera:

The videotape has two audio tracks, the second track is a Latin prayer played backwards

0.13 seconds before each sound of the chain, the screen will show the unique emulsion scratches of Kodak film

The length of my steps when walking with my eyes closed accurately reproduces the height of the stair steps (7.25 inches)

04:33

The worst is coming. When I picked up the hair sample in the frame with tweezers, the person in the mirror suddenly took out an old-fashioned syringe at the same time. He lifted his left sleeve to reveal a scar - exactly the same as the mark left by my bicycle accident in 2003, but the color is as fresh as a scab.

04:47

(There are traces of ink smudges here)

The thermal imaging alarm sounded. The temperature in the area where the man in the mirror was located dropped to -13℃. He used the tip of a knife to carve three coordinates on the frosted mirror:

41°42'25"N 72°43'08"W (my birthplace coordinates)

42°21'24"N 71°03'23"W (former site of St. Mary's Hospital)

And...the exact latitude and longitude of this house at this moment, with four decimal places accurate.

04:59

I decided to smash this damn mirror. But the moment the hammer was swung down, the camera suddenly played the video footage from last night automatically: the hammer of the man in the mirror fell 0.13 seconds earlier than mine.

(There is a scribbled supplement at the bottom of the page)

Modified at 05:13: When I reviewed the records just now, I found that all the data with "13" disappeared. Including the decibel meter readings, temperature values ​​and even the modification time. But they clearly existed in the computer automatic backup. I transferred this line of words using the iPhone memo. The damn Android tablet is garbled again.