My House of Horrors

“You fell asleep during your previous visit? How is that possible?” Zhang Feng was still considering Wang Dan’s words when he was pushed ahead by the latter. However, after hearing that Wang Dan had made up all those strange rumors, it was true that Zhang Feng did not feel as afraid as before. He had a liking for extreme sports and could suffer a great deal more than normal people. On top of that, he never did believe in the existence of the supernatural in the first place, so how could he be afraid of something that was not real?

The things inside the Haunted House were not real. Compared to scuba-diving or survival in the wild, a Haunted House had the lowest inherent danger. He knew fairly well that a visit to the Haunted House would not put anyone in mortal danger.

Since there was no possibility of danger, what was so scary about it?

After clarifying that in his mind, Zhang Feng became more confident, and even his gait was different from before. He was no longer that cautious. “There is nothing to be afraid of. We should move faster and finish this tour as soon as possible. This Haunted House, in fact this entire theme park, is so damn boring. If there is a chance, I will invite you guys to come with me to the newly open fifth generation high-tech theme park in Eastern Jiujiang.”

When Zhang Feng said that, he did not forget to turn back to smile at Wang Dan’s girlfriend, like he was trying to toss her some signal. With the patient’s record pasted on his back, Zhang Feng was the first to arrive at the second-floor basement. The light became even dimmer. Without the aid of a flashlight, they could barely see the environment around them.

“Have Lee Jiu and that male host left already? How come we did not hear anything from them at all?” Zhang Feng pushed open the door that was closest to him. It opened to another sickroom. A dirty bedsheet was crumpled on the bed, and there were traces of blood and broken chips of plaster left on the ground.

“This sickroom looks rather different from the others; it feels like someone has recently been here.” Zhang Feng wished to start analyzing, following Wang Dan’s lead, but he could not really see the reason, so he could only rely on his instinct.

“Shall we go in to take a look?” Wang Dan’s girlfriend was acting rather jumpy. She was still thinking about the pair of gray legs that she saw earlier.

“Since you believe that someone has been here, it was probably Lee Jiu and the male streamer. They probably discovered something in there. We should go in to check then,” Wang Dan said as he urged Zhang Feng into the room.

A faded scent of disinfectant filled the air, and it was pungent. Zhang Feng placed his hand over his lips, and his brows were creased in a deep frown. Suppressing the disgust, he pulled the bedsheet back. Under the sheet was a human-shaped blood stain and a selfie stick.

“Why is this thing here?” Zhang Feng picked up the selfie stick. “This does not look like a prop inside the Haunted House. Could it have belonged to the male streamer?”

When he spoke, a light thud came from the dresser next to him. It felt like someone had accidentally knocked into the furniture when they were in a rush.

“What was that‽” Even though he kept telling himself that there was no reason for him to be afraid, when there was a real dangerous situation, Zhang Feng could not stop his heart from racing. He walked toward the dresser slowly and pulled open the dresser door with the slowest speed possible. Inside sat an old, tattered patient’s garb and a worn diary.

“This is too easy! I have found the clue!” Zhang Feng was extremely excited. Finally, he had an inkling as to where the fun in touring a Haunted House was. It was the rush of exploration in the depths of fear and despair. When one struck gold when one’s nerves were highly strung, it would bring forth an indescribable and unassailable sense of pleasure.

He flipped through the diary, but Zhang Feng knew that his analytical power was not as good as Wang Dan’s, so he called the latter over to study it together. The diary detailed the patient’s slow discovery of the strange phenomenon happening at the hospital. Every night, there would be a little boy who came to play hide-and-seek with him. The sentences were easy to understand, and they were the writing of an everyday man, not a writer. However, these simple words managed to elicit the fear in the few readers’ hearts.

“A game of hide-and-seek?” Zhang Feng was not really a brainiac, but it did not mean that he was a fool. When he saw the game mentioned in the diary, he was immediately reminded of the patient’s record that was originally stuck on Wang Dan’s back. If the patient’s record was as Wang Dan said, a harmless prank, then how did he know beforehand that a dangerous game of hide-and-seek was underway in this strange hospital?

The nameless town had opened to the public for the first time, and they were the first batch of visitors. Wang Dan would not have been able to prepare this beforehand. Unless... Wang Dan was in cahoots with the Haunted house’s boss!

The anxiety that Zhang Feng had suppressed earlier returned in full force because he realized that the patient’s notice was now stuck on his back. Understanding the negative implication that this might bring, Zhang Feng snapped the diary shut. “The details of this Haunted House are quite well-done. We have been in here for quite some time already, so we should prepare to leave. After all, I am feeling quite tired already.”

“But we have barely done anything? And how can a sports and health education student feel tired so soon? Is it because you’re not feeling very well? Do you wish to sit down and rest?” Wang Dan asked in extreme concern, and that only made Zhang Feng want to punch the man in his face.

“It’s not that, yes, right!” Zhang Feng picked up the selfie stick left on the bed. “The male host will be worried that he is missing this. We should take this with us and wait for him outside.”

He held the selfie stick with one hand, and his other hand reached behind his back. Zhang Feng wished to remove the paper from his back, but something surprising happened. His hand searched about, but the patient’s record that was supposed to be on his back had disappeared!

“What the f*ck?” Looking back over his shoulder, he saw a pair of bruised arms reach out from inside the dresser. A man wearing a tattered patient’s garb with no legs was in the middle of sticking a number of yellowing patient’s records on Zhang Feng’s waist and legs!

Every single patient’s record had the same message written on it. “It is my time to be the ghost to come catch you!”

It was unclear when the many sheets of patient’s records were stuck on his body. Zhang Feng’s mind was drawing a blank, and his brain that was lacking in training was squeezed to the brim by endless questions!

Where did this man come from? Why is he wearing the patient’s garb that I saw earlier? What does it mean by ‘it’s my turn to be the ghost’? When did I promise to play the game with you‽

The expression on his face distorted, and Zhang Feng’s heart leaped to his throat. His brain shut down for three seconds before his body reacted. He screamed in fear and leaped into the air. At the time, his brain was still as blank as it could be. After he landed, he tried to knock Wang Dan out of the way and run out the door. However, Wang Dan and his girlfriend had already left the room.

When Zhang Feng was reading through the diary, Wang Dan had already noticed something was wrong. From the corner of his eyes, he had seen that the patient’s garb inside the dresser had started to move on its own. Different from Zhang Feng, Wang Dan went into high alert immediately. He understood how dangerous a 3.5-star scenario could be.

By then, he had already made the preparation to run. When Zhang Feng turned around and said something, Wang Dan saw two arms reach out from inside the dresser, but out of respect to Zhang Feng, he did not interrupt the young man when he went through his ‘analysis’. He knew that it was very disrespectful to disturb the man, so he listened to Zhang Feng’s analysis patiently.

When Zhang Feng made the discovery, Wang Dan already had his hand around his girlfriend’s wrist. They were out the door and ran for several meters. He felt like he had learned many life lessons in Chen Ge’s Haunted House.

I am not as perfect as you, so the only choice to ever beat you is to run faster than you.

This was not some Chicken Soup for the Soul cr*p; Wang Dan understood that the slowest running might really end up at the hospital.

Bang!

The sickroom door slammed heavily against the wall. When Wang Dan and his girlfriend exited the room, they realized that there was a pair of gray legs standing at the corner to the staircase. To intensify the fear in his heart, in almost an instant, another pair of legs appeared, and in less than 0.1 seconds, the third pair of legs appeared.

With the way to the stairs blocked, Wang Dan and his girlfriend could only run deeper into the hospital. By then, Zhang Feng had rushed out of the sickroom as well. He was running so fast and so blindly ahead that he almost ran into the wall. Before he even recovered from the near miss, he saw many patients with grayish skin appear near the stairs.

Due to his good looks and rich family background, Zhang Feng had never had any real trouble in his life, and he would be the center of attention wherever he went. At this moment, in the Haunted House, he was the star of the day as well. The many patients with twisted limbs all looked at him with great interest.

His back was pasted fully with the patient’s records. Tears were swirling in Zhang Feng’s eyes. He was finally reminded of Wang Dan’s kindness, and he ran toward the man. Hearing the footsteps coming from behind him, Wang Dan ran even faster. They rushed down the corridor and came to the stairwell on the right side of the hospital.

At the end of the day, Zhang Feng was a sports student, and it did not take long for him to catch up to Wang Dan. The horde of patients were still following them, and they were not going be so easily deterred.

“We cannot run together like this! We’ll all be captured!” Wang Dan claimed in an urgent voice. At this crucial moment, he stepped onto the plate and assumed responsibility. “Quick! At the next corner, when we are no longer in their sight, the two of you go and hide inside the sickrooms on both sides of the wall, and I will try my best to lead them away!”

“Wang Dan...” His girlfriend looked at him with worry, and there was something on her lips.

“There’s no time to waste, quick!” Willing to sacrifice, selfless to the end, Wang Dan appeared like a hero with no parallel. Zhang Feng was also surprised at how macho Wang Dan was because he would never volunteer to do something like that.

After turning the corner, Zhang Feng crawled into one of the sickrooms without wasting a moment. Just as he was about to close the door, he saw through the gap that Wang Dan held his girlfriend and kept running. They rushed toward the exit and did not show any sign of stopping.

To make matters worse, the patients with contorted bodies and a strange pall over their faces did not even feign interest toward Wang Dan and his girlfriend. Instead, they all crowded in front of his room!

The many eyes focused on the patient’s records stuck all over his body, and the reality of the situation finally dawned on Zhang Feng. When the pale faces swarmed into the room, a blood-curdling scream echoed through Li Wan Private Hospital.

“Wang Dan! You f*cker, you set me up!”

...

At the third-floor basement of Li Wan Private Hospital, the male streamer held his backpack, whose zipper was already open, with one hand, and his other hand grasped his phone. “This is strange, where is my selfie stick? Without it, the camera angle will be all over the place, and it will disturb the viewing experience if there is any running.”

“Did you forget to bring it with you?” Lee Jiu walked next to the man. They seemed to have another motive for entering the Haunted House.

“That’s impossible.” The man continued rummaging through his backpack.

“Stop searching, we need to start soon. I heard another scream earlier; I believe those students have been captured by the Haunted House actors already.” Lee Jiu kept turning his head to look at the sickrooms lining the walls. “We are going to do a livestream inside his Haunted House to conduct an exposé. If we’re seen by the workers, they are definitely going to stop us.”

“Let them do it then. What can they do? Can they afford to be physical before the camera?” The male host’s expression was dark, and it was completely different from how he was on camera. “Furthermore, I hope that they will turn physical. That way, we will have evidence to use against the boss.”

“The futuristic theme park wants to know the secret behind this place’s popularity, but I feel like there is a hidden purpose behind that one boss,” Lee Jiu whispered conspiratorially.

“I’m going to start streaming soon. You need to stop with that baseless speculation.” The male host took out several jade pendants with horrible quality out from his backpack. The pendants all looked the same, but some of them had cracks running down the surface. The host thought about it and decided to pick out a pendant with nine cracks like it was about to fall apart, and wore it around his neck.

After the preparation was ready, he logged into his streaming account. “We will carry this out according to our plan. We will conduct the Haunted House exposé, and you will cooperate with me from behind the scenes to come up with some scary effect. With the popularity that this Haunted House enjoys on the internet, I’m sure the stream will attract many viewers.”

“Don’t worry, I have the script memorized in my brain—there won’t be any problems.” Lee Jiu gave the host an okay sign and walked into the shadows. He had to maintain a five-meter distance from the host. Opening the app, the host turned the camera to face himself. When the stream was connected, the man basically transformed into a different person.

The clouds over his face disappeared, and he acted like he was panicked and worried. After the stream stabilized, he uttered in hurried tone, “Hello everyone, this is Yellow Wolf, your Big Brother Wolf. Those that know me realize that I come from a proud line of powerful diviners. I’ve spent a few years learning the tricks of the trade from my grandfather, so I know quite a bit about Feng Shui, Ba Gua, and so on.

“We have been to many Haunted Houses in the past, and we have run into some things that cannot be explained with scientific reasoning, but nothing is comparable to what has happened today.”

The male host who called himself Yellow Wolf had everything prepared. After he was done with the introduction, he pulled the camera further and continued. “I am currently at Western Jiujiang New Century Park’s Haunted House. Yes, the Haunted House that is known as the scariest experience on the internet, the place that no one has been able to conquer!”

There was thinly-veiled pride in the man’s voice. “The current scenario that I am in might be unfamiliar to most of you because this is a 3.5-star scenario, the scenario with the highest difficulty at this Haunted House! Many of you might ask, why would I be given the privilege to challenge a 3.5-star scenario directly? That is for me to know and for you to find out.”

With a mysterious smile on his lips, Yellow Wolf adjusted his tone, and his face turned serious again. “If we’re being serious, this Haunted House is indeed different from the rest. When I first stepped into the place, something happened to my jade pendant, a family heirloom. Friends, come and take a look at this.”

Yellow Wolf fished the planted pendant out from his collar. “When we visited the Nan Ling Cemetery in Xin Hai last time, the pendant had seven cracks, but look at this! When I entered the Haunted House, I counted nine cracks running down the pendant! This is a warning given to me by my ancestors! This Haunted House is very dangerous!”

Then, he put the jade pendant away and continued with the show. “But even if the danger scale is off the charts, I will take this risk and provide all of my dear friends with the most authentic Haunted House exposé!”