My House of Horrors

“director ma, i know you don’t believe in these things, but certain things are truly impossible to explain via scientific means.” shang guan qing hong’s face was stretched into a mirthless mask. he really was no in mood to smile.

“since we are already here, we shall take things as they come. we should always remain calm whenever we run into something serious. other than that, stop calling me director ma. you can just refer to me as brother ma.” this was the man’s first time entering such an eerie scenario, but he was able to maintain his composure. this proved that he was indeed better than others. at least in terms of mental strength and stability, he was already stronger than most normal visitors.

“now, i have a very bad feeling about this. director ma, how about we come back another day? today, we’ve obviously been tricked by that chen fellow. there must be many unknown traps laid in this scenario. i do not mind it myself, but you can’t get injured in here!” shang guan qing hong looked at the dark and creepy buildings around him, and his legs refused to take a single step forward.

“i do not believe that a visit to a haunted house can injure someone. furthermore, if you see it from another perspective, if i am really found injured inside his haunted house, wouldn’t that be perfect as well? i can use that to bring his haunted house down.” the man raised his arm. “there are many ways to bring down a haunted house. to me, open competition is the stupidest way to do it.”

“you have other plan in mind?”

“you do not need worry yourself about that. today, i came in person to see what is so impressive about a haunted house that could make jiang jiu stumble so hard. at the same time, i want to let the other people at the company know that i can do what jiang jiu cannot do, and what jiang jiu can do, i can do much better.” the man had ability to back up his words. whenever he spoke, there was a confident and sharp air that surrounded him. shang guan qing hong realized that his persuasion had fallen on deaf ears. he did not have the face to surrender now, so all he could do was ignore the bad feeling in his heart and follow the rest deeper into the scenario.

“if a perfect score is ten marks, given the creation of the atmosphere, the set design, and the combination of the lighting and sound effects, i will give it 8.5 marks.” the man who was fashionably dressed touched the wall and felt the sensation that came from the tip of his fingers. “the set pieces feel very real, like they have been moved from an actual haunted site. it is not completely based on luck that this haunted house was able to gain its massive popularity. there is actual backing behind it.”

the man was mean to others, but when it came to his professional field, he was rather fair and honest.

“but other than the authenticity, i cannot see any other positive points about this place.” the man with the sunglasses crossed his arms before his chest. he continued with more than a hint of derision. “the story background is so unspecified. the visitors do not have a fixed role, so they are unable to emerge themselves into the plot fully. this kind of haunted house enjoys so much praise on the internet? i do not believe one bit that he did not hire a fifty cent army to bulk up his positive reviews.”

“it is your freedom not to believe it. just remember what you said now when you cry for mercy.” he san was getting annoyed by the man in the sunglasses. he knew how scary a four-star scenario was. after being forcibly dragged in there by mr. wang, he was in a very bad mood.

“we are all professionals in this industry. his little tricks might work on normal visitors like you guys, but they will never work on professionals like us.” the man with the sunglasses took out his phone and searched for chen ge’s haunted house on the general review website. “of all the visitors that purchased the tickets, about ninety-seven percent of them thought their experience was horrifying, and ninety-five percent gave it a very high review. do you think that is possible?”

“that is indeed impossible.” he san shook his head. “i think one hundred percent of the visitors would have thought this place is scary if they’d really visited it. that three percent are probably the real fifty cent army hired by other members within the industry to bring down boss chen’s overall rating.”

“haha.” the man with the sunglasses said caustically, “i will let you in on a real industry statistic. even a top haunted house will not make sure that every visitor that has gone through its doors feels fear, so normal data will be around seventy-five percent. the fact that this haunted house’s statistics are so high is obvious proof that he has hired a fifty cent army to fluff up his marks. sometimes, i find it ridiculously funny that a haunted house that depends on sensationalism and a fifty cent army to get so popular online was hailed by so many idiots as the scariest haunted house in the country. if that is not the joke of the century, what is?”

“even if you are a professional in the industry, and even if you have the real statistics, i still do not understand how that gives you the right to slander someone else’s haunted house like this.” the other student from jiujiang medical university had spoken. normally, they were tortured enough by chen ge’s haunted house, but if there was someone who dared mock chen ge’s haunted house, they would be the first to jump out to defend it.

“because my name is fu bole.”

the man with the sunglasses appeared to be very famous in the industry, but it was clear that the students from jiujiang medical university had never heard this name before.

“why should i care what your name is? am i supposed to know you?”

“that is why i say you visitors are innocent, like pieces of white paper. have you heard of the ling family? the biggest chain of haunted houses in the country. we have in total thirty branches, and i am the ling family’s main designer.” the man with the sunglasses pointed at the people around him. “every single one of us here is more experienced and accomplished than that chen ge fellow. how long has he been in the business? if you really want to talk about it, we are all his seniors.”

the man wearing the sunglasses introduced the others in his group one by one. the man who was fashionably dressed was called wei chaochao. he was a designer for the aotsuka family’s haunted house from japan. the woman with the skull tattoo was nicknamed sister snake. she was involved in the design projects of many large-scale, international haunted houses. when she returned to the country, she opened an escape room whose good reviews were just second to chen ge’s haunted house—bewitched.

the other two fatties were twin brothers. the elder one was called liang er, and the younger brother was liang san. according to rumors, they had an elder brother who died young. a fortune teller had purposely persuaded their mother to name them liang er and liang san to prevent the eldest son from coming back to grab them as scapegoats. the brothers worked together to run the fifth most popular haunted house in the country—dreamscape. they were both designers and, at the same time, actors who specialized in scaring others.

among them was a middle-aged woman who had spoken very little since they appeared at the theme park. she appeared to be very afraid of the cold and impervious to heat. even when they were outside, she was still wearing long sleeves and had her body wrapped up tightly. the middle-aged woman was very reticent, and the man in the sunglasses, fu bole, did not give her much of an introduction. he merely went through the haunted house that she ran—the castle of lost memories.

the six of them could be considered the top haunted house designers in the country. scenarios that would be very scary for normal people would only be considered normal in their eyes because they had seen too many similar scares in their career. this year, they were hit by the low economy as well, and some of their haunted houses had seen an obvious decrease in their visitor count. to see chen ge’s haunted house suddenly rocket in popularity naturally ate their ego and made them feel slightly indignant; that was only natural.

“a group of haunted house designers coming to challenge a haunted house? that is very interesting. i am so lucky to have run into something as epic as this.” the male visitor from xin hai smiled wickedly. he turned to look at the other people around him. “why don’t we also introduce ourselves? i believe we will need to work together to clear this scenario.”

after the male visitor said that, no one present accepted his suggestion. they all ignored him, but that did not seem to faze him. he continued on his own. “then, i will start. my name is gu ren, and this is my girlfriend, fang ying. the two of us like to watch horror movies, and we are greatly interested in these things. we have been to many haunted houses in the past. i suppose you can see us as experienced players.”

“we are students from jiujiang medical university. i am he san, and this is my senior, zuo han. he is the person with the highest accumulative score at our school.” he san pointed at the other student next to him. the other student did not appear like he was a chatterbox. he was quite a handsome young man, but he did not seem to be interested in anything. he had that brooding presence about that. “and this other person is my lecturer, mr. wang.”

“accumulative score? what is that?”

“boss chen’s haunted house has a ranking system. if you clear a scenario, you will be awarded a point. the higher the difficulty of the scenario, the more points you will be given. senior zuo han is ranked third on the ranking. he is one of the most experienced visitors at boss chen’s haunted house,” he san explained patiently. he was a nice person; he was naturally kind and innocent, but unfortunately, he had been given a glimpse into the danger and darkness of humanity during his many visits to chen ge’s haunted house.

after everyone had made their self-introduction, they all turned in unison to xiao sun. he was quite nervous under their combined scrutiny. “my name is sun xiaojun. i come from the old city.”

xiao sun wanted to act as normal as he could, but he could not control himself. but if one really thought about it, it was quite ironic. a ghost was being stared at until he became nervous by a few living humans.

“alright, now that we have gone through all the introductions, we should start to discuss how to clear this scenario.” the sunglasses man, fu bole, stepped out to take the center stage. it was clear that he was expecting everyone to just accept him as the team leader.

“you can save your time trying to clear the scenario. this is the first time this four-star scenario has been open to the public. our main goal should be to ensure our own safety, and that is all,” zuo han said plainly.

“you are being drawn too deep into the trap by the boss. oh, never mind, it is a waste of time trying to explain it to you people who do not know anything.” fu bole did not care at all about the other visitors’ feeling. after all, this was not his haunted house; the worse the experience was for the other visitors, the happier he would be. “we have a one-hour time limit. it will be extremely difficult to find all the broken parts of the rag doll within such a large scenario, so i suggest we split up into groups. four people a group, that will greatly increase the efficiency of completing the game.”

“i can tell you very clearly right now that if we split up, we will be actively searching for death.” zuo han walked directly to face fu bole. “do you know how we ended up clearing the three-star scenario ‘coffin village’?”

“a three-star scenario is much simpler than a four-star scenario. your experience is of no use to us right now.”

“i just want to tell you that, at the time, ten of us entered the scenario at the same time. we were moving in a group. to transfer the red wedding dress out of the scenario, we watched our teammates disappear one after another with our own eyes.” zuo han stared into fu bole’s eyes. “even if we are gathered together, the teammates will still disappear without reason, much less when we get separated.”

“based on what you said, since we will disappear either way, why the insistence on us sticking together?”

“it’s to buy time. i do not know how the haunted house came up with the design to make people disappear before everyone else’s eyes, but at least the person who was lost could use his own ‘life’ to buy precious time for the others. his ‘death’ could not be wasted for no reason. do you understand it now?” zuo han’s tone was getting impatient. to be honest, he did not want to spend so much time persuading this stubborn and arrogant fu bole, but it could not be helped. this time, nine of the group were fu bole’s people. to clear this scenario, he would have to work together with these nine people.

“use their own lives to buy time?” fu bole and the other haunted house designers all laughed at him. “have you people lost your mind from visiting this place too many times? hey! you are their lecturer, right? how do you normally teach your students? they are about to enter society soon; how can they still be so naïve?”

the few haunted house designers were making fun of jiujiang medical university, but mr. wang’s eyes did not even wander over to them. he kept his eyes on zuo han.

he knew how brilliant zuo han was. he was the top of his class at the university. zuo han’s overall marks for all his courses—autopsy class, medical high grade mathematics, medical physic, forensic pathology, forensic psychology, and criminal psychology—had broken the records of jiujiang medical university for the past ten years. mr. wang knew that zuo han would not lie and knew that the young man was not just blowing air. that was why, when he entered the haunted house, he grabbed zuo han’s arm and never let go.

he san was the person who was most familiar with the haunted house’s boss and the environment, while zuo han was the student with the highest accumulative score from the university. mr. wang only had two hands, so he had chosen the two most reliable students. when he decided to enter this place, mr. wang had lowered the chance of him humiliating himself to the minimum, but after he was really inside the haunted house, he realized that he might have underestimated this place. everything felt so real. that authenticity even brought up many of his bad memories from the past.

“you can humiliate me all you want for now, and i will not waste time arguing with you. i am just telling you the way to ensure our survivability that has the highest probability. it is up to you whether you accept it or not.” zuo han’s words were clean and cutting. his eyes scanned through fu bole’s group before finally landing on ma fang. “if there is a clever person among you, then it would be best if you followed my instructions. after all, we are all on the same boat.”

zuo han appeared to have picked out the fact that ma feng was the real core of this group through their micro-expressions, so his last statement was meant for ma feng only.

“i also agree that we should stick together.” shang guan qing hong was quick to agree. “do you still remember the warning that the haunted house’s boss gave us before we entered the scenario? he told us not to have any interactions with anyone else, including the people beside us. this was clearly meant to sew discord among us. he could not wait for us to fight among ourselves.”

the group got into a heated argument. xiao sun stood at the side and did not dare speak. he thought to himself that the reason chen ge said that was probably because he was afraid that the other visitors might abandon xiao sun, so he purposely said that so that xiao sun would be stuck with the rest of the group.

“stop arguing, it is safer for us to stick together,” ma feng decided, and fu bole did not dare argue against him. so, the team of fifteen moved together. “but since we are on a time limit, squeezing together like this will waste too much time. we will split into three groups, and each group will have five people. when we are outside on the streets, we move together, but once we enter a building, we will move according to our designated groups, and then we will meet up again at the entrance of the building.”

ma feng was the top leader, and he found a compromise between the two options.

“it won’t work.” zuo han rejected that idea without even giving it much thought. “you are not familiar with the boss’ tactic. once we split up, he will have a way to make us separate from each other. other than that, how can you make sure that there are no actors among us?”

that one statement from zuo han made everyone nervous. before they came to chen ge’s haunted house, they had heard similar rumors before. some of the visitors there could be disguised workers from the haunted house, and it caused people within the same group to have difficulty trusting each other.

“the nine of us came together so there are certainly no actors among us, but the rest of you are very suspicious.” fu bole glared at zuo han and he san. “it is quite rare for a university lecturer to bring his students to visit a haunted house. are you guys really a lecturer and students from a university?”

“before you people suspect us, i wish to tell you one thing, and i hope the nine of you will remember this clearly.” zuo han said in a cold tone. “based on our previous experience, i believe this haunted house has an actor that can mimic people’s voices. he can perfectly replicate our voice, so you cannot confirm a person’s identity through their voices along. and other than that, make sure to take good care of your phone. even if you get a phone call or any information from your partner, do not trust it implicitly.”

“would a haunted house go to such lengths?” it was noticeable that fu bole’s tone was no longer as confident as before.

“that is not even the worst,” zuo han said hesitatingly. “personally, when i run into a problem, i use every method to find a solution. after visiting this haunted house so many times, i’ve gradually come to a conclusion that overturned my entire understanding of this world.”

“what conclusion is that?”

“this haunted house… might really be haunted.”