My House of Horrors

Liang Er, Liang San, and the middle-aged woman from the Castle of Lost Memories continued their exploration in the world of the black fog. This place’s visibility was extremely low; they could barely see things that were three meters away from them. “Where is all this black fog coming from?”“If it was white fog, then it could be explained from the usage of dry ice machines, but it is the first time I’ve encountered black fog.” Liang Er scratched his head. “It has no smell and no taste. It appears to have no other function other than to disrupt our sense of sight.”

“Theoretically speaking, the hidden pathway of the first sub scenario should lead to the secret room with the first clue. This room should not be that big. The haunted house’s boss probably wants us to find the body parts of the rag doll inside this black fog.” The middle-aged woman analyzed the situation based on her own experience of designing her haunted house.

“Then we’d better start looking. Be careful not to wander too far away from each other. There might be haunted house actors hiding inside the black fog.” The three stayed together as they moved forward. They walked for a full two minutes before they saw any trace of a wall. Their expressions started to change. “This does not appear to be a hidden room at all…”

“This place is too big. Have we arrived at a new scenario? But how come we have not encountered a single actor? What is the philosophy behind his haunted house design? I find myself failing to understand his thought process more and more.”

“How about we retrace our steps? I think we should regroup with the others.”

“Okay.” They all stopped moving. The three haunted house designers turned back to look, and they suddenly discovered something very scary. “Was this the direction that we came from?”

The ground under their feet had no discerning features. They were surrounded by black fog, and there was no object of reference—it was impossible to tell where they were in relation to everything else.

“Wait a minute, aren’t we supposed to have another member in our team? When did that kid disappear?” The longer one stayed inside the black fog, the greater the fear inside one’s heart would be amplified. The three haunted house designers’ hearts had started to shake like a leaf. At that moment, they heard a woman’s painful and despairing scream. Nudging their feet slowly toward the scream, they switched on the flashlight function on their phones.

The light was distorted by the black fog. They could see a woman who was covered in bandages not far away. Surrounded by a thick shroud of black fog, the woman appeared to be ingesting the black fog around her like some kind self-mutilating torture. As the fog rushed into her body, it tore open one wound after another on her body before it proceeded to leak out from her wounds again. The woman appeared to be searching for something inside the black fog. She used her own body as a vessel, and the filtering process was incredibly harsh and painful.

The black fog was being pulled toward her. As she continued to consume the black fog, black and red tattoos slowly started to surface on her body under the bandage. The tattoos were like a second layer of skin. They wrapped around her body. From afar, the woman radiated a kind of extremely grotesque beauty, but when one looked closer at the scenes that were depicted by the tattoos on her skin, everyone’s heart would be gripped by fear. The black threads severed the woman’s skin like knives. Blood mixed together with the black threads reconstructed a child’s regrettable and painful life—his encounter with many heartless characters and surviving inhuman pain and torture. Inside the deepest and darkest despair, a flower of sin was blooming!

The light from the flashlights hit the woman. The three haunted house designers saw the woman’s wounded body under the bandages, and their heads went numb.

Liang San stared at the woman’s bizarre posture, and he turned to whisper softly to his older brother, “What is that thing? That does not look like an actor! Is that a mannequin?”

“At first glance, she seems like an absolute beauty, but upon closer inspection, you will realize how disgusting everything is…” Just as he uttered the term ‘disgusting’, Liang Er saw the woman’s head slowly turn around. A pair of eyes dominated by curses and malice had landed on him. Liang Er lost control of his body immediately. Every piece of fatty flesh on his body was shaking.

The click and clack of high heel against the ground echoed through the space. Countless faces inside the world of the black fog started to wail. The strange smiling human heads that were formed from the curses rushed out from the rooftops. There was also a centipede-like creature strung together with human heads crawling rapidly on the wall. They rushed toward the three haunted house designers with evil intentions.

Moments earlier, they had been complaining about the lack of haunted house actors, but just a few seconds later, everything had changed. Liang Er and Liang San had no idea where these things had come from. Their faces blanched, and their natural instinct propelled them to retreat. More and more monsters appeared. They had not even dared to imagine these monsters in their worst nightmare; they had already broken through their understanding of fear.

“Run! Quick! Run!” The middle-aged woman was the first to react. She turned and started to race down the street. As she picked up her pace, the monsters rushed at her like a wave.

There were so many of them!

Liang San also started to turn back and run, but he had only taken a few steps when he heard a harrowing scream coming from behind him. He realized that his big brother was still standing where he was.

“I cannot move!” Liang Er had no idea what had happened to his body. Ever since he said the word ‘disgusting’, he realized that his heartbeat had started to go haywire. It was as if his body did not belong to him anymore.

Liang San hesitated for a moment. In the end, he stayed because blood was thicker than water. He turned around to grab Liang Er by his arm. “Bro! I will carry you!”

Before he finished, he saw the black threads hidden inside the fog crawl into Liang Er’s body, and they had started to spread toward his own body!

Liang San was so shocked that he immediately let go of Liang Er. The folds of fat on his face were trembling from fear. The eyes that were hidden inside the fleshy face had not been so wide in his life. “What are these things?”

Flinging his brother’s arm away, Liang San staggered backward and started to run. “Big brother! I will go and get people to come help you! Hang in there!”

Liang San could not care about what was happening behind him anymore. He chose a direction and started to run like his life depended on it. There was no object of reference in the black fog, so he had no idea where he was at all. He was surrounded by monsters, so he did not to even stop for a second to take a break.

“Liang San, Liang San…” After who knew how long, a familiar voice suddenly came from inside the fog.

“Big brother?”

“Yes, it is me! Quick, come over here! The exit is this way!” The voice was leading Liang San in a certain direction. The shadow of a fetus flickered in the black fog. Liang San wanted to stay away from that shadow, but he realized that his own brother’s voice was coming from the location where the shadow was. He then noticed the anomaly about this situation. He wanted to turn around and run the other way, but the moment he did so, the fetus started to madly chase after him!

“Liang San, where are you going? It’s me, your older brother!”

“Stay away, do not come close to me!” Liang San’s confidence when he first entered the haunted house had completely shattered. His mental stability was shattered the moment he abandoned Liang Er to leave on his own.

“I really am your big brother! Have you forgotten about me? When we were playing hide and seek when we were young, you were hiding under the bed. Someone was whispering in your ears, accompanying you. Do you still remember, one night, when you snuck out to go to the internet café, there was a big dog that kept barking at you? Since then, you’ve had a fear of dogs. Actually, that dog was not barking at you. It was because it had seen me!

“I am your big brother, the eldest brother that you will never shake off, Liang Yi!

“I died in front of you, but I have never left! We will be brothers forever!”

The fetus’ shadow crawled swiftly on the ground, and it was only a matter of time it caught up to Liang San. It crawled up Liang San’s body and strangled the man’s neck. The face that was bloody and ghastly was hanging from Liang San’s head as it stared into the man’s eyes. “Look closely! Look! See how similar we look!”

“Ah! Argh!” Liang San shook his head wildly like he had lost his mind. The darkest fear in his heart was recreated through the curse. It did not take long for the man to crumple in a heap with white foam coming out of his mouth.

The sound of high heels echoed on the ground. The scary fetus morphed back into a curse and disappeared among the black fog.

The screaming was endless. The middle-aged woman stumbled her way through the world of the black fog. Most of the monsters had been distracted by Liang Er and Liang San. Furthermore, she was the first to run, so she had made quite a headway in her escape.

“How did the boss manage to come up with all these props? What is going on inside this haunted house?” The middle-aged woman had lost her composure. All she knew was that she needed to run. After running for ten minutes, a wall suddenly appeared before her. “Was that the path that we used to get here?”

She followed the wall and continued to search until finally she found the black iron door. “The door is not locked! I am so lucky!”

The middle-aged woman yanked back the iron door and raced up the staircase. She was getting closer and closer to the exit.

“I have to tell everyone about the things that happened here! This haunted house is too abnormal!” She raced all the way to the end of the hidden pathway. She rammed into the door painted with the red snail, but the door refused to budge. “What’s going on?”

Strange laughter and crying came from the other end of the hidden path. Endless shadows were dancing in the black fog. The middle-aged woman knocked repeatedly on the door and cried loudly for help, but naturally, no one came to her aid. “Help me! Please, someone, come and help me!”

Her final call for help was swallowed by the shadows. After the black fog consumed everything, it not only did not dissipate, it even thickened further.

…

Walking down the street of the Voiceless Small Town, Zuo Han suddenly stopped moving. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you hear someone crying for help?” Zuo Han turned back to look at the Soundless Home. “It appears to come out from the building that we just vacated.”

“Should we go back to take a look?” He San was still quite worried about the other people. He was really concerned that a serious accident might happen.

“For now, I cannot tell for sure who the haunted house actor is. In these circumstances, other than the two of you, there is no need to go and risk our own lives to go and rescue other people. It will be a waste of energy to go save them, and we might even get dragged into more trouble.” Zuo Han kept his eyes on the black fog that continued to roll out from the Soundless Home, and his brows were deeply creased. “The speed of the fog spreading is increasing. Looks like the game will be entering the third stage very soon.”

“The third stage?”

“Normally, after we have obtained the key item and prepared to leave, the actors inside the scenario will be given free rein to move around to come after any and all visitors in their sights, so the third stage is also known as the free massacre.” Zuo Han’s voice was peppered with obvious worry. “When I was challenging the Coffin Village, to transport the wedding dress out, I sacrificed all of my teammates. During this third stage, brain power is completely useless. All that matters is physical stamina and luck.”

“That will be incredibly detrimental to us. The three of us do not appear to have luck on our side,” He San grumbled softly.

“Then we’d better speed up our exploration. If we fail to find any parts of the rag doll, we will only end up in worse condition.”

The group, including the rest of the haunted house designers, hurried to leave. None of them had suggested to go back and rescue their teammates who were screaming for help. Everyone had come to a silent consensus not to bring that up. It was as if everyone was suffering from temporary amnesia.

After the black fog appeared, the whole scenario became even more peculiar. Occasionally, an eye would open on a wall, or a snickering shadow would flicker around the street corner. The scariest thing in the ghost fetus’ memory was inching closer to the visitors. After turning the corner, there was a very long avenue that stretched out before the visitors. The buildings on both sides of this avenue were gray in color, and some of the buildings had cracks from age.

“Have we been to this place before? How come I feel like this street has appeared out of nowhere?” Zuo Han was the first to enter the avenue. Before he strode that far down the street, he noticed a person appearing from the avenue. “Be careful! There is someone ahead of us!”

Under the dim light, the figure was wearing a red raincoat, standing straight, and facing away from the visitors. She stood next to a tattered looking bus stop as if waiting for someone.

“It is not raining, so why is the person wearing a raincoat?” Zuo Han did not dare get too close. His brows were furrowed deeply; who knew what he was thinking?

“You are in cahoots with these people, so why do you have so many questions?” When Fu Bole saw Zuo Han acting like this, it irked him. Then again, the man already had a prejudice against these people who claimed to be from Jiujiang Medical University to begin with. “Fine, continue your act. I will stand here and see how much longer you can keep this up.”

When they saw the woman in the red raincoat, the eyes of Xiao Sun, who was among the crowd, lit up. He had seen this Red Specter in the world behind the ghost fetus’ door before. He knew that this was one of Chen Ge’s employees.

I need to figure out a way to get close to her and inform her that the first hidden pathway has already been accidentally destroyed by me and have her contact Boss Chen for me.

With this in mind, Xiao Sun walked out from the group and moved toward the red raincoat.

The haunted house designers were trying to find an ‘idiot’ to go and test this strange figure. Seeing Xiao Sun volunteer, none of them even thought of stopping him. But when Zuo Han saw Xiao Sun walk over there, for some reason, he had a bad feeling rise in his heart. He raised his hand, but in the end, he still did not stop Xiao Sun. Carrying the hope of his whole team of his shoulders, Xiao Sun stepped onto the bus stop’s platform. The other visitors stayed away from the platform, keeping a safe two to three meters away from Xiao Sun.

“Hello, I am Sun Xiaojun.” Xiao Sun lowered his voice and used his back to block the sight of the other visitors. He put both of his arms before his chest and silently pointed at himself. “I have accidentally broken the hidden pathway…”

Seeing that someone had wandered over, the woman in the red raincoat slowly turned around to reveal her extremely scary face. Her lips were sewn shut by shadows, and when she spoke, her voice slipped through the gaps between the stitches. It was incredibly harrowing. “Have you seen my child?”

“Big sister, the hidden pathway is stuck. We need to get the boss and come over to check it.” Xiao Sun did not dare raise his voice. He muttered with his lips closed. Interestingly, it appeared like he was mimicking the woman in the raincoat.

“Have you seen my child?” The red raincoat was playing herself. Her bright red pupils were rolling in her eye sockets, and her emotions had started to fray. When Xiao Sun saw how deep the red raincoat lady was entrenched in the script, he was very desperate. If this was allowed to continue, the whole avenue would probably be swallowed up by the black fog soon.

“Have you seen my child?” The red raincoat’s voice was very scary. Blood vessels wiggled on her body. It appeared like her emotions might go out of control at any moment. Xiao Sun also did not dare pressure the red raincoat lady. After all, this was an actual Red Specter. He was about to give up communication with the red raincoat when he was struck by inspiration, and a thought appeared in his mind.

Since she is unable to understand what I am trying to express, why don’t I just lead her to the hidden pathway to take a look? That is such an easy solution!

That was the brilliant idea that our Xiao Sun had. Therefore, without discussing anything with his teammates, he suddenly said, “I saw your child earlier! I know where he is! Really! I can guarantee that!”

His tone was very sure and determined. The other visitors had no idea what he was up to. Even the red raincoat lady’s expression appeared to have frozen. That was not how it was supposed to go according to the script. How would a visitor know where a Red Specter’s child was hidden?

“My son is wearing a tattered floral shirt, and he has a red scar on his forehead as well as a birthmark that’s the shape of a maple leaf on his chest.” What the red raincoat described was not part of the script. She appeared to be describing the features of her real lost son.

“That’s right! It was him!” Xiao Sun slapped on his calf. “The child that I saw was the same as the one you just described! He was inside the house nearest to the entrance! You need to search the first room on the first floor very closely!”

When he finished, the blood vessels on the red raincoat were boiling. She had searched for multiple years, and today, finally, someone had told her that they had seen her child. She walked to the back of the platform and soon disappeared. Seeing the red raincoat walk away, Xiao Sun sighed in relief.

When she sees that the hidden pathway has been destroyed and the black fog is rushing out, she will understand the severity of the situation.

At that moment, it was Xiao Sun who did not understand the severity of the situation. He finally revealed a relaxed smile and returned to the group of visitors.