My House of Horrors

The voice-activated lights went out, and the whole building was plunged into darkness. When Ma Feng walked out from the room with his own phone, he was given quite a fright. He stomped his feet and cried out, but the voice-activated lights above them in the corridor did not light up again. Raising his phone, he aimed the flashlight on his phone at the locations where the lights should be, and he noticed the light that came out from the screen of his phone was slowly turning dark. “What is going on here?”

A figure was approaching him in the dark. Ma Feng lowered his voice and turned back to ask, “Sister Snake?”

“No, it is me, Sun Xiaojun.” The familiar voice rang out beside him, but the appearance of his teammate did not give Ma Feng any sense of safety or consolation. If anything, it only made him even more agitated.

“Did you notice that the light from your phone is gradually getting dimmer and dimmer as well?” Ma Feng reached out one hand to lean against the wall. The darkness amplified the anxiety that he was trying desperately to hide.

“So that has been happening to your phone as well! The screen is getting dimmer and dimmer too! Looks like there is something wrong with our sight. That spooked me for a second. I thought something has gone wrong with my phone and I would have to go and buy a new one.” After hearing what Sun Xiaojun had to say, Ma Feng’s brows creased even deeper. Among this group of visitors, none appeared normal.

Using his own memory, he held his phone and swiped the light around him to look for the figures of Shang Guan Qing Hong and Sister Snake. With every turn of the phone, the light from the screen dimmed a degree further.

“Brother Ma, Shang Guan Qing Hong, I think we’d better leave this scenario as fast as we can.” Sister Snake walked out from the room next to him. “I really did not dare imagine that someone would make a completely dark scenario inside a haunted house. This has already gone far over the limits for a normal haunted house visitation. It is more like a test for the visitors’ threshold of mental and psychological stress. We have all underestimated the haunted house boss’ insanity.”

Sister Snake warned them as she walked back along the way that they came in. She did not wish to stay in that sub-scenario for even a moment longer.

“But if we abandon our original plan of finding a hidden pathway in this sub-scenario, it means we will have to go to the maternal and childcare center next door. As mentioned earlier, the hospital is the place with the strongest Yin energy because it is the location where most people die. After all, the haunted house boss must have his reasons for placing these two scenarios at the end of the street. It probably means that the terror levels of these two sub scenarios are roughly equal to each other.” Shang Guan Qing Hong also exited from the room behind Ma Feng. He appeared to be looking for something earlier. “Furthermore, we have already spent some time inside this scenario. When we reach the other scenario, perhaps the black fog will have already arrived at these two places, and the level of difficulty will only increase further.”

“Horror that you can see and horror that you cannot see cannot be compared at all. You guys had better listen to me.” Sister Snake showed the side of her that made her the boss of the second most popular haunted house in the country. No matter what Shang Guan Qing Hong said, she had made up her mind that she was going to leave this place. Even though Shang Guan Qing Hong held a different opinion to Sister Snake, at a time like this, he was more willing to lean toward Sister Snake’s experience and instinct. After all, she was more experienced than he was.

The three led Sun Xiaojun and retraced their steps. The lights from the screens of their phones had slowly weakened to a point where it could only light up about one to two meters ahead of them. After taking a few steps, it was as if the battery of their three phones ran out at the same time, and the light died without warning. Darkness fell completely; there was not even a trace of light. The bodies of the three visitors appeared to be frozen, and they stood fixed where they were.

“Do not panic! The four of us should hold each other’s hands. The exit is not far away from here. I know that for sure. We need to leave this place as soon as possible!” At that crucial moment, Sister Snake became the lynchpin of the group. Actually, since she entered Chen Ge’s haunted house, she had not said much. That was because she had been closely observing Chen Ge’s haunted house, and the more she observed, the harder her heart palpitated. Be it the method of the tour or the placement of the scare points, Chen Ge’s haunted house was immensely unique from the other haunted houses on the market. In other words, he was walking a path that other people could not replicate even if they tried. Sister Snake also understood why Chen Ge’s haunted house had gotten so popular online, but the epiphany had arrived a little bit too late.

“Do not wander about and do not scare yourself! Everyone, reach out and hold onto each other! The human psyche will become weakened and more helpless when surrounded by darkness. The four of us must not be separated from each other!” Sister Snake was very assertive, and she gave her orders directly. “I hope everyone can understand that we are only visiting a haunted house; no danger will occur to us! That is guaranteed! So, what we need to do now is not scare ourselves!”

Even though Ma Feng was not used to getting orders from others, in those circumstances, he still obediently did what he was told. He reached out as Sister Snake had ordered and grabbed the wrist of the person next to him.

“We have to get used to the darkness. Because our sense of sight has been deprived, the other senses will be heightened in its place. The haunted house’s boss might use other methods that are not common on the market to scare us, like the use of voices or touch.” Sister Snake had already grabbed the hands of the people next to her. “Who is on my left?”

“It is me.” Shang Guan Qing Hong’s hand was slick with cold sweat. He was rather embarrassed by it, but Sister Snake was not someone who would mind something like that.

“So, who is on my right?”

“That would be me,” Sun Xiaojun answered softly. The four confirmed their locations like that. They stood in a single file. Sun Xiaojun was at the far right of the line, and Ma Feng was on the far left.

“We should stay closer together and walk out of this place in this formation. When we arrived at this place, I purposely looked around the place. The boss probably worried that the visitors might trip and accidentally injure themselves, so the corridors are relatively clean. At least that is something that we do not need to worry about. We only need to firm up our courage and walk forward toward the exit.” The few visitors listened to Sister Snake’s orders and started to head toward the exit, but they only walked for a few steps when something scary happened.

“Did you guys hear that shrill calling of what sounds like a cat? The sound appears to have been there since we entered this place, but now it appears to be getting closer and closer to us.” The moment Shang Guan Qing Hong said that, he suddenly felt something brush against his feet. The brush of silken hair caused goosebumps to appear all over his body. His body instantly froze to the ground. “Someone just touched my leg!”

The four of them were holding each other’s hands, so if one of them stopped, the rest of them had to stop as well.

“Are you sure it was a person? Perhaps you accidentally kicked something.”

“It felt like human hair! It was real! I swear to you!” Surrounded by darkness, Shang Guan Qing Hong did not know what had brushed against him at all. Based on the feeling that came from his leg, many scary images instantly started to fill up his mind.

“Do not stop moving! We need to keep on pushing forward! The exit is not far now!” Sister Snake yanked Shang Guan Qing Hong along by his arm. “It was just a brush of your leg, so why are you so scared? And stop the senseless screaming!”

Compared to Sister Snake, Shang Guan Qing Hong was like a newly married daughter-in-law who was being lectured by her new mother in law. Even though he felt so wronged, he was not going to pick this moment to argue with Sister Snake because, deep down, he knew that Sister Snake was right. The sound of the cat’s calling was getting louder and louder in their ears. Beneath the cats’ calls, there were other sounds mixed in, like the sound of the doors creaking open and the sound of someone’s nails trailing past the metallic stair banisters.

“I feel like this cat’s call is urging us to run. Perhaps we are currently surrounded by several cats at this moment.” Sun Xiaojun had started his habit of running headfirst into an analysis at the wrong moment.

“This is the first time I have heard of a haunted house employ cats as actors.” Sister Snake shook her head. She could not see anything in the dark. “The meowing of the cats was probably recorded before the scenario was released to the public. There are at least ten surround sound speakers installed in this scenario, and the reason for their placement is to play the seemingly approaching shrieks of the cats to apply pressure to the visitors, creating the illusion that something dangerous is slowly approaching the visitors. The thing that brushed up against Shang Guan Qing Hong earlier was probably fake cat fur. The intention behind the boss’ design is to increase the sense of authenticity. After losing the sense of sight, the world will appear less real, and we visitors can be more easily misled, so at this moment, we need to be as calm as possible!”

Even though the four of them kept telling themselves to calm down, in reality, they had been making very slow progress. In comparison, one could realize how courageous and uneasy it was for Chen Ge when the man challenged the real door himself.

“How come we have not reached the exit yet? I remember the exit is not that far away from where we were!” Shang Guan Qing Hong’s legs were shaking. At his age, he could not suffer too many ‘surprises’ anymore. Currently, his forehead was covered in cold sweat, and he was close to his breaking point.

“In the darkness, we will slowly lose our sense of distance, time, and direction. All we can do now is firm our resolve and make sure that it is not shaken as we continue our way forward. That is the only thing that we need to do.” Sister Snake kept encouraging the others, but in reality, she was also repeating these same encouragements to herself. The refusal for the exit to appear slowly wore down the visitors’ hope. Despair began to corrupt the visitors’ hearts. The visitors became more and more fragile, and right at that moment, the extremely shrill wail of a cat rang out between the shoulders of Shang Guan Qing Hong and Sister Snake!

It was like the cat had used the last moment of its life to scream as loud as it could to warn the rest of them before it was dragged away and slaughtered in the worst way possible!

The sudden scream caused Shang Guan Qing Hong, who was already on the verge of a mental breakdown, to jump up from fear. He screamed along with the cat’s wail, and then his body instinct kicked in, and he let go of his teammates’ hands so that he could use his hands to cover his own ears.

“Do not let go of your partners’ hands!” Sister Snake was given quite a scare as well, but she swiftly collected herself. Then she turned to yell at Shang Guan Qing Hong.

“It felt like the cat died on my shoulder.” Shang Guan Qing Hong took a deep breath. He waved both of his arms around before he found the arms of the people next to him in the darkness.

“Stop with the unnecessary commentary! Quick, grab our hands and stay in the arrangement of the group. We need to keep moving forward!” Sister Snake’s voice was laced by anger, but her fury was more of a way to hide the fear in her heart.

“But I’ve already grabbed onto your hand…” Once Shang Guan Qing Hong said that, everyone was startled, and then an indescribable horror started to envelope every single one of them.

“You… have already grabbed onto my hand?” Sister Snake raised her hand right before her eyes. Then she suddenly whipped her body around, but she could not see anything. “Be careful! There is a haunted house worker standing next to us!”

At that moment, the person who was caught in the most difficult position was Shang Guan Qing Hong. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. He did not know whether it was correct to let go of the hand or not, and the question that was on his mind, the million dollar question, was: whose hand he was holding?

With his Adam’s apple trembling, Shang Guan Qing Hong asked softly, “What… what should I do now?”

The air around them seemed to freeze. None of the four visitors dared to speak. In the end, it was Sister Snake who was the first to recover. “We keep moving forward!”

Now, only by moving forward did they have a hope of leaving this place. Once they had lost their direction, it would really be all over.

“You mean you wish for me to hold onto this arm whose owner we do not know and continue to walk like this to the exit?” Shang Guan Qing Hong’s heart was about to jump out from his chest. He could the chills coming from the palm that he was holding. It was not the arm of a living human; it felt more like a frozen piece of meat sold at the supermarket that happened to have the shape of a human arm.

“That is the only thing we can do now. Just have some patience. You can do it.” Ma Feng also opened his mouth to console the man. He had his hand on the wall and slowly nudged his feet forward. “The darkness made us lose our sight, but even if we cannot see anything, the location of the exit will not change, so as long as we ensure that we do not get disrupted by external disturbances, we will eventually get out of this place.”

Once Ma Feng said that, the fingertips that he had been using to trace the wall felt a sudden chill. It felt like he had touched a piece of ice that was embedded into the wall.

“Hmm?” His bent his fingers and traced the part that was protruding out of the wall. “This arc and this sense of touch… it feels like a nose and a mouth!”

There was a frozen face on the wall!

His fingers bounced back like they were shocked by electricity. Ma Feng subconsciously darted away from the wall and sidestepped the unknown horror, but the corridor was only so wide. This meant that he immediately bumped into Shang Guan Qing Hong.

At that moment, Shang Guan Qing Hong was like a string pulled taut. He was holding onto a ghost’s hand inside a completely dark haunted house. His current fear level needed no description. He trained all his focus on that hand. The slightest movement would cause the man to crumble, much less being suddenly bumped into by Ma Feng. These two men whose combined age added up to more than eighty screamed at the top of their lungs. The sound of tumbling echoed in the darkness. It did not sound like four people were walking in a line; it sounded more like four blind people were surrounded by a group of people.

Among the pushing and jostling, Sister Snake was knocked to the ground. Her heart tightened with apprehension and fear. Sitting on the ground, her hands gripped her clothes tightly as she tried desperately to confirm their location and the direction that they were supposed to be heading in. She did not mind the argument; she did not even care about the fact that a ghost was among them. As long as they knew the correct direction to the exit, they would eventually leave this place. But after the series of knocking around, Sister Snake’s only hope was vanquished. Sitting on the ground, she felt like the exit could be on her left, but a moment later, she felt like the exit was actually on her right.

“It really is all over now…”

Ma Feng and Shang Guan Qing Hong were also panicking. They were screaming Sister Snake’s name loudly, and they reached out to search about them in the dark.

“Sister Snake, is that you?” Shang Guan Qing Hong had long released the hand he was holding. He did not dare move too brashly lest he bumped into the possible haunted house workers who might be standing next to him. Hearing Shang Guan Qing Hong’s question, Sister Snake could not even bring herself to answer. All she wanted to do now was curl up in the corner and slowly melt into the darkness alone.

“There is no light around us at all. We cannot see anything. Theoretically speaking, the haunted house workers should not be able to see anything either. Is it possible that they have night-vision goggles on?” At the end of the day, Ma Feng had experienced many big events in his life. Even though he was caught by surprise, he tried his best to use his knowledge to try to find a solution. “If we can grab the googles from the haunted house actors, this scenario will be a breeze for us to solve!”

“Brother Ma, is it really moral to swipe other people’s equipment during a haunted house tour?” Sun Xiaojun’s flat voice drifted from not far ahead of them.

“Of course, when the boss of this haunted house came to our theme park, who knows how many things he stole from us?” Speaking of the past, Ma Feng gritted his teeth in anger, and that diminished quite a lot of the fear that surrounded his heart. “The four of us mustn’t separate from each other. Come over here and hold my hand.”

Ma Feng reached out toward Shang Guan Qing Hong and Sister Snake. Moments later, two chilly hands grabbed Ma Feng’s wrists. Before he could react, there was another cat’s scream. All the doors in the building were slammed open. Ma Feng felt a powerful force pulling on both of his arms, and before he could resist, he was forcibly dragged behind one of the open doors!

“Argh!”

“Brother Ma? Brother Ma!” Shang Guan Qing Hong immediately shouted in the direction that Ma Feng’s scream came from. He turned to search at the position where Ma Feng was standing earlier. His fingertip touched some soft skin and something that was sticky like blood. “Brother Ma?”

His hands reached out horizontally, and Shang Guan Qing Hong realized with a shock that a monster that was impossibly large was standing before him!

He did not dare speak anymore. His fingers were shaking. He silently moved one of his hands to under his nose, and he got a whiff of a strong blood smell.

“Who… is this?”