My House of Horrors

A veil of darkness, one could not even see anything. There did not seem to be any light in the world behind this door. Chen Ge made sure to stay where he was as he slowly squatted down. He gripped his backpack tightly for support and pulled his attention to his ears to listen closely. There was the sound of breathing, the sound of a heartbeat, and the sound of the ticking of the clock.

“I seem to be inside someone’s room.” Ying Tong was a blind man, so his world was enveloped in darkness. He was unable to see anything, but the other people in his world were able to see him, and that was why this world was so dangerous. Pulling open the zipper of his backpack, Chen Ge rummaged about before his fingers curled around the tattered ballpoint pen. He pulled out the pen and placed it inside his shirt pocket. After that, he took out the comic and held it close to his side.

In this world that was completely covered in darkness, he might lose his backpack if he accidentally tripped or some other accident happened. It seemed unwise to place everything he had inside the backpack. That felt like something too dangerous to do.

“I will leave the Doctor Skull Cracker’s Hammer, the pair of red high heels, and Zhang Ya’s bedtime stories inside the backpack. If the person discovers that there is nothing inside the bag, they will definitely get suspicious.”

Unable to see anything, unable to tell his own location, unable to identify his enemies, he was not even able to tell what he looked like. This was definitely the strangest and creepiest door that Chen Ge had ever entered. He called his employees’ names at the bottom of his heart, but he waited for a long time and got no reply.

“The limitation on the Red Specters in the world behind this door is even more intense than the one inside Yu Jian’s world. Will I be able to hold on until the awakening of my employees?”

Having lived his life in the light, after Chen Ge lost the ability to see, he was extremely anxious. That was something to be expected. Adjusting his breath, Chen Ge slowly stood up again. He had been behind this door for about ten minutes already, and for those ten minutes, he had stayed put.

“My body has kept its original shape, and from my touch, there is no change to my clothes and appearance.”

Chen Ge’s nostrils twitched, and in the air, he caught the sniff of the faded scent of disinfectant and blood. Underneath all that, there was a subtle smell that was unique to cats. He followed the trail of the disinfectant smell and reached out behind him. The feeling of sturdiness and chill came from the tip of his fingers.

“The black iron door is right behind me. What I need to do now is confirm my current location, look for a safe place to hide, and wait for my employees to break through.”

However, that was easier said than done. Finding a safe location to hide was extremely difficult in his condition. After all, he was unable to see anything.

“The black door usually appears at the location most important in the door pusher’s memory and places like that are usually the most dangerous. It is the location that is most often visited by the ghost fetus and other negative emotions.”

After being behind the door for about fifteen minutes, Chen Ge finally took his first step. Carrying his backpack, Chen Ge placed one of his hands on the wall and waved his other hand before him. After the initial threshold of nervousness, he slowly calmed down.

“Even Yin Yang Vision is unable to pierce through this darkness, but Ghost Ear and Spirit Sniff do not appear to be affected. I can still rely on my super hearing and sense of smell to decide where I am.”

Unable to see the enemy’s location and tell the appearance and identity of the enemy was what worried Chen Ge the most.

Bang!

He had just taken the second step when Chen Ge knocked into something. The dull sense of pain came from his knees. He clamped his mouth shut and resisted the urge to scream. Instead, he squatted down again. This was the first time that he had made such a loud noise since he entered the door. It might have attracted the attention of certain Specters. For the sake of security, Chen Ge felt that it would be better if he stopped moving for a little while. He stopped to listen. There were no strange noises, and the smell in the air did not change. Chen Ge appeared to be alone inside the room.

“I need to be as light as I can with my movement and actions.” Chen Ge reached out to feel the thing that he had just knocked into. It was a rather squat bedside table. “This table is about the same height as the one that I saw in Ying Tong’s bedroom. Does this mean I am currently inside his bedroom?”

Pulling open the drawer, Chen Ge found a photo frame with his hands. “When Ying Tong was asleep, he was hugging a photo frame.”

What he discovered next confirmed Chen Ge’s speculation even further. He first found the radio inside the room, then his fingers went up and down the dolls with uneven body proportions, and finally, he got to a music box. Those were the exact items that he had seen in Ying Tong’s bedroom before. His fingers moved on the surface of the table. Chen Ge found something that he had not encountered before next to the music box.

“There are keys? This appears to be a phone designed for the blind.” The phone had exceptionally large keys, and the numbers on each key were protruding upward so that the user could tell the numbers easily by their touch. “Should I bring this phone along with me?”

The phone probably belonged to Ying Tong. Carrying it with him might mean that he could gain contact with Ying Tong in the future, or he might gain more information from it, but at the same time, it would be a huge risk to carry it on his body as well. This was because Chen Ge could not predict when the phone would ring. What if he was in hiding from some enemy and the phone rang? Then it would expose his hiding spot.

“I don’t think I should take it. The clues are not that important now. The most important thing is to survive until the end.” Chen Ge thought about it and abandoned the idea of taking the phone with him. The risk was just too high. Chen Ge placed the phone and the photo frame back where he had found them and continued his search inside the bedroom. The closet, dresser, bed…

The layout of the furniture was identical to the layout of Ying Tong’s bedroom in real life, but unfortunately, Ying Tong was not lying in bed. “Where could a blind man have gone?”

Chen Ge tried to use his previous experience to come up with an analysis. “The world behind Ying Tong’s door should be a reflection of his own home. In other words, something extremely painful and traumatic has happened to the man inside this old building. Ying Tong’s elder brother is a psycho that is very good at disguising himself, so this painful memory has a very high chance of having come from his own brother. The brothers were adopted by their relative. Based on what Ying Chen said, they were treated very badly during that period, so the relative will not have be a force of good in this world.”

Chen Ge was building the thoughts in his mind when the phone that was placed on the table suddenly rang. The shrill ringing drilled into his mind, and it shattered the silence inside the small room instantly.

“Damn it!” At that moment, Chen Ge thought of using the Doctor Skull Cracker’s hammer to give the phone a good whack. He desperately wanted to leave, but he felt it was too dangerous to move about without any preparation. The phone rang eight times before it quieted down again. It was then that Chen Ge sighed in relief. “I am unable to see anything. I cannot even set this phone to vibrate.”

There were no more clues to be found inside Ying Tong’s bedroom. Chen Ge took out the hammer and slowly opened the bedroom door. The chilling wind touched his cheeks, and it caused Chen Ge to shiver. Beyond the bedroom, there was still a pool of darkness.

“Hopefully, this world behind the door will not be that large, or else I might just get lost here, and I might not even be able to find my way back.”

He had only journeyed across a room that was several cubic meters wide, but that took Chen Ge almost half an hour. He felt like a man walking on tight rope, his heart was greatly unsettled.

“I should currently be standing inside Ying Tong’s family’s living room. Ying Tong is not in his own bedroom. As his elder brother, Ying Chen probably won’t allow his younger brother to wander off alone, so he is probably by his side at this moment.”

For Chen Ge, the best outcome was both Ying Tong and Ying Chen not being home. That way, he would have plenty of time to conduct his search and find a safe space to hide. The layout of Ying Chen’s house appeared in his mind. Chen Ge moved carefully along the wall. He walked very slowly, and his body was gradually getting used to the world without light.

Darkness represented the unknown, and the unknown often signified danger, amplifying the sense of fear in one’s head. Chen Ge’s grip on the hammer was taut as he slowly nudged his body forward. His fingers found themselves wrapped around a doorknob. Chen Ge gave it a firm twist, and the door swung open easily.

“The room next to Ying Tong’s bedroom should be the room where Ying Chen kept the cats. When I had Ol’ Zhou check it in real life, he saw two dying strays inside it.”

The stench in the air intensified. A horrible smell drifted into his nose. Chen Ge was about to step into the room when he felt something brush against his leg.

Chen Ge’s body froze. Is it a cat or a person?

There were other ‘things’ inside this room. There was a very high chance that they were cats, but that did not preclude the chance of them being ‘humans’. He trained the focus of his hearing. He could not hear any strange noises. He appeared to be standing before an empty room. Chen Ge took another gingerly step forward. His left foot stepped on something. Chen Ge knelt down to see, and his fingertips felt matted ‘fur’ on the ground.

“It’s very soft, and it’s all stuck together by some kind of adhesive. It is rather moist. It feels like meat, like a ball of meat covered in fur.”

Chen Ge gave it a good old squeeze, and it caused his whole body to become covered in goosebumps. It might have been better if he could see what he was holding, but he was unable to see anything. All he could see was darkness. “Is the whole room filled with this?”

Chen Ge opened his palm and allowed the thing to fall. He wanted to enter the room to investigate further, but psychologically, he was feeling rather reluctant. After losing their sight, a person would become more fragile. The feeling of anxiety would be rooted more deeply in one’s heart, and it would crawl all over one’s mind like a poisonous briar.

“Ying Tong and Ying Chen are probably not home at this moment. This is the perfect opportunity. I must not let it go so easily.”

After a moment of hesitation, Chen Ge entered the room. The feeling that came from his feet was very uncomfortable. It felt like he was stepping on a patch of muddy sand. The smell of blood and stench mingled in the air. Chen Ge worried that he might be enveloped in this smell should he stay there for too long, so after finding no new clues, he prepared to leave. Chen Ge walked to the door, but he did not walk out directly.

“If the room is indeed filled with blood and fur, the soles of my shoes must be coated in blood. They will leave a trail of bloody footprints wherever I go, and that is literally telling others how to find me.” Chen Ge found a pair of shoe covers from inside his backpack. This was something that he had grabbed when he was in Jiang Ming’s home a few days ago.

To not leave behind any fingerprints at Jiang Ming’s place, Chen Ge had prepared these gloves and shoe covers for the occasion. He stood at the door and put the covers over his shoes. He walked along the wall, and Chen Ge found the third doorknob. This should be the room that Ying Chen used to prepare all his videos. Chen Ge was not that interested in the room, but once he pushed the door open, he was hit in the face by the smell of air freshener and perfume.

“This place is different from how I remember it.” Finding his way around, Chen Ge’s finger closed around a mirror and a vanity table. On the table’s surface, there were cosmetic items like lipstick and something that appeared to be a music box. “This feels like a woman’s room. Has there been a female tenant at Ying Chen’s house? Does Ying Chen have a girlfriend? How come I didn’t hear Lee Zheng mention that before?”

The world behind the door started to differ from the real world, and the unknown started to expand. After he left the woman’s room, Chen Ge found the fourth doorknob, and he pushed the door open. The layout of the room was similar to Ying Chen’s bedroom. The man seemed to be an extremely neat person. Everything was placed in an orderly manner. “I have looked through the few rooms already, and I have found nothing useful. The main problem is that I cannot see anything. Just feeling it with my fingers, that means that I am bound to have missed some important details.”

This was the first time that Chen Ge had encountered such a strange door. His past experience was unable to provide him with much help. “Oh well, I should probably leave. If I run into the man that is possessed by the ghost fetus now, I will probably meet my end here.”

Once Chen Ge was reminded of the room filled with fur and sticky substance, he felt icky. He was just about to leave when his feet kicked into something. “Who is it?’

Initially, Chen Ge suspected that it was a cat. However, because the thing brushed against the back of his calf, somewhere a cat would not randomly brush against him, he changed his mind and realized that he had probably bumped into a person who was lying on the ground!

The room was exceptionally quiet. Chen Ge stood frozen for a while, and then without any warning, he raised the hammer and swung it behind him. The hammer did not connect to anything. There was only air behind him. “Is no one there?”

Chen Ge did not wish to stay in this room any longer. He planned to retrace his step, but he had just taken his first step when he stepped on something else, and he almost tripped and fell to the ground. “Was there something on the ground earlier?”

His heartbeat hastened. Chen Ge reached out to touch the thing that he had stepped on earlier. When his fingertips touched the thing, Chen Ge’s hand flew back instantly. Chill, with some suppleness and moisture on the surface. It brought back memories of examining and studying the human carcass when Chen Ge first visited the underground morgue. Resisting the urge to recoil, Chen Ge reached out again to grab at the thing and slowly moved around the subject.

“This here is an arm.” The fear was slowly growing. Chen Ge found the five fingers and the person’s shoulder, but he failed to find the person’s head. The headless body was strapped underneath the bed, and it was basically taped to the board of the bed. One of its arms was bent inward, and the other arm seemed to have been knocked out from underneath the bed when Chen Ge was rummaging through the room earlier. It fell out, and Chen Ge accidentally stepped on it.

“There is a human body hidden inside Ying Chen’s bedroom? Why does this exist in the door behind Ying Tong’s door? Did he personally witness Ying Chen commit a murder?”

Chen Ge crawled out from under the bed. A very horrible sight was starting to appear in his mind. The blind younger brother was living next door, unable to see anything. One day, he heard a strange sound and hurried out of the bedroom to ask. At that moment, his elder brother was covered in blood and holding a cleaver. The body was dragged behind him, but Ying Chen answered him with a smile, telling him that everything was fine. Just the image of something like that caused Chen Ge to feel uncomfortable. “I should leave as soon as possible. If Ying Chen returns, I will not even have a chance to escape.”

Exiting the room, Chen Ge searched for the entrance in the living room. Before he could find the location of the entrance, the landline in the living room suddenly rang.

“Who would call at this moment?” The ringing unsettled Chen Ge. He was afraid that the ringing might attract something bad. “Should I answer it or not?”

Different choices would lead to different results. One wrong step, and he might lose his life. The phone rang for about twelve seconds, and it continued to ring. Chen Ge took a deep breath before he picked up the phone. He held his breath and did not say a word.

“Oh? You’re already home.” Ying Chen’s voice came through the line. “You did not drop the football that you took away with you, right? I’ve told you so many times that the things on the left side of the cupboard are mine, and the ones on the right are your toys. Why can’t you remember a simple fact like that?”