My House of Horrors

“Who’s there?” Chen Ge rushed down the corridor without a second thought with the mallet raised. He did not want to give the other party the chance to react.

“Come out!”

The front door was already locked, so his trail had been exposed. He had nothing else to lose.

The man and the cat ran to the corner of the stairwell, but it was complete darkness up the stairs; there was nothing there.

“Where has it disappeared to?” Chen Ge had tested the white cat at the Haunted House. It was sensitive to those things and had never made a mistake.

The white cat didn’t go berserk but only showed aggression, so that thing’s danger level should be lowered than Mu Yang High School.

The white cat had acted up twice inside Chen Ge’s Haunted House. The first was when it was inside Mu Yang High School scenario, and the other was when the blood door appeared in the toilet. According to the cat’s reaction, Chen Ge made a gauge of the danger threat.

But the key issue is, I have no idea whether that thing was human or ghost.

Returning to the nurse’s station, Chen Ge demolished the counter with the mallet and pried the whole counter board out. The thing that he saw was rather scary. Strands of hair that were tied together by string were nailed to the wooden board. “Why would someone nail hair to a wooden board? What is the meaning of this?”

All the strands were neatly tied up with string. One was soft, dark, and luscious; it probably belonged to a young woman who took care of her hair. The other was rough, white, and had split ends; it probably belonged to an elder. Chen Ge deduced that there were hair samples from four different individuals after comparing their color, quality, and length.

“Of these 4 people, at least one of them has to be alive.” Chen Ge looked at the two large iron cages, and their uses slowly came to him. “I’m dealing with actual crazies.”

He placed the wooden board aside and squatted down again. This time, he got a better view of the handwriting on the wall—I will repay everything that you have done to me.

The handwriting was small, and there were other senseless sentences. It felt like the person was interrupted mid-sentence and started to write nonsense.

“When some patients act up, they mumble something incoherent to the air, quite similar to how normal people would talk in their sleep.” Chen Ge tried to make sense of those words, but they were incomprehensible.

Reading the words sent a chill up his spine. They reminded him of the sentences written on the outer walls of the mental hospital. There was a mention of a name in each sentence, and they came from different handwriting, meaning they were probably written by different people. It was understandable if a few patients acted like this, but to have the whole hospital act this way…

“Looks like all the patients in this hospital have some unresolved business.” Chen Ge took out his phone to snap a picture of the words written under the nurse’s station. He then tied the cock to his backpack. “Then again, the greater the number of individuals, the greater the chance of them making a mistake. It’s time for me to move onto the second sick hall.”

Chen Ge jumped out of the station and took out a pack of salt from his bag. He tore open a small opening and left a line of salt around the nurse’s station. This was not to prevent bad luck but to lay a trap for the hidden madman. With salt in his hand, Chen Ge walked to the hallway that connected the first and second sick hall. When he was about to enter the second sick hall, the white cat suddenly jumped onto the window and scratched on the glass.

“Careful, you’re going to fall down.” Chen Ge stood beside the window. The hospital was surrounded by a thick brush, and there was light in sight.

“Who would have thought that such a building existed in the middle of nowhere?” Chen Ge did not notice anything weird, but the white cat refused to the leave the window. It kept its head raised and kept meowing.

“Something wrong with the window? Above us?” Chen Ge opened the window and looked up. Just above him, at the window of the third floor, a twisted face was looking down at him. Facing away from the light, when the person heard the sound of Chen Ge’s window opening, he leaned back quickly and disappeared without even closing the window.

“That face…” Chen Ge also did not expect the enemy to suddenly appear above him. They had shared a look that was less than 0.1 seconds. He definitely did not get a good enough look, but he knew the face looked weird, different from normal, but he could not pinpoint what was weird about it.

Chen Ge stopped and focused on his hearing. He did not hear any footsteps, so he knew the person had not run in a certain direction. “I have a feeling that face is perhaps uneven on both sides, but it should be a person.”

Chen Ge entered the second sick hall. He had thought that the first and second sick hall were going to be the same, but when he entered the second sick hall, he realized that the layout was completely different. The second sick hall was larger and emptier than the first. There were no crowded beds, and between individual rooms, there were chairs, tables, and table lamps.

“The environment here is definitely better than the first sick hall.” Chen Ge dumped a handful of salt near the staircase before entering the first room that was closest to him. The mattress was torn open, and its innards were littered all over the place. The chamber pot was placed next to the eating utensils, and there were plenty of characters gouged out with fingernails left on the wall.

“It mustn’t have been easy for the doctors and nurses to take care of patients like this daily.” Chen Ge exited the room and continued to move forward.

The room types in the second sick hall were more varied than the first. There were specialized quarantine rooms, entertainment rooms, chess rooms, and shower rooms, and there was even a small hall with a stage at the end of the corridor, but the decoration inside was rather weird.

The hall was not used to host parties or balls. The windows were sealed shut and draped with extra thick curtains. All the decorations were either black or white, creating a weird style. Opening the door, before even stepping in, Chen Ge noticed the large black and white picture placed on the middle of the stage.

The picture was hanging on the wall, and it was sliced in half by an unknown culprit. However, from the remaining half, one could see that it was a middle-aged female nurse. She was of a large frame and had a scowl on her face.

“An enlarged black and white picture, thick curtains, rows of wooden chairs. Why is this place decorated like a mourning hall?” Chen Ge could not understand why such an event would occur at a mental hospital, and if the event was hosted by the hospital, what was the meaning of it?

“Could this female nurse have been a victim of the Third Sick Hall? But if that’s the case, why is her picture in the hall of the second sick hall?”

Chen Ge did not stop after memorizing the face of the female nurse. He closed the door, left a line of salt at the door, and ran up the stairs to the third floor.