My House of Horrors

“Boss, you still want us to find him?” Xiao Du grumbled. The young man did not have a good impression of Han Qiuming because of his sharp tongue.

“Something might really happen to him if we don’t find him.” Guo Miao’s expression was serious. “Perhaps something has already happened to him. No, we can’t leave him behind! We’re retracing our steps now!”

“I agree with you, boss.” To everyone’s surprise, Song An did not hold onto his grudges and was willing to help. “It’s a mistake to get separated inside a Haunted House. We’d better stick together.”

Xiao Du nodded after a long pause. “Okay, I’ll follow you.”

The most innocent was Su Luoluo. The girl did not know anything and had no idea what the workers from Tian Teng Medical School were talking about. She just followed them and ran all over the place.

“We should be more detailed with our examination. We need to look inside every room.”

With Guo Miao leading the way, the group returned into the Third Sick Hall.

…

Han Qiuming and Ye Xiaoxin entered the director’s office. The room was separated into two smaller rooms, equipped with simple desks and chairs.

“The drawers are empty, and there are no books on the shelves. It’s impossible to know the boss’ personality from his reading preferences, but this is a good thing as well because it saves our time. Many Haunted Houses like to hide passwords or clues inside books,” Han Qiuming explained to Ye Xiaoxin, but it felt like he was talking to himself. Ye Xiaoxin moved away from the man and walked deeper into the room. She looked at the large dresser.

“Let me, this dresser is obviously custom-made. Ninety percent chance there’s a worker or trap hiding inside.” Han Qiuming walked forward to pull the door open. The dresser was empty. He laughed awkwardly. “Looks like this is the ten percent. The worker probably didn’t have the time to return after scaring Ol’ Guo.”

Ye Xiaoxin was completely uninterested in the man. She knocked on the walls of the dresser light. “Placing a special dresser inside a special room, there has to be a reason.”

When Ye Xiaoxin knocked on the back wall of the dresser, the sound changed. It was obvious that the back was hollow. The two worked together to remove the wall, and a hidden passage was revealed.

“The worker’s passageway?”

“It’s shouldn’t be.”

There was no light inside the passageway, so Ye Xiaoxin took out her phone to use its flashlight. When both her and Han Qiuming entered the path, an invisible force pushed the wall of the dresser, and it slowly closed. The passageway was so cramped that it was difficult to even turn. Thankfully, it was only several meters long.

At the end of the oppressive tunnel was a steel door. Ye Xiaoxin pushed it open, and before her was a wooden board. She shoved it open, and the scenery changed. This was a sickroom that she had not been in before.

“The director’s office is connected to a sickroom? What is the meaning of this design?” Ye Xiaoxin was completely drawn into the authentic recreation of the Third Sick Hall.

“Do you think it’s because the director kept the patient in his room as his possession?” Han Qiuming suggested. “I hear this is something common when the private hospitals weren’t professionally managed like nowadays.”

“Possibly.” They entered the room and started inspecting it. There sick bed, tables, and chairs had their corners ground down. The decoration was simple; there was nothing special.

“Let’s go out to take a look.” Han Qiuming opened the door, and a weird stench entered his nostrils. It smelt like the mixture of medicine and blood. He staggered one step back and extended his neck to look down the corridor.

The walls were cracked, and the blood vessels behind them seemed to be pulsing. It gave a very creepy feeling like the building was alive and the walls were hiding its blood vessels.

“It doesn’t seem like we’ve been to this corridor before.” The set design was almost the same, but the feeling it gave was completely different. The Third Sick Hall had made use of the looping design to its maximum potential. The visitors did not know what was at the end, and they had no idea how many corridors awaited them.

The mattresses on the floor were well-worn, and the dolls poked their pillow heads out. Weird expressions were drawn on their faces. It felt like their eyes were following the duo. Han Qiuming wanted to retreat. They came from the secret passageway, so they did not know how far this corridor was from the rest, and they had no idea how many scary things it was hiding.

He used his phone to shine the light down a corridor. The end of the dark corridor was not an exit but yet another corner.

“Don’t block the way.” Ye Xiaoxin exited the sickroom. Her legs that stepped out felt like they were touched by chills. This corridor was obviously different from those before it.

“Let’s look around. The tape recorder should be one of these rooms.” Ye Xiaoxin entered the sickroom next door to investigate, but Han Qiuming stood where he was. His hand that gripped the door was covered in sweat, and he peeked over his shoulder to look at the room door.

The upper half of the door was normal—it had the sign ‘3’—but the lower part of the door was quite scary. It was completely covered in red paint, but the paint was bright and sticky. The red seemed to be alive, and it grew on the door. “Room 3? Why are the number of the rooms in this corridor different from others?”

Han Qiuming and Ye Xiaoxin examined the first three sickrooms. When they reached the end, they discovered a room without a number or a sign. “Let’s go in and see.”

The room was small and completely enclosed. There was sound-insulation on the walls, and there was a bed with straps installed in the room. There was some broken equipment left by the bed.

“This looks like an electroshock therapy room. I’ve seen something similar in many other mental hospitals and movies.” Han Qiuming looked around the bed before examining the cluster of broken equipment. Then he started to chuckle. “Found it!”

Han Qiuming moved the equipment aside to retrieve a tape recorder that was hidden among it.

“And here I thought the Haunted House would be difficult.” He tried his best to pretend like this was nothing, but the excited expression on his face betrayed his true feelings.

In comparison, Ye Xiaoxin was much calmer. She looked at the recorder and frowned for the first time since she entered the Haunted House. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Han Qiuming did not know what Ye Xiaoxin was talking about. “Let’s ignore it. We need to leave now. There’s a time limit to this game. I’m going to make a perfect game clear and shut that Chen fella up.”

“You really don’t hear that?” Ye Xiaoxin pointed at the tape recorder in Han Qiuming’s arms. “The tape inside is turning, and the play button is lit up. The recorder has been running.”