My House of Horrors

“Mr. Bai is on the first floor, the Red Specter is on the second floor, and a bunch of invisible monsters are on the third floor. What will be on the fourth floor?” Chen Ge stood in the corridor alone, not daring to breathe too loudly. His pupils narrowed to a point, and the muscles all over his body were tense. “Since I’m already here, might as well take a look around.”

Moving his feet, Chen Ge’s body was slowly swallowed by the darkness. In the dim corridor, the only light source came from the elevator’s panel. The red number was like a smiling face carved out by a knife. It could not heal, and the painful smile had to be maintained forever.

Creak…

After walking for a while, Chen Ge discovered another room related to art—the model storage room. The door of this room had been left ajar. It felt like someone was hiding behind the door, spying on the corridor. Chen Ge slowly pushed the wooden door open. The room that he was greeted by was rather strange.

There were no tools, only columns of white cloths that ‘stood about’. It felt like people covered by white cloths were standing in the room.

“What are these?” Chen Ge approached one of them and pulled away the white cloth that was closest to him. He wished to know what was underneath the white cloth, but at the same time, he was afraid that the thing underneath might be dangerous. Therefore, he moved with extreme speed and caution. He was going to make the first move before the other party could react.

The white cloth fell away to reveal a skinned human model statuette.

“This doesn’t look like it’s made from cement or manmade rubber.” Chen Ge frowned lightly. The white cloth was hiding a human model that had no skin. The muscles appeared tense, and the blood vessels coursed through the muscles. It looked so real, replicating every single horrifying detail. “Did the art students at this school use these models during their classes?”

He looked at the model, and the model stared back at him. The pair of eyes that were sunk inside blood vessels and bone glared lifelessly at Chen Ge. “The paint storage room has rows of red paint jars that give off a faint scent of blood, and the model storage room has a bunch of skinned human models. I cannot imagine what I will find inside the art room.”

After replacing the white cloth, Chen Ge learned from his previous lesson; he did not stay in the room for long and left immediately. Just as he turned around, his eyes caught the inner part of the model storage room. A white cloth was lying on the ground, but the thing that it should have been covering was nowhere to be seen.

After leaving the model storage room, Chen Ge found the canvas storage room at the other side of the corridor. It was filled with half-processed or fully processed ‘canvases’.

Touching them with his hands, Chen Ge found that the processed ‘canvases’ had a smooth surface, but he was unable to tell what kind of materials had been used to treat them. However, what caused Chen Ge alarm was that the ‘canvases’ had the same touch as human skin. It felt like he was touching other human beings. He did not stay there for long. Wiping his hands on the working outfit, Chen Ge left the room.

“Just what kind of experiments are conducted here?” Chen Ge continued to move forward and finally found the art room at the end of the corridor. “As I expected.”

With the discovery of the art room, part of Chen Ge’s goal of entering the laboratory had been accomplished. He walked hastily forward to push on the door. The wooden door fell open with his push. There were thirteen easels in the rooms, and various paintings hung on the wall.

At first glance, it looked like a normal art room, but once one looked closer, one would notice the endless horrors hidden inside this room. The paintings on the walls were all curious and strange. There were human faces, twisted souls, human portraits, and convulsing bodies; the content was all different, but all the humans or ‘ghosts’ in the paintings were inverted.

The backgrounds of the paintings were upright, but the people were inverted. It was as if they lived in a different world, and the paintings were merely capturing their shadows. The paintings that ran down the wall gave Chen Ge an immense impact. As he walked into the room, his gaze was pulled naturally toward them, and it felt like he was walking into a nightmare.

He walked to the center of the room. Thirteen incomplete paintings sat on the thirteen easels. Among them, three of the paintings greatly attracted Chen Ge’s attention. The first painting was of two inverted doors. One was bloody red, and the other looked normal. These two doors were wide open, and inside the doors stood two painters holding a paintbrush. He lowered his head to look at his inverted self, and it appeared like he was thinking about something in his mind.

The name of the painting was ‘Me Inside the Door’. A row of description was scrawled underneath it in blood—’Overflowing despair will open the door, then if I remove the despair, will the world behind the door return to normal?’

The painting was the only painting in the room that was named. The painter obviously knew about the door’s existence. The second painting that caught Chen Ge’s attention was quite scary; it was a painting of that very room.

On the upper part of the painting, there were thirteen painters seated before their easels painting. However, the lower part of the painting was completely blood red. The thirteen painters died in different ways; their bodies collapsed on their seats. The most suffocating discovery was the painters were painting their own death in the upper part of the painting.

“These painters seem to know their ending beforehand, but they still insist on continuing their painting. Is it because they knew the ending was inevitable?”

The third painting that drew Chen Ge’s attention was the least completed. The upper part of the painting showed a child standing before a mirror. The world beside him was totally normal, but the surface of the mirror was dripping with redness. The boy in the mirror was covered in blood and was tapping heavily against the surface.

The lower part of the painting was still of that boy. The world around him was red, and the only exception was the mirror before him. It was clean and shining. The boy who was covered in blood slammed on the mirror heavily like he wished to strangle the uninjured version of himself on the other side of the mirror.

“I saw blood red mirrors in the maintenance room. Do the mirrors in this school have the same purpose as a door? No wait, I seem to have forgotten an important detail!” Chen Ge knew that a four-star scenario would be completely different from all the other scenarios that he had attempted in the past. Therefore, his experience from before could no longer be applied.

“Doors and mirrors, the blood doors and bloody mirrors behind the doors…” Various clues connected in his mind, and they led him to a brazen conjecture.

“Perhaps I should bring this painting with me.” There was another reason that Chen Ge valued this painting so much. The spot where the painter would leave their name read… Lin Sisi.

This painting might be created by the real Lin Sisi, and solving the mystery around Lin Sisi might help Chen Ge understand the world behind the door. In fact, that might be the main objective that Chen Ge had given himself.

Chen Ge’s hand reached toward the painting. Before his finger even touched it, a giant change happened to the art room. Droplets of liquid fell on the top of his head. Chen Ge used his hand to touch it and realized that it was not water but blood.

The air became humid, and the heavy stench made its silent return. Blood started to leak out from the walls, and deepening footprints surfaced on the ground.

The normal world appeared to be overlapping with the other blood world. All the paintings inside the art room became distorted. A black shadow suddenly leaped out from one of the paintings and headed right for the door.

The shadow felt strangely familiar to Chen Ge. He immediately stopped what he was doing, grabbed the nails, and rushed toward the exit.