My House of Horrors

The statement on the patient’s form became—’will die tonight’. It did not specify who would die that night.

“The cursed hospital wanted to come after me. This is their curse that I will fail tonight.”

Without showing themselves, hiding in the dark, they would complete their kill through unrelated individuals. Chen Ge had gained a new understanding of the cursed hospital. They could not be dealt with using the usual methods, so he would have to be extra carefully.

“Both the non smilers and the cursed hospital are openly trying to stop me, but what is the purpose behind this? Do they want to keep the ghost fetus for themselves? They have such a big appetite…”

Chen Ge put away the patient’s form. After the word ‘you’ was removed, the patient’s form from the cursed hospital probably could be passed down to another person.

“Perhaps they just want to put a curse on me and make me weaker so that they will have more confidence to complete the plan that they have in the world behind the door.”

The appearance of the cursed hospital at that moment gave Chen Ge a much needed reminder. Other than the ghost fetus, he would need to be careful of the hands of the cursed hospital that night.

“Before I even got into the door, the conflict has already begun. These people that live in the shadows of the city have a heart that is dirtier than the others.”

They would stoop to the lowest of the lows and would stop at nothing. To compete with these kinds of parties day after day, Chen Ge felt it had not been easy to maintain his own sanity. That in itself was a great achievement. Chen Ge used the young man’s phone to send a message to his family to inform them of his current location before turning to leave. He had much more important things to do that night, so he could not waste too much time there. At 8 pm, Chen Ge took the cab and arrived at Jiu Hong Housing Agency. None of the streetlights were functioning, and the whole street was submerged in darkness as if a monster could jump out at them at any moment.

“It is now only eight in the evening. Do the people here go to sleep so early?”

Jiu Hong Housing Agency was already closed, so Chen Ge headed toward Jin Hwa Apartments on his own.

“When I came in the morning, the walls on the both sides of the streets did not appear to have so many flyers on them.” Chen Ge stopped moving and turned to look at the wall. All the flyers featured a picture of Xiang Nuan’s mother. They claimed that she was a scammer and that she had a less than moral personal life. She was a mistress that was kept by the estate agent—her boss, in other words.

“These flyers look like they have just been recently pasted on.” Chen Ge tore down a random one and noticed that underneath that flyer was a torn corner of what appeared to be a similar flyer. “This feels like someone come every day to paste these flyers, and then they are taken down by another person every day. The person who does the latter is probably Xiang Nuan’s mother, and the former is more likely the tenants who stays at this residential area.”

Walking into Jin Hwa Apartments, Chen Ge felt slightly uncomfortable. The faded stench hit his nose. The smell was similar to the horrible stench that he had encountered in Ying Tong and Yu Jian’s rooms.

“This kind of smell will only be found in the rooms of the children who are chosen, but the whole residential area where Xiang Nuan lives reeks of this horrible smell.”

This was a very bad sign. Only Chen Ge was able to sense this smell, and every time he encountered this stench, something bad happened.

The residential area that night was strangely quiet. A few rooms in the two buildings from Jin Hwa Apartments still had their lights on, but the side for Jiu Hong Apartments was completely dark. It was as if the whole place was deserted and unoccupied. Standing at the mouth of the stairs of Building A, Chen Ge called Xiang Nuan’s mother on her phone. The phone rang for a while before it was answered.

“Hello, this is Chen Ge. I came to look at some of the rooms from this afternoon.” Chen Ge introduced himself. From the other end of the line, he could hear the endless wailing of a child and the sound of things being crashed and thrown around.

“I am so sorry, but I am in the middle of something…” There was a hint of desperation in the woman’s voice.

“Do you need any help? I am just right below your building. I can come up now.” Chen Ge hung up the phone before he got the answer from the woman. After he got into the staircase, he noticed that the smell had thickened. From the surface, Jin Hwa Apartments looked rather normal, but once he stepped into it, he realized that it had not been properly cleaned for a long time already. Trash and useless junk littered the corridors and staircases, and many different advertisement flyers were pasted on the wall. Among them were flyers that contained insulting words about Xiang Nuan’s mother.

Every flyer had the picture of Xiang Nuan’s mother on it. The woman in the black and white photo had a calm and collected smile. It formed a stark contrast to the heavily insulting words that followed the rest of the flyer. Chen Ge believed that he had a good eye for people. After their short interaction, he believed that these claims about Xiang Nuan’s mother were completely unfounded. That could only mean that someone was purposely out to slander her.

Chen Ge did not take the elevator. He walked down the dirty and unkempt corridor and reached the door of Room 401.

“Are you alright in there?” Even standing outside the door, Chen Ge could hear objects being broken. Moments later came the sound of hurried footsteps, and then the room door was pulled open. Xiang Nuan’s mother stood at the door with two black plastic bags. Her fingers were bleeding. It appeared that they had been cut by glass.

“I probably won’t be able to follow you to meet up with the tenants tonight. Xiang Nuan suddenly acted up, and even the medicine is not doing any good.” The woman was in such an urgency that she placed the plastic bags by the door, finished what she had to say, and then was ready to turn back into the room.

Chen Ge stopped her by grabbing the door to stop it from closing. “You might need an extra pair of hands at a moment like this.”

When he stepped into the room, Chen Ge was assaulted by a horrible stench. The smell was much more intense than any of the children’s homes that he had ever visited in the past.

“Where did the smell come from?” Chen Ge had sniffed this stench out when he first started this four-star trial mission, but so far, he was unable to tell the source of the smell. Initially, he thought the smell came from the candidates that were chosen by the ghost fetus, but after he entered the door to help these children find the parts that they were missing, the stench would disappear like it was never there in the first place.

Therefore, Chen Ge had been unable to confirm the source of the stench, but he had a feeling that this answer that had been eluding him for so long would be revealed that night. The living room looked like it had just been visited by a tornado. The floor was littered with water puddles and trash. The cheap cotton sofa had been bitten until there were holes in them. The lamps were shattered. The drawers were yanked out from the cupboards and tossed randomly to the side. There was cold food left on the dining table. The woman wanted to stop Chen Ge when she saw he was trying to enter the room, but then the boy’s painful screams came from the bedroom, so she abandoned Chen Ge and hurried toward the bedroom.

“Xiang Nuan, what’s wrong with you? Can you please tell mummy what’s wrong?”

The answer that the woman got was a lamp being shattered against the wall. Xiang Nuan did not seem to be in possession of himself. His mouth kept making some strange noises, and he ran about like a headless chicken. However, upon closer inspection, one would realize that he appeared to be looking for something.

“He is afraid. He is very afraid of something.”

Anxiety, fear, and panic—Chen Ge had seen these emotions on the faces of many visitors before, but Xiang Nuan’s emotions cut much deeper than his visitors. The fear appeared to come directly from the bottom of his heart, and it was slowly consuming him little by little.

As they say, the onlooker sees more of the game.

Chen Ge took in the mess of a room and reached out to pull the woman back. “Has anyone visited your place recently? Any strange visitors or people of that sort?”

“No, other than you, there have not been any visitors to my home for a very long time.” The woman was in an agitated state. As a mother seeing her son in such a tortured state, it was a kind of torment for her as well.

“Does he act out like this normally?”

“Yes, but just as you saw this afternoon, he calms down after you give him some consolation and comfort. The intensity of what’s happening now has never occurred. Even the medicine did not prove useful.” The woman was on the verge of tears. “Should we call the emergency number? I am so afraid that he will injure himself.”

“If he does not calm down within the next fifteen minutes, then we will have no choice but to send him to the hospital.” Chen Ge could not offer a better idea. The boy finally stopped his maddening action when his battery ran out. He collapsed on the ground that was covered in chopsticks. Like a hooked fish that was placed on land, his chest rose and fell intensely.

To Chen Ge’s surprise was Xiang Nuan’s expression. His teeth were heavily gritted, and he kept making these guttural noises. His facial features were twisted together in hatred, but his eyes were flowing with tears.

He appears to be asking for help…

The woman had already taken the steps to pick up Xiang Nuan. She tried to comfort her like she normally did. Within his mother’s embrace, Xiang Nuan’s expression slowly returned to normal. He closed his eyes and seemed to have slipped away as fatigue took over. The woman placed Xiang Nuan on his bed. She stood beside him and quietly looked at her soon. Xiang Nuan, who was sleeping, looked not much different from other kids his age. In fact, Chen Ge could say that he was much cuter than most of the kids that he had met.

This whole scene pulled at Chen Ge’s heart. Chen Ge did not disturb them but stood quietly and guardedly at the door. The woman gave Xiang Nuan’s bedroom a quick clean up. She busied herself until nine o’clock before she left his bedroom. She looked haggard, and the tiredness originated from the bottom of her soul. The woman looked like she needed a much deserved rest. After cleaning Xiang Nuan’s bedroom, she still needed to clean up the mess in a living room, a place that she had already cleaned up once that afternoon.

“Let me help you. Normally, I am the one who does the chores around the house anyway.”

“Aren’t you supposed to go and help those tenants with their homes? It is now already 9 pm. If you stay here any longer, I am not sure how long they will wait for you.”

“It will be fine.” Chen Ge was a fast worker. He only needed ten minutes to clean up the room with the woman’s help. At the same time, he used this precious opportunity to study Xiang Nuan’s house. The result was rather disappointing. This was a normal home. There was nothing out of the ordinary that stood out to him.

“Don’t you feel tired that you have to clean and work yourself to the bones day in and day out?” Chen Ge did not bring up the flyers that he had seen as he came up the stairs. He wanted to be selective with his words as he slowly pulled the woman out into admitting the truth.

“I honestly do not know.” The woman placed three plastic bags at the door and then pressed on her fingers that were covered with bandages. “Before I had Xiang Nuan, I did not even know how to cook. At that time, if you told me this was the life that I would be leading, I would probably ram my head into the wall and choose to end my life on the spot. But now that I have Xiang Nuan, seeing him grow older day after day, I can feel that I am growing up with him as well.”

“Because you have become a mother?”

“Perhaps but perhaps not.” The woman massaged her wounded fingers. “I do not ask for much. I just hope that one day I will hear Xiang Nuan call me mom with his own lips.”

Chen Ge nodded as he stood up. “Why don’t I leave you my number? If you run into any trouble in the future and you need help, feel free to give me a call.”

“Thank you.”

“I will go and take a look with the other tenants now. If there are any problems, I will contact you.” The woman walked Chen Ge to the door. Once she opened the front door, she was given a full view of the flyers that occupied the wall right in front of her house. The whole corridor was filled with her pictures. At that moment, even Chen Ge felt bad for her.

“Is this the work of the tenants because you refused to give them back their rent?” Chen Ge asked in a sensitive whisper.

“I don’t know.” The woman shook her head. She was on the verge of a breakdown. “I have no idea who’s behind these horrible rumors. Every morning, when I go to work, this is how I am greeted. The whole corridor will be filled with this nonsense. Even if I tear them all down, they reappear the next day.”

“It must need quite a workforce to put up so many flyers. I am sure you’d notice such a large group when they were operating.”

“Now that you mention it, that is strange. But then again, these flyers are probably pasted when I am at work.”

“To be able to know your schedule and when you will not be home, the culprits are most likely people who live in this neighborhood. They might even be your neighbors.” Chen Ge kept his voice lowered in a whisper. “Have they been trying to chase you away?”

“There is that possibility. As you can see, Xiang Nuan is not exactly a quiet boy. The neighbors hate him a lot.”

“Other than these insulting flyers, have they done anything else?” Chen Ge felt like he was slowly getting somewhere. “Please do not hide anything from me. These experiences might the reasons behind Xiang Nuan’s illness.”

“Well, I have received some letters…”

“Letters?” Chen Ge narrowed his eyes. “Are they threatening letters? Can I take a look at them?”

“Why don’t you go and help the other tenants first while I go and look for them?”

“Okay.” Chen Ge stood at the stairs, and he reminded the woman before he left, “Someone else might come to find you tonight. You’d better not open the door for them.”

It was the last night for the ghost fetus mission. Everyone involved would give it their all. The woman, who was Xiang Nuan’s mother, would definitely be drawn into it somehow.

“I will be careful.”

After the door closed, Chen Ge took out the comic to summon Xiao Bu and Men Nan and had them guard in front of Xiang Nuan’s home. The cursed hospital probably had their eyes on Xiang Nuan as well. Chen Ge could not afford to be too careful. His mind was working up the memory of the room number of the few tenants. Chen Ge called the number of one of them. The tenant also lived in Building A of Jin Hwa Apartments. his room was just above Xiang Nuan’s room.

“No one is picking up? But didn’t they promise to meet me tonight?” Chen Ge walked up the stairs. The number of flyers had significantly lowered. He soon arrived at the door of the tenant.

“Is anyone home?” Before Chen Ge knocked on the door, he saw an old envelope stuck between the gap of the door.

“People still correspond with handwritten letters these days?” A very bad feeling rose in his heart. He flipped through the comic and summoned the water ghost. “Go and peel open that envelope for me.”

The Red Specter had no idea what Chen Ge was up to. He tore open the envelope and took out a bloodied patient’s form from inside.

“A death notice?” The water ghost very innocent opened the patient’s form and recited the statement on it. “Please hand this notice over to Xiang Nuan in the next three days, or the next one will be you.”

Chen Ge took one step backward. “Are you sure it is Xiang Nuan’s name on it?”

“Yes.” The water ghost held the envelope and stood where he was. “How come I feel like something is not right?”

“Looks like the non smilers have not only cursed me. They have cursed Xiang Nuan as well…”

At this point, Chen Ge suddenly stopped. He stood at the corridor and looked around. He realized with consternation that almost all the tenants’ doors had similar envelopes stuck in them.

“The letters that Xiang Nuan’s mother mentioned wouldn’t be this kind of cursed letter, would it? That cursed hospital appears to have sent these letters to all of the tenants!”

He hurried back to Xiang Nuan’s home and knocked heavily on the door. Moments later, Xiang Nuan’s mother opened the door. She was holding a large paper box and it was filled to the brim with old letters.

“Chen Ge, why did you come back so soon?”

“These are the letters that you mentioned earlier?” Looking at these envelopes, Chen Ge felt his scalp go numb. “You have opened all of them?”

“I have only opened some of them. They are all filled with Xiang Nuan’s death notice.” The woman’s face was dim. She did not know that the cursed hospital had channeled all the hatred of every tenant in the whole residential areas onto Xiang Nuan through these letters. Everyone was cursing him, everyone was part of the chain, and everyone wanted him to die.

Looking at the letters inside the paper box, Chen Ge felt a sense of déjà vu about this.