My House of Horrors

There were 7 dead bodies in the hospital in the short amount of time. Each of them constituted a strange death but there did not appear to be a conspicuous thread tying them all together. [Doctor Sun purposely reminded me to pay attention to their cause of death but there is not any big problem just from their cause of death, or Doctor Sun is trying to tell me that there are actual existence of ghost in this world through the stories of these seven unfortunate victims?] Chen Ge had too little information and he was unable to retrieve too much information from Doctor Sun’s stories so all he could do for now was to memorize the details of these stories in his mind for now.

The lightning continued to flash outside the hospital, the storm was like a desperate patient in and of itself. The wind lashed at the windows, the rain fell constantly on the roof, the sound echoing non stop in everyone’s ears.

When the four people came to the mouth of the corridor that would lead them to the fourth sick hall, Doctor Sun stopped posing Chen Ge any questions, instead Doctor Sun led Chen Ge directly down the corridor. After they entered the corridor, Chen Ge’s heart started to race, in fact his heart was pumping so fast that he felt like he was having trouble breathing. His mind kept repeating the stories that Doctor Sun just told him for some unknown reason. [The doctor who was looking through the surveillance saw a strange character in a red shirt in the corridor before. After that person gone up the stairs, she never came down again. This night is proving to be a strange night, I wonder if the few of us will run into her tonight.]

Theoretically speaking, this was something very scary but once Chen Ge considered the possibility of that, he only felt his heart race even faster and an indescribable feeling started to overwhelm his person. It was very complicated. Instead of fear, it felt more like curiosity and excitement.

[Curiosity kills the cat, I have to calm down first. There is no need to get ahead of myself.] After they reached the second floor, Chen Ge noticed there was a ragdoll that had lost its head sitting at the corner of the corridor that turned into the staircase. The doll was hand made. The body was torn apart and the opening exposed the black and red colored stuffing inside.

“Why is there such a thing at the hospital?” Chen Ge was about to go over to take a look at it when someone pulled on his clothes. Chen Ge turned around to look and realized it was Patient Number 2. “What’s wrong?”

“Why are you still so courageous even after you have broken a leg? Do not wander off from the rest of the group, we need to stick together.” Patient Number 2’s voice was filled with concern. It was clear that he really did have Chen Ge’s best interest at heart.

“Alright, I was just going to over to take a look.” Chen Ge had no idea why but his power of sight was incredibly good. Even in the darkness, he could see many things incredibly clearly. Perhaps this was caused by some kind of eye disease or at least that was what Chen Ge told himself. When they reached the corner, Chen Ge’s brows slowly locked together. There appeared to be animal organs stuffed inside the ragdoll’s body, it looked quite disgusting.

“Do not get too close to it. There was a pregnant woman who registered at the hospital before. Due to complication during childbirth, the child died during the surgery. The mother survived the surgery but it was hard to say it was a good thing. She slowly lost her mind and for that she was transferred to the third sick hall. During her period there, she had been searching for her own son.” Doctor Sun explained as he started expressionlessly on the ragdoll on the ground.

“You mean to say this ragdoll is left here by that pregnant mother?”

“Other than her, I cannot imagine anyone else would do something like this. Actually I pity her conditions. Perhaps because of the trauma, she refuses to admit the fact that her child is already dead, she kept on telling the people around her that her child is still alive and they are just around her. They will even crawl into her bed and lay beside her pillow at night.” Doctor Sun dragged Chen Ge away from the decapitated ragdoll.

“Then does that mean that she suffered from delusion?” Chen Ge asked. He felt like he could empathize with the lady.

“Yes and no.” Doctor Sun turned back to give him a smile. “The woman’s condition is very similar to yours. She refused to take our treatment because perhaps she understood well inside her heart that once she was cured, she would not have the chance to see her own child again.”

“How does that mean that her condition is very similar to mine?” Chen Ge could not understand it. He did not pine for any lost child the last time he checked.

“If the sacrifice for becoming better is to wipe out completely the stories that you have made up for yourself in the past, forget everything and everyone that existed in your stories, would you have voluntarily received the treatment?” Doctor Sun dropped the question in a casual but Chen Ge had a feeling that this was some kind of test. Chen Ge gave it a serious thought for a while. In the end, Chen Ge did not answer it, he did not want to expose the true thoughts inside his mind.

“Regarding these patients that refuse to be treated from the very beginning, no matter how hard the doctors tried, it would be pointless. The condition of the mother became more and more serious. She would often tore out pieces of the bedsheet or the curtain and made them into simple dolls. And then she would place the dolls at the corner of the stairs. For some reasons, she believed this would bring her child back to her. Until now I still could not understand the reasoning behind it. How could the ragdolls have helped with the return of her child? Would the child be attracted by the ragdolls and thus came searching for their mother or the dead child would occupy the dolls’ bodies and came back to accompany their mother?”

“No matter which of the circumstance it was, I do not think we should have aversion to this ragdoll. Even though it looks scary, it possesses the lingering spirit of that pregnant mother.” Chen Ge dragged his broken leg and stood before the ragdoll. What he said stunned Doctor Sun and Patient Number 2. They did not know how to react for a brief moment.

“You are pitying the mother?” Doctor Sun asked to confirm.

“it is not really that. Let analyse this from a more rational perspective. What has the mother done wrong in her position? Even if the child has turned into a ghost, is that the child’s fault?” Chen Ge’s way of thinking was obviously different from the doctors. “They are both victims, the real culprit is the ones who have killed them.”

“You mean to say this tragedy is caused by the doctor?” Once Doctor Sun uttered that statement, Doctor Gao who had been acting like a walking zombie slightly frowned.

“No, I am not saying it is the doctor’s full responsibility, but it must have been related to him somehow. So many things have happened at this hospital, no one could have guaranteed that nothing has interrupted the doctor during the surgery.” Chen Ge looked at the headless doll that sat at the corner of the staircase. “There is no debt without creditors, if it is trying to look for a closure, then it will have to do with something inside the hospital has done.”

“Are you trying to reason with a ghost?” Patient number 2 also could not understand the various actions done by Chen Ge so far.

“I cannot tell for sure whether there are ghosts in this world or not, I am just voicing my own opinion.” Chen Ge moved his eyes away. “The hospital will be cleaned every day in the morning, but the ragdoll still appeared here at the staircase. This meant that the pregnant woman might still be alive. That proves that there are other survivors inside this hospital, this should be a good news for us.”

“The pregnant woman died on the third month during her treatment. When she passed away, we found a closet filled with ragdolls inside her room.” After Doctor Sun dropped this bomb, both Chen Ge and Patient Number 2 were stumped.

“She is no longer here? Then who placed the ragdoll here?” Patient Number 2 still refused to admit there was ghost in the world. “Only the doctors would know about the pregnant woman’s story, the killer is mimicking the pregnant woman, does this mean that the killer is a doctor?” Then he turned his accusatory gaze at Doctor Sun, honestly he suspected Doctor Sun a lot.

“When Zhang Jingjiu was injured, Doctor Sun and Doctor Gao were in our company. Even if the culprit is a doctor, it is not either of these two doctors.” Compared to believing the killer was a doctor, Chen Ge felt a higher possibility that it was a baleful spectre. During the argument, the group arrived at the second floor. The empty corridor was pasted with the pictures of many doctors, this gave Chen Ge a sense of déjà vu.

“The hospital used to honor the best doctors and those who had been awarded by hanging their pictures at the corridor. Xin Hai Central Hospital originally used a lot of money to hire many famous doctors, I suppose you could say this is a kind of advertising method. The intention of the hospital was coming from a place of good but after the accidental death of one of the doctors, the hospital thought it might not be such a good idea to keep the doctor’s picture on the wall anymore so they removed his picture from the wall. But one night, when a nurse was on night duty, she realized the doctor’s picture, which was supposed to have been removed from the wall, was hanging back on its original place.

“She studied it for a long time. And then she came to a scary conclusion. The picture of the doctor on the wall was not showing the original picture of the doctor but the much paler countenance of the same doctor as if it taken after he was dead. She reported this to her superior. The leader assigned the hospital workers to stay at the corridor to watch over any kind of incident but the scary picture never appeared again.

“At the time, this became a scary rumor at the hospital. The leader gave the nurse a long notice to stay at home for her to rest. Just as everyone thought this was the end of everything, the doctors who had their pictures hung on the wall had accidents happen to them one after another. After that, the hospital removed all the pictures from the wall and made a decision to stop hanging a living person’s pictures on the wall anymore.”

After hearing Doctor Sun’s explanation, Chen Ge was even more confused. “You said the hospital had made the decision to show hanging the doctor’s pictures, so what are these? Why are there so many pictures on both sides of the walls? Are you telling me someone came to purposely hung all of them on the wall in the middle of the night?”

“Like what I have told you earlier.” Doctor Sun pointed at the door of the sickroom beside them. “After you walked through a doctor, the world inside and outside of it will be completely different. You are still inside the hospital but it is no longer the same hospital. By the way, there is one more detail that I want to tell you. The picture of the first doctor that appeared on the wall, that was the same doctor who performed the surgery on the pregnant woman.”

There had to be a reason why Doctor Sun purposely stressed on this detail. Chen Ge ruminated on it and then he realized most of the victims at this hospital had interacted with other victims before. Their deaths were probably not accidentally but instead they were made to be looked like some kind of accident.

“We better do not stay here for too long.” The lightning flashed and lit up the many pale faces on the two sides of the wall. In that moment, Chen Ge had a scary realization that it was not simple pictures that were looking down at them. The group hurried all the way to the fourth floor, Doctor Sun was still the one who led the way. “I remember the storage room for the emergency store of medicine should be inside the seventh room.”

The corridor of the fourth floor appeared to have been long vacated. Most of the rooms here were locked and some of the locks had been rusted shut. “After the incident to the first hospital director, basically the fourth floor of the fourth sick hall has been abandoned. Normally the doctors and nurses will rather take a long detour than cross this place.”

“is this place that scary?” Chen Ge realized he was desensitized to the sense of fear.

“Well, there used to be a cleaner who did not believe in these things. He chose to do his job during the late afternoon when there were not that many people at the hospital. In the end, he saw someone held something in the corridor of the fourth floor corridor and was writing something continuously on the wall. He recognized the white coat the person was wearing and thus assumed the person was a doctor. But when he got closer, he realized the person was holding his own broken finger and was repeatedly writing the character death on the wall.”

“So the cleaner encountered the death hospital director?”

“Indeed.” Doctor Sun’s voice turned chilly. “But do you know something even scarier that happened after that?”

“The cleaner also died from an accident not long after that?” This was already the best conclusion that Chen Ge could come up with.

“The cleaner resigned from the hospital. But he could not survive without money for long. Therefore, he went to work at another smaller private hospital. On the seventh day he worked at that private hospital, he died inside the office of the hospital director but the curious thing was his cause of death was similar to the first hospital director here. In fact when the police arrived at the scene, they entered an office that was filled with the character, death. Not long after that, the private hospital closed down due to the bad publicity. The related admin of the hospital had gone missing and most of the doctors and nurses from that hospital, according to rumors, had stopped working in the medical field.”

“How could this sound like some kind of curse to me? The origin of the curse is this hospital and everyone with the curse will keep spreading the misfortune unless they will never be able to leave the hospital.” Chen Ge realized how preposterous he was sounding. “To use the hospital as the medium for curses and turn a place to save people’s lives as the source of tragedy, the person behind this curse is truly a scumbag of the century.”

“Curse? Misfortune? Your power of imagination is too strong.” Patient Number 2 shook his head. He did not agree with Chen Ge’s opinion. From his perspective, the cause of all the strange things was human being. But he was not going to get into an argument with Chen Ge, after all, Chen Ge was a mental patient.

Trailing the wall, Chen Ge followed the two doctors as they entered the corridor of the fourth floor. Initially there was nothing wrong but after walking for about 10 seconds, Chen Ge suddenly felt there was something out of place. The corridor did not look that long, one could see its end with a glance but they had been walking for 10 seconds already, they still had not reached the end of the corridor.

“This is strange.” Chen Ge stopped moving. The rest of the three turned to look at Chen Ge with confusion, their gazes were questioning why did he stop.

“What’s wrong?”

“None of you notice this?” Chen Ge pointed at the door beside them. “This is already the second time this sealed door appeared beside us! We appeared to have been walking in circle.”

Once Chen Ge said that, it hit Patient Number 2 on his head. “Indeed, I felt like we have been walking for a long time already too. I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me because I was too nervous.”

“The reason might be this door.” After hearing the story about the first hospital director, Chen Ge was greatly interested in the hospital director’s office. He was curious to see how this room with lots of secret would look like. Before the two doctors could stop him, Chen Ge pushed on the door of the director’s room softly. Who knew the door would be left unlocked. A stinging stench drifted out from inside the room. Patient Number 2 held his nose with his hands, even doctor Sun and Doctor Gao took a step back. Only Chen Ge stood dumbly at the door. His nostrils twitched. Chen Ge took in a deep breath. The suffocating stench triggered the memory in his mind as numerous scary thoughts flashed across his mind.

“I have smelled this stench somewhere else before!” He was certain of that fact. His brain pulled up the memory whether he liked it or not, the pain started to come for him again. Holding the edge of the door, Chen Ge gritted his teeth as he forced himself into the hospital director’s office. He looked at the death character that filled the room and it felt like his brain was being pried apart by a pair of invisible hands.

“I am very familiar with this stench! I have smelt it at the edge of death before! Whenever I smell this stench, something bad is bound to happen!” Leaning against the frame of the door, Chen Ge forced himself to stay conscious. He forced his eyes to open and finally located the source of the stench. In the middle of the desk inside the office, there was a glass jar. And inside the jar sat a heart that was curled around with black threads.