My House of Horrors

The man cursed under his breath, patted down his clothes, and made sure his shoes were sparkly clean before leaving. He did not notice the lack of a key in his pocket. After the man had been gone for several minutes, Chen Ge used his key to enter Room 3004.

If this was someone else in this situation, they would have been cautious and tense, worried that the owner might return because, after all, the man was a suspected murderer. However, Chen Ge did not have that worry. The last murderer that had set his sight on him was still in the ICU with two arms and one leg broken.

“As long as I have good intentions in my heart, there is nothing to be scared about.”

Chen Ge looked at the opened drawers and cupboards, but he did not venture to randomly touch the stuff in the room. Instead, he walked into the bedroom and placed the phone down under the bed. He tweaked the phone until the camera angle was similar to the video on Ma Yin’s phone.

“Even though partitions have been added to the room, they did not change the location of the window.” Chen Ge tapped the partition lightly and memorized the layout of the room. “This man is very suspicious.”

Chen Ge stood in the middle of the room, thinking about the comments that Liu Xianxian had made about the man.

“After we left the teahouse, Liu Xianxian told me that this man is different from other men out there. He had all the good points of a mature man, but there was one thing weird about him—he thinks that his wife, who died in a car accident a few years ago, is still alive. The man packages himself as an emotional and trusting person, but reality does not seem that way. From how I see it, the man hasn’t even married, and this room is not even his; it’s his brother-in-law’s.”

People in the throes of romance would lose their rationality, and Liu Xianxian was a naive girl, so Chen Ge suspected that she had been conned by this man.

“Perhaps Ma Yin’s sister was conned by the man as well.” Chen Ge came up with various possibilities. “When she discovered the man’s real identity, they had an argument, and the man accidentally killed Ma Yin’s sister.”

He wanted to call Liu Xianxian to ask for more details, but he was afraid that the girl might act rashly and do something unnecessary. To prevent himself from being exposed, Chen Ge eventually decided against that.

“The man’s maturity and confidence are a facade. Internally, he is a very self-abasing person. Based on the conversation he had with his brother-in-law, it is obvious that he hates his brother-in-law. Perhaps the brother-in-law is the source of his self-abasement.” Chen Ge was suddenly interested in this brother-in-law. “On the phone earlier, the brother-in-law forbade him from entering the study. This means that there is probably something important inside. Perhaps I can use that to figure out the brother-in-law’s identity.”

Chen Ge entered the study. The study was twice the size of the bedroom. Two bookshelves were stocked with various types of books, and there was a study table near the window.

“The man’s brother-in-law appears to be a heavy reader.” The man had an eclectic collection from philosophy to art, from modern medicine to study of the occult. Chen Ge did not touch the books on the shelves because, for a real book lover, they would know the exact position of each book, and Chen Ge was afraid of leaving a trace. He opened the dresser to take a look; it was very tidy inside. Chen Ge walked to the table and pulled open the drawer. It had two laptops of the same model.

“Why are there two laptops, and why are they kept inside the drawer?” He took them out and placed them on the table. He pressed the power buttons. One of them opened like normal, but the other one had a password lock. “They serve different purposes?”

Chen Ge got even more interested in the owner. “Since the laptop is locked, there must be something important sorted in this.”

Chen Ge clicked open a random folder on the desktop, and when he did, he was shocked. The folder contained more than one hundred pictures and about twenty videos. Most importantly, all of the media was related to Chen Ge’s Haunted House! The pictures covered all the scenarios, including Coffin Village!

“The only visitors who have visited Coffin Village are Sister Mao’s group, so where did these pictures come from?” Chen Ge did not feel so good. He looked at the time stamp, and they matched the day of Sister Mao’s visit. In other words, the owner of this house had taken the pictures from Sister Mao’s group after they visited the Haunted House in the morning.

“But they were sent directly to the hospital after their visit. Does this mean the owner is someone working at the hospital?”

The more Chen Ge scrolled through the media files, the more unsettled he became. All the pictures and videos were time-stamped. He clicked open the earliest video. It was shot about one month ago at exactly the time he unlocked Murder by Midnight!

The video was blurry, and a few students’ voices could be heard in the recording.

“That is He San and his friends’ voices!” Chen Ge immediately thought back to the scene at the time. He had just unlocked Murder by Midnight when the students from Jiujiang Medical University came to create problems for him, to take revenge for Gao Ru Xue.

At the time, one of the students planned to take a video inside the Haunted House and shared it online. Chen Ge had mixed himself into the group of students. There should only have been seven people, so he had become the eighth one.

The video was shaking badly. When the cameraman realized there was an additional person caught on video, he dropped the phone out of fear. The camera was facing up, and it caught Xu Wan walking over from the other side of the corridor wearing Doctor Skull-cracker’s outfit. The video froze on Xu Wan’s face. She was wearing the scary mask that was sewn together from many human faces.

The video itself had no problem, but the timing and location was too weird.

“When I arrived at the ghost stories society for the first time, No. 10 recognized me immediately because he had seen the mask on my face.”

Initially Chen Ge thought No. 10 was definitely one of his customers, but after watching this video, he realized that things might not have been that simple.

“No. 10 is someone I know in real life, but that person might not have visited the Haunted House personally.”

When the group from Jiujiang Medical University first came, it was He Feng who led the group. Chen Ge suspected the young man to a certain degree, but be it from the aspect of age and presence, Chen Ge did not think He Feng was No. 10.

“The chairperson should be someone else.” Chen Ge stared at the computer screen. “Why is this place’s real owner so interested in my Haunted House? On top of that, why did he purchase a house in Fang Hwa Apartment’s third building?”

The top floor of the building was the headquarters for the ghost stories society. The owner was familiar with Chen Ge’s Haunted House and lived in this building. Chen Ge’s conclusion was the real owner should be the last survivor of the society.

He desperately needed to know the owner’s real identity. He clicked open the other folders to find for more clues.