My House of Horrors

“It’s only 2 am; there’s still time.” Chen Ge took out his phone to look through the stuff that he had recorded. He was considering how to complete the mission at the underground morgue.

The passenger wanted to go to an abandoned school in the middle of the night, and that caused great pressure on the driver. With sweat running down his face, he kept studying Chen Ge through the rear-view mirror.

Chen Ge felt uncomfortable being scrutinized so closely. He suspected that if he continued to do this, he might be going on the blacklist of the taxi company at Jiujiang.

“Looks like I should consider buying a car, but I don’t have a driver’s license. Or I should try to find a Specter that knows how to drive.” The truck driver that Chen Ge had met in Eastern Jiujiang flashed across his mind; the man was quite suitable. “After completing the mission at the underground morgue, I should pay Eastern Jiujiang a visit. If the truck driver is willing to join the Haunted House, I can save the money on buying a car.”

Finding a potential employee, Chen Ge could not help but smile. Chen Ge arrived at Mu Yang High School at 2:40 am. He waded through the brush and soon found the school hiding in the darkness.

“This place is only a two-star scenario, but how could it feel creepier than the Third Sick Hall?” Chen Ge pulled open the backpack. He was there to ask the old principal for his help, so he did not want to make it look like he came with aggression in mind. However, without the hammer in his hands, Chen Ge could not calm down. Holding the hammer, Chen Ge pressed the recorder and entered the school. “The old principal once appeared in the sealed classroom.”

The bodies inside the well had been discovered, and after the police left, it had been a long time since a living person returned to this place. The grass had swallowed up the school grounds, and Mu Yang High School had returned to its original state.

Walking down the charred corridor, Chen Ge entered the education block. He pushed open the door to the sealed classroom and looked inside. The tables and chairs were arranged neatly, and like how he did on his first visit, Chen Ge sat in the middle of the room.

There was weird writing on the blackboard, various senseless requests were carved on the table, the windows rattled slightly, and the wind blew into from the cracks on the glass. Nothing had changed, but the questions in Chen Ge’s mind were different from the previous time he was there.

“Where could the old principal be hiding?” Chen Ge did not have any bad intention toward the old principal—he just wanted them to have a reunion. After thinking for a while, Chen Ge removed the ballpoint pen from his backpack. Sitting there, Chen Ge started playing the Pen Spirit game.

“Pen Spirit, Pen Spirit, you are my spirit from my previous life, and I am your spirit in this life. Can you tell me where Mu Yang High School’s first principal is?”

The ballpoint pen stood perpendicularly on the table, and after some hesitance, she wrote, “Office.”

Chen Ge nodded when he saw the word. He felt like the Pen Spirit had found a sense of belonging in the Haunted House and even pride; he felt comforted by that. He stood up and left the sealed classroom. Chen Ge walked to the office block. He looked through every room and found the principal’s room at the end of the corridor.

To leave a good impression on the principal, Chen Ge knocked on the door five times, and after hearing no answer, he used the hammer to knock it down. Chen Ge then realized that the room was quite empty. “The old principal built Mu Yang High School from the ground up, so he shouldn’t have left this place.”

Perhaps the timing was not right, or perhaps he had some reasons to not show up. “In his life, the old principal was a nice person. After death, he came back to take care of the students because he was worried. Now that I’m taking care of the students, could he have moved on before he had no other reason to stay in this world anymore?”

Chen Ge thought about it and realized that the possibility of that was not zero. Chen Ge stepped into the room. The principal’s office was tidy; other than the table, chair, and a shelf, there was nothing else.

“The Pen Spirit must have her reasons for telling me to come to this office. Could it be that the old principal knows that I’m looking for him so he left already?” The image of a fat old man appeared in Chen Ge’s mind, and he was wrought with uncertainty. He walked to the table to pull the drawers open. The first drawer had several certificates for city-level competitions. Mu Yang High School had few students and teachers, and the students did not really score good marks. Normally, when they were invited to competitions, they were there to take up the last place. The number of certificates that they had won was little, but the old principal had kept every single one of them. “The old principal really did want to build a good school, but he couldn’t do it alone.”

Chen Ge opened the second drawer. It was filled with appreciation letters. Most of them came from students, and some were for donations of outside parties. “He even kept these things.”

After rummaging through those letters, he did not find anything useful.

He pulled open the last drawer. It had a pair of reading glasses and several thick account books. “Contribution and donation statistics?”

Chen Ge flipped through the books, and when he saw the name on the first line, he was stunned.

“Jiujiang Mental Illness Research Center, Doctor Gao?”

To make sure that this was the Doctor Gao whom he knew, Chen Ge went online to search for it. “Indeed, this is Gao Ru Xue’s father.”

Flipping through the books, Doctor Gao had always been the top donor every month, and this changed Chen Ge’s impression of the man again. There were donations from different organizations in the latter half of the book. Chen Ge knew about those because they always made a big deal out of the donations like they could not wait for the whole world to know about their charity. However, in reality, their donations were much lower than Doctor Gao’s.

Doctor Gao did not once mention that he was so charitable. “Could someone like this be the chairperson for the society?”

Chen Ge stood next to the table. If Doctor Gao was really the chairperson of the ghost stories society, then he had to be the most complicated person that Chen Ge had ever met. “On one hand, he is supporting charity, helping patients, but on the other, he murders and aids the monsters behind the door. What is his real purpose?”

Chen Ge could not fathom Doctor Gao’s thoughts. The best psychologist in Jiujiang had his own thoughts buried deep in his heart. The last account book contained the replies that Doctor Gao had written to the children. These were all kept by the old principal. Chen Ge found a picture that was slid between the pages.

The picture was blurry, but he could recognize it with one glance. Doctor Gao was in the picture. He was standing next to a young man and surrounded by children. Standing not far from them was a shy woman. The woman’s face was blurred, but from her frame and size, she seemed similar to the strange woman that Chen Ge had run into at Western Jiujiang Medical University.