My House of Horrors

“You’re trying to blame this on me? If not for you forcing me to carry the bucket, this would not have happened,” Li Jiu complained. He tried to wipe his hand on his shirt, but it did not have much effect. If anything, the red dots only got deeper in color.

“Stop wasting time. Come over and help. We’ll leave after we’re done. Why is this blasted place so cold?” Brother Wei walked ahead and held the buckets as he walked down the corridor following the map in his memory. They would pass a door that led to a morgue every few meters along the white corridor, and the number would be painted on the door. The two walked past Morgue No. 6 and then 7. Just as they were continuing to move forward, Li Jiu suddenly pulled on Brother Wei’s shirt.

“What is it this time?” Brother Wei glared at Li Jiu with impatience. Standing where he was, Li Jiu flashed the flashlight at the door next to Morgue No. 7.

“When we entered this place earlier, there is a wall next to Morgue No. 7, right?”

“I can’t really remember, why?” Brother Wei’s voice sounded pressed because it came out from behind the mask.

“Look at this. Why is there another morgue next to Morgue No. 7? Is it a new addition?” Li Jiu did not dare move forward anymore. “There is such a thick layer of dust on the doorknob, so this must have been built some time ago. How come I have no memory of it?”

“Stop scaring yourself. You probably remember the wrong details.” Brother Wei walked past Morgue No. 7 and stopped before the extra morgue. The morgue’s door looked the same as the doors that preceded it. The unclear number was the only difference, like someone had scratched it out with nails.

“Shall we go in to take a look?” Brother Wei searched his mind, and he did remember that Morgue No. 7 was supposed to be the last morgue.

“If you want to go, you need to go in alone. I don’t dare.” Li Jiu shook his head as he held the flashlight.

“Why are you so easily scared? We probably handle even more dead bodies at the crematorium every day than what’s down here, so why are you acting like this?” Brother Wei said that, but in reality, his heart was shaking as well. He skipped over this topic and picked up his pace as he ran past the extra morgue.

“Wait for me!” Li Jiu chased after Brother Wei, and something unexpected happened. The distance between Brother Wei and Li Jiu increased. Just as Li Jiu was about to run past the morgue, the steel door of the morgue opened on its own. It was very sudden, like someone from within had pushed it open.

Li Jiu was already shaking in his boots. The sudden movement of the door scared him, and he yelped in fear. Hearing that, Brother Wei stopped and turned to look. When he saw that the door was open, his face blanched. “Why did you go and open the door? If you have time to go sight-seeing, why don’t you come over to help me?”

Brother Wei lectured Li Jiu, but the latter was feeling wronged as well. “The door opened on its own; I didn’t even touch it.”

He glanced into the room, and the moment he did, his body froze with his eyes locked in a certain direction.

“What’s wrong with you now?” Brother Wei had been partners with Li Jiu for years already. He knew his colleague well; he was not someone who was into pranks. He put down the buckets and walked to stand beside Li Jiu and look into the morgue.

In a glass tube not far from the door was a body soaked in liquid, and the scariest thing was that the body’s eyes were open.

“Brother Wei, how come it feels like it’s watching us?” Li Jiu kept his voice low. Whenever he opened his lips, it felt like cold air was running into his lips.

“Let’s go and take a look.” Brother Wei grabbed Li Jiu by his shoulders, and two of them entered the morgue. The morgue looked more like a display room. There was a plaque on the wall. It said, ‘Every donor deserves to be respected, and that respect should exist at all times.’

The plaque was pasted on the wall, but Brother Wei and Li Jiu’s attention was completely captured by the body with the eyes open. They did not notice the words on the wall. The two moved slowly into the room and stopped next to the dead body.

“Liu Zhengyi?” There was a short introduction on the bottom of the tube. The body’s name was Liu Zhengyi, a graduate at Western Jiujiang Medical University who had stayed as a lecturer after his graduation. The man was a morally-upright man. The introduction said that on the day that he became a teacher, he had already decided to donate his body to the school after his death.

Once upon a time, a student had been joking with the cadaver’s looks in class, and he had scolded the student severely. He looked so young in the tube, and the introduction did not mention his cause of death.

“The preservation is so well done; it looks like a real person.” Brother Wei reached out to tap on the glass tube. The body inside did not respond.

“What are you doing? What if you really wake him up?” The red dots had already spread from Li Jiu’s arm, but he did not notice it. He yanked Brother Wei to the side. “Those security guards said that the underground morgue is haunted, and their own people refuse to come down here. Let’s leave immediately and not take any work from this school ever again.”

“Let’s finish this contract first.” Brother Wei flung Li Jiu’s hand off. He looked to the side. There were other glass tubes in the room next to Liu Zhengyi, and each of them had a cadaver inside it. There was a kind-looking old man. He looked peaceful and had the presence of a university professor. There was a muscular teen of about twenty. His eyes were closed, and there was a bright smile on his face like he was having a sweet dream. Brother Wei’s eyes scanned all the glass tubes, and when he saw the tube behind the door, he was startled.

The tube was empty. The weirdest thing about it was the cover at the top of the tube, which was open like something inside had just crawled out from it. The two sidled close to the tube and shone the flashlight on it. Then they discovered something even weirder. The top of the tube reeked of formalin, and there were two wet hand prints on the cover. Brother Wei and Li Jiu shared a look, and they both panicked.

“The thing inside the tube has crawled out?”

“Don’t panic.” Brother Wei looked around the tube. “If something did crawl out, it would have left more than two handprints, but there aren’t any more handprints or footprints.”

Li Jiu looked around with the flashlight, and he realized that Brother Wei was right. “Then how do you explain the two handprints?”

“No idea but we should leave immediately.” This was second floor underground, and they were surrounded by darkness. The darkness was so thick that it felt like it could not be banished by the light from the flashlight. As Brother Wei was retreating, he turned and walked out with Li Jiu.

“I’ll go deal with the stuff inside the buckets. You stay here and wait for me.”

“Okay, come back quickly.”

Brother Wei and Li Jiu left the room, and neither of them discovered that there was a cupboard behind the glass tube whose gaps were continuously leaking formalin.