My House of Horrors

Xiao Zhu’s mind went completely blank, and the familiar chill crept up her arm. She felt the water flooding through her mouth and nose. Her lungs were filled with water, and she could not breathe. She moved both of her arms and legs. She wanted to ask for help, but there was no response. She could only stand there and watch the woman slowly lift her head upward to reveal her face that was difficult to put in words.

If this was a normal situation, the woman in the mirror should have been considered a beautiful woman, but unfortunately, the woman’s facial features had been completely destroyed from the bloating.

The creepy thing was that the woman’s face kept changing. The black hair parted, and after a while, the face slowly became familiar to Xiao Zhu. She realized with terror that the face of the woman in the mirror slowly turned into a reflection of her own face.

She waved her hands, but she could not control her body. The sound of water filled up her ears. Xiao Zhu felt like she was trapped inside the mirror, and her body was being swapped with the female inside the mirror!

“Save me! Save me! Save…” She gasped for air, but no oxygen travelled into her lungs. Before Xiao Zhu died from asphyxiation, her face was gruesome, and her animalistic instinct kicked in. She titled her head and knocked into the mirror that was before her!

Crack!

The sound of shattering glass filled the room. The blood muddled her sight, but that feeling of drowning finally disappeared.

“Xiao Zhu‽” Ah Cheng’s cries of concern appeared in her ears. The woman finally regained her consciousness. Her body swayed, and she started to lean backward.

“What’s wrong with you?” The man caught Xiao Zhu from behind. The blood poured out from the wound on her forehead, and it dyed the woman’s eyes red.

“Mirror, there was someone in the mirror!” Xiao Zhu grabbed Ah Cheng’s arm, and she screamed while pointing at the mirror. The mirror in the toilet cracked from the impact. Shards of bloodied mirror slid down and fell from the wall. Ah Cheng hugged Xiao Zhu and pulled out the glass shards from the woman’s hair. He had also been given quite a fright from the woman’s sudden action.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s fine, I’m here. I’m here with you.” Ah Cheng let the woman lean back in his embrace, and he noticed that there was some problem with the sink. The black hair in the drain danced around like seaweed, and the water level kept rising until it started to overflow from the sink. The water dripped onto the ground, and the atmosphere in the room became eerier. The water that was flowing quietly looked like the result of a suicide victim slitting their wrist. The thing that overflowed was not water but looked more like blood.

“We should leave this place first.” Ah Cheng hugged Xiao Zhu and used his strength to haul her out of the toilet.

“The faucet is not closed…” Xiao Zhu’s voice sounded weak and flimsy.

“We can worry about that later. We’ll find more people and come back. For now, let me take you to the hospital first.” Initially, Ah Cheng was not that afraid, but after the woman’s crazy action, even his heart immediately jumped to his throat.

He was like a bird in the hunter’s sight. When he turned back to look inside the bathroom, he suddenly noticed that the blood on the mirror pieces was moving. The droplets looked like little worms that lived at the bottom of the river. They slowly moved to form a full sentence.

I am inside the mirror! She is in your arms!

When he saw the few words, Ah Cheng almost released his grasp of the woman in his arms. He noticed that this had gone way beyond the stage of a prank. There was really something strange happening at the rehabilitative school.

The wound on the forehead was still oozing blood. Xiao Zhu was so different from her normal cute self. Without aid to her wound, she looked rather scary. The lights in the corridor started to flicker more intensely. To help with the children’s recovery, the school pasted many pictures of cartoon characters and animals on the corridor.

Under the flickering lights and the shift in brightness, the animal characters started to look weird, and the many smiling faces looked incredibly scary. More water leaked out from the overflowing sink. The water felt like it was alive. It flowed out of the toilet and trailed after Ah Cheng.

Ah Cheng did not realize that. A normal person would not have realized that. His whole focus was on the cartoons on the wall. Only now have I realized how creepy these things look at night. We should tell the headmistress about this and request to have all of them removed.

The words that had appeared on the mirror earlier kept surfacing in Ah Cheng’s mind. He held Xiao Zhu, who had her head lowered. He could feel the softness and suppleness of the woman’s skin, but he could not feel the temperature coming from her body.

“Xiao Zhu?”

He tried to call out to her. Xiao Zhu lifted her head, and the wound opened wide. The blood from her forehead trailed down her face, and she looked harsh. This was definitely not the best that she had ever looked. “Ah Cheng, I feel so tired, and my head is spinning.”

The tone was draggy, and there was a thick nasally undertone like the woman’s nostrils and throat were filled with water. The girlfriend that he once loved dearly now looked so unfamiliar. It was a very hard feeling to describe.

“Hold on a little bit longer. I’ll bring you to see the doctor now.” Ah Cheng bit on the edge of his tongue. His girlfriend was suffering deeply, and he had thought of abandoning her. What an unmanly thing to do! He picked up his pace, but as he walked down the corridor, he felt as if the corridor had grown longer.

“How long have I been walking down this hall?” The negative feeling in his heart grew. He bit down on his teeth, hugged Xiao Zhu, and charged down the corridor. However, when he took his first step, he stepped on something slippery on the ground and toppled over.

Both he and Xiao Zhu collapsed onto the ground. When he turned to look, he realized with a shock that the corridor was completely wet, and a trail of water had been following him closely like a living, venomous snake. He looked further down the corridor, and the room that was next to the toilet slowly creaked open.

A small shadow appeared next to the door. She leaned against the door. The lights in the corridor were on, and the place was showered with light, but he had a hard time seeing her face clearly. All he could confirm was that the shirt that she was wearing was soaking wet.

“Wen Wen?” The room that the little girl exited was the small room that the woman had trapped Wen Wen in that afternoon. Ah Cheng was figuring out what to do next when his phone rang. He reached to answer the phone as if on instinct.

“Do you think it’s possible for the child to return to school? The headmistress and myself have asked many nearby shops, and they said that they have not seen Wen Wen. The girl is probably still at the school, but she is hiding somewhere.”

It was Teacher Wang who called. When he heard her voice, Ah Cheng seemed to see a light at the end of the tunnel. “Wen Wen is at school! Please come quickly! Xiao Zhu is injured!”

“Injured? Okay, I’ll be there immediately!” The call was hurriedly ended. Ah Cheng actually still wanted to say a few more words. He put the phone away, but when he moved his eyes away from the screen, he realized that Xiao Zhu had been looking at him with her body twisted in a strange posture. “Who were you talking on the phone with?”

“That was Teacher Wang. She will bring people to come help us in a bit.” Ah Cheng was a very careful person. After he noticed the strangeness about Xiao Zhu, he did not ask any more questions, and the shadow that he suspected to be Wen Wen did not come any closer. The way he saw it, the most urgent thing that they needed to do then was leave the school.

But I searched that room earlier—the little girl was not in there. Could it be that the girl has been playing hide-and-seek with us?

Just what was on the girl’s mind? How could a girl with mental retardation trick a whole group of adults like this?

The more Ah Cheng thought about it, the more afraid he became. A scary movie that he had watched a long time ago appeared in his mind. The female main character was an innocent-looking child, but in reality, she was a strange person who had lived for a long time already. Every time that she was adopted, she would disturb the family’s peace and even cause the family to be drenched in red.

Could the child suffer from the same illness?

He did not dare to think about it any longer. Ah Cheng dragged Xiao Zhu down the corridor. However, when he reached the door, he realized that the door that led outside had been locked.

“Where is the key?” Ah Cheng looked all over the pockets on his body, but he could not find it. He tried his best to shake the door until the lights over his head suddenly went out. The shadow that was hiding inside the small room walked out. The hands were extended forward like they were stopping something.

“Don’t come any closer!” Seeing the shadow pick up speed in the corridor, Ah Cheng released his grasp on the woman in his arms. He prepared to abandon Xiao Zhu and jump through the window to find his escape. However, the strange thing was, even though he had released his grasp on the girl, Xiao Zhu’s body remained stuck to his body.

The woman’s face appeared like it was sewn to Ah Cheng’s chest. She lifted her head. “Ah Cheng, don’t you want me anymore?”

Blood spread on her face, and the sound of water dripping appeared beside his ears. Ah Cheng did not know what had happened. There was a feeling that the woman’s face was slowly becoming unfamiliar as it morphed into the face of another woman.

He used all his might to push the woman’s face away. Ah Cheng’s breathing became more hurried, and his heart was racing at maximum speed. “Stay here and wait for me, I’ll go get help. I’ll definitely come back for you!”

The sound of water dripping did not disappear. If anything, it only grew louder. The shadow down the corridor was approaching, and the woman on the ground crawled toward him. Her hair wrapped around his arm, and she used her hands to wrap Ah Cheng’s legs tightly. “You are not going to leave me here alone!”

…

“Who locked the door? Have the two of them found Wen Wen?” A woman who looked comparatively quieter stopped at the door to the classroom. “They won’t answer my call, and we still have not found the girl. Don’t tell me they have already escaped from the scene and run home?”

In the woman’s tone, one could hear her dissatisfaction toward the other teachers. She used her key to open the door, only to find that the floor was wet with water.

“What happened here?” The woman stopped for a while at the door and turned on the flashlight function on her phone. “On the phone, Xiao Cheng said that Lee Xuezhu was injured. How did she get injured if they were just searching for the girl at school? Is there a third person here?”

She reached out to turn the lights on in the corridor, but the lights would not come on. They seemed to be broken.

She stole into the corridor, and the woman raised the phone. The light cut through the corridor. She saw that the door to the toilet was open, and a girl that was not tall was standing before the mirror. The girl stood on her tiptoes and reached into the sink like she was looking for something in the water.

After a while, something that was even more surprising occurred. The girl pushed her own head into the sink, submerging herself underwater.

“Wen Wen?” The woman felt the girl look familiar, and she silently went closer to the toilet. “What are you up to?”

Since there was water on the ground, as careful as she was, she was going to make noise. When the woman reached the door of the toilet, she saw a bloated monster standing behind the girl in the shattered mirror. She wore a bloodied shirt, and she used her hands to press on the back of the girl’s head.

“She wants to drown to girl‽” At this crucial moment, her kindness won over terror. The woman charged into the toilet to try to save the girl. Seeing the girl run into the toilet, the monster in the mirror was surprised.

At the spot where the woman was standing earlier, black hair expanded like seaweed. If the woman tried to turn and escape, she would run headfirst into the web that was knitted from black hair.