My House of Horrors

“What is producing that smell‽” The drunkard covered his mouth and nose as he shone his flashlight into the dog house. Out of his expectations, there was nothing inside. “This looks perfectly clean, but if that’s the case, why is it so smelly? Even ruined meat wouldn’t be this smelly!”

Resisting the urge to vomit, the drunkard picked up the nearby branch to sift through the dirt inside the dog house. “There’s nothing buried underneath either, so where is the stench coming from? It smells like the stench has soaked into the wooden boards…”

The echoes of harried footsteps neared. The drunkard took a step back. Unable to stand the smell, he jumped through the open window into the building.

“Hopefully, the family won’t lead the monster here.” The drunkard started to regret calling the middle-aged man to follow him—that had completely exposed his location, had it not?

Holding his head in his hands, the drunkard squatted beneath the window and pinched his skin. “This is not a dream, but what the hell was the thing that I saw? How can a head move so fast? And how did it move anyway? Using its chin?”

The drunkard believed that tragedy had already struck the family of three, but he had no thoughts of going out to save them either. “Other than me, all of the other passengers on the bus have probably died already. No one would have the courage to face these things, no one…”

He was still feeling light-headed; however, that was not from alcohol but from fear and shock. With cold sweat pouring out of his every pore, the drunkard shivered. “What should I do now? Without a signal on the phone, I have no idea where I am. I guess I’ll just hide here until the fog disperses.”

After what happened earlier, the drunkard did not dare wander aimlessly anymore. He cowered under the window, and several minutes later, he suddenly heard the door of the yard creak open.

“Someone’s here!” Holding his breath, the drunkard focused on his hearing. After the gate opened, there was no other sound.

“Did the thing just come in to take a quick look? Did the monster not discover me?” This time, the drunkard had learned from his previous lesson; he did not poke his head up to look through the window, worried that someone might be looking back at him. Instead, he got his phone, adjusted the angle, and used the camera function to look out into the yard. The gate was half-open, but there was no one in the yard.

“I guess that was lucky.” The drunkard stood up, and when he put the phone away, his elbow brushed against the bottle left on the windowsill.

“An air-freshener?” The drunkard replaced the bottle and did not think too much of it. Standing up, the drunkard finally had the time to study his hiding place. Perhaps it was his heightened nerves, but he felt like there was a strange voice whispering into his ears. It sounded like the tingle of a wind chime.

This was an old tradition, hanging wind chimes above the door. When they jingled, it represented that someone had entered the room. If this was normal, the drunkard would not have cared, but this situation was different. There was a feeling that someone was wandering near the entrance, and it was moving fast.

Just the thought that there was something else in the house with him caused his heart to constrict. Footsteps shuffled on the ground. The drunkard was facing away from the window, and he suddenly noticed the light behind him dimming like something was standing at the window, blocking the light.

Who’s standing outside the window‽ As that thought crossed his mind, the drunkard’s head was about to explode. His body was frozen in fear, and the wind chime jingled more intensely. Something is approaching!

The drunkard summoned all of his courage to turn back to look, but there was nothing at the window.

“I’m just scaring myself.” He retreated to the window, and when his hand brushed the windowsill, he felt something under his skin. Using the light from the phone, he saw there was a lot of black dog fur stuck in the cracks on the windowsill.

PA!

The window on the second floor was swung open. The drunkard’s hands shuddered, and the dog fur in his palm fell to the floor. He clearly heard that it was the window directly above him that was swung open!

Perhaps this was a coincidence, or maybe someone was trying to toy with him. He did not dare jump out of the window, but at the same time, he did not think that it was safe inside the house. Just as he was hesitating, more dog fur fluttered down from the ceiling.

“Why is there so much dog fur?” He was reminded of the empty dog house in the yard and that thick stench!

“What is happening?” The drunkard did not dare look up; he had no interest in finding out what was staring at him from above. At that moment, he just wanted to be left alone.

“I can’t stay here anymore; I need to leave!” Just as he made that decision, the gate in the yard was pushed open again, and in the dark, something that looked like a mop went to block the front door.

Seeing the face underneath the hair, the drunkard’s heart was plunged into ice. He did not even close the window and ran away from this room that was closest to the yard.

“F*ck, when did it show up?” The drunkard ran into the corridor, and the sound of the wind chime came from the end of the corridor. Pairs of old slippers littered the ground, and the place was quite a mess.

“The dog fur floated down from above, so there must be something scary on the second floor as well! I mustn’t go up there, and I need to stay away from the stairs!” The drunkard took a deep breath to make himself calm down. He slunk into the room furthest from the stairs.

The floor creaked noisily, and a strange child’s singing came from who knew where. It felt like someone had activated a dead person’s recorder.

“I saw slippers for both adults and children in the corridor, so there might be more than one thing occupying this house…” The more he thought about it, the more afraid he became. The drunkard’s back was wet, and his body was cold. “Hopefully, they won’t come in here.”

After silently closing the door, the drunkard noticed that there were empty cans left behind the door. They looked similar to the one he found on the windowsill. “Why are there so many air-fresheners in the house?” He tossed the cans aside and then came to notice that there were many perfume bottles and packs of deodorant abandoned in the corner of the room.

“Why are there so many fumigants in this house? What happened here?” The drunkard kept getting reminded of that stinky dog house. “The dog house is well kept, but it is disgustingly smelly. The rooms for human beings are such a mess, but they smell fragrant. Something must be wrong here.”

He looked around and discerned that he was in a young man’s room. There were fashion magazines and body-building magazines strewn on the bed, and there were dumbbells and weights underneath the table.

The room could not have looked more normal, but for some reason, the drunkard felt very uneasy.

He opened the drawers of the study table. In the bottom drawer, he found a stack of pictures recording scenes of animal abuse. It made the hair on his back rise. However, that was not the scariest. As the drunkard continued to flip through the picture, he noticed, for the first quarter of the pictures, it was a faceless teen who was torturing animals. However, for the remaining three quarters of the pictures, it was the teen who was being tortured in return.