My House of Horrors

The phone in the movie vibrated. Qiumei stopped arranging her stuff and picked up the phone. Without seeing the caller ID, she answered the call directly. “Hello, who is this?”

“We just chatted on the internet. I saw that you’d left your phone number on your personal page, so I thought I’d give you a call.” A man’s voice came from the other end. The person did not sound that old because his voice was still settling into puberty.

“We just chatted on the internet?” Qiumei pulled back the phone to look at the screen. “You are the Non-Existent Man!”

“That is my online ID.”

“Why would you use a name like that?”

“That is not important. The important thing is that I have managed to reach you.” The boy purposely lowered his voice, as if it could make him sound more mature and mysterious.

“The number I left on my page is real, so is it really that surprising that you can make this call? Have you called other girls on their number before and ended up being catfished?” Wenyu did not treat the boy seriously.

“I am talking to you via a dead person’s phone. The fact that you are able to answer the call means that part of what you said is real.”

“You sure have a strange way of clarifying people’s claims.” Wenyu’s attitude turned chillier. Strangely enough, she was not surprised by what the boy said. “Speak, why are you calling me?”

“I simply wish to save your life—I’m afraid that you might go on a suicide mission.” The boy did not sound old, but he seemed to have lived through a lot.

“Suicide mission?”

“Why would you want to return now that you have managed to escape? I know you won’t remember many things, but have you ever considered that the memory is the cost you paid for your escape?” The boy tried to persuade her. “For the sake of escape, even your memory has been surrendered. However, to regain the lost memory, you’ll voluntarily return. Have you heard of anything stupider in this world?”

“I am not going back to search for my memory; I am going there to search for a person.” Wenyu unlocked the door and studied the notebook inside. “Wenyu is the name of this body, but that is not my name.”

Her finger slid across the cover of the notebook, and it glided over the name Qiumei.

“I don’t care why are you returning, but I don’t suggest returning to this place. Remember! Do not go back there!” There was the sound of something heavy being dragged coming from the other end of the phone, and with that, the call was hurriedly ended.

“I know that the place is very dangerous, but certain things cannot be avoided.” The main character placed the arranged information by the headboard, and then she crawled into bed, hugging the phone. She tried to contact the Non-Existent Man, but there was no reply.

“Of all the information that I can find on this university online, they say that it is a private school and built by a private donor. But based on the pictures online, the scale is way beyond that of a normal school. Its size is even bigger than a normal university.”

Wenyu planned to visit this school. She took out paper and pen and recorded all the information she could find on the phone.

“Some of the pictures have watermarks on them, so they might be fake, but how come some of the other pictures just look so strange?”

Perhaps it was the angle of the camera or an issue with the buildings, but in some of the pictures, regardless of whether it was day or night outside, the room had this dim, eeriness to it. The girl turned the bedroom light off but left the bedside lamp on. She lay in bed and started to do her homework. Seeing the girl on screen, Chen Ge was reminded of himself. Before the start of any mission, he would often gather and analyze information like Wenyu.

“This ghost story reminds me of myself too much.” The time ticked away, and Wenyu gradually fell asleep, lying in bed. The pen slipped from her hand, and it landed on the ground. It rolled away until it stopped right at the bathroom door.

She had to work in the day and study at night. Wenyu was very tired, and she slept very soundly. The camera pulled back, and it focused on the sleeping Wenyu. It was hard to tell what the director was going for. He used a ten-second cut to focus on a sleeping Wenyu.

Chen Ge’s employees were not treated to a night at the movies often. They stared at the screen with open curiosity. Their attention was rapt, and they tried their best to follow the director’s rhythm, attempting to understand his perspective.

“I admit that the girl is rather pretty, but hasn’t this scene dragged on for a bit too long already?” Bai Qiulin finally voiced his thoughts. “When her eye was open, there was an air of resentment around her, but weirdly enough, after she closed her eye, the air disappeared completely.”

“This director is good at his job. From his previous short film, I know that he would not waste a single cut. There has to be a purpose to this.” Chen Ge waited patiently, and after some time, he noticed something. “The bottom left corner of the screen. Yes! There, the spot where the pen fell and stopped earlier.”

The door to the bathroom was left open, and the pen stopped right next to it. The only light source in the room came from the bedside lamp. Due to the camera angle, one realized that the bathroom was not completely dark, and a streak of weak light fell on the bathroom mirror.

The movie seemed to have stopped with the main character soundly sleeping, but as one studied it further, the feeling of something being not right grew. The reason was because the scene had not fully stilled. In the corner of the screen, inside the bathroom, something was moving!

The image on screen looked warm—the soft yellow light, fluffy mattress, and a sleeping beauty. However, once their gazes wandered to the corner of the screen and saw what was happening inside the bathroom, the sudden contrast would cause the audience’s hair to rise.

Inside the dim bathroom, a woman in a red outfit was standing before the mirror. She twisted her neck, but she kept her eyes glued to the camera!

The face was hidden in the dark, and when the audience chanced upon it, it would feel like the face was staring at them through the screen.

“I knew something is not right!”

No matter what kind of style the movie adopted, at the end of the day, it was a horror movie. The pen on the ground moved on its own. The woman in the bathroom had already disappeared from the mirror, and one was given a glimpse of a woman in a red outfit moving in the room.

The majority of the scene had not changed; the only thing that changed was the reflection of the mirror in the bathroom.

The rental room was only so big. There was no living room, and the bedroom was attached to the bathroom. The scene maintained its warmth with the occasional strange sound.

The pen rolled on the ground, and the lizards on the wall crawled away. The light from the bedside lamp cast a shadow, but the shadow did not belong to the room owner, who was sleeping.

The papers on the table were flipped through, and the lock on the drawer jangled like someone was trying to open it.

Moments later, everything returned to silence, but then the scariest scene appeared.

The pillow on the bed indented downward like someone had lain down next to the main character.