My House of Horrors

The strange feeling from the back of his neck grew stronger. Chen Ge’s eyes moved away from the mirror and slowly turned around to look behind him. Hair skidded across the tip of his nose. Chen Ge was greeted by a scarred face and a pair of eyes filled with venom.

An upside-down man was standing behind Chen Ge, staring at Chen Ge with his inverted facial features!

…

Inside the ‘haunted’ toilet, a man was attracted by the strange mirror before him, then he felt something strange on the back of his neck. He turned around and saw this inverted face staring at him. No matter who it was, they would definitely be spooked by this experience.

Qu Changlin, who was hiding inside the toilet, had his ears perked up, ready to feast on the visitor’s scream, but he waited for a long time, but all he heard was an eerie silence.

A gap broke open next to the edge of the mirror. Using the lamp in the corner of the toilet, Qu Changlin could roughly make out a figure in the dark. He was tall with one hand stuck inside his pocket and the other holding an old backpack.

Time seemed to have frozen. After who knew how long, Qu Changlin saw the man slowly raised his hand. Just as he thought that the man was about to clamp his hand over his lips to stop himself from screaming, the man’s palm reached toward the face hanging behind him.

“It’s just a mannequin? This is strange. How could a mannequin possess such a despairing gaze?” the man mumbled to himself. He seemed to be deeply attracted by something. He put down his backpack and used both of his hands to carefully examine the skull that was hanging upside down.

The finger caressed the mannequin’s cheeks almost lovingly before travelling to its eyes and lashes. Seeing this, Qu Changlin, who was hiding behind the mirror, felt a chill run through his body. Various scary thoughts filled his mind, and the hand that was holding the remote was already drenched with sweat.

…

Chen Ge examined the mannequin’s eyelashes. When he first laid eyes on the mannequin, he had already been mightily impressed. It was completely different from the mannequins available on the market, and it was even different from the mannequins at his own Haunted House. This mannequin was mixed with the creator’s emotions, and each detail was perfect.

With the skill of Mortician’s Make-up and Dollmaker’s Talent, the mannequins created by Chen Ge’s hands had the most realistic appearance, but even so, the mannequins could only be seen as the perfect vessel. Without the control of his employees, they would appear rather lifeless.

As for this mannequin that fell from the ceiling, even though due to material restrictions, the realism was not comparable to Chen Ge’s mannequins, the eyes were so lively!

“He uses very common materials, so how did manage to create such a lively pair of eyes? Just how many pairs of eyes has the creator observed to be able to come up with something like this?” Chen Ge held the mannequin’s head carefully. He did not think that it was that scary. If anything, there was an admiration rolling in his eyes. “I’ll need to create a lot of mannequins, and that is such a big workload for one person. In the future, as the number of scenarios increases, the number of mannequins needed will shoot up as well. I will need to find an assistant. This person’s talent is not bad. With some training, I’m sure they’ll be a valuable addition to the Haunted House.”

Chen Ge’s brain turned very fast. Even when he was standing alone in the toilet, holding a mannequin’s head, he was still thinking about his own Haunted House. “To have talent like this stay inside the toilet to scare others is such a waste.”

Chen Ge let go of the mannequin, and the latter swung lazily before the cubicle. Chen Ge walked to the fifth cubicle.

“Is someone inside?” He did not know what kind of impression he would have given the worker hiding in the dark. In any case, Chen Ge did not care; he merely wanted to find the mannequin’s creator.

“Where are you? Are you playing hide and seek with me?” Chen Ge sounded weirdly excited, like a child discovering a new toy.

In this strange environment, hearing Chen Ge’s voice, the hiding Qu Changlin felt his heart quivering. He even suspected that the shock had been too much, and the visitor had gone insane. The sound of knocking came from the fifth cubicle. Hearing that, Qu Changlin’s heart started to race.

For some weird reason, in that moment, it felt like the role of the hunter and the hunted had swapped. The person hiding in the secret room was the victim, and the man wandering outside stubbornly was the real culprit.

“If you’re not going to open the door, then I’m coming in, okay?” Even though it was phrased like a question, Qu Changlin did not hear any hesitation from the speaker.

BANG!

The door of the fifth cubicle was pushed open, and Chen Ge looked in with some disappointment. “Then everything should be inside the last cubicle.”

He walked to the door of the last cubicle, but Chen Ge did not stride in directly. He leaned against the door to listen for any sound coming from inside the cubicle. Timing was crucial to activate traps inside the Haunted House, so there had to be at least one employee handling one scenario because not everything could be controlled remotely.

Chen Ge looked around. “This place is only so big. Where could he be hiding? The last cubicle should contain some scares as well, but if I was the employee, I wouldn’t pick to hide there.”

Adopting the worker’s perspective to view this problem, Chen Ge suddenly lifted his head to look at the crack in the ceiling where the mannequin dangled from.

Is the worker hiding in the ceiling?

A brave idea popped up in Chen Ge’s mind. He walked to stand beside the mannequin and looked at the hole above him.

Someone has to be controlling the mannequin. I wonder, where will the lines connected to the mannequin lead me?

The monsters and ghosts that other people avoided were openings for Chen Ge. He stood beside the mannequin and thought for a while. Qu Changlin, who was behind the mirror, had his heart gripped by a vise. He had no idea what the man was going to do next.

Chen Ge walked back to the cubicle and summoned Ol’ Zhou after taking out the comic from his backpack. He pointed at the hole in the ceiling, and Ol’ Zhou nodded.

Chen Ge kept knocking on the door of the last cubicle, and while the employee’s attention was thus distracted, Ol’ Zhou sneaked into the hole in the ceiling.

For Qu Changlin, this was incredibly strange. The sound of knocking kept coming, but he could not see anyone.

What is he doing?

Qu Changlin held the remote with both hands. Sweat slid down his face, and the constant knocking annoyed him. The torture lasted for a minute before it got the better of Qu Changlin.

Either you come in here or you get out. Who are you trying to scare by wasting your time here?

He pushed the door open a gap, wishing to confirm Chen Ge’s location. But at that moment, he felt something brush against the back of his neck like a centipede crawling over it.

He scratched behind it, and his fingertip touched something that felt like a ball of watergrass. Subconsciously, Qu Changlin turned to look behind him.

A pale face with an upside-down smile was hanging behind him. “Found you.”