My House of Horrors

“Chen Ge jumped out of the building? That shouldn’t be! Is he alright?” Lee Zheng sounded confused.

“That kid is very well-trained. Quite a number of people jumped out of the second-floor window, and he is the only one that walked away unscathed.” Captain Cai was confused as well. He had checked the surveillance footage from the building opposite. Of all the jumpers, Chen Ge was the one with the most experience. The slowing down, the landing pose… everything was right out from the textbook like he had done it many times before.

“That does sound suspicious, but I don’t think you should worry that much. As long as it was not him who made the call, it probably isn’t anything big.” Lee Zheng shared his experience.

“We have a few injured individuals and some still unconscious, that is nothing serious?”

“I don’t know why he is in Xin Hai. If you have the misfortune of receiving his emergency call in the future, you will understand what I mean. Ol’ Cai, enjoy the temporary peace now. I still have something else to do, I gotta run.” Lee Zheng then prepared to hang up.

“Wait a minute! What do you mean by that? If you don’t explain yourself, there is no way I am going to let you hang up.” Captain Cai could be quite stubborn.

“Fine, fine. You win. What else do you want to know? Ask quickly.” Lee Zheng was really busy. He had just gotten discharged from the hospital, and the work had been piling up. He had more than a few cases that he needed follow up on.

“I’ve looked through his information, and the time between each entry of his police work involvement is very short. In fact, there’s a period where he provided two vital pieces of information for two different cases within one week.” Captain Cai sounded serious. “Can a normal person run into two serious crime cases within one week? Can so many killings happen so consistently around a normal person? Unless he’s the killer, the possibility of this is very, very low.”

“Your suspicion is very valid, but did I say that he is a normal person?” Lee Zheng knew the man had misunderstood something.

“So, he really is one of your people…”

“I wish that was the case. The kid has a natural talent for law enforcement, but unfortunately, he wastes that talent on running a Haunted House.” Lee Zheng sighed regretfully. “When we first received the call from him, we ran a thorough background check on him. He might look easy-going and very not serious normally, but he carries a pain that he doesn’t share with others.”

“Oh? What’s his story?”

“About one year ago, both of his parents practically disappeared off the face of the earth. There were no bodies or any news about them. Even now, the case is still open. Based on the report from a local senior, the child was devastated. He lived a purposeless life for a very long time and finally found his footing several months ago. It was probably then that he started to take it upon himself to find his parents. The surveillance near his home showed him leaving home late at night; he was probably compiling his own clues. He went to those dangerous places to look for his family.”

After hearing what Lee Zheng had to say, Captain Cai did not respond instantly. His memory of Chen Ge appeared in his mind, and that pair of calm eyes struck him the most. “His actions are very dangerous. Haven’t you tried to advise him against doing so?”

“We’ve done that more times than I can count, but it’s pointless. Actually, I can understand why. Place yourself in his shoes, his family is still missing, and all the memories in the past have become a haunting memory. A person like that will definitely hate criminals with a passion.” Lee Zheng had a lot of respect for Chen Ge; he admired him a lot. He had survived a complicated and troubled past to grow into a man with a great, unshakeable sense of justice. Captain Cai started to see it that way as well.

“Okay, I get it now. I won’t disturb you anymore.” Captain Cai hung up. He looked at the long page of Chen Ge’s heroics and spaced out. Who knew what he was thinking? After a long time, he took out his phone to call his superior to ask them for permission to send the boss of Nightmare Academy to Jiujiang for treatment. After getting the permission, Captain Cai departed for the hospital immediately.

Chen Ge left Xin Hai Police Station at around 5 pm. Compared to Jiujiang Police Station, the procedure undertaken at Xin Hai Station was much more complicated, but that was probably because the officers in Jiujiang knew Chen Ge and skipped most of the steps.

“I thought that I could leave around noon but ended up spending a whole day here.”

After leaving the station, Chen Ge got a cab and headed back to Nightmare Academy. After all, he needed to meet up with Xu Yin and Ol’ Zhou. Xin Hai Central Street was filled with busy people as usual; the incident that afternoon did not slow down the traffic there. With his head lowered, Chen Ge mixed in with the crowd and glanced at the Haunted House. The door was closed, and there was police tape at the door.

“I can’t use the front door. I’ll need to cut through the shops.” Chen Ge entered the shopping lot through the building’s other entrance. He activated the recorder to try to contact Xu Yin. He walked around the building for several minutes, and suddenly, the recorder gave out a static sound. Chen Ge realized that Xu Yin had sensed him.

He turned into the toilet and found an unoccupied cubicle and started to call Xu Yin’s name in his heart. The lights in the toilet flickered, and the doors creaked. Suddenly, the light went out.

The faucet dripped noisily, and a faded scent of blood permeated the air. Then a row of bloody letter appeared on the cubicle door. ‘The toilet of the underground parking lot.’

“Xu Yin wants me to go there?”

Chen Ge did not think too much of it and headed to the basement parking lot. He searched for a long time but could not find a toilet; all he found was an abandoned storeroom that had a no-entry sign on it.

“This should be the place, right?” Opening the door, Chen Ge entered it. This place was had indeed formerly been a toilet, but it had been abandoned a long time ago and was used to store various trash.

He called Xu Yin again, and this time, the red Xu Yin and the honestly smiling Ol’ Zhou appeared at the same time.

“Boss, we found something inside this Haunted House.” Ol’ Zhou led the way. They opened the door of the last cubicle. The wall was broken down, and behind it was a dim, dark passageway. After moving all the wooden boards that blocked the way away, Chen Ge and his two employees walked into it.

“This place is connected to the haunted house’s basement; it leads to a sealed scenario.”

With Ol’ Zhou leading the way, Chen Ge came to a scenario that was completely sealed up using wooden boards. After removing the boards, Chen Ge looked into it. The whole scenario was empty. Most of the props had been removed, leaving behind a desk in the middle of the room. It was a normal desk, nothing special about it. Chen Ge looked inside the drawer and found a diary sitting inside.

“Is this what you found?” Chen Ge took the diary out and flipped through it. He thought that the content looked very familiar. He took out the diary that he had obtained during Nightmare Academy’s new student welcoming ceremony. After comparison, the two diaries were about ninety percent similar.

The only difference was that the diary inside the drawer had all of its words sewn on the pages using red threads. It looked rather scary.

“Boss, this diary is written using blood vessels from behind the door. So, it came from one of the doors.”