My House of Horrors

Wang Xiaoming’s meaning was very clear. The large dog that the girl mentioned was not a dog at all but the missing students. This whole family was crazy.

“I know what you’re trying to say, but did you notice something weird?” Chen Ge dropped his voice to a whisper. “Why does she look at me differently from when she looks at you? That pair of eyes filled with pure evil was focused on me. Does she know me?”

“Now is not the time to think about that, Xiao Lin. We need to leave now!” Wang Xiaoming grabbed Chen Ge and prepared to make a run for it, but at that moment, footsteps came from inside the bedroom, and soon, the door was opened. The girl wore pink pajamas, and she held a long ring of keys in her hand. “Found it.”

“Okay, we will go to the maintenance room now.”

Of course, they were going to leave, but before that, Chen Ge wished to obtain more useful things. He reached out to take the girl’s keys, but the latter took one large step back. “Even though I have the spare key, my dad warned me from getting close to the room at the deepest part of the corridor and forbade me from giving the key to strangers.”

After Chen Ge revealed his purpose, the girls also started to show her fangs. From the beginning, she had never intended to help them, but other than herself, no one knew what her real goal was.

“Both me and this student know Mr. Bai, so how can we be strangers? If you don’t feel like going with us, why don’t you give me the keys? After I open the door, I’ll come back to return the keys to you,” Chen Ge said calmly. His expression was serene; it was difficult to read his thoughts from his facial expression.

“No, my dad said that the keys cannot be given to strangers. Only family can use them.” The girl’s voice softened. She made it sound like she was being bullied. Chen Ge frowned slightly—he felt like the girl was hinting at the fact that she wished for him to be her family.

After a quick contemplation, Chen Ge squatted down again. He pinched the girl’s cheek. “We are friends now, the best of friends. No matter what, we can rely on each other like family. If you’re bored because you’re alone, the two of us will come to keep you company.” Chen Ge was a careful thinker. He knew that some ghosts’ obsessions were like a curse. Once he gave them his real name, they would stick to him forever, so he dragged Wang Xiaoming down with him without much hesitation.

“The two of you?” The girl’s eyes were glued onto Chen Ge. From the beginning, she had never laid her eyes on Wang Xiaoming. This was one of the things that had struck Chen Ge as strange. The girl stood at the bedroom door. She was still hesitating when the sound of a heavy object knocking against a wooden board came from inside Bai Ling’s bedroom!

The bedroom door was not closed tight. The ‘dog’ inside the room seemed to have confirmed that the visitors this time were not acted by Bai Ling and Mr. Bai from Chen Ge’s conversation with the girl.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

“Okay, that’s a promise.” The girl’s smile was like a blooming flower. “Wait a minute, the big dog is acting up again. We mustn’t let it attract the other people’s attention.”

The girl’s gaze lingered on Chen Ge for a long time before she turned to head back into the bedroom. The sound of banging slowly dwindled. Then, several minutes later, the girl walked out from the bedroom. Her expression was normal, but she had changed into a new set of pajamas.

“I’ll go with you. You open the door and look for your things while I wait for you outside.” There was an indescribable excitement in the girl’s voice. She jogged through the living room and waited at the entrance. Chen Ge and Wang Xiaoming moved to follow her.

“Xiao Lin.” Wang Xiaoming pointed at the girl and then waved his hand as if reminding Chen Ge not to get too close to the girl. Chen Ge nodded silently. He was prepared to grab the tools and run.

The girl held the doorknob and started to turn it. She had just opened the door a sliver when the door was suddenly pulled outward!

“There’s someone outside the door!” Chen Ge jumped from the shock. Thankfully, with the training from the black phone, his reaction speed was far faster than a normal person’s. Just as the doorknob was about to slip from the girl’s hand, he ran forward and slammed into the door, knocking it shut!

BANG!

The sound of door closing echoed down the corridor. In this silence, the sudden boom was very scary.

“Xiao Ling, I am Uncle Zhang from next door. There have been sounds coming from your place, so I came over to take a look. If you need any help, please open the door.” A man’s voice came from outside.

Chen Ge lowered his voice and leaned against the girl’s ear to whisper, “Do not open the door no matter what. Would he eavesdrop outside the door for so long if he wished to help? Furthermore, he was trying to pull the door open earlier, which proves that he wished to barge in. This man is lying to you.”

The girl, Bai Ling, did not expect someone to be hiding outside her room, but there was no fear in her eyes, only a trace of alertness and dissatisfaction.

“Go and hide inside my father’s bedroom. Remember to lock the door.” The big dog was in her bedroom, and her father’s bedroom was the innermost room. She jogged back to open the lock. Bai Ling urged Chen Ge to hurry back. The girl did not seem to care about Wang Xiaoming at all—she merely wished to hide Chen Ge.

“Quick, get in here.” Chen Ge was not going to leave his partner behind, so he pulled Wang Xiaoming into the room as well. The bedroom door closed again. Wang Xiaoming leaned against the door and could hear his heart pounding in his chest.

“There is someone else hiding outside the door. Thankfully, we didn’t run out and escape earlier, or else we would have been caught!”

“The person outside the door is probably the teacher who saw in the corridor. He was using a flashlight and almost discovered us,” Chen Ge replied absent-mindedly because his focus was on the room that he was in. This was Mr. Bai’s bedroom! He might find what he needed there!

“Just now, it was Bai Ling who used her key to open the lock, so in other words, without going through her, we would not normally be able to access this room!” Chen Ge did not panic even though things were not looking optimistic. If anything, he thought that he was being lucky. He looked through the drawers and shelves and soon discovered something.

“Student’s Registration File? Why would something like this be found inside a teacher’s drawer?” Chen Ge flipped through it at top speed. This was a normal file—the only special thing was that when he had still been in Mr. Bai’s class, he had counted only seventeen other people, including Mr. Bai, but in this file, there were the pictures of twenty-one students.

When Chen Ge woke up inside the classroom, he had memorized the faces of all his classmates. It was something that he had done out of caution, but that would come in handy now.

Comparing the file and the memory in his mind, Chen Ge soon realized that something was wrong.