My House of Horrors

“Is this Lin Sisi’s self-portrait? But why didn’t he paint in his own features?” Chen Ge stared at the faceless head in the phone, and the longer he stared at it, the more confused he became. Gradually, it felt like he was staring at his own face. “Shouldn’t the phone’s background keep changing? Whenever there’s a new Lin Sisi, would the human face change again?”

This phone was a treasure for Chen Ge; he had too many things that he needed to understand. Moving his fingers, Chen Ge first clicked open the photo album. “The camera functions normally, but the videos or photos inside this phone are quite strange.”

Chen Ge looked for a long time before he found the problem. There was no human presence inside the videos and photos—they were all about the scenery.

“Have the pictures with people in them been deleted? Or could the people at this school not be captured by the phone at all?” Chen Ge very bravely conducted an experiment on himself. He raised the phone and took a selfie. The phone was so old that it did not have a front camera, and the picture taken was very blurry. Chen Ge glanced at it. Initially, he did not notice anything, but later on, his eyes started to narrow.

There was not only Chen Ge in the picture taken—there was also the shadow behind him. The strangest thing was inside the picture. Chen Ge’s shadow was thin and defenseless. He was hugging his knees, curling his body together.

“This phone can capture the shadow from Room 413? This phone can capture ghosts with its lens‽” Chen Ge suddenly understood why there had not been any people inside the phone’s saved photos. “All the pictures that had people in them have been deleted, but I have no idea whether it was Lin Sisi or someone else who did so.”

The phone had been tweaked before, but it did not dampen Chen Ge’s mood. He found another thing worth noticing about the phone. The shadow in the picture retained his most original phone. In other words, Lin Sisi’s phone most likely possessed the ability to see through the ghost’s disguise and recover their most original form.

“With this phone, I can avoid many dangers and have a glance of the ghost’s real image beforehand. Plus, I can use this to come up with many special plans.” Chen Ge felt like his luck had turned much better after he encountered the shadow. He took a few more pictures of himself. After confirming his hypothesis, he deleted all the pictures and returned the phone to its original state. Lin Sisi’s phone was very old. Other than the camera function, it only had a few other basic features. Chen Ge then looked at the phone book. There was only one contact inside—home.

Opening the recent calls, it showed that there were only records for calls made in the last twenty-four hours. It was worth noting that in the past twenty-four hours, someone had used this phone to call two unknown numbers several times. The last call was made right before Chen Ge awakened in this school.

“Such consistent calls means that Lin Sisi should have noticed something already. He kept calling these two numbers because their owners might have been able to aid him.” Chen Ge was now Lin Sisi in everyone’s eyes. He thought about it before calling the first number.

It rang for a long time, but there was no answer.

“Why isn’t anyone answering?” Chen Ge anxious. The other person did not end the call and did not pick up the call, allowing it to ring.

“Did the person not take their phone with them, or are they also considering whether to answer the call or not?” After it continued to ring for a while, Chen Ge ended the call, and he tried the second number.

The busy tone pulled on Chen Ge’s nerves. Several seconds later, something surprising happened. Following a light click, the second call was connected. The other person answered the call, but no one spoke. Chen Ge patiently waited for the person on the other end of the line. He listened to the background noises, hoping to triangulate the other person’s location, but unfortunately, the other line was exceptionally quiet like a morgue at midnight.

“Hello?” The phone had limited power. Chen Ge did not dare waste more time, so he spoke first. “I know you’re listening. First, I don’t mean any harm. If now is not a suitable time, it’s fine. I just have some questions, and you only need to make some sound when my predictions are wrong.”

His own echo came from the other end. The other person still did not intend to speak.

“Do you know Lin Sisi?”

Almost as soon as Chen Ge said the name Lin Sisi, the call was cut off. Chen Ge did not even have time to react to it.

“They hung up on me? But this proves that there’s something wrong with them if they hung up with such certainty after hearing the name Lin Sisi.” Chen Ge called again, and this time, it only rang once before the call was ended.

“How about we try texting then?” Chen Ge soon abandoned this thought. Speaking was bidirectional. While exposing himself, he would obtain information about the other, but messaging was one-directional. The more he spoke, the more he would reveal about his own secrets.

For the sake of security, Chen Ge temporarily abandoned the plan of messaging. He moved his fingers as he called the number for home. When he keyed in all the numbers, a boy’s voice announced on the phone, “I’m sorry, but the number you’re calling is not available.”

The number was supposed to be home, but the number led to an empty number. Chen Ge tried it a few more times, and the result was all the same.

“Looks like this number is really cut off—his home is already gone.” Chen Ge memorized the three phone numbers and left the brush in the direction given by the shadow. The eerie streetlights glowed weakly on him, pulling his shadow long. But upon closer inspection, he discovered that his shadow was wiggling like it was slowly growing.

“The shadow only needed a short amount of time to digest the girl, at least ten times faster than my experience outside the door! Is this his talent, or is this common to all the ghosts inside this door?” The shadow had digested the other Specter so fast that it gave Chen Ge a confidence boost to his plan. However, he did not get ahead of himself. “Even with such a quick digestion speed, the rules at this school are so well maintained, which goes to show how powerful the owner here is.”

Chen Ge was unsure of the other rules at this school, but consuming other Specters had to be something that violated the rules. “When I just woke up, Mr. Bai was taking a rollcall inside the classroom. At the time, my deskmate seemed to remind me that there have been students going missing from the school.

“The missing students might have been consumed by others, and most ghosts go into hibernation after consuming others, so how did the killers escape detection?”

Widening his eyes, Chen Ge suddenly was struck by a possibility. “Could it be that the killer that the school is looking for is hiding among the missing students? He might be the first student to have gone missing.”

Hypothesizing based on this clue, a flash of brilliance appeared in Chen Ge’s eyes. “There is a Greater Red Specter at this school. The locals here mostly follow the school rules, and only those who came from outside like me will go against the rules fearlessly… Does this mean that the killer that the school is looking for might be Chang Gu, who arrived here earlier than me?”