My House of Horrors

After the nurse finishes handing out all the medicine, she will return. When she discovers that the notebook is missing, she will go searching for it, but it should be fine because I believe she is only slightly more powerful than Xiaoxiao and the Pen Spirit. If I face her in battle, I might not lose.

Chen Ge held the hammer and walked deeper into the corridor. If this was some other person, they would have been shocked silly already; they would not have been able to calculate and plan their steps. Opening the rooms one by one, Chen Ge made no new discoveries until he reached the door to the third-floor bathroom.

The sound of door opening came from downstairs, so this bathroom should not be where the ‘door’ is.

He could feel the anxiety coming from the white cat on his shoulder. Chen Ge tried to push the door open, and the bathroom was shrouded in complete darkness, swallowing up any sort of light.

The row of squat cubicles looked rather frightening in the dark. Different from the school, the cubicles had no locks, probably in case of accidents inside the bathroom. Chen Ge did a tour but found nothing strange. He eventually stopped before the sink that had a mirror, and he realized how interesting the design was.

There was a curtain draped on top of the mirror. With a pull, the mirror would be covered up easily. This little design quirk reminded Chen Ge slightly of his own Haunted House. Looks like there are some problems with the mirrors here as well.

Chen Ge pulled the curtain up, and the mirror was stained with smudges, like someone had run their hands over it. The surface was smudged with so many finger marks that Chen Ge could barely see his reflection.

The door is not here, Chen Ge confirmed after making sure the layout of the third floor bathroom. He came out from the bathroom and used the adjacent staircase to walk down to the second floor.

The closer he got to the first floor, the stronger the stench in the air became. The thing that surprised Chen Ge was that some curious things had appeared on the second floor’s corridors and walls.

It was unknown whether it was caused by the building’s old age or some other reason, but there were patches along the corridor where it protruded outward. The protrusions had red hues to them like the color of bruised skin. The cracked floor also had residual liquid that looked like it was blood. It was as if blood had once seeped from cracks and had now dried.

The second floor was completely different from the third floor. The danger rating had practically doubled. If the third floor was eerie, then the second floor was dangerous; it just made people want to turn and run.

Could this really be real blood? Chen Ge picked up something that looked like congealed blood off the floor and squished it in his hands. It doesn’t smell bloody… probably just normal red soil.

The mattresses on the corridor were rather in the way, and as Chen Ge walked past them, he yanked some open. He realized that the closer he got to the first floor, the more authentic these dolls looked. It was not that they were visually more authentic, but they gave off a stronger feeling that they were alive.

When I enter the first floor, will the dolls in the mattresses crawl out on their own?

He was not kidding and was considering this possibility seriously. Walking past room after room as he proceeded down the corridor, Chen Ge noticed a few special rooms as he was about to turn the corner. All the patients’ rooms had windows on their doors so that the doctors could see inside easily, but these few rooms were different.

The director’s office? Chen Ge had pretty much finished exploring the mental hospital, and this was the first time he had come across a door with a plaque on it. He entered the room, and the space was huge. It had been made from breaking down the walls between three normal rooms.

There were several pots of dead plants against the wall, and next to them were empty bookshelves and an office table. There was also a resting area. It was about half the size of the working area, and it had a single bed and a disproportionally large dresser.

Closing the door behind him, Chen Ge stepped into the room. The floor was littered with a massive number of patient records, but these records were different from the ones in the nurse’s notebook. They were unedited. In other words, these patients were probably still alive.

The mental hospital had been in operation for at least ten years, and the number of patients that came through its door was huge, at least much bigger than Chen Ge anticipated. Compared to Jiujiang’s population of several million, the number of mental patients was probably very small, but Jiujiang only had two certified government mental hospitals, and even at their maximum capacity, they could only handle about a thousand people. This, combined with the fact that mental illnesses required repeated treatment, meant that there were not enough hospitals to go around. This was why there were private hospitals like Jiujiang Third Psychological Convalescence Centre.

It had the necessary certification, but at the end of the day, it was a private hospital. Their main focus was money, and their management was riddled with problems. Due to the nature of mental patients, many things were not treated with the seriousness that they deserved. Accepting Wang Haiming even though he was mentally fine was one such example.

After picking up a few of the patient’s records, Chen Ge soon lost interest. The diagnoses given were pretty much the same—even the treatment methods were similar to each other.

“A real doctor is someone like Doctor Gao. These doctors were merely trying to silence the patients’ wills and souls, transforming them into puppets without individuality.”

Chen Ge continued his search. The bookshelves and table drawers were empty. Chen Ge entered the rest area and flipped the bed upside down. There was nothing. Finally, he turned toward the suspiciously large dresser. This was the only place he had not searched.

“This dresser is big enough to fit two adults. Could the missing director be left inside?”

Raising his hammer, he scanned the dresser. The dresser was sealed with police tape, and it had not been taken down since it was applied because the edges were untouched.

“Why would the police seal the dresser? Was it hiding the body?”

There were many other curious things about the dresser. Its four edges were taped with duct tape, and curious mantras were written on the corners. There were also red nails that were about half the length of a normal palm protruding out of the dresser.

“It just feels like this dresser carry something important inside.” Chen Ge hugged the white cat and placed it down by the door. He removed the police tape and used the mallet to pry the door open.

There was no scary scene, and the dresser was not filled with clothes or anything weird. Inside sat a few papers that were filled with words and several envelopes that had not been mailed. Picking up the top most paper, the first line that entered Chen Ge’s eyes made his heart jump.

“The kid inside Room 3 is acting up again. He is the first person to have seen the ‘door’, so I suspect the appearance of the ‘door’ is related to him.”

Wasn’t Room 3 empty? Where did this kid come from?

Chen Ge continued to read, and the letters inside the dresser explained how the single ‘door’ had caused the ruination of the entire mental hospital.