My House of Horrors

1098 The Black Phone“s Real Purpose? 2 in 1

The diary in Room 0011 was missing a lot of pages, so it was all Chen Ge could do to fill in the blanks with his own educated guesses as he flipped through the pages. It took him half an hour to finish reading the diary and put it down.

“What do you think? Did you find anything?” Wen Qing noticed how strange Chen Ge was acting, which in itself was a strange event. So far, Chen Ge had not been fazed by anything that they had encountered in this world behind the door, while when he was perusing the pages of the diary, the man’s expression had changed many a time.

“I have understood some very crucial things. Everything that we see now is the consequence of an action that was committed a long time ago.” Chen Ge placed Doctor Gao’s doctor inside his backpack, alongside Zhang Ya’s bedtime story. The man’s physical condition was worsening, and he found it very difficult to keep his emotions from running wild. From the Ghost Stories Society to Eastern Jiujiang’s Li Wan City, there had been some kind of connection between the ghost fetus and Doctor Gao. Chen Ge did not quite understand it then, but now he finally apprised himself of the reason behind it.

Perhaps, from the very beginning, the members of the Ghost Stories Society were made up from the patients that have escaped from the cursed hospital. They knew that they were sick, and they were using their own method to cure their own illness. None of the patients at the hospital have their own name; they are referred to by their patient’s number. It was the same for the Ghost Stories Society. Every member had their own number that they corresponded to. There are many more similarities, so from the very beginning, some of the clues have been right before my eyes.

Chen Ge sat on the sofa and held his chin in thought.

Doctor Gao knew the ghost fetus’ name as Chen Ge. So, when I first came to the Ghost Stories Society, he did not make things difficult for me. In fact, he had helped me join the society successfully. That was probably the only chance he had to kill me; even with Zhang Ya’s aid, I would not have been able to handle so many society members at the same time. Is it possible that Doctor Gao still knew some other secrets like the background information of Patients 0001 to 0010? Would his interest in me be related to these ten patients as well?

Chen Ge was contemplating the many questions in his mind when the building started to shake like it had been hit by an earthquake! The aftershock of this occurrence was much more intense than the three times before it, and it lasted even longer.

“Yet another body part of the rag doll has been found in a different building?”

Things started to change inside the building. The stench in the air became more intense. Everyone’s breathing became more difficult, like there was a chain that had started to wrap around everyone’s neck. Many strange noises started to come from outside the building. It sounded like some kind of monster ramming continuously into the walls of the building. Harrowing screams filtered into their ears. Even if they covered up their ears, they could still them clearly. It was as if the screams were coming from inside them.

After the building stopped shaking, the first thing Chen Ge did was take out his own comic.

“The body parts of the rag doll are the foundation of this world behind the door. Now that the foundation has been shaken, it means that the world itself will be unstable, and thus, the limitation on my employees will become smaller.”

Throughout the comic, the pages were bleeding. Every page was crawling with blood vessels, and if one looked closer, one could see many ghastly faces that were trying to surface on the pages. Seeing such a grotesque sight, Chen Ge finally revealed a rare smile.

“It won’t be long now. They are going to arrive soon!”

His tone had an undercurrent of madness to it. Holding the bloody comic, Chen Ge mumbled empathically to himself. A grin that only he would understand hung on his face. Both Wen Qing and Xiao Sun moved subconsciously away from the sofa. They thought that Chen Ge at that moment was rather scary. The presence that radiated off him was no weaker than the monsters behind the door.

“The fourth earthquake was probably the result of the other outsiders. They now know the locations of two of the rag doll’s body parts. Looks like I will have to pick up my pace.”

Standing up, Chen Ge carried his backpack and dragged Doctor Skull Cracker’s Hammer toward the door.

“Chen Ge, why don’t you take a few minutes of rest? You can’t even stand steadily on your feet.” Wen Qing walked over to try to support Chen Ge, but she was rejected by the latter.

“It’s okay. I am fine.”

Walking out from Room 0011, Chen Ge came to the last room on the first floor. The number on the door said 0005.

“Patient 0005?” Chen Ge thought that Patient 0011 would be the limitation of the rag doll’s memory. He was surprised to find the room for Patient 0005 in this building. “Based on the description on the multiple diaries that I have found, the patients numbered one to ten are categorically different from the other patients. But since the room for Patient 0005 has appeared at this place, will the room of Patient 0001 be upstairs?”

His heart started to race like it was going to jump out from his heart. For reasons unknown to Chen Ge, when his mind focused on Patient 0001, the blood in his body would start to boil.

Pushing open the door to Room 0005, Chen Ge entered the room. Every object inside Room 0005 was covered in a layer of blood. The furniture was heavily damaged. There was nothing that was usable or intact inside the room.

“The person who stayed here must have had a tendency to destroy.” Wen Qing carefully stepped around the trash on the ground and walked toward Chen Ge.

“Do not stay too far away from me. The three of us should look around the room to see if we can find any important clues.”

The previous three sickrooms that they had visited had a layer of paint over the walls. Even though there were traces of blood in the rooms, at least someone had attempted to cover them up, but it was completely different for Room 0005. No one tried to cover up the travesty that had happened here. The whole room was black and red in color. Chen Ge took a careful look around. He did not find any diary in the room, but he did notice many small characters that were carved out using fingernails on the walls of the bedroom. Most of the letters had been mixed with the blood, and they looked like they came right out of a scary movie.

“I really do not dare imagine the state of the person’s mind when they wrote these things. This is just madness.” Xiao Sun hid at the back of the group. His worldview had been shattered again and again that night. Now, nothing could surprise him anymore. While Xiao Sun and Wen Qing were both stunned by the markings on the wall, Chen Ge had already walked forward to inspect it. As he carefully cleaned away the stained blood, he started to read the words that were left behind.

“I have started to forget many things. A few days ago, I could still remember my name, but now there is only a number that is left in my head!

“I know my memory is failing me. I am forgetting more and more things, but there is one thing that I will never forget—kill the hospital director!

“I do not know why such a directive has been stuck in my mind, and I do not have a clue as to why I would want to do something like that. Perhaps the hospital director is the reason I am in this state. But what exactly has he done to me? Why can’t I remember anything about it?

“The new roommate died beside my bed. When I woke up, he was already dead. There are no other people in the room. If we rule out the possibility of suicide, then the only logical explanation is that I have murdered him, but how come I have no memory of that at all?

“The doctors said I am seriously ill, but how come they do not conduct any treatment on me? All they did was rotate new roommates for me so that every morning I will wake up to a fresh dead body next to my bed. I have gotten used to opening my eyes to a fresh body every morning until the day my wife moved in with me. She was still as beautiful as I could remember. I asked the doctors about my wife’s condition. The doctors only told me that she was sick, and they clammed up after that. I could not get them to tell me more about my wife.

“I tried to communicate with my wife, but she refused to utter even a word. I could see that she is very afraid. She is afraid of the environment that she has been deposited in, and she is afraid of me. But why should be afraid of me? She is the one person that I love the most in the world. Why would I actively harm her?

“That night I did not sleep. When the sun rose, my wife was still cowering in the corner of the room. She is still alive!

“I have beaten myself. I slammed repeatedly on the iron door. I wanted the doctor to move my wife to another room. But the only answer I got from the empty corridor was the echo of my own voice. What should I do? No one was there to tell me the answer. I tried various method to keep myself awake, but it was getting more and more difficult.

“I forgot when I did eventually fall asleep, but when I opened my eyes, I was already sent to the other side of the door. In the deepest part of hell, the line between life and death is blurred. The hours of my consciousness became less and less. Most of the time, I have no idea what I am doing, or perhaps I am no longer myself. My body was taken over by the monster who had been hiding inside me. All the patients around me and the doctors have seen that monster before, but I am the only one who has not met him.

“Everyone is afraid of that monster, but I personally am desperate to meet him because I need to ask him whether my wife is still alive or not.

“When I am conscious, the doctors make me suffer all kinds of curses. The curses were yanked out from strangers’ bodies. They died from the curse, so the curses carried their memories and despair. Being a vessel of other people’s curses was no different from carrying their past. These things were nothing but pain for me, but it appeared to be some kind of nutrition for the monster inside my body.

“The life behind the door was spent in a haze of mindlessness and blurriness. Only a few words were left in my brain—kill the hospital director, my wife, and my patient’s number. Just as I thought my life would end in this miserable way, I met a doctor wearing a patient’s outfit. His surname was Gao, and he had a rag doll with a horrible smell following behind him. The smell that the doll gave off was no longer something that could be put into words.

“We are all trapped inside the nineteenth floor of hell. There are no friends and family in the world of black and white. Trying to converse with others in this place is something very dangerous because no one knows what will happen next. When I first saw him, honestly I felt some pity for the man because I knew that the next time I woke up, he would turn into a dead body.

“When I opened my eyes and woke up from my coma, I was surprised that the doctor was standing beside me! He was still alive! This was proof that my wife could still be alive as well!

“He seemed to be able to see into a person’s heart. Before I mentioned anything, he brought up my wife voluntarily. From his lips, I found out what I did to her. My wife is already dead. She was killed by the monster inside my body. I started to hate my body. I wanted to die alongside the monster inside my body, but I was stopped by Doctor Gao. He slowly brought me back to the world of the sane. It was not my fault that my wife is dead. After all, it was the monster who killed her, not me. And the monster was planted inside my body by the hospital director, so if anyone is to blame, it is all the hospital director’s fault!

“I could die if I want to, but that would be after we murdered the hospital director. After talking to Doctor Gao, I finally understood why that directive had always lingered in my mind—kill the hospital director. He is the culprit! This is all his fault! He must die!

“I started to pretend to cooperate with the hospital’s treatment. With Doctor Gao’s suggestion, I pretended to faint and started to act like the other version of myself. To have the doctor believe in my amateur acting, Doctor Gao suggested I murder the first doctor that entered my room. I followed his instructions. Technically, that was the first time I have killed someone.

“That must have sounded quite ironic. For the person whose hands were already filled with blood and could not have sinned deeper even if he tried, the first time I killed a man was to pretend to be a monster. At that time, I still did not understand that once a habit had been given the chance to grow, it would be hard to stop it from progressing in the future.

“The night doctors’ reaction was all within Doctor Gao’s prediction. It was the first time I was sent into the deepest part of hell when I was fully conscious. Opening that iron door that was painted black, I saw the monster who carried the whole hospital on its back. It moved inside the endless black fog. It had a face that was not that different from a normal human face. I did not dare look directly at it because my body was shaking nonstop. I did not want to be exposed due to fear.

“The doctors were talking beside them. They were saying things that I could not understand, something about only by taking on all the sin could one gain the corresponding power. Not everyone in the world was capable of taking so much sin. The hospital had been searching for that unique soul. Me, Doctor Gao, and that rag doll that reeked were all targets that they had chosen, but none of us fit the hospital’s requirement. Their real purpose appeared to be building a blood red city. That was something that they were preparing, so they needed a soul that could support and carry the sins of an entire city.

“I do not understand why they would want to do something like that, but I did not have much time to thing. The black fog invoked the monster inside my body, and it was slowly consuming the part of myself that remained.”

There were many words carved out on the walls. They were jumbled up together in a maddening entry. Most of them were too old and too stained by blood to make out. Chen Ge tried his best to decipher them, and the above was the best result he could achieve.

“I do not really quite understand what he is talking about. It is better for this kind of madman to be locked up. It is for the betterment of the society.” Xiao Sun stared at the bloody words on the wall, and his back broke out in cold sweat.

“What if they all started as normal humans like you and me?” Chen Ge had no affection to lose for that hospital. If they thought a person had the potential, they would use various methods to force them to go mad and then slowly initiate their ‘treatment’ on them. With his back on the wall, Chen Ge combined all the content of the diaries that he had read so far, and he noticed something that was quite surprising.

Doctor Gao consumed the door of the underground morgue, and he voluntarily chose to suffer all the sin that originated from the underground morgue. The morgue itself had no problem, but Doctor Gao made use of the Ghost Stories Society and its members to feed the morgue with sin. A person as clever as him had to know what that represents. It feels like he was actively trying to accept the sin of the entire the Ghost Stories Society.

Then we look at the ghost fetus. He has rebuilt Jiu Hong Apartments behind Xiang Nuan’s world and locked up the sins behind each building, using them to counter the black fog, forming a deserted island of humanity. This is, in a way, a precursor to the formation of a red city.

Lastly, it is the hospital’s way of operation. Through the records in this room, we know that Patient 0005 saw the monster that carried the sin of the entire hospital in the world behind the hospital’s door. It moved amid the black fog, and he exposed that the real purpose of the hospital was to create a red city.

Everyone is working toward the red city in their own way. What is so attractive about the red city that compels them to do so? And to create such a city, must there be someone who steps forward to suffer the sin of the whole city or it won’t work?

With this train of thought, Chen Ge suddenly turned to look at his hands.

Based on the missions given by the black phone, I have slowly taken steps toward a goal. Now that I look back, it seems like I have already involuntarily taken on all the sins and the pasts of my ghost employees that I have met along the way. Could that be the black phone’s real purpose? Is it trying to build a red city through me as well?