Horror Game Designer Chapter 26: Illness of Fear

The temperature in the building dropped. The newbies didn’t show any fear of facing the unknown danger. They followed the rules and set up the devices as soon as possible. The devices had their corresponding numbers. The centre was trying to use new methods to deal with various anomalies. The new devices were their weapons.

“Are these things useful?” Gao Ming asked.

“99 percent they are not, but even if there’s only a 1 percent hope, we’ll keep trying.” The driver gripped his fists. “Humans are humans because we can use tools.”

“The communication shut down when we opened the door to Room 405. The child and his parents once stayed here.” Bai Qiao switched on the flashlight and walked into the room. Bai Qiao had no effective weapon but still walked forward.

“Let me do it.” Gao Ming cut in. “You’re the core of the team. I’ll scout forward for us.”

The thin chains reacted. They were like moving tattoos as they appeared on Gao Ming’s wrist. He extended his left hand to push open the door.

A strange smell wafted out of the rented room. Five giant black plastic bags clogged the space beside the living room door. They contained some yellowed blankets and children's clothes.

“Be careful.” Bai Qiao raised the light to shine the way for Gao Ming.

There was a fight in the living room. The dining table was tipped over. The concrete floor had frozen rice clumps and broken plates.

“It was not a single-sided fight. Both parties have lost their rationality.” Gao Ming saw a piece of scalp stuck with short hairs. It should belong to a man. “Things were worse than I thought.”

Gao Ming used his finger to touch the mould on the wall. He looked around. Even though the doors and windows were closed, the room was very moist. Under the couch, behind the tv and inside the closet, moulds were growing.

“If this is my home, I’d be constantly angry too.” The driver split the newbies into three teams. One team followed Gao Ming into the room, one team stayed at the door, and the last was responsible for support.

“It’s normal not to feel good. However, to direct those emotions at your family is wrong.” Gao Ming walked to the other side of the living room. This place was not a home. It was filled with dirt and grim. The family was like the furniture in the house, all broken.

“His parents are both violent. They are like monsters attacking each other.” Gao Ming picked up the broken vase on the ground. The shard had blood and long strands of hair on them. “Did they become like this because of the anomaly or were they already like this?”

“Based on the elders, they were already fighting constantly before the anomaly.” Bai Qiao did not interrupt Gao Ming. She wanted to see what he was capable of.

“Even if there’s no anomaly, the tragedy might happen too…” Gao Ming wanted to find the connection between the game and real life. “Therefore, it was not the anomaly that found them, but they attracted the anomaly.”

Gao Ming entered the only room that was relatively clean. This appeared to be the child’s bedroom. The small room had a study table, a dresser and a single bed. Interestingly enough, the bed had the winter’s thick blanket even though it wasn’t even fall yet. The thick blanket was like the walls around the child’s heart. A few children’s clothes hung inside the dresser. The newspaper covered the bottom of the dresser. There was also a crayon box and a flashlight.

“The space down here can almost hide a child. When the kid was scared, he might choose to hide here.” Gao Ming knelt down. “An enclosed environment could give the kid a sense of security, as he had returned to his mom’s stomach.”

As Gao Ming grabbed the crayon box, an arm made from cloth reached out to grab it back. Bai Qiao and the newbie next to her became nervous. Gao Ming didn’t react. He pulled both the crayon box and the arm out.

“Such an ugly doll.” A handmade doll was hidden deep inside the dresser. It looked barely human. It was all patched-up and dirtied with paint.

“The neighbours said the couple didn’t bring the child with them, and the police couldn’t find the boy. Do you think he could have turned into this doll?” Gao Ming grabbed the doll by its neck and tied its hands together.

“Now is not the time for a ghost story.” Bai Qiao frowned. Gao Ming hadn’t received formal training, so everything he did was wrong.

Gao Ming touched the doll, and he didn’t feel anything weird. He opened the crayon box and saw that someone had written on the lid, “I wish to hide at a place where no one can find me.”

“It looks like the anomaly has fulfilled the kid’s wish.” Gao Ming thought back to his birthday wish. He suddenly felt like the anomalies were not so bad. They just wanted to help people, albeit in a gory way.

A quick search of 405 was completed. The newbies behind Gao Ming took samples of everything in the house, including the mould.

“Be careful. This might not be a Level 1 anomaly.” After a quick warning, Gao Ming sat on the kid’s bed to think. He had made a missing child game before. The game was called Hide and Seek. The players would play with seven ghosts and one real kid. The game would be cleared when the real kid was found. However, that game didn’t match this anomaly. In this anomaly, it was the parents, and not the ghosts, who traumatised the kid.

“The parents fight each other and even beat the kid. It’s little wonder there’s something unusual with the kid’s mind.” Gao Ming encountered many criminals at the prison with a bad childhood upbringing. “In this kind of family, the kid will only proceed to two extremes. They’ll either be extremely cowardly or extremely violent. From the scene, the kid here should be the former.”

Everyone loved an obedient child, but enforced obedience would only break a child. The most direct expression would be cowardice. He was afraid of being scolded, so he was scared to do anything. Gao Ming curled up his body and tried to sit in the middle of the blanket castle.

“The parents threw things around in the living and hit each other. The child was not protected and might be attacked instead. The emotion he would have the most would be… fear.”

Gao Ming thought back to the doodles he saw on the wall. When the parents started to argue, many red characters crawled out of them. They dispatched their body parts and crowded around the kid.

“Perhaps the red characters are a way for the kid to express fear.” Another game appeared in Gao Ming’s mind. That game was called Illness of Fear. The game had no actual ghost or gory scenes, but the game was more threatening than normal horror games.

The game was very simple. One day, the Illness of Fear suddenly broke out and spread through the city. Everyone was infected.