Horror Game Designer Chapter 38: Toys

“There are too many things scarier than ghosts.” Gao Ming took out a few paper notes. “Can you bring us to your home later?”

“Sure, but my place is a bit cramped.” The middle-aged woman looked at the money and then at Yan Hua. She looked embarrassed.

“The two of you can stay here.” Gao Ming had Yan Hua and Zhu Suisui stay at the shop. He saw the middle-aged woman order Yun Tun noodles but didn’t eat any. Gao Ming told the waitress, “Get me two more bowls of noodles.”

“No, no.” The woman shook her hands. “This is not for my family. I’m buying it for someone else.”

Gao Ming didn’t insist. When Xuan Wen arrived, they led Wan Qiu to follow the middle-aged woman.

“You can call me Auntie Pang. Si Sui Street Apartments has four buildings, A, B, C, and D. My home is at Building B.” The woman carried her child and started to complain. “There used to be a path connecting the buildings from within, but we can’t use that now.”

“Why?”

“The whole Building A is sealed off. I heard that the remaining tenants have all moved. It’s an empty building now.” The woman shook her body to comfort the child. “If you ask me, those people are crazy! Where are ghosts in this world? If they have the energy to do this, they should work on fixing the economy of this country! Staying in a haunted house is better than being homeless!”

“Building A has been cleared?!” Based on the info in Bai Xiao’s computer, the anomaly started with a family in Building A.

“There weren’t many tenants in Building A anyways. The day before last, some strange people came to Building B and persuaded us to move as well.” The middle-aged woman carried the child and the noodles. “Life is getting harder, but the problem is you don’t even know why.”

The group walked on the pot-holed Si Sui Street and avoided Building A to reach another entrance to Si Sui Street Apartments. Just standing outside, Gao Ming felt uncomfortable. His body felt wrapped in a thin layer of shadow. Wan Qiu even grabbed Gao Ming and Xuan Wen’s sleeves, showing his unwillingness to go further.

The nine-story tall building had faded yellow paint. Perhaps this place used to house happiness, but the outer walls were covered in grime. Every window had a steel grille, lending the place the look of a prison. Even standing outside felt oppressive, much less living inside.

“Why are we stopping?” The middle-aged woman asked. She was already used to this. “There is some trash in the corridor, so be careful.”

The apartment was huge. It was built decades ago to situate workers hired from outside. Each floor had a very long corridor, and the houses lined both sides. However, one room did not serve one household. A room could be split into more partitions with iron webs and steel boards. The foreign workers were forced to survive in these cramped spaces. It was inevitable for there to be conflict.

“Staying here for too long and you’ll get sick eventually.” Gao Ming walked to the end of the corridor and pushed open the window. He could see the other building from it. It was totally silent, with no signs of life. Gao Ming was about to turn when he caught something from the corner of his eyes.

He whipped his head around. There was a family of four in the building opposite. They stood in a line by the window and looked at him with the same expression. The four were dressed in a manner that didn’t fit the times. The elder’s lips appeared to be bleeding.

“That is Building A.” The middle-aged woman walked over. “In the past, Buildings A and B used to be connected. You could walk between the two through the corridors, but you can’t do that now.” She pointed at the cement wall at the corner, “The corridors were sealed up by the tenants a few years ago. They left only floors 5 and 9 open, but those two paths were sealed off by the police a few days ago.”

“Floors 5 and 9…” Gao Ming turned back to look at Building A, and the family of four was gone.

“You should stay away from the cement wall. I heard from the old tenants that a killer once hid their victims inside the wall. You might be touching the face of a victim now.” The woman waved for Gao Ming to go over. “There are left and right corridors on each floor. The elevator has been broken for years. You better don’t use the left corridor. Some of the tenants are too lazy to go to the public restroom at the end of the corridor, so they relieved themselves in the corridor.”

The middle-aged woman stomped her feet heavily as she reached the fifth floor as if telling people she had returned. She put down the child and searched for the key. She slowly opened the bright red door.

“Welcome.”

Gao Ming finally understood why the middle-aged woman didn’t want Yan Hua to come. The 30-plus cubic metres home was filled with stuff. The shoes of children and adults were stacked together. The cupboard had the doors torn open. It was stuffed with many things like textbooks, bags and miscellaneous trash in plastic bags. Across the closet was the double-layer steel bedframe. The clothes were pushed to the end of the bed. The blankets were squeezed together. There were yellow stains on them.

The distance between the bed and closet was barely enough for an adult. In the corner between the end of the bed and the corner of the closest was a giant stuffed doll.

Seeing their mother, the bedframe shook. Two kids around 4 poked their heads out from the upper bed. They didn’t dare to get down.

“Stop playing. We have guests.” The woman poured the noodles into a bowl. Strangely enough, she didn’t eat and she didn’t allow the children to eat either. She placed the bowl on a chair and moved the chair to the middle of the room. The children looked at the food hungrily but didn’t dare to say anything.

“Sit, please.” The middle-aged woman then walked to the other room. The outer room was the dining and bedroom. The smaller inner room was worse. Next to the toilet was the stove and water tank. Cooking oil and condiment bottles were placed on the same rack as shampoos and detergent. The drain was stuck with yellow broken hair, rotten vegetables and oil.

“Where can we even sit?” Gao Ming tried to move into the room. The woman kicked the children’s toys away and barely made space for them.

“Look at the entire East City. No one has a better deal for their home than me.”

“I don’t think that’s the issue here.” Gao Ming noticed Wan Qiu was acting strangely. He kept shaking. “You said this is a haunted house. What happened here?”

The woman didn’t mind her kids and said openly, “A guy hanged himself here. Before he died, he killed his two kids.”

Even Gao Ming felt uncomfortable hearing that, but the woman and the two kids in bed didn’t react in any way.

“Many units here have a history, but many people like to move here because the rental is low.” The woman explained, “It’s the worst if you stay next to a haunted house. The rental won’t be low, but you’ll be haunted too!”

When the woman said that, her eyes wandered to the left. She subconsciously looked at the stuffed doll in the corner.

Through her expressions, Gao Ming could see that the woman was hiding something. It was not that she was not afraid of death, but she knew that the ghosts wouldn’t harm her.

“Let’s… go…” Wan Qiu, who had been silent, yanked on Gao Ming’s sleeve.

Xuan Wen acted weirdly too. She patted Gao Ming’s shoulders and silently walked out. She had no smiles.

“Are you leaving? You’ve paid me. Stay longer.” The woman grabbed the front door. She slowly closed the door but blocked it from closing fully.

“We’re going to see the other places.” Gao Ming told the woman. As he moved his eyes away, he saw a giant doll crawling on the dirty ground behind the middle-aged woman.