It took Brother Feng a good ten seconds to recover. Pointing weakly toward the bathroom, he whispered, "The mirror…"
Those two simple words seemed to carry a peculiar sort of magic.
The mirror on the wall had been smashed to pieces, shards of glass scattered everywhere.
After Heshan had passed out earlier, Chen Ge had covered all the mirrors in the haunted house with black cloth. Things had quieted down for a while after that. Now with the new scene unlocked, he'd let his guard down for just a moment, and this was the result.
For any entertainment venue, once it got tagged with a safety-hazard label, continuing operations became incredibly difficult. Chen Ge understood this all too well.
He picked up a shard from the floor and stared at his own reflection in it. "This thing has to be dealt with—fast."
Chess pieces come in black and white; people come in good and evil. The same logic applied to ghosts and monsters.
Whatever lived inside that mirror harbored clear malice toward the living. Chen Ge could sense that much. It was aggressively hostile, driven by some unspeakable purpose.
Heshan fainting, Brother Feng smashing the mirror in terror—these two "incidents" had sounded a alarm bell in Chen Ge's mind, filling him with a sense of urgency.
Covering mirrors with black cloth was no long-term solution. The thing in the mirror had already become an obstacle to the haunted house's rapid growth.
The mirror was broken. Nothing suspicious remained in the bathroom. After circling the room once, Chen Ge walked back out.
He gripped the iron hammer in his hand and sat down beside Brother Feng. "Can you tell me what just happened?"
After a few minutes of rest, Brother Feng's breathing finally steadied, though his face was still deathly pale. "I can't really explain it clearly."
"That's fine. Just say whatever comes to mind." Chen Ge fixed his gaze on Brother Feng. Unlike Heshan, who had simply been scared into unconsciousness, this guy's psychological resilience was considerably stronger—at least he had fought back.
Brother Feng tried to sit up. His color had improved somewhat, but the fear in his eyes hadn't diminished in the slightest. "I was being chased by one of your staff members, and I ducked into this room in a panic. At first everything was fine, but then I started hearing someone calling my name."
"Did it say your name?"
"No, but I could feel that it was calling me." Brother Feng ran his hands through his hair. "The voice was coming from inside this room. It took me a long time to figure out exactly where it was coming from."
At this point, the terror in his eyes deepened. "The voice was coming from the mirror in the bathroom. I could sort of hear it, but not clearly. I couldn't make out what it was saying—I just knew it was about me."
"And then?" Chen Ge committed every word Brother Feng said to memory. This firsthand experience would help him gain a deeper understanding of the monster in the mirror.
"After that, I walked up to the mirror, wanting to figure out what was going on. I tried to take the mirror off the wall, but the moment I touched it, the voice in my ear became much louder. My mind started getting fuzzy. I stared at my own reflection, and the longer I looked, the less it felt like me." Brother Feng reached the critical part. He shot a fearful glance toward the bathroom, as though some monster might leap out at any moment. "I was standing in front of the mirror, and the person reflected back wasn't me. Normally, I'd have been terrified and wanted to get away. But what scares me the most now, looking back, is what happened next."
"What happened?"
Brothing Feng said with absolute seriousness, "At that moment, I didn't feel a shred of fear or dread. Everything seemed perfectly normal. My body started leaning toward the mirror, my face almost pressing against the glass. I could see the face in the mirror moving toward me too. It was an exact copy of mine, yet it felt completely alien. I couldn't say what was wrong, but that face didn't belong to me. My thoughts grew more and more muddled. My brain didn't issue any commands, yet my hand pressed flat against the mirror's surface. I felt like I wanted to crawl into the mirror—no, that's not right. It was more like I was being locked inside the mirror, struggling to get out."
During his nightmare-level daily mission, Chen Ge had experienced something similar. When he reviewed the phone footage, his body had been slowly leaning toward the mirror just the same. "So how did you break free?"
"It was the doll again." Brother Feng gave Chen Ge an unexpected answer. "At that point, I had no idea what I was doing. When my face was almost touching the mirror's surface, I suddenly saw through the mirror that there was a cloth doll lying on the floor behind me."
"A doll?"
"Yeah. Same kind of doll I'd seen in other rooms in the building. About palm-sized, with a stitched-on beard." Brother Feng nodded and gestured with both hands to indicate the size. "Suddenly noticing a doll behind me, I started to get scared. Fear kind of blazed up inside me like fire. All I could think was: get out, now. But my body wouldn't obey. My will and my body started fighting each other—it felt exactly like sleep paralysis."
Brother Feng's tone was matter-of-fact, but Chen Ge could hear the danger woven through every word.
"After that, I suddenly heard Heshan shouting from the second floor, and I snapped awake, like coming out of a dream." The fear in his eyes had faded considerably. "I was so scared I just grabbed the nearest chair and smashed the mirror to bits. It was pure instinct. Your haunted house is too terrifying—I'd completely forgotten I was just a visitor."
At this point, Brother Feng seemed to remember something. He waved his hand at Chen Ge. "Everything I told you is the truth. I'm not exaggerating or trying to deflect blame. I'll pay for the mirror, full price."
"Don't worry about the mirror. The fact that you didn't get hurt is the best outcome for me." Chen Ge stood up and paced the room. "Where's the doll you saw?"
Brother Feng hesitated. "I think I kicked it under the bed. That's one of your props too, right? Sorry about that."
Chen Ge lifted the bed skirt and pulled out the doll, its surface marked with footprints. He brushed the dust off. "You should thank this doll. It just saved your life."
"The doll saved me? All right… thanks." Brother Feng shrank back, his face growing paler by the second. He had a feeling this haunted house owner wasn't quite right in the head, but he was in no position to make demands, so he managed a half-hearted "thank you."
"What if I told you that everything you just experienced wasn't haunted-house props or special effects, but something that truly exists?" Wearing a bloodstained doctor's coat and cradling a tattered cloth doll in his arms, Chen Ge tilted his head and studied the college student in front of him.
Poor Brother Feng—nearly six foot three, yet curled up in the corner of the bed hugging his knees like a frightened girl, his face a picture of helplessness. "So do you think I should say I believe you? Or that I don't?"