Time slipped by as night descended upon the haunted house.
Sometime in the deep hours, a strange sound suddenly emerged from the otherwise silent haunted house — like someone sawing through something.
In the employee break room,
He rolled over and pressed a pillow against his head, but the peculiar noise kept worming its way into his ears.
"Am I dreaming? What the hell is making that sound?"
Every prop inside this haunted house had been crafted or modified by Chen Ge's own hands. He knew full well that none of them produced a sound like sawing wood.
After six or seven hours of sleep, his head was still a little foggy. Chen Ge pinched his thigh hard, pulled on his clothes, and took a hammer out of his toolbox.
He flicked on his flashlight and pushed open the break room door.
The haunted house at night was many times more terrifying than during the day. Chen Ge leaned against the doorframe, not in any hurry to step out.
"It can't be a burglar — only an idiot would come stealing from a haunted house in the middle of the night. And it can't be rats — they gnaw at wood with a faint, splintery sound, nothing this clear." Having ruled out the two options any normal person would think of, Chen Ge began entertaining more outlandish possibilities: "Could it be the monster from the mirror?"
Due to a shortage of fabric, he hadn't managed to cover all the mirrors in the Midnight Pursuit scene on the third floor.
He stared into the pitch-black corridor, took a few steps back, and tucked the cloth doll left behind by his parents against his body before he dared walk through the door.
The sound was coming from above. Chen Ge climbed the stairs floor by floor and finally stopped outside the entrance to the Midnight Pursuit scene.
"Sure enough, it's coming from in here. The question is whether it's the lingering spirit of the Ping'an Apartments victims or something dirty from the mirrors." Standing at the door, Chen Ge hesitated slightly. Honestly, even he didn't want to enter a horror scene in the dead of night.
Tormented by the cutting sounds from within, Chen Ge tightened his grip on the hammer's handle. "I hold the title of Favored by Vicious Spirits, and I've earned the goodwill of the Ping'an Apartments victims. Even if I run into something nasty from the mirrors in the Midnight Pursuit scene, it shouldn't be able to do anything to me."
He recalled the scene where the mirror monster had knocked Heshan unconscious — it had been on the verge of succeeding before
"Let me take a look. I'm already locked in a life-or-death standoff with the mirror monster anyway. The more I learn about it, the better my chances of dealing with it." Chen Ge was perfectly calm. He understood clearly that what he truly feared wasn't the monster itself, but the feeling of confronting the unknown.
He pushed open the entrance to the Midnight Pursuit scene. A faint musty smell drifted through the air. This place was looking more and more like the Ping'an Apartments.
The doors along the corridor on both sides hung half-open, half-closed. Chen Ge raised his phone in one hand and gripped the hammer in the other as he stepped inside.
The sawing sound grew steadily louder. Chen Ge knew he was closing in on the truth.
He traversed the entire third floor and finally stopped in front of a single door. He was certain that eerie sound was coming from this room.
The door wasn't fully shut. Chen Ge reached out and grabbed the lock. The chill that bit into his hand sobered him up instantly.
His leg muscles tensed, and he threw the door open.