94 Dangerous Game

 

‘The woman is the oldest of the 3 and even in this haunted house, she would respond to her child’s cries for help. Relatively speaking, she at least has that humane quality retained in her. She will still look after her family.

‘The toddler will make a loud fuss whenever he sees me. Assuming that I am currently a ghost, it’s perfectly normal for a child to see me and cry though.

‘Finally, there is the boy. He is in a patient’s outfit and has his movement limited. Looks like he’s most ill. In his family’s eyes, he’s probably the most abnormal.’ Not everything was what it appeared. Whether a scenario was defined as normal or not depended fully on its environments. The knife chipped on the bedroom door. Han Fei hurried to the bedside. He asked urgently, “Can you hear me?” With clear threats on his tail, now was not the time to be gentle. However even after he shook the boy and gave him a slap on his face, Han Fei still got no response from the boy.

“There are pills scattered around the bed and blood stains on the ground. These are clear signs of conflict.” Han Fei looked around and he spotted a change of clothes, a patient’s record and discharge form on the study table.

‘Second Mental Health Centre?’

“The patient suffers from unreasonable anxiety, and pain. He reports occasional bouts of acoasm and hallucinations. His situation has not improved despite multiple therapy sessions.” Flipping through the pages, Han Fei finally found the thing he was looking for. “The patient has a history of childhood trauma. He was abused by his father and his only protector was his mother. According to the patient, he witnessed his father murder a pair of mother and daughter in the nursery. The father proceeded to dismember the victims inside the bathroom before hiding the carcasses inside the kitchen fridge.

“It was since then that the patient’s mental state became unstable. He claimed that he could see ghosts and souls. After his mother died, his father remarried. During his stay with his new family, the patient’s condition worsened. He was found committing many dangerous behaviors during this period. Another trauma came when his father passed away. The patient claims that he can see his parents’ soul and other ghosts residing inside his house. He also insisted that there is a vicious demon possessing his younger stepbrother.

“Based on the patient’s explanation, his younger brother would attract the attention of dead souls and passing monsters, he’s the source of all tragedy. The patient’s various inexplicable behaviors were supposedly meant to chase the ghosts away. He believed that once he kills all the ghosts, the demon hiding inside his younger brother will appear. Only by eliminating this true demon that his life can return to normal.

“The patient operates on his own set of reasons. He shattered the mirror because he saw a ghost inside it; he bound the fridge with ropes because he believed the flesh inside the fridge will come alive at night; there is a reason behind his every action. We suspect this aberrant worldview is formed from the patient’s prolonged exposure to immense stress and untreated hallucinosis…”

The second half of the report was torn apart. It probably would have described the ending of this strange family.

Han Fei took some time to parse the wealth of information he had just been exposed to.

In the boy’s patient record, it stated that the patient believed he witnessed his father commit murders inside the bedroom, dismember the bodies inside the bathroom and then hide them inside the kitchen fridge. That corresponded to the 3 most dangerous locales in Room 1091, the bedroom where the toddler was, the bathroom where the banshee with the black hair was and the kitchen where the headless carcass was.

The nursery housed the largest number of ghosts, probably because in the boy’s mind, it was the source of everything. The tragedy began after his father started killing people inside the bedroom.

The hair that oozed out from the bathroom could be a representation for another scene the patient had witnessed. After the father dealt with the victims, their hair would have floated in their own pools of blood.

The father once used the fridge to hide the dead bodies so it was not that unnatural for the patient to imagine the frozen meat inside it coming alive to haunt the living residents. Underneath the absurdity of the situation, there was a logic to everything.

Since the mission was constructed from the previous manager’s memories, Han Fei could basically confirm that the sleeping brother was indeed the previous manager. Room 1091 and its horrors were modelled after his mental history.

‘Some studies suggest that supernatural sightings are nothing more than emotional stress manifestations of one’s subconscious. In this case though, these manifestations and the threat they pose cannot have been realer. The patient’s father used the nursery for killing, the bathroom for butchering and the kitchen for storing. Viewed from the patient’s perspective, one can easily see how the bedroom can be a womb for the ghosts and monsters to linger, the bathroom a place where they can be injured or killed, and the fridge in the kitchen a cage to detain them. Perhaps I can make use of these findings to help me accomplish my own goal.’

The knife cleaved through the wooden door. The mother in the stained apron charged at Han Fei. Han Fei grabbed the chair to block the attack and then purposely jumped onto the bed. Even in the throes of her madness, the mother did not lose her maternal instinct. She stopped attacking for fear of accidentally injuring her child. However, the girl’s head abandoned Han Fei immediately and turned her aggression onto the sleeping boy once she entered the bedroom. ‘The mother and toddler will focus on me but the other ghosts will target the boy first?’

This discovery inspired Han Fei. Finally, something to take the heat off him. “Your son is being bullied by a house full of ghosts and all you can think of is to come after me?!” Han Fei pushed against the chair and sent the woman sprawling to the ground. He swiped the knife while she was down. He saw off the ropes that bound the boy. While he did that, the woman jumped on his back and bit into his neck. Han Fei’s flesh tore open but the man gritted his teeth and powered on. When he was done, he swung his elbow back and stunned the woman with a shot to the side of her head. Han Fei quickly used the ropes to tie up the woman and bound her to the bedpost.

Picking up the remaining rope and knife, Han Fei ran out from the bedroom. By then the black hair had leaked out from the bathroom into the living room. It crawled on the floor like black briar. Han Fei stepped gingerly around the hair and picked his way into the kitchen. Before the fridge could open, he wrapped the rope securely around it. ‘No wonder the boy was admitted into a mental hospital. These actions would definitely appear senseless to others.’

After the knot was made, Han Fei locked the door and started to search the kitchen for useful items. About 5 minutes later, a child and a woman’s wails came from outside the kitchen. Han Fei leaped towards the door and eased open a gap to look. The whole Room 1091 was now overgrown with black hair. Both humans and ghosts were swallowed by it. The black hair slithered into the kitchen and Han Fei was not spared from the unfortunate fate.