Something Seems Genuinely Wrong

Monkey hid alone on the second-floor staircase, keeping a constant watch on the movements around him.

He stood in the corner, able to see both the third-floor and second-floor corridor entrances simultaneously; no matter which direction the killer came from, he would be able to flee at top speed.

The lighting in the Haunted House seemed to have dimmed further, and in the pitch-black corridor, the eerie background music made one's heart race with panic.

Monkey pinched himself hard, then took a deep breath. As a medical student, he knew well that slight pain and sufficient oxygen could help a person calm down quickly.

"The timing of the monster's appearance is suspicious. The moment Lao Zhao discovered there was an eighth person among us, the monster accelerated and charged over. This shouldn't be a coincidence." He recalled everything that had just happened in his mind: "After Lao Zhao discovered the extra person, everyone panicked. If Feng Ge had taken out his phone at that moment to look clearly at everyone's faces, we definitely could have identified the eighth person. We missed the first opportunity. After the monster charged, if everyone had stood their ground instead of being scared, we wouldn't have been scattered. We missed the second opportunity."

Monkey sighed softly: "Although everyone was scared when the monster charged, it wasn't enough to make us run. Everything happened because of the first person who fled. He set the precedent and disrupted our thinking. If my guess is correct, the first person to run must be the extra one. I heard Xiao Hui scream just now; she was the second to run and was closest to that person, which indirectly proves my speculation is correct."

A wry smile appeared on his face. Guessing correctly was one thing, but being afraid was another. Hiding alone in such a gloomy and terrifying environment, he felt a chill down his back: "The monster and the extra eighth person are working together, using the psychology of deserters and herd mentality to spread fear, scatter us, and then pick us off one by one. Is it really necessary to elevate things to a strategic level just to scare people?"

Monkey was very smart, but he was also very timid; he never dared to enter or leave the laboratory alone back at school: "I must tell Feng Ge and the others this news quickly and then regroup with them."

He took out his phone, the faint light of the screen illuminating the space behind him, and he suddenly shuddered: "How did this ragdoll get into the stairwell? Didn't I leave it in the third-floor hallway?"

Afraid of attracting the monster, Monkey didn't dare turn on his flashlight. He turned up the screen brightness and aimed it at the wall, where a tattered doll lay flat.

"Did someone accidentally kick it downstairs while running?" After thinking it over, Monkey could only come up with this one explanation. The ragdoll was stuffed with paper and had no mechanical parts, so it certainly couldn't be remote-controlled: "It looks quite creepy."

Other than being worn out, there was nothing particularly terrifying about the doll, but looking at it for too long gave one a strange feeling, as if it were alive.

Monkey found it inexplicable himself. He stared at the doll on the ground, feeling that it wasn't a toy, but a pitiful little girl carrying a sense of grievance.

"It must be an illusion. I need to stay away from this thing. Playing in a Haunted House is about to give me psychological issues." Monkey dialed Feng Ge's number, and the ringtone echoed through the third-floor corridor.

"Is he on the third floor? Or did he accidentally drop his phone like Lao Zhao?"

The sound of the phone ringing in the Haunted House inexplicably became even more terrifying.

Monkey didn't hang up; he put the phone in his pocket and quietly went to the third floor. He hid at the corridor entrance and looked inside; Feng Ge's phone was just lying there in the hallway.

"Neither Lao Zhao nor Feng Ge has their phone on them. I can only try the others." Monkey stood alone at the third-floor stairwell, looking at the empty corridor and the doors swinging open and shut in the wind, his legs turning to jelly from fear.

He frantically scrolled through the screen, looking for other people's numbers, but just then, his phone vibrated and suddenly rang.

"Damn! What's going on!" He looked down and saw someone was calling him: "Shi Ling? Why is she looking for me? Could it be that she's alone too?"

In front of girls, Monkey always acted fearless; this was a common trait among most hot-blooded youths: "Shi Ling, did you get separated from everyone? Where are you now? I'll come find you."

"I've been locked in a room on the third floor. I didn't see the specific door number clearly. You guys need to come over quickly; there's something wrong with this room!" Shi Ling was a very quiet girl, but her tone was urgent now, as if she were about to cry, and he didn't know what she had encountered.

"Tell me slowly, how did you get locked in a room? The individual rooms on both sides of the corridor shouldn't be lockable, right?" Monkey said while walking down the corridor, trying to determine Shi Ling's location through the sound.

"I don't know! After I hid inside and closed the door, it wouldn't open again! And this room is different from the others; there are two dolls sitting side-by-side in the center of the room!"

"Sitting?!" At the mention of dolls, Monkey's hair stood on end. He knew very well how sinister the dolls in this Haunted House were.

"Hurry up and come!" Shi Ling's voice gradually became shrill, as if she were on the verge of losing control.

"Right away! You stay away from those dolls first. Do as He Shan said earlier and don't touch anything in the room. I suspect that the dolls..." Monkey stopped halfway, staring blankly in front of him. Half a meter from his toes lay a ragdoll.

He almost suppressed the urge to smash his phone and moved to the side of the doll.

"Long hair, a painful and remorseful expression. It looks different from the one in the stairwell; it feels much more mature than that one." After saying this, Monkey's eyes widened: "What the hell? Why can I analyze so much from a doll? Am I hallucinating from fear? Or is this doll made too realistically? I keep feeling like they are living people, possessing their own emotions."

"Now is not the time to think about this. As long as the doll in front of me is different from the one in the stairwell, it at least means these dolls can't move on their own. Things haven't reached the worst-case scenario yet. My top priority now is to rescue Shi Ling." Shaking his head, Monkey cheered himself on: "I'm purely scaring myself. If the doll from the stairwell had chased me, how could she appear in front of me? She should be behind me. It seems this is just a little trick by the Haunted House owner; there's no need to be afraid at all."

After he finished speaking, he guiltily glanced behind him: "I told you, there's no need..."

Monkey's gaze froze one meter behind him, and the rest of his sentence was choked back, because a doll was lying there quietly.