Gloomy Sunday

"Three courtyards, main rooms, side rooms, east and west wings, covered corridors, hanging flower curtains, ruyi gates, inverted eaves, and ridge poles... The attention to detail in this Haunted House is quite good. It's a faithful imitation of an ancient courtyard house, and it's very immersive." Gao Ruxue walked through the scene, stopping occasionally with a relaxed expression, offering a critique every now and then.

"Senior, we are in a Haunted House, not touring the gardens of Suzhou. Could you please consider my feelings?" The empty residence was filled with a gloomy, chilling aura; soul-summoning banners fluttered, and spirit money danced in the air. To He Shan, the Haunted House looked completely different than it did to Gao Ruxue. He was cautious, terrified that something might suddenly lunge out from the shadows in the corners. "We should hurry and find the exit. I have a bad feeling about this."

"Since we're here, we might as well have a good look. We're the ones playing the Haunted House, don't let the Haunted House play you."

"Don't you remember what the owner said before we came in? He told us to find the exit within fifteen minutes. I have a feeling that guy is wicked. If we can't escape within fifteen minutes, something terrifying is bound to happen!" He Shan tried to persuade Gao Ruxue, but unfortunately, she didn't care.

"There are only so many ways a Haunted House can scare you. At most, they have staff dress up as ghosts and chase us around. We aren't even afraid of real corpses, so why would we be afraid of living people?" Gao Ruxue wandered aimlessly through the corridor and pushed open the door to the West Wing Room on her left.

The Ghost Marriage venue was a standard courtyard structure. The main room was for the elders and the head of the household, the side rooms were for the eldest son and younger generations, and the wing rooms, located on either side of the main room, were for the servants and maids.

Pushing the door open, she found the tables and chairs overturned inside. The bedding on the bed had been torn apart, with cotton stuffing scattered everywhere, and a length of white silk hung from the center of the ceiling beam.

"Senior, I'll keep watch outside, you be careful..." Before He Shan could finish his sentence, Gao Ruxue dragged him into the room. He wore a bitter expression, staring at the white silk that swayed slowly despite the lack of wind, his body stiffening.

"Interesting. The white silk is 1.5 meters off the ground; that height isn't enough to hang anyone. The furniture is overturned, and there are still signs of a struggle on the floor. The Haunted House is deliberately creating the illusion of a forced suicide. The wing room is where the maids lived. If the vengeful ghost didn't even spare the servants who had no blood relation to the family, it seems they intended to torture everyone in this mansion to death." Gao Ruxue's expression was calm, though a hint of excitement hid in the corners of her eyes. "The design of this Haunted House is very meticulous; there might even be other hidden Easter eggs."

She rummaged through the cabinets and flipped over the bedding on the bed. Beneath the tattered quilt lay a paper-mache doll of a young girl.

"A paper doll lying on a living person's bed?" Gao Ruxue tossed the paper doll aside and lifted the bed board, but there was nothing underneath.

"The higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment. I overestimated this Haunted House. Let's go, the exit isn't in this room." She waved her hand and strode toward the outside.

Left alone in the room, He Shan looked at the paper doll on the floor, his teeth chattering. Perhaps it was just the angle, but he felt as if the paper doll was smiling at him.

"The Bronze Rooster bleeds, the paper doll opens its eyes... Wait for me! Senior!"

The door to the wing room clicked shut, and the white silk inside stopped swaying.

"Can you keep it down? What are you screaming for? A grown man acting as timid as a girl." Gao Ruxue shot He Shan a look and stopped at the edge of the corridor.

"It's not that I'm timid! This place really makes me uncomfortable. The longer I stay, the stronger that sense of unease becomes, as if the things I fear most in my heart are being dragged out!"

Hearing He Shan say this, Gao Ruxue paused for a moment. She also realized something was wrong.

A forensic doctor's most important traits are a steady heart and steady hands, yet when she spoke to He Shan just now, her tone had become noticeably irritable—something that had never happened to her before.

Could it be that I am afraid? I know everything in this Haunted House is fake, so why would I be afraid? A crack appeared in Gao Ruxue's psychological defenses. Neither of them had found the source of their fear, but under the influence of self-doubt and psychological suggestion, the seeds of terror were taking root and sprouting.

"Do you think this place really hides something unclean? He built this Haunted House on a mass grave, and it was renovated from an old hospital building..."

"Shut up! Isn't our school's underground morgue scarier than this place? You're a medical student, why are you so cowardly?" Gao Ruxue didn't care on the surface, but her speech grew faster and faster. She sat on the railing of the corridor and looked around. The ancient house, the mourning hall, the withered trees, the spirit money covering the ground—these things weren't actually that scary. "What exactly am I afraid of?"

Both of them were so drawn in by the eerie environment that they didn't notice the background track playing on a loop.

This forbidden melody, known as Gloomy Sunday, had subtly coiled itself around their hearts. Like a dark river eroding their souls, it was dragging them step by step into a bottomless abyss.

"Little Shan, how long have we been inside?"

"I don't know, but I feel like we definitely won't be able to run out within fifteen minutes!"

"Don't panic, I've thought about it carefully." Gao Ruxue didn't bother brushing off the dust and walked toward the other side of the corridor. "There is nothing to be afraid of in this Haunted House. The owner is simply giving us negative psychological suggestions. From the moment we entered, he kept emphasizing words like 'mass grave,' 'live burial,' and 'female ghost.' He wants us to scare ourselves. What makes this person even more cunning is that he set a time limit without saying exactly what we would encounter. This causes us to pressure ourselves and let our imaginations run wild, filling in the blanks with the most terrifying things."

"Then what do you suggest we do? I just feel like this Haunted House is different from others." He Shan was a very honest young man; he believed whatever his senior said.

"Your feeling isn't wrong. A normal Haunted House has professional actors playing ghosts and uses a bunch of equipment to create bloody, terrifying scenes for us to experience in a structured way. But this Haunted House didn't do that. He created the scene and let us explore freely. Without guidance or constraints, no one knows what will happen next."

"I understand what you mean. The unknown is the most terrifying thing." He Shan looked as if he had just had an epiphany.

"As things stand, that's the only explanation." Gao Ruxue frowned imperceptibly. "Alright, let's get ready to go to the next room."

The wing room was adjacent to the main room, where the head of the household lived. Pushing open the wooden door, they found hemp mourning robes discarded inside, and in the center of the hall sat a lacquered wooden coffin.

It was a red coffin with a large, double-happiness character pasted on it in white paper. On both sides, rows of paper dolls were kneeling neatly.

Their names were written on their backs, their faces painted with makeup, and their eyes seemed to possess a strange vitality. Their expressions varied, as if they were secretly staring at the two people standing in the doorway.