Outside the window, rain poured down.
Anthony sat blankly in his chair, staring at the mess before him.
Everything had gone wrong.
That was what he thought.
His life had become a complete disaster. His investment had failed, and his wife had left him because she suspected he was having an affair... an affair?
How ridiculous.
Anthony's lips twitched. He had seen the man beside his wife that night, yet she still denied it and turned the accusation back on him.
Women, oh, women. Even when they were wrong, they acted as if they were right.
She had not always been like this. Anthony still remembered those wonderful early days of their marriage, how sweet their life had been. How much she had loved him. But now, everything had changed. She had become petty, constantly telling him what to do.
She hadn't been like this before. Or were all women like this? Before marriage, they went along with everything you wanted, then showed a completely different face afterward? He admitted his investment had not gone well, but wasn't failure as much a part of business as success? It wasn't as though he had never succeeded before. Or did his wife consider his successes insignificant while finding his failures intolerable?
Thud!
The slam of the front door came from outside. Anthony rose and looked through the window, only to see his wife striding away from the house through the storm, suitcase in hand. She left with such resolve, climbing straight into the carriage.
She did not even turn to look at him!
Anthony had never felt more heartbroken. Those once-sweet memories now seemed to have become poison. The lovelier his wife was in his memories, the more cruel reality appeared by contrast.
In that moment, all hope deserted him.
His investment had failed, and even his wife had abandoned him. What was the point of living?
Anthony stood up and stared at the rope before him, swaying in the air. His mind was utterly calm. Standing on the chair, he even took a moment to adjust the rope before slipping his head into it without hesitation.
Then he kicked the chair over.
Clatter.
The rope around his neck snapped taut, and Anthony's eyes flew wide.
What was he doing?
He opened his mouth, desperately trying to breathe, but no air entered his lungs. Instead, he felt suffocation, despair, and encroaching darkness. Everything around him seemed to sway, growing dimmer. The shadows in the already gloomy room seemed to turn into living things, ready to swallow him whole...
Just as Anthony's sanity was about to reach its breaking point, a voice sounded beside his ear.
"I'll leave it to you, Katie."
"All right, Mr. Detective."
As that voice rang out, Anthony suddenly felt a tremendous impact strike his body, so powerful that he almost vomited up his insides. It felt as though a charging warhorse had slammed into him. Then came a sensation of weightlessness. The world before him flipped upside down and spun wildly before his body crashed hard into a wall.
Thud!
The hard, cold surface against his back and the searing pain brought Anthony to his senses.
The despair and suffering surrounding him vanished with that blow. He fell to the floor, shook his head, and opened his eyes again. Li Wei and Katie stood a short distance away, watching him.
"Are you all right, Mr. Anthony?"
"I... honestly, not really."
Anthony staggered to his feet and pressed a hand to his forehead. He could still feel that pain, despair, and sorrow.
It left him with a sorrow he could find no words for.
"Fortunately, I'm not particularly interested in getting married right now."
At his utterly unrelated answer, Li Wei and Katie exchanged puzzled looks.
"This sounds very much like a Substitute Ghost."
A moment later, after hearing Anthony's account, Li Wei spoke.
"A Substitute Ghost?"
"A legend I heard before."
Li Wei casually made something up.
"I heard that the souls of people who drown don't leave this world. Instead, they're bound beneath the water until they find a new victim and drag them underwater to drown. That victim's soul takes their place, trapped beneath the water, while their own soul can finally rest."
"That's..."
At Li Wei's words, Katie and Anthony both looked somewhat stunned. Clearly, neither had heard a ghost story like that before.
"Is that true?"
"That, I don't know."
Li Wei shook his head.
"Just like the stories about this house being haunted, they're only stories. Whether they're really just stories is something you won't know until you experience it yourself."
"I'd rather not."
Remembering what had just happened, even Anthony's expression grew noticeably stiff. He reached up to touch his neck-he could still feel the marks left behind.
"It was nothing but pain and despair. I certainly don't want to end up like that."
Katie nodded in agreement with Anthony's feelings. Her experience had been much the same. After the darkness swallowed her, she had felt herself become someone else entirely: a wife with a husband and two children, living together as a happy family. Yet her husband's temper had grown increasingly violent and strange. In the end, Katie had watched helplessly as he killed both children, then raised his blade against her.
Fortunately, Li Wei had arrived and stopped it all, allowing Katie to separate from that Doll.
So those had not been her experiences, but the Doll's memories...
And that Doll...
Katie glanced at the Doll lying beside the wall. Its lifeless glass eyes stared at her, making her skin crawl.
"This really caught me off guard. Are these the... strange occurrences you mentioned, Mr. Li Wei?"
Until now, Anthony had always worn a playful grin. Whether that was a disguise or simply his personality was unclear, but he evidently no longer had the heart for such a performance.
"If I'm right, this might only be the appetizer."
"The appetizer?"
"That's right."
Li Wei nodded.
"Think of this house as a heavily guarded castle. We've only reached its outermost edge. What happened to you was more like accidentally falling into the moat. It wasn't even enough to alert the guards."
"Then that moat must have some very rough waters."
Anthony's smile was painfully stiff, and no wonder. The appetizer alone had nearly killed them... without them even realizing it.
He did not know what this was. He had never seen anything like it before. If Li Wei and Katie had not helped him just now, he would already have died.
Without a sound.
"I don't really want to know what the guards inside are like."
Katie muttered softly and hid behind Li Wei.
"Unfortunately, unless we find the ruler of this castle and defeat it, we probably won't be getting out."
Li Wei was helpless, too.
"All I can hope now is that those soldiers follow my orders and burn this house down before dark. That might give us a chance to change things. For now, though, let's keep looking for the others."
The room where Katie had been "murdered" was a second-floor bedroom. The place where Anthony had "killed himself" was the third-floor attic. Li Wei had already visited the first floor.
The only place they had not visited yet was...
The cellar.
Li Wei led Katie and Anthony back to the first floor. For Anthony, the journey was every bit as unsettling as his first visit to the Haunted House.
"Mr. Li Wei."
Li Wei turned to find Anthony standing beside him, still wearing his usual irreverent smile. This time, however, it looked rather stiff.
"Perhaps I was seeing things, but I thought I just saw that maid... move?"
As he spoke, Anthony shifted his eyes, signaling for Li Wei to look toward the kitchen stove nearby. A maid Doll stood there, holding a knife in one hand and a potato in the other, apparently peeling it. Yet now the Doll had raised her head and was staring expressionlessly at Anthony.
"Ignore her. Just pretend you didn't see anything."
Li Wei looked away.
"By the way, which way is the cellar?"
After saying that, Li Wei looked around again. The others followed his gaze, and all of them froze.
At that moment, a maid Doll stood at the other end of the corridor, holding out a hand to point toward the corner.
"Thank you."
Holding the brim of his hat, Li Wei nodded to the maid Doll, then headed toward the corner. Katie and Anthony hesitated before following him. As they passed the maid Doll, both paused, then nodded to her as well.
"Thank you."
Perhaps it was their imagination, but when they looked up again after thanking her, they saw the maid Doll staring at them, a faint smile appearing on her previously expressionless face.
A chill shot up both their spines. They hurried forward, returning to Li Wei's side.
Then Katie instinctively glanced back.
"...That maid is gone."
"Ahaha... she probably went back to work..."
Anthony tried very hard to maintain his earlier air of irreverence, but his stiff, wooden delivery thoroughly betrayed how he felt.
Li Wei was not surprised. Judging by Anthony's behavior, he could tell that the man probably worked in some profession akin to espionage.
But even spies were human, with an instinctive fear and unease toward the unknown.
After all, Anthony certainly could not imagine why Dolls would move on their own.
In truth, Li Wei was nervous himself. Fortunately, thanks to all those films, television shows, novels, and games, he had at least seen plenty and weathered countless battles compared with the people of this world. He could still keep somewhat calm.
"All right, here it is."
Li Wei stopped before a wooden door set into the floor.
"Be careful. In my experience, things underground are never easy to deal with."
Before you continue