698 No.4's Nightmare
Everything happened too quickly. Before Han Fei and the old lady were ready, the room darkened. They held their breath and looked at the rolling head inside the bowl before the bedroom door.
“I think I’ve found the child’s mother…” When Han Fei turned around, the old lady was kneeling on the ground. She put her hands together and prayed at the door. She prayed that the thing would leave her grandson’s body.
The eeriness of the room and the prayers of the old lady formed a special power that wanted to drag everything into the unknown darkness. The talismans on the door fell. Suddenly, the shaking door returned to normal. The metallic doorknob eased downwards, and the door opened.
Han Fei’s eyes were fixed on the gap. His heart, covered in names, jumped. He felt compelled by something to move forward. Intense pain came from the back of his mind. The memory fragments in his mind collided. The fear of death surfaced. He could hear his heart pounding clearly in his ears. Han Fei’s eyes were drawn by the darkness behind the door. His soul was like a train charging towards the death abyss.
“Who is behind the door?”
The head covered in glue was knocked into the wall. The talismans close to it fell, revealing a simple painting behind it. A colorful boy was playing in the painting. He was despised by his mother and beaten by his father. He ran everywhere, chasing after bloody friends. He ran and jumped. When he was tired, he hugged his friends and shared fairy tales. More paintings under the talismans were revealed. They were cute, colorful, and humorous. The child in the paintings kept running. He frolicked with his bloody friends, playing hide and seek. This home was his theme park, a theme park filled with grayness, violence, and grotesque. Underneath the coat of innocence was a twisted childhood.
The temperature dropped. The child in the paintings ran faster. He was inviting Han Fei to play with him inside the room.
Curses crawled all over his palm. The sting of pain reminded Han Fei. When he snapped to attention, he was already before the bedroom door. “I haven’t been charmed like this for a long time already…” It was hard to shake Han Fei’s conviction. He couldn’t tell what had happened earlier.
The painted childhood memories on the wall formed a great contrast to the creepy items inside the room. The child inside the paintings welcomed his arrival. The strange figurines inside the room blinked their eyes when Han Fei turned around. The painting represented the reality that he saw as well as the mental landscape he lived in. The divine figurines were severe and oppressive. They were the heavy reality in the adult’s eyes. They oppress and restrain him.
Han Fei’s Adam Apple bobbed. Various sounds appeared in his ears. It sounded like people chanting or singing some strange song.
The old lady, whose face was covered in sutra, knelt in the living room. She mumbled things that no one could understand. She was only a few steps away from Han Fei, but it felt like she was worlds away.
“It feels like I can’t return anymore.”
The darkness behind the door possessed some kind of mysterious power. It was like a hand that could grab and pulls a person into the darkness. The former No. 4 was probably slowly ruined like this. He was slowly consumed by the darkness until he couldn’t leave it anymore.
When Han Fei first entered this building, he didn’t think he’d run into something so dangerous. After all, Building 4 was only so big. It was unlikely to inhabit as many ghosts and monsters as the plastic surgery hospital, but Han Fei was proven wrong.
For a young child, a room could be a world he couldn’t leave, an object could evoke his fear, and a dresser could bring him suffocating despair.
Holding the doorknob, Han Fei pushed the door open. The bedroom behind the door was filled with colorful paintings. They represented a child’s nightmare and despair.
Despair became a singing elf. His father’s belt grew with monstrous eyes. His mother’s makeup became precious human organs that would shatter with a touch. Every tile was written with questions and options. One had to be careful moving inside the room. Stepping on the wrong option would bring punishment. The heavy curtains appeared to be lined with lead. A normal person couldn’t open or close it. The bed grew with black briar. Dead bugs hid under the bed. A giant puppet was currently lying on the bed, pretending to be asleep. She had very long hair and giant eyes made from buttons. However, since her shoulders and head were sewn together, she couldn’t look down and notice the child who needed her protection.
The doll was painted with various kinds of cheap makeup. She had a fragrant shell but the broken seams of her body showed the rotting dead animals inside.
There was a tingling sound, and the child’s little theme park started operation. The paintings on the wall came alive. The child played with other bloody children until the doorbell rang. Han Fei glanced behind him. The whole house had changed. The house of figurines and talismans had disappeared. The living room became just like the bedroom. Han Fei had sunken inside No. 4’s nightmare.
The cat under the bed was in the midst of labor. She mewled loudly. The lizards crawled out of the wall. They kept looking around but did nothing. The doorbell outside the door became more insistent. The person was losing patience. He slammed angrily at the door. The metallic door trembled.
“The doll represents the mother. Does the person outside the door represent the father?”
The birthing cat and the peeping lizards were the distant neighbors. The child saw everything differently, but they were also connected to real life. The agitated knocking continued for a long time before the metallic door opened. The leather shoes stepped on the ground. The heavy plodding was scary. Han Fei turned to look at the living room as a giant shadow poured in from the door. No. 4’s father had arrived. It represented darkness and oppression. It was a shadow that dominated No. 4’s heart.
The giant body brushed against the colorful paintings on the wall. Han Fei reacted quickly. He pulled on the red strings, but he realized the red strings were gone. He was touching a child’s icy fingers instead. Han Fei looked at his arms in shock. He had turned into a child wearing tattered clothes. He radiated this horrible smell that reminded Han Fei of festering old wounds.
The door slammed shut. Han Fei had no idea when he fell for the illusion. He saw a middle-aged man reeking of a horrible stench walk out of the shadow. His eyes were always red. There was no trace of love on his face. After removing the shirt that was stained with vomit, the man’s body almost melted into the shadow. He walked toward Han Fei and then strangled Han Fei’s neck.
At that moment, Han Fei really felt the threat of death. However, the man soon spotted the brand new organs on the doll’s table. He slammed Han Fei heavily to the ground. He grabbed the table with both of his hands and flipped it over. The organs screamed in pain, but the strange thing was the scream came from the voice of another man. Hearing the scream, No. 4’s father became even more enraged. He stomped on the organs and grabbed a few to stuff them inside the doll’s body. The doll with the long hair waved her hands and tried to resist, but her strength was no match to the man. She wanted to scream, but as a doll, she had no mouth. The man tore open the doll’s stomach. He stuffed the broken organs into her stomach. He was not yet satisfied, so he stuffed his head into the doll’s body and chewed on her insides.
Han Fei didn’t dare to imagine the meaning of these scenes. He slunk to the kitchen. No. 4 had already given him the answer as to what to do at the start.
Many tragedies happened at the corner where no one was paying attention. Unfortunately, the past couldn’t be changed. Han Fei only wanted to stop the tragedy from repeating in the future. Han Fei’s tiny body picked up the blade in the kitchen and walked back to the bedroom door.
The doll’s stomach was torn open. The shredded fabric fell on the animal carcasses. She raised her hands to strangle the shadow’s neck, but it was to no avail. Han Fei slowed down and moved as quietly as possible. As a butcher who killed butchers, Han Fei knew how to deliver a fatal blow. However, No. 4 didn’t know that. He might have practiced again and again every night. After multiple hesitations and trials, he finally became a monster!
Han Fei found the perfect angle, leaned on his body weight, and pushed the blade in!
“The old lady said that her son was bitten to death by No. 4. I’m probably doing the things that he didn’t dare to do but wanted to.” Han Fei, with incomplete memory, made a choice in this bizarre nightmare. He didn’t feel too good inside, but this should be the fastest way to end this nightmare. The horror of this place was hard to describe. A normal player would have collapsed by now, but Han Fei had been through the trials of the cryptic world. He easily adopted the perspective of the child and completed the things that he didn’t. The father was stabbed. His rotten heart and the shadow around him rapidly shrunk. The black blood splattered all over the doll and Han Fei.
Han Fei didn’t stop. He wanted to remove the knife to cut off the monster’s head, but the angered man didn’t give him a chance. The sharp fingers pierced through Han Fei’s skin. A normal child would be scared witless, but Han Fei was completely in No. 4’s character. He reacted like an animal and jumped to bite the man’s neck. Facing real despair, the man hesitated. He reacted just like he did in real life. He was frightened, and Han Fei bit his neck. No matter how hard he punched and pulled, Han Fei didn’t let go. This was because Han Fei knew this was his only chance.
No. 4’s nightmare was to make everyone experience his pain and despair and then sink into this place. Han Fei used No. 4’s real-life solution to fight back. More wounds appeared on his body. The beating, whipping, and burning, he had endured everything until the shadow on the man faded away. Before No. 4 bit the man to death, No. 4 always lived in the shadows of fear. After he bit through that terror, he walked to the path of the other extreme and became a symbol of death and misfortune among the 31 orphans. The black blood flowed into his mouth and drenched his clothes. When the man was too weak to stand up, Han Fei stepped on his step.
The doll threw various objects at Han Fei. Her disgust and fear were palpable even without words.
“It’s your turn…” The wounded Han Fei took out the knife and walked toward the doll. He had a moment’s hesitation, but his rationality told him to make the second choice. Han Fei had no idea what kind of memory Mad Laughter had taken from him, but his instinct told him that he wouldn’t make this choice in the past.
Han Fei stepped over the black blood and pierced the knife at the doll’s face. Suddenly, the thick curtains in the bedroom fell to the ground. Dust rose. Red moonlight shone on Han Fei. He stopped moving and looked towards the window. There was a giant red eye outside the window. It was like there was a monster as tall as the apartment staring at Han Fei.
Han Fei had a sense of déjà vu. Before he could react, he heard the glass shatter. A wounded arm reached into the room and pressed at Han Fei’s head.
“So you haven’t let go of your mother.”
The fingers phased into Han Fei’s brain. Nothing could stop it. Every memory it touched was shattered. However, just as the fingers were about to squish Han Fei’s consciousness, they touched a small piece of fragmented memory. The memory contained a group picture of 30 orphans. The picture was given to Han Fei by the painter at Midnight Mall. It was also Han Fei’s first Level D Cursed Object. The giant fingers stopped above the picture. It seemed to be caressing the children’s faces.
The bloodshot eye blinked, and the nightmare that entrapped Han Fei shattered. At the same time, thousands of curses crawled over Han Fei to protect him. Han Fei’s sight returned to normal. He had escaped from No. 4’s nightmare. He was still standing before the bedroom door.
“Why… do you have our picture?”
A child’s voice came from inside the room. His tone was very gentle.
