Chapter 8: Black Friday
"Three entrances and three exits, main rooms and side rooms, east and west wing rooms, covered walkways, hanging screens, Ruyi doors, inverted lintels, thunderbolt pillars... The details of this haunted house are pretty good. It mimics an ancient siheyuan, very immersive." Gao Ruxue wandered through the scene, her expression relaxed, occasionally offering commentary.
"Senior, we're in a haunted house, not strolling through Suzhou gardens. Could you consider my feelings?" In the empty courtyard, with its eerie atmosphere, soul banners fluttering, and paper money flying, the haunted house in He Shan's eyes was completely different from Gao Ruxue's. He was cautious, afraid something might suddenly emerge from the shadows in the corners. "Let's just find the exit quickly. I have a bad feeling."
"Since we're here, let's enjoy the tour. We're playing in a haunted house—don't let the haunted house play you."
"Do you remember what the owner said before we came in? That we have fifteen minutes to find the exit. I feel like that guy's up to no good. If we can't escape in fifteen minutes, something terrifying is bound to happen!" He Shan tried to persuade Gao Ruxue, but she didn't seem concerned.
"Haunted houses only have so many tricks to scare people. At worst, they'll have staff dress up as ghosts and chase us around. We're not afraid of the dead, so why would we be afraid of the living?" Gao Ruxue aimlessly walked through the corridor and casually pushed open the door to the left side room.
The venue was a standard siheyuan layout. The main room was for the elders and head of the family, the wing rooms for the eldest son and younger generations, and the side rooms, flanking the main room, were for servants and maids.
Pushing the door open, she saw overturned tables and chairs inside, torn bedding on the bed with stuffing scattered about, and a white silk sash hanging from the center beam.
"Senior, I'll keep watch outside. Be careful..." Before He Shan could finish, Gao Ruxue pulled him into the room. He grimaced, staring at the white sash swaying gently as if moved by an unseen wind, his body stiffening.
"Interesting. The sash is 1.5 meters off the ground—too high to hang anyone. The overturned furniture and the signs of struggle on the floor suggest the haunted house is deliberately creating the illusion of a forced suicide. The side room was for a maid, and the vengeful spirit didn't even spare a servant with no blood ties to the family. It seems intent on torturing everyone in this mansion to death." Gao Ruxue's expression remained calm, but a hint of excitement flickered in her eyes. "The design is meticulous. There might even be hidden Easter eggs."
She rummaged through the cabinets and tossed aside the bedding on the bed. Beneath the tattered quilt lay a paper doll.
"A paper figure lying on a living person's bed?" Gao Ruxue casually threw the paper doll aside and lifted the bedboard, finding nothing underneath.
"The greater the expectation, 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 out.
Left alone in the room, He Shan looked at the paper doll on the floor and felt his teeth chatter. Maybe it was the angle, but he felt like the paper doll was smiling at him.
"Bronze rooster bleeding, paper doll opening its eyes... Wait for me! Senior!"
The side room door closed tightly again, and the white sash inside stopped swaying.
"Can you keep your voice down? What are you yelling about? A grown man acting as timid as a girl." Gao Ruxue shot He Shan a glare 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 uneasy feeling gets, like the thing I fear most is being dragged out of my heart!"
Hearing this, Gao Ruxue paused for a moment. She, too, sensed something was off.
The most important thing for a forensic pathologist is a steady mind and steady hands. But just now, when she scolded He Shan, her tone had noticeably grown more impatient—something that had never happened elsewhere.
"Am I afraid? I know everything in this haunted house is fake, so why am I scared?" A crack appeared in Gao Ruxue's psychological defenses. Neither of them could pinpoint the source of their fear, and under the weight of self-doubt and psychological suggestion, the seeds of terror began to take root.
"Do you think this place might actually have something unclean? The haunted house is built on a mass grave and converted from a hospital building..."
"Shut up! Isn't the underground morgue at our school scarier than this? You're a medical student—how can you be such a coward?" Gao Ruxue pretended not to care, but her speech grew faster. She sat by the railing of the corridor and looked around at the ancient mansion, the funeral hall, the withered trees, and the scattered paper money. None of these things were particularly frightening. "What am I really afraid of?"
Both of them were so absorbed in the eerie surroundings that they didn't notice the background music playing on a loop.
This forbidden song, titled "Black Friday," had subtly wound itself around their hearts, like an underground river eroding their souls, dragging them step by step into a bottomless abyss.
"Shan, how long have we been in here?"
"I don't know, but I feel like there's no way we're getting out in fifteen minutes!"
"Don't panic. Let me think carefully." Gao Ruxue didn't bother brushing off the dust and headed straight for the other side of the corridor. "There's nothing truly scary about this haunted house. It's mainly the owner giving us negative psychological cues. From the moment we entered, he kept emphasizing words like 'mass grave,' 'live burial,' and 'female ghost.' He wants us to scare ourselves. What's even more cunning is that he set a time limit without specifying what we'd encounter, which puts pressure on us to imagine the worst."
"So what do we do now? This haunted house feels different from others." He Shan was a straightforward guy—whatever his senior said, he believed.
"Your instincts are right. In a normal haunted house, there are professional actors playing ghosts, lots of equipment to create bloody and terrifying scenes, and we follow a set path to experience it. But this one doesn't do that. It sets up the scene and lets us explore freely, with no guidance or constraints. No one knows what will happen next."
"I get it. The unknown is the scariest thing." He Shan looked like he'd had an epiphany.
"That's the only explanation for now." Gao Ruxue frowned almost imperceptibly. "Alright, let's head to the next room."
The side room was adjacent to the main room, where the head of the family lived. Pushing open the wooden door, they saw mourning clothes and filial robes scattered inside, and in the center of the hall sat a lacquered wooden coffin.
A red coffin, with a large "double happiness" character pasted in white paper in the middle, flanked by two neat rows of paper figures kneeling on either side.
Their backs bore names, their faces painted with makeup, their eyes seemingly alive, each with a different expression, as if they were secretly staring at the two at the door.