Horror Game Designer

Chapter 26: Phobia

The temperature inside the building dropped suddenly, but facing the unknown fear, the new investigators were not too terrified.

They strictly followed the internal rules of the bureau and assembled various equipment from their backpacks as quickly as possible.

These devices all had corresponding numbers. The investigation bureau was continuously trying to combat abnormal events with various means, and the equipment brought by the newcomers was their “weapon.”

“Is this thing useful?” Gao Ming asked curiously.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s not, but as long as there’s a one percent hope, we’ll keep trying until we find something that can affect the unknown,” the burly driver clenched his fist. “It’s because of the ability to use tools that humans became humans.”

“Communication was disrupted when we opened the door of room 405. That child and his parents once lived in this room,” Bai Qiao picked up a flashlight and headed towards room 405.

Without weapons to counter the horror or any effective protective measures, Bai Qiao, knowing the danger, still headed towards room 405.

“I’ll do it,” Gao Ming stepped forward first: “You are the core of the team, let me handle the exploration.”

The tiny chains on his wrist, stimulated by the shadows and resembling moving tattoos, appeared on Gao Ming’s wrist. He extended his left hand and gently pushed open the door of room 405.

The ninety-square-meter rental house was filled with a strange smell. Five huge black plastic bags were piled up by the living room door, containing some yellowed bedding and children’s clothes.

“Be careful,” Bai Qiao raised her flashlight to light the way for Gao Ming.

It seemed like a struggle had occurred in the living room. The dining table was overturned, chairs were lying on the ground, and there were solidified food scraps and broken porcelain bowl shards on the cement floor.

“It wasn’t just one-sided domestic violence. Both parties in the fight had lost their minds,” Gao Ming found a small piece of scalp with short hair in the corner of the wall, belonging to a man: “The situation is worse than I imagined.”

Touching the wall, Gao Ming felt the mold on it. He looked around; even with the doors and windows shut, the room was very damp. The wardrobe, under the sofa, behind the TV, all were covered in large patches of mold.

“If I rented a room like this, I would feel bad too,” the burly driver divided the newcomers into three teams: one followed Gao Ming into the room, one stayed at the door, and one was responsible for backup support.

“Feeling bad is normal, but it’s wrong to vent anger on close family,” Gao Ming went to the other side of the living room. This room couldn’t be called a home at all, dirty, messy, filled with the smell of rot.

The family was broken, just like the various pieces of furniture smashed in the room.

“The parents both had violent tendencies, arguing and fighting, like two monsters hysterically attacking each other,” Gao Ming picked up a broken flower vase from the ground. The edges of the shards still had traces of blood and strands of long hair: “Did they become like this due to the abnormal event, or were they always like this inside?”

“According to an old resident of the building, they often fought before the abnormal event arrived,” Bai Qiao didn’t interrupt Gao Ming. She was curious to see what this ordinary person, who had resolved a third-level abnormal event, was capable of.

“Even without the abnormal event, a tragedy could still happen…” Gao Ming wanted to understand the relationship between the game and reality: “So, it’s not that the abnormal event found them, but that this family was attracting the abnormal event.”

Passing through the living room, Gao Ming came to the only clean room, which seemed to be the child’s bedroom.

The small room had a desk, wardrobe, and a single bed. Interestingly, it wasn’t autumn yet, but the bed was laid with winter quilts and various blankets.

Those quilts were piled around the bed, like the walls of a castle in the child’s mind.

Opening the wardrobe, a few children’s clothes hung inside, and the bottom was lined with newspapers, a flashlight, and a box of crayons.

“The space under the wardrobe was just enough to hide a child, meaning the kid of room 405 might choose to hide here and draw when scared,” Gao Ming crouched down: “The enclosed environment could give the child a sense of safety, as if back in the mother’s womb.”

Grabbing the box of crayons, Gao Ming was about to move it when a fabric arm suddenly fell on the box.

Bai Qiao and another newcomer beside her tensed up, but Gao Ming showed no reaction. He pulled out the box and the arm together.

“What an ugly rag doll.”

A handmade rag doll was hidden deep in the wardrobe. It barely resembled a human shape, covered in patches and stained with various paints.

“The neighbors didn’t see the couple take the child away, and the police didn’t find the child on the 4th floor. Do you think the child might have turned into this rag doll?” Gao Ming locked the doll’s neck and tied its hands together.

“Now is not the time for ghost stories,” Bai Qiao frowned slightly. Gao Ming hadn’t undergone the bureau’s internal training and wasn’t following the rules.

Pressing his fingers over every inch of the rag doll, Gao Ming felt nothing strange inside. He then opened the box of crayons. The lid had a sentence written on it in crooked letters – “I wish I could hide in a place no one can find.”

“It seems the abnormal event helped the child’s wish come true,” Gao Ming thought of his own birthday wish. He suddenly felt that the abnormal event was very eager, seizing human vulnerabilities and desperately trying to fill them, but in a bloody and terrifying way.

After a basic inspection of room 405, the newcomers following Gao Ming took out their equipment to collect items from the room, even the mold on the walls.

“Be careful, we might be involved in more than a first-level abnormal event,” Gao Ming whispered, then sat on the child’s bed, deep in thought.

He had played a game about finding a lost child called “Hide and Seek,” where seven ghosts and a child play. Finding the real child meant clearing the game. But that game didn’t correspond to this abnormal event, which brought shadows to the child not from ghosts but from his parents.

“The parents often had conflicts and fought, sometimes even venting their anger on the child. Living in such a family, the child would inevitably develop various psychological problems.”

Gao Ming had encountered similar cases when doing psychological counseling in a high-security prison. Some offenders had often suffered rough treatment from their parents since childhood.

“In such a family atmosphere, the child’s personality could go to two extremes: either extremely timid and weak, or abnormally irritable and excessive. Judging from the scene, the child of room 405 was likely the former.”

Everyone likes obedient children, but there are different types of obedience. If a child is always forced to appear well-behaved, their inner world gradually becomes twisted.

The most direct expression is timidity, fear of making mistakes in everything because they are worried about angering others, so they want to hide themselves.

Looking at the “quilt wall” around the bed, Gao Ming curled up his body, trying to lie on the child’s bed.

“The parents were in the living room, throwing and smashing things, beating each other, full of foul language. The child couldn’t get protection from either parent and had to always be careful not to become their venting tool.”

“In this situation, the most likely emotion to arise is fear.”

Gao Ming thought of the graffiti on the stairwell wall. When the figures representing the parents started arguing, many red figures would crawl out of them, disassembling their body parts, all running towards the child.

“Maybe those red figures were the child’s way of expressing fear,” Gao Ming gradually recalled another game, a more ominous one called “Phobia.”

There were no specific ghosts in it, nor overly bloody scenes, but its destructiveness and threat were even greater than the typical ghost story!

The content of the game was simple. One day “Phobia” suddenly erupted, spreading and infecting the entire city, plunging everyone into fear.

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