Click——"
The rusty door lock made a screeching sound.
The small door to the storage room was locked and could not be opened.
"Fuck, Ah Xiu, what are you doing?!"
Fang Qianan finally realized what was happening and broke out in a cold sweat.
Li Xiu also seemed to be burned by something and quickly withdrew her hand from the door handle.
"I'm sorry," Li Xiu subconsciously took a few steps back to get further away from the door. "I was distracted and reached out to open it."
"I didn't think that much about it."
The young man whispered in a hurried tone.
"Yeah, it's okay." Fang Qianan responded dryly, but both people present vaguely sensed that there was something unspeakable wrong.
"Bang, bang, bang—"
At this moment, the two people who were looking at each other heard an extremely clear sound of footsteps coming from the ceiling.
It sounded exactly like the sound of someone running, approaching from far away, and then quickly running away.
On the second floor... is someone running?
Wait, is that a person?
As this question flashed through his mind, Li Xiu couldn't help but hold his breath. He looked at Fang Qianan, who was staring at the villa's mottled and peeling ceiling, his jaw muscles tense.
After the brief sound of footsteps disappeared, the entire villa was as silent as a cemetery.
"Did you hear that?"
After a long time, Li Xiucai heard himself asking in a trembling voice.
Fang Qianan's breathing was heavy.
"Yeah." The boy nodded, his face pale. "...Let's go to the second floor?"
He asked.
Li Xiu hesitated for a long time.
To be honest, he was so scared that his legs were a little weak.
However, for some unknown reason, the last words he uttered were as soft as a mosquito's: "Come, I'm here."
Nothing useful was found on the first floor.
If I don't go to the second floor to check it out, will I continue to encounter ghosts and have nightmares?
It's impossible to face the college entrance examination in this state, right?
Li Xiu used countless reasons to convince himself, but when he and Fang Qianan climbed up to the second floor of the haunted house, trembling and moving one step at a time like turtles, he was still so nervous that he couldn't breathe.
The second floor looks much cleaner and tidier than the first floor.
The polished teak floors were covered with a thin layer of dust, most of the doors were locked, and the remaining large furniture in the common areas was covered with white cloth.
Li Xiu stared at the ground for a long time.
There were no footprints on the ground.
But the more this happened, the stronger the creepy feeling became - if there was no trace on the ground, then who made the footsteps that he and Fang Qianan had just heard?
"Let's go, shall we?"
Fang Qianan said.
"Um."
Li Xiu rubbed his arms and could feel goose bumps all over his hands. And Fang Qianan didn't look much better than him.
There was no longer any strangeness or estrangement between the two of them at this point, and they were almost just hugging each other and walking away.
Trembling with fear, Li Xiu and Fang Qianan began to check the situation on the second floor.
I don't know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, but the second floor seems to have been carefully renovated by the school. All the places where the wallpaper has fallen off have been scraped off and repainted. Only occasionally in some corners, you can see some objects that are out of tune with the surrounding environment - gourds made of purple copper, copper coin swords, and some ornaments that are difficult to identify.
"grass--"
Noticing Li Xiu's gaze, Fang Qianan also looked towards those things. After a moment of daze, Fang Qianan uttered a curse.
Then, the boy climbed on Li Xiu's shoulders with even greater strength, and then Li Xiu felt a trembling hand reaching into her school uniform.
"What?"
Li Xiu frowned and held Fang Qianan's hand.
"Share the salt and glutinous rice you have with you. Give me some."
Fang Qianan seemed to be about to cry now.
Li Xiu didn't understand what was going on at first, but then Fang Qianan's words made him start to get scared.
"Those things were placed where there might have been bodies there before."
…
The reason why the Xiao family massacre is so famous is not only because the victims are too special as the family of the richest man in City A, but also because it is extremely weird and strange.
After making several astonishingly profitable investments, the family, once at the height of its power in City A, selected its most capable and highly regarded second-generation leader. As expected, the renowned young and decisive Xiao family leader would lead the family to even greater glory.
But such a man who was at the peak of his life went crazy on an extremely ordinary day.
"...He activated the security system to seal off the entire villa. He first strangled his wife in bed, then drowned the then-partially paralyzed Old Man Xiao in a large, heated fish tank... His brother's family was dismembered... The housekeeper at the time was also slaughtered."
Fang Qianan's voice was hoarse, probably because of fear. He was getting closer and closer to Li Xiu.
"The most terrifying thing is that this family massacre was not completed in a short period of time. Xiao Weisi claimed that the family was on vacation, so by the time people realized something was wrong, it had been almost half a month. During this half month, he even completed several online meetings. Similarly, the families and friends of the deceased have been receiving news from friends and relatives..."
Although, according to the investigation after the incident, when those people received the news, the person they thought was dead had already been dead for a long time.
"I heard that when the police arrived, Mr. Xiao's skeleton had been almost completely eaten in the fish tank. Mrs. Xiao's body was also severely decomposed. However, my brother and his family were still sitting upright at the dining table, and there was even food in their stomachs..."
However, the food was just their own flesh.
From the hall to the stairs, those who wanted to escape were killed one by one, and their bodies were scattered throughout the villa.
And Shawvis...
"But they never found Shawvis."
Fang Qianan said in a hoarse voice.
"Although we found a video of him shooting himself in the study, we couldn't find his body no matter how hard we looked, so—"
"Stop talking!"
Li Xiu interrupted Fang Qianan.
He is shaking.
Li Xiu was actually not the kind of person who was timid and would scream when hearing horror stories. However, this time, he was so frightened by what Fang Qianan said that his heart started beating wildly and his whole body was trembling.
Fang Qianan seemed to realize his inappropriateness. He wondered if he had gotten too drunk from the half bottle of wine he had just drunk. The place where the two of them were standing was not suitable for him to tell those stories - but he kept talking without restraint.
After hugging each other for a long time, Li Xiucai finally recovered a little.
"That's not right." He suddenly frowned and came to his senses. "Why haven't I heard of what you said before?"
The story of the Xiao family haunted house was so famous that Li Xiu had practically heard it since childhood, but he had never heard the version Fang Qian'an had just described. The most widely circulated story in City A was that Xiao Weisi went mad in the middle of the night and killed his entire family before committing suicide. Despite the commotion, even the neighbors who worked in the garden every day didn't notice anything. It turned out the man had been dead for nearly two weeks, but the neighbors shocked the police by telling him that he had greeted the woman through the window yesterday morning.
You can even see the whole family sitting neatly around the dining table eating every day.
…
"ah?"
Fang Qianan was also a little surprised when he heard what Li Xiu said.
"But what I've been hearing is…"
Wait, who told him all this? Fang Qianan was in a daze for a moment and found that he could no longer remember.
Li Xiu gave him a bewildered look and didn't pursue the matter further. Fang Qian'an came from a distinguished family, and perhaps he'd learned some forbidden details from one of his elders.
"Let's take a look on the second floor. Whether we find anything or not, let's leave." Li Xiu frankly admitted that she was indeed very scared. "...I feel very uncomfortable here."
He gave some glutinous rice and salt to Fang Qianan, grabbed the rest in his hands, then held his breath and walked tremblingly to the depths of the second floor.
There are many locked rooms on the second floor.
However, I don't know if it was negligence of the workers who maintained the house or what, but the door of the master bedroom was not completely locked and could be opened with a slight push.
Unlike the first floor, the lighting in this room was unexpectedly good. In the hexagonal room, there were at least four floor-to-ceiling lattice windows, one of which probably had a problem and could not be closed tightly, leaving a large gap.
The cool breeze blew slowly into the room from outside, the translucent curtains fluttered, and the whole room looked bright and dreamy.
"Ahem... the dust is so heavy..."
As a result, as soon as Fang Qianan entered the room, he started coughing while covering his nose.
Well, because the windows were not closed, the room was indeed much dustier than outside.
The once majestic bed stood firmly in the center of the room, and the white cloth covering it had now turned light gray.
The exquisitely carved European-style dressing table next to it was not spared either. The original white cloth was blown half-covered and half-exposed, and the exposed part of the wood had long since deformed and faded.
Li Xiu's reaction was not as big as Fang Qianan's. After all, the place where he grew up might not be as clean as here.
but...
"This is the master bedroom."
Fang Qianan walked forward a few steps and scattered the salt and glutinous rice in his hand as he spoke.
"What are you doing?"
Li Xiu looked at him and asked in shock.
"Exorcism."
Fang Qianan replied seriously, then he took out his cell phone and started playing the Amitabha Sutra.
"Mr. Xiao, Mrs. Xiao, we didn't mean to disturb your rest. Please be magnanimous and don't bother us students. Don't bother us anymore. I will burn paper money for you again when I return..."
The tall boy put his hands together and muttered desperately.
Li Xiu: "…"
After muttering for a while, Fang Qianan noticed Li Xiu's silence, and quickly stopped and waved to him again.
"Come here." Fang Qianan said nervously, "Don't stand at the door alone. In horror movies, people like you are the easiest to be dragged away."
Li Xiu's body stiffened.
Then, he dragged his feet forward a few steps and got closer to Fang Qianan.
After entering the room, Li Xiu unconsciously frowned and pursed his lips. He found that he didn't like the smell of this room.
A faint, lingering stench of decay still lingered in the room after more than a decade of wind and rain. But the smell was so faint, so faint that it quickly dissipated if you sniffed closely.
Li Xiu even suspected that she had this olfactory hallucination simply because she was frightened by what Fang Qianan had just said.
While Fang Qianan was praying desperately to God, Li Xiu did not speak (after all, Fang Qianan looked really stupid now). He just stayed close to Fang Qianan, unconsciously looking around the bedroom where the former richest man lived.
The bedroom is very large. In addition to the sleeping area, there is also a small private meeting space. In addition, there are two white double doors on each side of the room. Li Xiu could probably guess that they were the bathroom and dressing room.
The sleeping area alone is almost as big as Li Xiu's entire house.
After being abandoned for so many years, it still looks so spacious, comfortable and luxurious.
However, the owner of this room...
"Hula…"
Another gust of wind blew through the window.
The white cloth hanging in front of the dressing table was shaking and was blown down a little.
Li Xiu glanced and happened to see something on the dressing table.
"Fang Qianan, what is that?"
He poked Fang Qianan and walked towards the dressing table.
The dressing table had been emptied long ago after the tragedy, but now a photo frame was lying upside down on the empty dressing table.
Li Xiu turned it up and found a photo embedded in the frame - it looked a bit like a family portrait.
However, in such a windy and rainy environment, the photo frame has long been deformed and the photos inside have long faded and yellowed.
The color photos taken back then now look like black and white photos from many years ago.
In the photo, the family, dressed in suits and formal attire, are standing neatly on the lawn of the villa, looking at the camera and smiling.
The first thing Li Xiu noticed was their smiles.
The family, pampered and polished by money and a comfortable life, all seemed to have a similar temperament. Even their smiles looked identical—they slightly parted their lips, revealing a bit of teeth, their apple cheeks pushed upward by the corners of their mouths, and their eyes narrowed into two thin slits stuck under their eyebrows.
There were two points of pupil light flickering slightly in the narrow gap.
The dead people in the photo smiled at Li Xiu.
The familiar chill spread through Li Xiu's body again.
Li Xiu stared at the photo blankly, his eyes fixed on the familiar face in the corner.
Although he looked much younger than Li Xiu knew him more than ten years ago, and his face in the photo was extremely blurry, Li Xiu recognized the face at a glance.
"Fang, Fang Qianan." He moved his lips and spoke with difficulty.
Fang Qianan came over and put his chin on Li Xiu's shoulder. In order to look at the photos, he directly covered Li Xiu's back.
"Isn't this person... Teacher Ouyang?" Li Xiu asked somewhat bewilderedly, "Why is he in this photo?"
It can be said that the moment Li Xiu saw Ouyang in the photo, his mind was in a mess.
He thought of the male teacher who was hanged in his nightmare, and the rumor that the teacher had already committed suicide out of fear of punishment in reality.
Although he hadn't figured it out yet, Li Xiu felt a strong sense of unease due to his intuition.
It would be more accurate to say that he was talking to himself rather than asking Fang Qianan.
Fang Qianan didn't answer him either.
"Hula…"
The wind blew up the white cloth on the dressing table.
Li Xiu raised his eyes and his gaze fell on the mirror that had already become mottled and blurred.
A strange, bluish-gray face stretched its neck and pressed tightly against Li Xiu's cheek.
Ah Xiu...
The author has something to say:
Brother: Ah Xiu is so nice~ (ヽ(°▽°)ノ)
(Whispering, I actually think the generic haunted house stories circulating in City A are much scarier than what Xiaofang told...)