Horror Game Designer

The dresser door was shut. Gao Ming, whose body was covered in prayers, held the pen. He didn’t continue writing. His eyes were on the vibrating phone. His grandmother’s voicemails were like a summons from hell. Gao Ming didn’t answer them, but the messages kept coming. They came more and more frequently. One minute later, the messages suddenly stopped. A video call request popped up on the screen. His grandmother’s black-and-white portrait showed up. She seemed to wish to crawl out of the phone.

“A video call?” The face covered in characters hesitated. In the end, Gao Ming chose to accept it.

“Gao Ming, do you know how much I worry about you? Do not leave your room. Once you do, everything will be for nothing! Do you still remember your parents? They die because they didn’t listen to me!” The old woman in the video looked like Gao Ming. Her hair was white. She looked tired and aged. Her clothes were dirty. She shouted loudly at the screen. Various items and ‘divine medicine’ sat around her. She had surrendered everything valuable to the Sensei and his God.

“Listen to me. Sensei has spoken! Your tragedy will be automatically resolved seven days later!” As he stared at the screen, Gao Ming’s gaze coloured with suspicion. The room on the screen was very familiar, but it was different from how he remembered it. His grandmother shouted with tears in her eyes. She was deeply worried about Gao Ming, but…

Gao Ming put down the diary and opened the dresser. He walked towards the other bedroom inside the apartment unit.

“Do not open the door! I am helping you!”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Two bedrooms were situated at both ends of the narrow corridor. Gao Ming’s small bedroom was on the left, and his grandmother’s large bedroom was on the right. The light stench came from the right bedroom. Twine curled around the doorknob, and a row of yellow papers was pasted along the door frame.

“Don’t open the door, Gao Ming! If you do, all the bad luck is going to escape!” The old lady started to beg. She really believed that the Sensei could help her get back her son and daughter-in-law and help Gao Ming.

“But you are already dead…”

Gao Ming snipped the rope around the doorknob. He heard a heart-wrenching scream coming from the phone. The moment he opened the bedroom door, the video call ended. A thick stench rolled out of the room. The scene he saw was harrowing. There was a chair placed in the middle of the room. His grandmother’s malnourished body was pinned to the chair. Her face was purple, and her throat was bloated. Various pills were scattered on her red jacket. Even in death, she gripped a bottle of pills. The bottle had no manufacture date or any normal symbols. The brown bottle was the medicine that she begged the Sensei for.

She wore all red. Her body was grimy and unclean. Her eyes were bulging. Strange and cheap ‘jades’ hung around her body. Some of them were carved pebbles that one could find by the roadside, but they carried the hope of his grandmother. Since Gao Ming was young, Gao Ming’s grandmother started to bring ‘treasures’ home. These treasures slowly turned their home into a ghost’s lair.

When they were sick, they didn’t go to the doctor. Instead, they drank water with ashes. When Gao Ming was ostracised and bullied at school, he was told to wear some talismans. The Sensei and his God were there to solve everything. Whenever a positive thing happened, his grandmother would do something to thank the Sensei.

Gao Ming picked up the paper on the ground. It detailed the ways in which the medicine is ingested. One had to put the medicine in one’s mouth from morning to noon and serve the sacrificial objects between night and midnight to balance out the power of the medicine. Everything in his grandmother’s bedroom was there for a reason. The apartment was a lair to collect Yin energy. The location where his grandmother sat was the spot where the Yin energy was the heaviest. She had ingested the medicine for days in the wish of meeting the Demon God, but she was killed by the medicine instead. Grandmother’s favourite Sensei prescribed her the medicine, and it was the medicine that killed her.

“Resolving tragedy? You’re the tragedy…”

Gao Ming tightened his grip on the phone as he studied the corpse on the chair. This room made him feel very uncomfortable. Other than the many talismans, there was a figurine right opposite his grandmother. Gao Ming didn’t recognise the God, but when he saw the figurine, his heart winced from pain and pieces of memory floated out. The memories were not from his brain but from his heart.

He arrived there a few days ago. His heart of flesh was pierced through by God using a copper chain; His heart of God was tore into pieces and manifested into different versions of his past by another God.

He had never encountered such a strange power before. One killed his past, while the other turned his worst future into a reality. The intense pain made his body convulse. The memory had appeared more than once. He didn’t know which one was true. However, one thing was certain: as long as he was still alive, he had a chance.

His phone started to vibrate again. Gao Ming stopped exploring the memories in his flesh. He opened his eyes and saw that his grandmother was calling him again.

“Why? You turned me into this monster when you were alive. Why are you unwilling to let me go after you’re dead?”

He answered the call. It was another video call. This time, the image from before didn’t show up. Instead, Gao Ming was shown on screen. He was standing at the door, holding his phone.

“Is this… the perspective of grandmother’s dead body?”

He looked up. His grandmother’s desiccated face lifted, and her murky eyes stared at Gao Ming. “Didn’t I tell you not to come in?!”

The dangling arms started to move. Something moved in his grandmother’s engorged throat. Her skull moved. The ropes that bound her joints tightened.

“Is it my fault that the tragedy can’t be resolved? It’s your fault! You are the tragedy!” Fear grew in his heart. Gao Ming retreated and slammed his grandmother’s room door close.

The sound of ropes snapping entered his ears. His grandmother was coming out of the bedroom!

Gao Ming grabbed his diary and school bag as he ran to the living room. No matter what awaited him outside, he didn’t want to stay in that home anymore. To prevent Gao Ming from escaping, his grandmother put chains and talismans around the living room door. Only those with the key could leave.

Gao Ming kicked the lock and slammed into the door. He needed to leave. The door trembled and shook. Gao Ming could hear creepy noises coming from his grandmother’s bedroom. She was crawling out!

“I need to leave!”