Chapter 19: A Night That Had Lost All Sense of Time

After Hughes had held him for a while, Yu Chu started to feel awkward. He patted Hughes twice. “It isn’t chasing us anymore. You can put me down now.”

Hughes set him down. Yu Chu turned to look around. There were plenty of streetlights in the area, but only one was lit.

The production crew had probably designed it that way. Darkness made it easier to build a scary atmosphere.

A few angel statues stood on the grass nearby. With no lights on them, shadows fell across their faces, giving them the unmistakable look of Weeping Angels. Blink once, and they’d have you.

Yu Chu stared at the statues, wondering if the production crew had actually found a Weeping Angel to ambush them.

He turned to Hughes and Jian Yuyang. “All three of us have different tasks. Hughes should have finished his by now. Which one should we do next?”

“Let’s do yours,” Jian Yuyang said. “I can find a zombie and pat him on the back later.”

Hughes nodded.

“Then let’s find the haunted house.” Yu Chu looked around. He couldn’t see any signs pointing the way. “Let’s split up and see if we can find one.”

The other two went off in different directions to look for signs.

Yu Chu searched the area for anything that might be the haunted house while trying to reach Yuan Xiangdi and Qin Yun over the walkie-talkie.

At last, just as Yuan Xiangdi’s voice crackled through the speaker, Yu Chu spotted a sign.

“This is Yu Chu. Where are you now? Over.”

“Qin Yun and I are by the pirate ship.” Yuan Xiangdi’s voice was mixed with static. “A zombie chased me just now. Scared me half to death, but luckily I ran fast. Are you heading to do your task now?”

“We were being chased too. We’re about to do the haunted house task,” Yu Chu said. “There are five fragments to find. Why don’t we split up? It’ll be faster than searching together.”

“Okay, okay…”

Before Yuan Xiangdi could finish, Yu Chu heard him scream. Luckily, Yu Chu reacted fast and pulled the walkie-talkie away from his ear.

He called Hughes and Jian Yuyang back, and the three of them followed the signs until they found the haunted house.

Some people loved the thrill of going through a haunted house. Yu Chu most certainly wasn’t one of them.

Paying money to be scared felt a lot like paying for torture. If he’d come to the amusement park on his own, he never would have set foot in the haunted house.

If his personal task hadn’t required him to come here, he would have foisted it on another member of the group.

The haunted house was creepy enough on its own. Given the circumstances, it was more than twice as scary.

For once, Yu Chu struggled to keep his expression under control. Usually, his camera-ready composure held up perfectly.

Jian Yuyang draped an arm over Yu Chu’s shoulder. “How about Hughes and I go in and find the fragments, then bring a ghost out for you to touch? That way, you can finish your task without going inside.”

It was a workable plan, but Yu Chu shook his head. “It’s fine. It’s just a haunted house.”

“Are you sure?” Hughes asked.

Yu Chu felt anything but sure, but his voice was firm. “I’m fine.”

After steeling himself, Yu Chu walked through the entrance between the other two.

The cameraman, who had been lugging a camera and chasing them all the way there, stayed outside rather than follow them in. He would wait for them to finish their task and come back out.

There were cameras inside the haunted house, so the cameraman didn’t need to follow them.

Inside was much creepier than outside. The lights were dim, and they weren’t the kind used for ordinary illumination.

If they were any dimmer, Yu Chu wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

He was especially easily startled at the moment. After just two steps, he stepped on something.

Yu Chu immediately pulled his foot back and looked down. A puddle of something the color of blood lay on the floor.

It looked like liquid, but it hadn’t felt like liquid underfoot. It wasn’t scary, just a little gross, like the slime he’d played with as a kid.

With the other two pressed close on either side, Yu Chu moved forward slowly.

The haunted house had an abandoned-hospital theme. Yu Chu noticed disposable IV bags scattered across the floor.

They held liquids of all different colors, so the three of them had to step carefully around them as they went. If they crushed one by accident, it might burst and splatter their clothes.

The creepy atmosphere was getting to Yu Chu. He lowered his voice. “Shouldn’t we walk faster? We have things to find, and I still have to do my task.”

He didn’t seem to realize that they were moving so slowly because he was taking such tiny steps. Hughes and Jian Yuyang weren’t actually scared at all.

The two of them kindly kept that to themselves and agreed to pick up the pace.

Once Yu Chu sped up, they followed the route marked inside the haunted house and soon reached the door of a room.

The door was covered in dark red handprints, most of them incomplete.

There were other, harder-to-describe marks as well. Looking at the handprints and the irregular smears, Yu Chu imagined a scene of unimaginable horror.

A small square window sat above the door. Since this was a haunted house, there had to be a staff member dressed as a ghost hiding behind it, ready to pop out and scare him if he looked.

But opening the door would probably get him scared, too.

Yu Chu hesitantly gripped the doorknob, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He pushed the handle down, then opened the door.

When he opened his eyes, the room was pitch-black. Its only light came from the dim glow outside. In that faint illumination, he could make out several hospital beds.

There wasn’t a ghost hiding by the door after all. Yu Chu breathed a sigh of relief.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Jian Yuyang said. “At least it’s lit outside.”

Hughes was fearless. He spotted a blanket bulging on the bed beside him and actually walked over to pull it back.

There were no fragments beneath it, just a tattered cloth doll with both arms torn off and dirty stuffing poking out.

“Nothing on this bed,” Hughes said.

Yu Chu slowly made his way to another bed. The moment he stopped, a pair of hands that had been waiting beneath it shot out and grabbed his ankle.

Cold hands clamped around his foot. Yu Chu screamed and stumbled backward several steps, nearly falling. Jian Yuyang caught him just in time.

Yu Chu clutched Jian Yuyang’s clothes. His legs had genuinely started to give way, and the sensation of someone grabbing his ankle still lingered.

He’d thought the ghost would hide behind a door and jump out at him. Apparently, the scares had evolved. Now they hid under beds.

“What happened?” Jian Yuyang asked.

Hughes came over as well.

Yu Chu took two deep breaths, trying to slow his racing heart.

He pointed at the bed and spoke slowly. “Someone grabbed my foot just now.”

Hughes looked where Yu Chu was pointing and saw a person dressed entirely in black hiding under the bed. The figure looked just like the little black silhouette that often represented the culprit in Detective Conan.

There were no lights in the hospital room. Someone dressed in black and hiding beneath a bed was almost impossible to notice unless you looked carefully.

Yu Chu, the victim of the scare, was still dazed. He sighed, no longer in the mood to look for fragments.

Hughes seemed to have an idea. He walked over to the bed, crouched down, and asked, “Could you do us a favor?”

The staffer in the black costume looked at Hughes, puzzled.

Yu Chu thought for a couple of seconds, then understood. His task was to touch a ghost’s face, and there was someone right here he could touch.

The staffer was easygoing. Touching the face was no problem.

Yu Chu wasn’t interested in touching anyone’s face, especially not the person who’d just scared him. He reached out, quickly brushed the staffer’s black-painted face, and completed his task.

They searched the hospital room carefully but found nothing that looked like a fragment, so they moved on to the next room.

Yu Chu had just been scared, which made him even more cautious. He kept worrying that a ghost would leap out at him from some corner.

He’d wondered if the production crew might have zombies lying in wait inside the haunted house.

They hadn’t run into any yet. Maybe the crew had a shred of conscience and knew a chase scene in a pitch-black haunted house would be difficult to film. Or maybe the zombies were there and they just hadn’t seen them.

They searched two rooms and still hadn’t found a single fragment.

Yu Chu realized that finding the things was taking longer than he’d expected. At this rate, who knew when filming would wrap? They might really be stuck here until midnight.

Just then, the walkie-talkie in his pocket suddenly crackled to life. Its voice sounded especially loud in the quiet haunted house. Yu Chu pulled it out.

It was Qin Yun. “Can you hear me? Can you hear me? This is Qin Yun.”

“Yes, I can hear you,” Yu Chu said. “We’re searching inside the haunted house, but we haven’t found anything yet. Have you found a fragment?”

Qin Yun said they had just found one.

“What does it look like?” Yu Chu asked.

Qin Yun described it. It wasn’t an ordinary scrap of paper, but a note inside a glass bottle. From the outside, it looked a lot like the secret formula for a Krabby Patty.

The comparison was vivid enough for Yu Chu to understand right away.

“Got it,” he said.

As soon as he finished speaking, the PA system crackled to life, announcing that one of the members had found a fragment.

So it had been the one Qin Yun and Yuan Xiangdi found.

If they had already found one over there, his group needed to hurry up.

Yu Chu gestured to the other two. “It’s in a glass bottle, like the Krabby Patty secret formula.”

At first, they had all thought they were looking for an ordinary scrap of paper. Knowing it was inside a glass bottle made it much easier to spot.

After being scared three times, Yu Chu finally found one of the antidote fragments hidden in the haunted house.

The production crew had to be kidding. They’d hidden it in the room farthest from the entrance.

Yu Chu had experienced every scare the haunted house had to offer while searching for it. Not a single effect had gone to waste, from a ghost hiding in a cabinet to one bursting through a door and charging into the room.

If he liked haunted houses, this would have been worth twice the ticket price.

Too bad he didn’t.

Yu Chu crouched down and picked up the glass bottle. “Finally.”

“Why hide it here?” Jian Yuyang said. “I thought they’d at least put it somewhere closer to the entrance.”

Hughes started analyzing the layout again. “But it’s close to the exit.”

Yu Chu looked at the camera and waved the bottle. “We found it.”

The PA crackled to life again, repeating the same announcement as before.

Task complete, Yu Chu left the haunted house as fast as he could.

He never wanted to come back here again.

There were zombies waiting outside the entrance. Another chase began, and all three of them took off running.

Halfway through, Yu Chu remembered a variety show he’d watched a couple of days earlier. It had followed another group on a vacation. The members only had to complete a few tasks while they traveled.

Why did their variety show involve running around an amusement park at night, playing tag with zombies?

The zombie extras had a good sense of restraint. After chasing the three of them for a while, they broke off like wild monsters in a game and slowly returned to their original positions.

Yu Chu stopped to catch his breath and looked up at the moon. He gave himself a little pep talk.

His group had found one fragment, and Yuan Xiangdi’s group had found one too. Three remained.