【I have a haunted house】Chapter 1: Nightmare in Decline

"I've never seen a haunted house this unscary."

"The props are so fake. After walking around, I wasn't scared at all—actually, I almost started laughing."

"Materialists fear nothing!"

"I told you, it’s boring. I’d rather be playing games in the dorm. My Kun is already level 80."

At the entrance of the haunted house in the western suburbs of Jiujiang, a few students were riding shared bicycles, leaving without a second glance.

Seeing this, Nick, holding a promotional flyer for the haunted house, couldn't help but feel helpless.

Scaring people was an art form, but after all these years of horror films, people’s psychological endurance had grown so strong that walking through a haunted house felt no different from strolling through their own backyard.

"Boss!"

A clear female voice called from behind. Nick turned to see a petite, well-endowed "zombie" in a nurse outfit, stomping out of the haunted house, looking furious.

"What's wrong, Xiaowan?"

The girl, named Xu Wan, was one of the temporary actors at the haunted house.

"Those little punks tried to take advantage of me!" She bared her tiger teeth, clenching her fist.

It was a complaint.

"That's too much. Even zombies aren't safe," Nick said, his voice sympathetic. "I'll go talk to the park manager, check the surveillance footage."

"No need to make it so complicated. As soon as I realized what they were up to, I took the initiative and gave one of them a good punch," Xu Wan shook her nurse costume, revealing the blood stains. "This isn’t makeup."

"Uh, no problem. A girl should learn to protect herself," Nick wiped the sweat from his forehead, glancing at the setting sun. "Well, that's it for today. Looks like there won’t be any more visitors, so tell the others they can head home early."

After Nick finished speaking, the girl, still in her zombie makeup, didn’t budge.

"Is there something else?"

"Boss..." Xu Wan hesitated, slowly pulling a letter from her pocket. "This is Tao Ming and Xiao Wei’s resignation letter. They really appreciate how you’ve treated them, but they didn’t have the courage to tell you face to face, so they asked me to pass it on."

"They’re leaving?" Nick paused, taking the letter. "Everyone has their own path. You can go home early too."

"Got it. I’ll go take off my makeup."

Watching the cute little "zombie" walk away, Nick silently lit a cigarette.

Half a year ago, his parents mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind this haunted house.

Clinging to the memory of them, Nick quit his job and devoted himself entirely to running the haunted house, hoping to make it a success.

But times were changing quickly. The haunted house industry was fiercely competitive, and it was already a niche business with many limitations.

The same terrifying scenes became boring after being seen once, and constantly updating them required a lot of money.

For the past few weeks, the haunted house had been losing money. The daily ticket sales couldn’t even cover the utility bills.

"I don’t know how much longer I can hold on."

He stubbed out the cigarette and was about to head back into the haunted house when a middle-aged man in a New Century Park uniform approached him.

Upon seeing him, Nick quickened his pace like a mouse avoiding a cat.

"Are you pretending you don’t see me?" The middle-aged man grabbed Nick’s shoulder. "We need to sort this out today. Your utility bills and venue rent are two months overdue. The higher-ups have been pushing me, and I’m under a lot of pressure!"

"Uncle Xu, it’s not that I don’t want to pay, it’s just that things have been tight lately. Could you give me another month?"

"Last month, you said the same thing."

"I promise, this will be the last month!" Nick pounded his chest, his expression sincere.

"The haunted house industry is in decline. You can’t attract visitors, and you’re just wasting your time," said the middle-aged man, known as Uncle Xu, as he eyed the envelope in Nick’s hand, his grip loosening. "You’re still young. Why not do something else? Why make things so hard for yourself?"

"Uncle Xu, I know you're just trying to help, but this haunted house means something special to me. It’s the last connection to my parents." Nick's voice dropped low, as if not wanting anyone to overhear.

Uncle Xu, as the park manager, knew all about Nick's parents, but he didn’t reply. After a few seconds, he sighed deeply, his tone softening. "I understand your feelings. Fine, I’ll try to buy you a few more weeks."

"Thank you, Uncle Xu!"

"Don’t thank me. Just focus on selling more tickets."

After sending off the park manager, Nick returned to the haunted house, where he began his routine work: checking equipment wear and tear, maintaining props, cleaning.

"The fake blood in the repair room is almost gone. I need to order more. This hallway needs to be slanted a bit; maybe it will create a better blind spot for the guests. The mannequin got torn, gotta fix it. Damn! Who took my craft light?"

To outsiders, he was the owner of a haunted house, an entrepreneur of sorts. In reality, the struggles behind the scenes were his alone to bear.

A haunted house was a form of "terror" consumption. People’s muscles and nerves became highly tense in a terrifying environment, and once released, it was like a massage, providing a temporary sense of satisfaction.

But haunted houses were also a one-time experience. Many traveled from city to city, attracting new visitors. For fixed-location haunted houses like Nick’s, unless they became famous enough to draw people in, they didn’t last long.

That Nick had managed to keep it going for so long was already impressive.

Dragging a damaged mannequin, Nick entered the repair room. He had majored in toy design and manufacturing in college, and many of the props and mannequins in the haunted house were his own designs.

The repair process was tedious and complicated—he had to stitch up the mannequin's skin, repaint it, and make it look worn.

"Almost out of blood. I remember there’s some stock left in the attic." The haunted house had three floors: the first and second were used for setting up terrifying scenes, while the third floor was for storage.

He opened the dusty wooden door to the attic, which was cluttered with outdated equipment, much of it left behind by his parents when they ran the haunted house.

Looking at the familiar equipment, Nick felt a pang of nostalgia.

"Six months have passed already..."

Nick recalled his childhood, when his parents ran a traveling haunted house, taking him from city to city. Sometimes, when his parents were busy, they’d leave him in the back with all the props and monsters, and that’s how he developed a fearlessness of things most kids would find terrifying.

While his peers were busy with alphabet puzzles, he was already running around holding severed heads.

"All memories..."

Before he knew it, Nick had walked over to a wooden box filled with his parents' belongings. Inside were a rough cloth doll and a pitch-black phone.

The doll was the first toy Nick ever made as a child, and the phone... he had no memory of it at all.

These two items were found by the police in an abandoned hospital on the outskirts of town. No one knew why his parents had gone there in the dead of night.

"It's been so long... where are you?" Nick picked up the cloth doll, squeezed its face, and sighed softly. "I better get more fake blood. If I can't survive this off-season, the haunted house might really have to shut down or be sold."

Nick muttered to himself, but as he mentioned selling the haunted house, the black phone—silent until then—suddenly flashed, emitting a faint cold glow.

"What’s this? Black technology? A supernatural phenomenon?"

If anyone else had been there, their heart rate would have surged, their palms would have sweated, but Nick’s reaction was more direct. He picked up the phone and held it up to his face, checking again.

"I’ve tried a hundred times to get this phone to work. How is it suddenly turning on today? This was found at the place my parents disappeared... Could it be they’re reaching out to me because they know I’m struggling?"

Suppressing his excitement, Nick swiped the screen, and the phone’s black display showed only one app icon—a haunted house logo.

"This isn’t what I expected, but the icon looks familiar. Isn’t this the front gate of our haunted house?"

Frowning, Nick clicked on the app, and a line of blood-red text appeared on the screen: "Do you believe in ghosts?"

Whether ghosts exist or not is a philosophical question that’s highly subjective—especially for someone like Nick, a pragmatic, science-minded person.

"Guess there might be..."

Nick made his choice, and after a few seconds, new text appeared on the screen.

"Your thoughts are the answer. From this moment on, you will officially take over as the new owner of the haunted house. Of course, this is not something to celebrate. As the final part of the beginner's guide, let me offer you some advice: suicide is the most cowardly act. Please, try to live."

"That’s a