【I have a haunted house】 Chapter 7: The Ghost Marriage

"Fight poison with poison? I wouldn’t believe you even if you were the last person on earth!"

"Big brother, if you pay for a new phone screen, we can call it even."

"Think a half-price ticket will buy me off? Not a chance!"

Amid the clamoring voices, several minutes passed, yet no one dared to enter the haunted house. The tourists huddled behind the safety barriers, too afraid to take the first step. Their cowardice made Nick’s patience wear thin. “Isn’t anyone brave enough to experience it? My haunted house isn’t scary at all. If you don’t believe me, check the reviews online.”

Encouraged by his words, a few people pulled out their phones and began to search.

“It’s true, all the reviews say it’s not scary at all.”

"Yeah, the only positive comment is about the actress playing the ghost—she’s so beautiful…”

“Maybe we should go in and try it?”

After another long wait, someone finally stepped forward. "It’s just a haunted house. How scary can it be? I’ve seen real corpses, so what’s there to fear?"

A young man with a crew cut and a sturdy frame, his brows thick and eyes large, spoke confidently.

"Bro, stop talking nonsense. There’s a limit to how much you can act cool."

"How old are you to have seen a real corpse?"

"Everyone here is just scared, pretending otherwise…"

As the banter continued, a voice broke through the chatter, unsettling in its calmness. “He’s not lying. Corpses are nothing unusual to us.”

Everyone turned toward the sound. A tall woman, wearing a sunhat and a white skirt, walked toward them from the entrance of the amusement park.

Her face was unreadable, and it seemed as though the temperature dropped a few degrees as she passed by.

"Senior!" The young man rushed over, eager to help the woman carry her bag. But with a single glance from her, he froze, standing awkwardly in place with a forced, yet polite smile.

"You call her ‘Senior’? Are you still students?" Nick asked, intrigued by the two.

“We’re from the Forensic Science Department at Jiujiang Medical University,” the young man replied with a grin. “I’m Diff, and this is my Senior, Ice Sister. I posted your video on the school forum last night. She decided to come check out the haunted house after watching it.”

“This ice-cold beauty is a forensic scientist?”

“No wonder her aura fits the profession so well.”

“Hey, beautiful, mind adding me on WeChat?”

Tourists gathered around the woman, and Diff, ever the protector, chuckled and stood to the side. “You guys have no idea. My Senior is something else. She dissects frogs and mice in the morning, washes up, and then heads straight to the cafeteria for braised pork like nothing happened. If you catch her in the mortuary late at night, she might greet a cadaver floating in formaldehyde with a yawn. You think you stand a chance? She's probably worked on more men than you've held hands with women."

This unusual introduction worked like a charm, and a two-meter-wide empty circle appeared around the woman.

Nick, hearing the young man’s words, rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on. He had just completed a nightmare-level task and was about to turn things around, only to find that the first visitors were forensic students.

If someone studies forensic science, their psychological endurance must be extraordinary.

"Can we go in now?" Ice Sister asked, impatience lacing her voice as she walked up to Nick. With her height and platform shoes, she nearly looked down at him.

"Ticket’s twenty, but half price means it’s ten. Before you enter, though, I’ve got some background information and some precautions to share with you," Nick replied, recalling the three key elements of haunted house design mentioned by the black phone—among them, the backstory, which was crucial in creating an immersive experience.

"First, a little introduction to my haunted house. Although many people on reviews say it’s not scary, I want to give you the truth. This land we stand on was, fifty years ago, the largest burial ground in Jiujiang City. Thirty years ago, the city decided to build Jiujiang People's Hospital here. What happened next you can find online, but it’s not a pretty story. After a series of unexplained events, the hospital had to move. This haunted house was built by transforming the old site of the hospital, and there are many hidden secrets and files left behind from when it was abandoned."

With a sweep of his hand, Nick pointed to the warning sign near the door. "Visitors with cardiovascular diseases or arrhythmias are prohibited from entering. Children aged twelve to sixteen must be accompanied by a parent. Alright, if there are no questions, the two of you can come with me."

Nick pulled aside the opaque black curtain and locked the rusty iron gate behind him, leading Diff and Ice Sister into the pitch-black corridor.

"‘In life, they were not a couple, but in death, they were buried together in the same grave’—this is an old tale that has been passed down through generations in Jiujiang."

"Lord Pingjiang wanted to arrange a ghost marriage for his prematurely deceased child, so he invited a fortune teller to select a bride based on her birth date and zodiac. But the girl had already given her heart to someone else. To force her to comply, Lord Pingjiang threw her lover into the river and threatened her family’s lives."

"In the end, to save her parents, the girl agreed to marry a dead man."

"Blood candles, lacquered coffins—both the red and white ceremonies were held in the same room. After the girl was buried alive in the coffin, strange occurrences began at the Pingjiang estate."

"Blood dripped from a bronze rooster; paper figures opened their eyes; at midnight, a woman’s apparition appeared in the house..."

"This experience is called ‘Ghost Marriage,’ an open-ended scenario. You’ll need to find the correct exit within fifteen minutes to escape. If you’re too frightened, just stand by the camera and shout. I’ll come to get you." Nick paused at the entrance to the second floor, gesturing toward the darkened corridor. “Have fun.”

“It sounds interesting, but it’ll take more than this to scare me,” Diff muttered, hiding behind his ‘Senior’ and claiming he wasn’t afraid, yet his body told a different story—he wouldn’t budge an inch.

On the other hand, Ice Sister showed no signs of fear. Her expression remained impassive as she walked in without a second thought.

“Senior, wait for me!”

As the two visitors entered the long corridor on the second floor, Nick locked the exit door behind them and called Xu Wan. "Xiao Wan, the guests are in. Be ready, and remember to block your ears."

After giving the instructions, he hurried to the control room, where the monitors, sound control panel, and special effects remote devices were all housed.

"I wasn’t planning to use this track, it’s pretty cursed, but after encountering forensic students disrupting the opening, well, this is beyond bearable!" He switched on the sound control panel, loading "Black Friday" into the background music library and setting it to loop.

Once everything was set, he sat before the monitor, watching Diff and Ice Sister closely. The moment they showed any signs of distress, he would rush in to assist.