Horror Game Designer

Chapter 16: Fundamental Abilities The Father and Mother Who Delivered the Cake

Gao Ming jogged down the stairs, undeterred by the pouring rain as he hurried back to his house without opening his umbrella. The day had been remarkably rewarding, a stark contrast to his mundane job at a maximum security prison.

Once inside, he laid out several black and white photographs on his coffee table. Lost in thought, he wondered if the emerging horror games with reality could bring back the people in these memorial photos. Yet, he also wondered if they would remain themselves upon their return.

His eyes lingered on a photograph of Teacher Yao, contemplating Yao’s potential adjustment to the other side. As he planned the next horror game session, he decided to include photographs of Zhao Xi and Teacher Yao.

In the dark, rain-drenched night, a famished Gao Ming that had fasted all day reluctantly opened his fridge. His reluctance stemmed from a deep psychological impact left by the first game, making him hesitant to eat anything from home.

Considering takeout, he mused about the escalating disaster and the possibility of food delivery amidst it. After ordering via his phone, he fell silent, staring at the standby screen.

His phone’s wallpaper depicted a meal with his parents in a suburban district of Xinhai, taken during a leave day. Still in her apron, his mother served dishes while fretting about a neighbor’s matchmaking plans for him once his job stabilized.

Meanwhile, his father, seizing a moment of distraction, stealthily enjoyed a glass of wine.

This heartwarming photo, however, troubled Gao Ming as he gripped his hair in distress.

The photo’s normalcy was puzzling. Who had taken it? It didn’t seem like an automatic shot due to the phone’s distance. It implied a fourth person’s presence, which Gao Ming couldn’t recall.

He reflected on the investigator’s warning about communication disruptions due to anomalous events. Despite this, during his three-day entrapment, he had received calls from his parents, sounding utterly normal.

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He hesitated to delve deeper, fearing the implications.

“Anomalous events in Xinhai began six months ago. Have all these calls since then been from someone else?” he wondered.

As a psychological counselor, Gao Ming was skilled at detecting emotions, making him hard to deceive.

The heavy rain made travel to Xinhai impossible. With tense, crackling knuckles, he hesitated before finally dialing that familiar number.

The ensuing busy tone was more unsettling than any horror game.

“No answer?” he questioned, engulfed in uncertainty.

Gao Ming anxiously paced within his house, repeatedly attempting to call the number, but each effort met with silence. He questioned the sudden inability to connect, feeling a growing sense of unease.

Resigned, he sank into his sofa, fixating on a black and white family photograph that featured a cake. Determinedly, he dialed his home phone for the seventh time.

As the dial tone beeped monotonously, raindrops rhythmically pattered against the window, creating a somber backdrop. A cold, serpentine chill emerged from the shadows of the room, slithering around his ankles in an ominous embrace.

With the room growing colder, Gao Ming, from the corner of his eye, noticed the mother in the photograph seeming to smile in an unsettling manner.

Abruptly, the busy tone ceased, and the call connected.

“Hello?” Gao Ming stood up sharply, his voice laced with trepidation. On the other end, he heard a mix of static and a heavy, dragging sound, as if someone—or something—was nearing.

“Can you hear me? It’s me, Gao Ming!” he called out.

The living room lights flickered erratically, mirroring the static crackle. Concurrently, footsteps sounded in the hallway, sending a chill down his spine as his body heat seemed to evaporate.

“Who are you, really?” he asked, his voice trembling.

A faint, haunting echo of his mother’s voice whispered from the phone, “Stay here…” Meanwhile, shadows in the room began to twist and turn, resembling tree roots breaking through the ground.

As the cold intensified, Gao Ming tried to disconnect the call, but the voice grew louder, insistently repeating, “Stay here, stay here, stay here!!!” Its shrill tone reminded him of previous eerie encounters with entities masquerading as his parents.

He felt as though invisible arms from the encroaching shadows were reaching for him. In this dire moment, a loud knock on the door broke the spell.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

“Your delivery is here!”

“Is anyone there? Your food! Answer the phone!”

Shadows seemed to shift towards the door, while Gao Ming, mustering all his strength, desperately ended the call.

The room’s temperature swiftly returned to normalcy as warmth and light flooded back in. Gao Ming rushed to the door, his heart pounding.

The delivery person, still knocking, was shocked to find Gao Ming collapsed into the hall, a picture of terror and exhaustion, gasping for air.

Gao Ming, still reeling, pondered fearfully, “When did these calls start being replaced? Have I been talking to spirits all this time?” Pain racked his body, his hands shaking uncontrollably.

The delivery guy, holding a bag of yellow braised chicken rice, was rendered speechless by the scene. He cautiously stood in a corner, gently offering, “Brother, your food is here.”

“Sorry for troubling you,” Gao Ming expressed his apologies to the delivery guy, his eyes conveying sincere gratitude. He recognized that the delivery man’s timely knocking had potentially saved him from a grim fate. Curious, he asked, “What’s your name? How long have you been knocking? I don’t want to hold up your other deliveries. Let me send you a tip through the phone as compensation.”

Introducing himself as Sumo, the delivery guy modestly suggested that a positive review would suffice. Nevertheless, appreciative of Sumo’s unintended rescue, Gao Ming took out two hundred dollars and handed it to him.

Puzzled by this generosity, Sumo inquired, “Why are you doing this?”

Fumbling for his phone, Gao Ming responded, “Good deeds deserve recognition. I rarely use cash. Add me as a friend, and I’ll transfer the money digitally.”

Despite Sumo’s attempts to decline the extra payment, insisting it was merely a five-minute delay, Gao Ming insisted on the gesture. He then asked Sumo if he had noticed anything unusual outside, to which Sumo, looking perplexed, shook his head.

Gao Ming speculated that the eerie ‘parents’ in the memorial photo could only influence things as long as they remained within the photo’s confines. He then checked his indoor surveillance footage on his phone.

Sumo, curious yet apprehensive, peeked at the screen.

The footage unsettlingly depicted Gao Ming in a state of frenzy, spasming and gesticulating wildly as if in the grip of madness.

This sight unnerved Sumo, who trembled as he held the yellow braised chicken rice and the money. He began to suspect Gao Ming might be under some supernatural influence.

Just then, the motion-activated lights in the corridor flickered off, casting Gao Ming’s face in a spectral light from the phone screen. They exchanged wordless, uneasy glances.

Feeling scared, Sumo half-joked, “Bro, don’t look at me like that, I’m getting frightened.” He shared that he was a college student new to food delivery, apologizing if he seemed rude.

Gao Ming tried to reassure him, affirming that he was a normal person.

Sumo, now visibly scared, retorted, “Which normal person needs to assert they’re normal?” He recalled hearing rumors about bad feng shui and criminal activities at Li Jing Apartments and started to believe them.

Without waiting for an explanation, Sumo hastily set down the food and money and bolted downstairs.

Gao Ming, left alone with the delivery and the cash, retreated to his room, contemplating the night’s surreal occurrences. He realized that using the memorial photo while making calls home triggered changes in the photo’s ‘parents,’ allowing them to manifest from the shadows.

“This situation is horrifying,” he thought, “yet it could be a valuable tool if harnessed correctly.”

He remembered a tense confrontation with Zhao Xi, where his parents had eerily knocked on the door, cake in hand.