Doll House(2)

The group wasn't remotely as united as Chu Yi's first instance as they immediately split off do their own thing. The veterans forming teams with veterans, leaving the helpless rookies to fend for themselves, and neither was Chu Yi interested in being the baby sitter for any of them.

But it was only after they started exploring the castle, that they truly realize how big it was. Many of the rooms were restricted, with large padlocks closed firmly around the handles, but even then, the ones they could explore amounted up to thirty.

What was uncanny about the rooms was that all of them seemed to have been built with the same template. Even the alignment of the floor boards were parallel down to the very angles. If it wasn't for the different numbers on each of the wooden doors, they would have believed that they were just walking around in circles, exploring the same room over and over again.

In each room, there was also something strange. On top of every bed lay a rag doll- The Madams Prized Collections, with incomplete limbs, some of them missing an arm, a leg or simply a finger but none of them were in fact whole. The situation, uncannily reminded them off the Madam, she also resembled that of an unfinished doll.

While Checking each room thoroughly, the groups passed each other with slight hostility, no one could be sure when they would eventually turn against each other, and no one wanted to be the guinea pig to test that theory out.

By the time the sky outside had started darkening, their search had already proved futile and in defeat, they could only reconvene in the dining hall.

Ding- Ding-Ding,

With a shrill din of a bell, the butler reappeared in the hall,

"Tonight the madam has mercifully allowed you to rest for a night before your official duties begin tomorrow"

When no one said anything in return, the butler harumphed coldy.

"It seems you lot are just as ungrateful as the other darned wretches. "

Immediately they returned a lacklustre a applause, faces turned up in strained smiles

Gratified the butler turned away,

"You can pick the rooms at your own behest tonight, just remember to leave everything intact"

There was no need to say it, they could all hear the hidden threat.

The players looked at each other before walking away tacitly.

Although, there were no clues at the moment, there was no need to worry needlessly because everyone understood that on the first night, the first person to die was usually the precursor to discovering the secrets of the instance.

They just didn't know who'll be the first unlucky victim or whether it would be themselves.

Night had already descended and the dim lamps around the castle had been lit, reflecting dark shadows onto the plain walls.

The timid newcomer that everyone disliked was called Wei Xi and she was the last one to pick a room- albeit helplessly- when no one offered to stay with her, this pig teammate.

There was also a doll laying on her bed and with spiteful resentment, she harshly tossed the ugly doll to the floor, adding an additional kick for good measure before breaking once more into waterworks.

No one would tell her where they were and those hateful men just ignored her pleas .

She wanted to go home.

What on earth do these things want to from her.

Wei Xi, didn't know how long she laid there, cowering under her sheets, unable to close her eyes to the paranoia.She could only keep crying miserably, waiting for morning to come

Knock.

KnOCK.

KNOCK.

Abruptly startled, the tears dried in her eyes in shock. There came three loud knocks on her door.

Who would be idle enough to knock on her door in the middle of the night.

With a trembling voice she called out,

"W-who is it-"

No one answered, only the knocking growing louder and more aggresive each second that she didnt open the door was her response. Eventually cruelly cascading into loud banging that sent her heart racing in shock!

"If -If you don't stop, you'll wake the others-"

No one answered.

At this point she couldn't deceive herself into believing that what was out there was a human and a with a frightened yelp she borrowed herself into sheets.

"Pleasedontcome in, pleasedontcomein,pleasedontcomein!!"

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM

At this point, the knocks had turned into heavy banging on the door. The heavy wooden door only seemed fragile under the relentless force and creaked harshly under the impact of the creature and by the sounds of it wouldn't be able to stand it for long. Whatever was outside was trying to force it's way in!

After a few minutes of panic and dread, she managed to forcefully calm herself down a bit and it was only then, did he she realize,

The sounds weren't coming from the door.

The doors weren't shaking. 

It was coming from the floors.

Something was buried under the floor.

Violent banging, came from the floorboards beneath her bed, shaking intensely with each strike, there was something clambering to break free from underneath! 

Tears streamed down her face pathetically,bubbling with her snot and gobble, the terrorized screams being hushed in her throat. Pleads and wails falling out of her lips in a incomprehensible mumbles.

She didn't want to die.

The knocking grew in intensity every passing second, every creak of the board underneath her seemed to echo infinitely in the trapped room !

Growing closer and closer and closer!!

She felt faint.

She was going to die.

Then it stopped.

The silence was deeply unsettling in the encompassing darkness. There was no banging for a good while.

Is it gone, relieved, Wei Xi finally scrounged up the courage to peek a head over the bed to look.

CHING-

With the sharp sound of a blade drawing, she felt a flash of pain in her neck.

Then nothing.

Eyes wide open, she saw her body growing farther and farther away. The head tumbled into the far corner of the room leaving trails of foul blood in its wake.

The last thing she saw was a beautiful rag doll dressed in pure white, dancing happily in the fountain of warm blood that spurted from her severed neck.

She was dead.

***

A scream woke Chu Yu up from his sleep and it didn't take long for him to figure out something had happened or rather, someone had died.

Eventually, the rest of the players found the the room from the direction of the screams and inside, the scene of carnage left several of the player with pale faces and both the newcomers with weak stomach vomited their entire guts out in seconds. Chunks of undigested steak still floating around in stomach acid.

The smell was much more pungent and disgusting than the scent blood, and he sidestepped the duo with distaste.

Chu Yi shifted around, changing his angle, and cast another glimpse at the door. At this one glance, he involuntarily raised a somewhat shocked eyebrow.

Coagulated blood caked the entire room. A corpse were messily strewn across the floor. The degree of goriness and mutilation was beyond grotesque, to the point that one completely couldn't recognize the original bodies. Rather than saying they were human beings, it was more accurate to say they were merely a hollow chuck of skinless meat. Blood trickled along the room, flowing all the way down to the floors outside. From the walls to the floorboards, there was hardly a single place on this third floor that was clean.

Beside the mostly eaten corpse, or rather the rancid pile of ground flesh their was also a little doll dressed in a beautiful red dress much like the ones sitting in their rooms.

After watching in speechless silence for a while, one of the veterans was much more big- hearted than the rest and after looking around for any signs of danger. Immediately started searching the room for clues regardless of the guarded gazes of the others.

Sure enough, there was a diffrence from yesterday. In a hidden corner of the room appeared an aged newspaper.

But with a sheepish grin, the man came back with it helplessly.

"It seems that the paper was written solely in English-

And?

The man scratched his face,

" My college entrance exam for English was only about 100 points."

Flabbergasted , even Chu Yi had to look at the man with some equivalent disdain, getting 100 points was equivalent to sleeping for 3/4 of the exam and filling in random multiple choice answers five minutes before the test was over.

Scornfully, The rest crowded around the paper to read it,

[July 13 1997

Editor: Anonymous

Today, major crime syndicate in our town had been unearthed. 104 bodies of children were found. All of them branded with the words "Little Beggar Boys". They have kidnapped, beaten, and deliberately disabled and spread throughout the country to beg for a lifetime. None of the children could be identified as their organs and blood have been drained and sold onto the black market. We hereby send gratitude to out kind Madama Baron who has kindly offered her land to bury the bodies of the 104 tortured souls.]

Immediately they thought of the sinister disabled dolls around the castle,

"Fuck- dont tell me ?-"

The man, Zhao Pengyu looked hideous having used his limited knowledge to guess at what the paper was been saying.

Chu Yi looked at the newspaper in his hand and reiterated with a calm face: "Yes, the dolls here are all built with incomplete limbs. And the little beggars- they are all kidnapped children. Some were dug for their organs and died on the spot. Some had their bones broken many times, causing their bones to grow deformed, and sent to different places to beg. Those who couldn't bear it all died there. Their distorted and gruesome corpses buried on the castle grounds."

Zhao Pengyu's expression cooled down and angrily cursed: "These beasts!" Look at the newspaper in Chu Yi's hand, Zhao Pengyu, couldn't help but pat the dust off his shoulder.

Something had definitely happened in between the Madam and the 104 children. They just had to find out what exactly.

"We just don't know if what the newspaper read is exactly as it seems."

It was at this point, that there came a low knock on the door, swiveling around they were startled to see a little boy in a soft white gown staring right back at them with a curious gleam in his big dark eyes.

"Do you also you wanna play dollhouse?"