"This is the first time I've seen such a non-scary haunted house."
"The props are too fake. After walking around, not only was I not scared, I even felt like laughing."
"Materialists have nothing to fear!"
"I told you a long time ago that it's boring. It's better to play games in the dormitory. My Kun is already level 80."
At the entrance of the House of Horror in the western suburbs of Jiujiang City, several students rode shared bicycles and left without any regrets.
Seeing this scene, Chen Ge, who was holding a brochure about the haunted house, felt quite helpless.
Scaring people is a technical job, but modern people have experienced various thrillers and have a strong psychological quality. Entering a haunted house is like being in your own backyard.
"boss!"
A clear female voice came from behind. Chen Ge turned around and saw a petite "zombie" with a proud bust wearing a nurse's uniform. He ran out of the haunted house angrily.
"What's wrong, Xiaowan." The girl's name is Xu Wan, and she is one of the extras in the haunted house.
"Those little bastards just wanted to take advantage of me!" She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists.
It turns out that I came here to complain...
"It's too much. They don't even spare the zombies." As the boss, Chen Ge would naturally help Xiaowan: "I'll go find the park administrator to report the situation and adjust the monitoring."
"No need to go to so much trouble. When I noticed that the other party had this intention, I took a preemptive strike and beat him up." Xu Wan shook the blood on the corner of the nurse's uniform: "This is not makeup."
"Well, there's nothing wrong with it. Girls should learn to protect themselves." Chen Ge wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and glanced at the sunset: "Then we'll be here for today. I guess there won't be many tourists anymore. Let's inform others and get off work early."
After he finished speaking, the girl with zombie makeup in front of him did not move.
"Any thing else?"
"Boss..." Xu Wan hesitated, and slowly pulled out a letter from her pocket: "This is the resignation letter from Tao Ming and Xiao Wei. You treated them well, but they were too embarrassed to tell you in person, so Just ask me to pass it on to you."
"Are they leaving?" Chen Ge was stunned for a moment, then accepted the envelope: "Everyone has his own ambitions, so you should get off work early."
"Yeah, I'm going to take off my makeup."
Watching this cute little "zombie" leave, Chen Ge silently lit a cigarette.
Six months ago, his parents disappeared mysteriously, leaving only this house of horror.
In order to keep thinking about it, Chen Ge quit his job and devoted himself to running the haunted house, hoping to do better.
Unfortunately, times are changing too fast. The haunted house industry is under great pressure from competition, is relatively unpopular, and still has many limitations.
The same scary scene will become boring after watching it once, and constant renovation requires a lot of money.
Since a few weeks ago, the operation of the haunted house has been unable to make ends meet, and the day's admission fee is not even enough to cover the water and electricity bills.
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"I don't know how long I can last."
After putting out his cigarette, Chen Ge was about to return to the haunted house when a middle-aged man wearing New Century Paradise work clothes came over.
Seeing him, Chen Ge was like a mouse meeting a cat, he quickly quickened his pace.
"Are you pretending not to see it?" The middle-aged man grabbed Chen Ge's shoulder: "Let's make things clear today. You have been in arrears for water, electricity and venue rent for two months. The bosses have been reminding me, which makes me stressed now. It's huge!"
"Uncle Xu, it's not that I won't give it. It's true that funds have been a bit difficult recently. Please give me another month."
"You said the same thing last month."
"I promise you, this is definitely the last month!" Chen Ge patted his chest with a sincere look on his face.
"The haunted house business is in a slump right now, and it can't attract tourists. I tell you not to insist on it anymore." The middle-aged man named Uncle Xu looked at the envelope in Chen's singer, and the strength in his hand gradually decreased: "You You are so young, why do you have to live so tiredly if you don't want to do anything bad?"
"Uncle Xu, I know you are doing it for my own good, but this house of horrors has a different meaning to me. It is a thought left by my parents." Chen Ge's voice was low, as if he didn't want more people to hear it.
As the administrator of the park, the middle-aged man knew everything about Chen Ge's parents. He didn't reply. After a few seconds, he sighed softly and softened his mind: "I can understand your thoughts to some extent. Okay, I'll try my best." I'll help you delay it for a few more weeks."
"Thank you, Uncle Xu!"
"Don't thank me, you'd better use some snacks to sell more tickets to the haunted house."
After seeing off the park manager, Chen Ge went directly back to the haunted house and began to repeat his daily work, checking equipment wear and tear, maintaining props, and cleaning.
"The artificial plasma in the repair room is almost used up, so we need to buy another batch; this passage is tilted inward, which may better block the blind spots of tourists' perspectives; the doll is scratched and needs to be repaired; wipe it!" Where is the craft lamp I installed? Someone stole it!"
In the eyes of outsiders, he is the owner of a house of horrors and a promising young man who starts his own business. In fact, only he knows the sadness behind it.
Haunted houses can be regarded as a kind of "horror" consumption. In a scary environment, people's muscles and spirits will be highly tense. Once released, it will be like a massage. This method can give people a sense of satisfaction in a short period of time.
At the same time, haunted houses are also a one-time consumption. Many haunted houses on the market move around cities to continuously attract new tourists. A haunted house like Chen Ge that is fixed in a certain place cannot last long unless it is extremely famous and attracts people to come here.
It is not easy for him to be able to support himself for such a long time.
Dragging the smashed doll, Chen Ge entered the repair room. He majored in toy design and manufacturing in college. Many of the dolls and mechanisms in the haunted house were designed by himself.
The repair process is complicated and monotonous. It requires sewing the doll's skin, re-coloring and distressing.
"Almost blood, I remember there is still stock in the attic." The haunted house has three floors, the first and second floors are used to decorate scary scenes, and the third floor is the utility room.
Pushing open the dusty wooden door, the attic was filled with all kinds of discarded equipment, most of which were left behind when his parents ran the haunted house.
Seeing things misses people, so Chen Ge rarely comes here.
"More than half a year has passed in a flash."
Looking at the familiar equipment, Chen Ge thought of his childhood.
At that time, they were still running mobile haunted houses, and his parents took him around various cities. Sometimes when the couple was busy, they would throw Chen Ge alone backstage, with all kinds of ghost props as his company, and they started cultivating him from an early age. It also made Chen Ge very courageous.
After all, when his peers were playing alphabet puzzles, he was already running around holding a model of a human head.
"It's all memories."
Unknowingly, Chen Ge walked to the wooden box where his parents' belongings were stored. Inside, there was a rough puppet and a dark mobile phone.
The puppet was the first toy Chen Ge made when he was a child, but he had no memory of the mobile phone.
The police found these two things in an abandoned hospital in the suburbs. As for why Chen Ge's parents went there late at night, no one knew the reason.
"It's been so long, where are you?" Chen Ge picked up the puppet, pinched its face, and sighed softly: "I'd better find artificial plasma quickly. If I can't survive this off-season, the House of Horror Maybe it really needs to be closed down and transferred."
Chen Ge was just talking to himself, but when he talked about business closure and transfer, the black mobile phone that had been silent in the wooden box suddenly flashed on the screen, emitting a faint cold light.
"What's going on? Black technology? Supernatural phenomena?"
If it were someone else, his heartbeat might be faster, he would look around, and his palms would be sweaty. In comparison, Chen Ge's reaction was very direct. He picked up the phone, put it in front of his eyes, and started to make a second confirmation.
"I tried this phone a hundred times before but it didn't turn on. Why did it suddenly turn on by itself today? I found this phone from the place where my parents disappeared. Could it be that they know that I am in difficulty right now, so they are actively contacting me?"
Suppressing the excitement in his heart, Chen Ge swiped the screen. There was only one application on the dark phone desktop, and it used a haunted house as the icon.
"It's not the same as I imagined, but the icon looks familiar. It seems to be the door of my own horror house!"
Chen Ge frowned and opened the app, and a line of bloody words appeared on the screen - Do you believe there are ghosts in this world?
Whether there are ghosts in the world is a surreal philosophical question. For a science and engineering man like Chen Ge, it is very difficult.
"There should be..."
Chen Ge made his choice, and after a few seconds, new handwriting appeared on the screen of his phone.
"What you think in your heart is the answer. From this moment on, you will officially succeed me as the new owner of the horror house. Of course, this is not something worth celebrating. In the final stage of the novice tutorial, I want to give you A word of advice, suicide is the most cowardly behavior, please try your best to live!"
"The amount of information is a bit large! But why does his second-tier tone of voice sound a bit like my dad?"
Chen Ge clicked on the Haunted House app again, and a brand new interface appeared:
Horror House in the Western Suburbs of Jiujiang City
Status: On the verge of bankruptcy
Positive rating: None
Number of visitors today: four
Number of visitors in the month: ten
My Ghost Team Members: None
My prop library: None
Achievements unlocked: None
Existing facility scenes: zombie resurrection night (bad props, poor actors, no story or logic, no scream index); ghost marriage (not a couple when they were born, the dead are buried in the same cave, the ghost wife chases the ghost, Screaming index half a star)
Unlockable horror scenes: Midnight Escape (a dangerous mental patient lives in a dilapidated apartment building. He is holding scissors and a hammer, wandering outside your door, and has a screaming index of one star); the third ward (This abandoned hospital makes strange noises every late night. As a newspaper reporter, you will enter to find out. The scream index is three stars); Death Hearse (the hearse carrying the dead is already on the road. If it cannot leave within an hour, You will be left in the car forever, screaming index two stars)
Daily tasks: Completing the daily tasks in the horror house will give corresponding rewards and unlock more horror scenes.
Conditions for the expansion of the haunted house: the number of visitors in the month exceeds 100, and the favorable rating reaches more than 60% (after three expansions, the horror house will be upgraded to a trembling maze)
The Horror Carousel (consume the fright value generated by tourists in the haunted house to rotate the carousel): Life and death are determined by destiny, wealth is in the sky, there are spiritual fruits that increase lifespan, and there are also vicious ghosts full of hatred!