"Listen, do you two have a grudge?" Richard asked.
"The guy in the restroom was a murderer with over a dozen lives stained on his hands. He raped and killed my girlfriend, dismembered me, and stuffed me into the wall, filling it with reinforced concrete," came the chilling revelation.
"Later, when things unraveled, the police cornered him in this building, and he hanged himself in the restroom."
The voice in the hallway trembled with intense hatred.
It sounded too real to be fake.
After a moment of silence, Richard asked, "Can you defeat it?"
"As long as it enters this hallway, I am invincible!"
"Then why couldn't you defeat me?" Richard's words left the wall ghost speechless.
It was also puzzled by how a mere human could defeat it in this hallway!
Perhaps it was the human bone nail or the blood on the bone fragments that somehow countered it.
In any case, if Richard hadn't used that human bone nail, it could have vanished into thin air.
"Alright, I'll trust you this time!"
While verbally expressing trust, Richard picked up a hammer and nail, deftly driving another one into the wall.
"You!" The wall ghost exclaimed with a mix of anger and surprise.
"Don't worry, it's just a precaution. If what you said is true, I'll remove it later," Richard reassured.
Although the wall ghost was infuriated, it had no choice but to dissipate the ghostly aura at the end of the hallway.
Richard made his way to the door saturated with ghostly atmosphere, inserted the key, and turned it.
With a creak, the door swung open, releasing a bone-chilling coldness.
Shivering, Richard entered. Inside the restroom, everything was spotless, as if freshly cleaned. However, there was water pooling everywhere, with the sound of dripping water echoing in his ears.
Despite the apparent small size of the restroom, Richard saw a single toilet stretching endlessly with no end in sight!
"Simon!"
Shouting as if in a valley, the echoes returned.
Richard started kicking open door after door, regardless of whether there were people or ghosts inside doing their business.
Bang!
The first door revealed a tangled mass of black hair stuffed in the toilet. The hair started to wriggle and rise, revealing a pair of dead-like eyes glaring at Richard.
"Sorry, wrong door, carry on," Richard said as he moved to the next one.
He continued this pattern with each succeeding door...
After opening a dozen or so doors, Richard heard some noises. Following the source, he reached a restroom where, upon kicking the door open, he found Simon inside, vigorously scrubbing a toilet with a brush.
Muttering repeatedly, "Almost done, almost done, the supervisor said we can leave once it's clean."
"I've been looking for you for ages. What time is it? Stop cleaning toilets and come with me!" Richard grabbed Simon and tried to pull him away, but Simon remained rooted to his spot, continuing to clean and mutter about the dirt.
"It's so dirty here, so dirty, why is it dirty again?" Simon exclaimed as he frantically scrubbed away until every speck of dirt vanished.
Watching Simon's fervent cleaning, Richard was taken aback. "Could he be a bit crazy?"
Despite Richard's attempts to drag him away, Simon remained focused on his task, even pushing Richard aside with surprising strength.
Considering whether to give him a nail to the head, Richard hesitated, then suddenly turned and slapped Simon hard across the face. "Idiot! Snap out of it. Do you want to leave or not?"
Surprisingly, Simon stopped in his tracks at the impact of the slap, looked around in confusion, and then focused on Richard. "Richard?"
Did that slap actually bring him back to his senses?
Richard was slightly surprised.
Could his Ghostpower at 10 have broken through Simon's illusions?
"Richard, you finally came. I was about to lose it!" Simon clung to Richard, crying uncontrollably.
"You have no idea..."
"No time for your tears. Follow me out of here first!" Richard pulled Simon out of the single restroom, where the ghostly aura intensified.
Before they could find their way out, they couldn't distinguish east from west.
A dark figure appeared in front, the ghost in charge of supervising the restroom cleaning.
"Is the restroom clean?" Richard bluntly asked.
"If it's not clean, go back, or I'll tear you apart piece by piece!" The ghost manifested with a face covered in bloody scars, with visible bruises and a neck with a long, dangling noose, the head swinging like a kite on a string above.
Clearly the same psychopathic killer the wall ghost had mentioned, now a hanging ghost.
"I... I..." Simon paled, stuttering, filled with shadows in the face of the hanging ghost.
"You can never clean this restroom. You want to trap him here forever until he collapses from exhaustion," Richard calmly interjected.
"Another rat shows up, perfect. You two can keep each other company!" The hanging ghost grinned maniacally, its head suddenly flying towards them.
Richard swiftly threw a human bone nail, accurately piercing the hanging ghost's forehead, causing cracks to spread across its head. Then he viciously flung a bloody sanitary towel at the ghost.
In an instant, the hanging ghost was left in disarray, roaring in madness.
"Wow, Richard, you're amazing!" Simon stared wide-eyed at the sanitary towel, utterly shocked.
As the fog gradually dispersed, an exit appeared in their view.
"Run!" Without hesitation, Richard grabbed Simon and dashed.
"You can't escape. No matter where you run, this ghost can always find me!" Simon lamented.
Richard remained silent. As they fled the restroom, the hanging ghost's howls echoed from behind.
Simon turned back just in time to see the flying head, eyes wide with terror.
Just then, Richard stopped at the staircase landing, turned to face the approaching hanging ghost, and the floor began to tremble. The walls along the hallway started shedding their skins, oozing black blood from every corner.
In the blink of an eye, the corridor transformed into a bloody hell!
The hanging ghost abruptly halted, sensing something amiss. Its face contorted in terror as it tried to retreat back to the restroom. But upon turning around, it found the path had vanished.
"Friend, we are both ghosts, yet you aid humans?" The hanging ghost, realizing the truth, spoke with chilling malice.
"Surprised, don't you recognize me?" A voice filled with intense killing intent resounded, and the walls on both sides began to shift, numerous pale hands reaching out and grabbing the hanging ghost.
In fear, the hanging ghost gasped, "You're that damn—"
Before it could finish, the hanging ghost was forcefully pulled into the wall, shrouded in ghostly fog.
The piercing wails that followed made Richard and Simon's hair stand on end.
In an instant, the chaos subsided.
The hallway regained its serenity.
Muttering to himself, Richard said, "Did we perish together?"
"It's dead."
Just as he finished speaking, the wall ghost's indifferent voice resounded.