Global Ghost Stories: I'm Investigating Ghosts in My Nightmare!

Chapter 35 The Play Without Eyes
The little girl's laughter pierced Lu Yueqi's brain like countless cold steel needles. The laughter was filled with a chilling eeriness.

"what!"

A short, suppressed scream burst from Lu Yueqi's throat. Her body trembled violently with extreme fear, and she instinctively backed away, her back slamming heavily against the cold wall with a dull thud.

"Quiet! Don't move!"

Bai Yu's voice, transmitted through the tactical headset, struck her chaotic nerves like an electric current, forcibly pulling her back from the brink of being overwhelmed by fear.

Lu Yueqi bit her lower lip hard and tasted a hint of blood.

She leaned against the wall, panting heavily, forcing herself to keep her eyes wide open and look at the source of the terror.

Bai Yu took half a step forward, completely blocking Lu Yueqi behind her.

The beam of his flashlight was steadily fixed on the eyeless doll, and he stood like a sculpture poised to strike.

After turning its face completely towards them, the doll made no further movement. It simply stood there quietly, staring at them with its two dark, hollow eye sockets.

The atmosphere in the office seemed to solidify. The air was cold and sticky, and every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass, stinging the lungs.

Time stretched out infinitely at this moment.

One second, two seconds, ten seconds...

Nothing happened.

The doll remained motionless, and Bai Yu remained still; this eerie standoff was fraught with tension.

"Bai... Bai Yu... what... what does it want to do?" Lu Yueqi's voice trembled uncontrollably, but she remembered Bai Yu's teaching and did not scream again. Instead, she asked through the earpiece in the lowest possible volume.

"Observe," Bai Yu replied with only two words.

His brain was operating at an incredibly high speed. This wasn't the rule-distorting nightmare he'd dealt with before; there were no explicit written rules, but its behavioral patterns were a rule in themselves.

It appeared after the laughter, paused after Lu Yueqi screamed, and then fell still. This shows that it responds to external "sounds" and "emotions".

Lu Yueqi's fear seemed to be the food it craved. But its own calmness plunged it into a kind of "procedural" confusion.

At this moment, the mutation reappeared.

"Clap."

A soft sound came from the corner of the room.

The two looked in the direction of the sound and saw a building block fall out of a toy box in the corner.

Then it was as if they had received some kind of silent command.

"Pap, tap, tap..."

One by one, the building blocks jumped out of the box. On the ground, they began to stack themselves as if controlled by an invisible hand. They built strange towers that seemed ready to collapse at any moment.

On the desk, a bobblehead doll with its head connected to its body by a spring began to sway back and forth abruptly, making a grating "creaking" noise.

On top of the filing cabinet, a teddy bear covered in thick dust stared with eyes made of black glass beads, which reflected two points of scarlet light under the beam of a flashlight. Its cotton arms slowly rose, pointing in Lu Yueqi's direction.

The entire office was transformed into a living dollhouse.

These toys did not directly attack, but their presence and behavior created an undeniable psychological pressure. They were declaring in this way: This is our "playground," and you are "new toys" who have stumbled upon it.

Lu Yueqi's face was deathly pale. She felt her sanity being slowly eroded by these bizarre sights.

She even had the illusion that the walls and ceiling were slowly pressing in on her, trying to trap her in this small space.

"Lu Yueqi." Bai Yu's voice rang out again, this time with less sternness and more guidance. "Look at me, don't look at those things. Tell me, besides fear, what else can you feel right now?"

"I...I don't know..." Lu Yueqi's voice was filled with confusion and despair, "I feel...so cold...so lonely...it's like...it's like I'm the only person left in the whole world..."

“That’s right.” Bai Yu’s voice revealed a hint of certainty. “That’s the feeling. It doesn’t hate us, it’s just… too lonely. It doesn’t want to kill us, it just wants us… to stay and play with it.”

"Play?" Lu Yueqi couldn't understand.

"Yes, let's play a game... that will never end."

As soon as Bai Yu finished speaking, the eyeless doll that had been motionless suddenly moved.

It stretched out its stiff ceramic arm and pointed to the only window in the room.

"Giggle..."

That eerie laughter rang out again.

Then, with a "snap," the office lights went out without warning.

The flashlight beams of Bai Yu and Lu Yueqi also went out instantly at the same time, as if forcibly cut off by some force.

Absolute darkness instantly engulfed the entire room.

"Hide and seek... let's begin..."

A child's voice, filled with countless echoes, resounded directly in their minds.

"The person who is found... will become a 'ghost'..."

"No! No!" Lu Yueqi's psychological defenses completely collapsed at this moment. She could no longer suppress her fear and screamed.

"Rusting..."

"Squeak... squeak..."

In the endless darkness, the sounds of the toys moving were amplified countless times. They seemed to be surrounding the two from all sides, the sounds growing closer and more intense.

Lu Yueqi could even feel something cold gently brushing against her ankle.

"Baiyu! Baiyu, where are you?" she cried out in despair.

A cold but powerful hand suddenly grabbed her wrist.

It is Bai language.

"Calm down!" Bai Yu's voice was right next to her ear, so close she could almost feel his breath. "Now listen to my instructions. This is your only chance. The power within you, do you remember what I taught you? Don't resist it, guide it!"

"I...I can't do it! It won't listen to me!" Lu Yueqi cried out.

“Then command it!” Bai Yu’s voice took on a firm tone. “You are not its slave, you are its master! Now, convey your emotions to it! Don’t you also feel lonely? Don’t you also feel scared? Tell it! Tell the ‘other’ you in this room! Tell it that you understand its feelings!”

Bai Yu's words were like a lightning bolt, shattering Lu Yueqi's chaotic mind, which was filled with fear.

Yes...loneliness...haven't I been lonely ever since I was dragged into this terrible world?
She was afraid of being seen as a monster by her friends, afraid of causing trouble for the investigation bureau, and afraid of the "thing" inside her.

This feeling is so similar to the deep-seated loneliness that permeates this room.

"Sizzle..."

Something with a ceramic-like texture touched her knee.

The threat of death and Bai Yu's resounding words became the catalyst at that moment.

Lu Yueqi closed her eyes and gave up struggling. She stopped thinking about the terrifying toys approaching, and she stopped thinking about whether she would die. She sank all her thoughts into the depths of her body.

She "saw" the chaotic energy lurking in her soul. It was like a caged beast, full of violence and unease.

This time, Lu Yueqi neither tried to suppress it nor feared it.

She tried to gently touch it with her mind.

"I am really scared……"

"I'm so lonely..."

"You... too?"

She conveyed her most genuine and vulnerable emotions without reservation.

hum-

After receiving this "resonance," the nightmare power called "Deep Cold" no longer raged out, but flowed out of Lu Yueqi's body gently and quietly, like a stream that has found its way to a river.

A chilling atmosphere, tinged with tranquility and sorrow, gradually spread silently from her throughout the room.

The chill wasn't biting; it was like a thin, gentle layer of frost, lightly covering every item in the room.

The rustling sound stopped.

The creaking noise disappeared.

The cold, ceramic arm that had been touching Lu Yueqi's knee also froze.

The whole world seemed to be frozen by this gentle chill.

The lights in the room slowly came back on, emitting a soft, warm yellow glow.

All the toys returned to their original positions and remained quietly, as if the terrifying scene had never happened.

Only the eyeless doll remained standing before them.

But the unsettling malice that once emanated from it has vanished without a trace, replaced by an unyielding sorrow.

Just then, fragmented images flooded into Bai Yu and Lu Yueqi's minds like a tidal wave.

They saw a little girl.

A cute little girl wearing a white dress and with pigtails in her hair.

Her parents owned the toy factory and were always busy with their business, returning home very late. So, the empty factory at night became her only "paradise."

Her favorite toy is a doll that hasn't had its eyes fitted yet. She talks to it and plays games with it every day.

One day, while playing hide-and-seek with her dolls, she locked herself in the quality control office. The door was closed from the outside, and she couldn't open it. She cried out and pleaded for help, but no one heard her in the huge, noisy factory.

She slowly stopped breathing amidst endless loneliness, fear, and despair.

Her last remaining obsession was "I really want someone... to play with me." This obsession merged with the equally "lonely" eyeless doll in her arms, ultimately forming this pathetic nightmare with "games" as its rules.

The illusion dissipated.

Two clear tears unknowingly slid down Lu Yueqi's cheeks. Looking at the doll in front of her, she felt no fear, only sympathy and pity.

Bai Yu released her hand and slowly walked to the desk. He crouched down and picked up several shards of ceramic from under the desk, remnants of the broken ballet music box.

That was the little girl's most cherished treasure.

Lu Yueqi also walked over, and she stretched out her slightly trembling hand to gently stroke the doll's cold porcelain face.

"Rest in peace," she whispered, her voice trembling with tears.

Bai Yu carefully placed the fragment in her hand into the doll's stiff hand.

The moment the fragments touched the doll, the doll's body began to emit a soft, warm white light.

A translucent phantom of a little girl in a white dress emerged from the doll's body. She held the restored music box in her arms and gave Bai Yu and Lu Yueqi a pure and relieved smile.

"Thanks……"

After a soft thank you, the girl's phantom, along with the eyeless doll, transformed into countless specks of light and slowly dissipated into the air.

"Ding dong."

With a crisp, light sound, a transparent, ice-blue crystal shaped like a teardrop fell from the spot of light and landed on the floor.

The mission is over.

……

On the SUV back to headquarters, Lu Yueqi leaned back in the passenger seat, having fallen into a deep sleep due to exhaustion.

Her face was still streaked with tears, and her sleeping expression was incredibly peaceful.

Bai Yu drove, her face still pale, but her eyes were much gentler than when she arrived.

He glanced at the sleeping girl beside him and whispered something that he could barely hear himself.

He turned his gaze back to the road ahead, illuminated by the car headlights, and unconsciously placed his left hand on the steering wheel.

Just then, the almost invisible "Eye of the Vortex" mark on the back of his hand suddenly emitted a cold, static-like fluctuation.

It felt like a high-ranking audience member casually clapping after watching a reasonably entertaining play.

Bai Yu's pupils suddenly contracted.

"Heh..." Hei Yan's laughter, tinged with a hint of mockery and pleasure, rang in his mind precisely on time.

"Look, the audience has shown the most basic courtesy to this fledgling play. They are starting to look forward to it... to what kind of magnificent yet desperate elegy you and this fledgling, who has just learned to sing, will one day play for them on that great stage."

(End of this chapter)