Hearing the voices from the bedroom upstairs, the blood in all three girls' veins seemed to freeze. Stephanie, noticing the curiosity on Claire's face, pressed a finger to her lips, signalling her to stay quiet and just listen.
From the tone of the voices, it was clear that the doctor and his wife were arguing about something.
The doctor's voice was stern and angry."You always take her side, no matter how wrong she is! That's why our daughter is going astray. If you had stopped her back when she used to skip college to go out with boys at night, we wouldn't be in this situation now!"
His wife's voice responded sharply, filled with frustration."Oh, of course, it's all my fault! When our daughter needed her father's love and guidance the most, you were never home! You didn't even attend her college events, doctor! Do you remember how broken she was when she realized her own father didn't care? She used to hurt herself just to get your attention! I was the one who held her together. Yes, she's made mistakes — but she's still our daughter. She's young, and young people often lose their way. We can't undo her mistake, but we can help her now!"
The sound of footsteps followed — the doctor and his wife were coming downstairs. His wife was still pleading with him to help their daughter, but the doctor refused coldly."I will never support her in something immoral," he said harshly.
Stephanie turned to Claire and whispered softly, "It seems the doctor's daughter did something that he considers unforgivable. But his wife keeps defending her."
"What kind of mistake could Jasmine have made?" Claire asked, her eyes filled with anxious curiosity.
"Oh, Claire, you're too innocent sometimes," Lily whispered with a faint smirk. "Didn't you hear what the doctor said? He mentioned that she sneaks out with boys, skips classes, and goes on night-outs. In other words, she's been having… adult relationships before marriage."
By now, the doctor had settled onto the couch in the living room, while his wife had gone into the kitchen on the left side of the hall.
Suddenly, the main door creaked open. The three girls froze as they saw her — Jasmine — stumbling inside, clearly drunk. She was wearing a short dress, holding her underwear carelessly in one hand.
"Hey, Dad! What's up?" Jasmine said with a shameless grin.
"You have no shame at all!" the doctor shouted furiously. "I'm your father, and you walk in here drunk, waving your undergarments around? Do you even realize what time it is?!"
"Oh, come on, Dad," Jasmine slurred, giggling. "I'm your daughter! When I was born, you saw me naked. Even till I was ten, I used to bathe with you — you were naked, I was naked — and it wasn't a problem then. So what's the big deal now? It's just a pair of panties!" she said, tossing it carelessly onto the table.
At that moment, the doctor's wife came into the hall and, upon seeing her daughter's condition, her face turned pale with shame.
Stephanie, Claire, and Lily stood inside the protective circle, silently witnessing the horrifying family scene unfold before their eyes.
"Jasmine! Go to your room right now," her mother said firmly. "Freshen up and put on some proper clothes. Your father and I need to talk to you."
Without arguing, Jasmine turned and staggered toward her room, which was on the right side of the hall on the ground floor.
"Have you seen your daughter's state? She has no fear, not even of her own father. I told you not to let Jasmine leave the house today. That boy sent me her nude pictures just yesterday and is demanding fifty thousand dollars! And look at this girl, she doesn't care at all. For girls these days, have their honor, their virginity become so cheap that they'll lose it with anyone, anywhere?" the Doctor angrily asked his wife.
"Don't you worry. I will talk to Jasmine right now and ask her about that boy. Who knows, if we talk to him, he might agree to marry our daughter," the Doctor's wife told her husband.
Just then, the Doctor and his wife heard two voices talking from Jasmine's room—one was Jasmine's, and the other belonged to a boy who was asking her to come closer.
Hearing the noise, the Doctor instantly jumped off the couch and rushed towards Jasmine's room. He flung the door open. The scene inside made the Doctor lose all self-control. He bolted towards the bookshelf in the hall, grabbed a gun, and hurried back to Jasmine's room.
The boy in Jasmine's room was the same one who had been blackmailing the Doctor with her nude pictures. Seeing the gun in her husband's hand, the Doctor's wife grew terrified and tried to stop him. However, the Doctor was consumed by rage and simply wanted to kill the boy. He angrily shoved his wife, causing her head to hit the wall, and she instantly fell unconscious.
The Doctor immediately barged into Jasmine's room, just about to fire at the boy. Suddenly, the boy attacked the Doctor, and they wrestled their way into the hall. Jasmine watched the entire spectacle, but made no move to stop either her boyfriend or her father. Then, a sudden gunshot echoed, and for a moment, everything stood still.
The clock now read 12:50. The Doctor lay on the hall floor, groaning in pain. His wife, who had regained consciousness, was tied to a chair in the hall and was begging her daughter and her boyfriend to take her husband to the hospital. Meanwhile, Jasmine and her boyfriend sat comfortably on the couch, watching the Doctor and his wife suffer, cry, and plead.
"Your father is quite tough, Jasmine. The bullet hit his kidney, yet he's been alive for an hour," Jasmine's boyfriend remarked, lighting a cigarette.
"Don't worry about him. Just think about what we do next, because our blackmailing plan failed," Jasmine said, looking toward her father.
Hearing this, the Doctor was stunned. The plan to blackmail him for money wasn't just her boyfriend's—it was Jasmine's, too. She was the one who wanted to extort fifty thousand dollars from her own father by having her boyfriend send him her nude photos.
"What kind of a girl are you, Jasmine? You had your boyfriend send your own nude photos to your father so you could blackmail your own flesh and blood! Didn't you feel a moment of shame? If you needed money so badly, you could have just asked me—I would have given it to you, as always. But for that, you played such a massive game," the Doctor asked Jasmine, his voice faltering and tears welling up in his eyes.
"Oh, really? You're my father, yet you constantly restrict my night-outs, try to snatch away my freedom, forbid me from wearing short dresses, you have a problem with my friends, and you expect me to beg you every day, saying, 'Dad, please give me money, I want to party'?" Jasmine asked, standing up from the couch and walking toward her father.
"Hey, old man, just die quickly now! Then Jasmine and I will take complete care of your property and your money. Don't worry," Jasmine's boyfriend said, laughing.
"I won't allow that! If you harm my husband, I will file a police complaint against both of you, and Jasmine, I will disinherit you from the property. I won't let you have a single penny! Your father was right; it would have been better if we were childless than to have a child like you," the Doctor's wife threatened Jasmine and her boyfriend.
By now, Stephnie, Claire, and Lily understood that the Doctor was showing them the story of his past life, which was why he was haunting the house as a spirit. Slowly, the Doctor's life ebbed away, and he died. Watching this, his wife began to weep loudly.
But even seeing her father dead, Jasmine's heart didn't soften. She turned to her boyfriend and said, "My father is dead, but if my mother stays alive, she'll get both of us caught by the police. Then, we'll have to spend our whole lives behind bars for my father's murder. We won't get the money, nor can we be together. So, think, what should we do about my mother now?"
"I have an excellent idea. Why don't we paint your father as of loose character and say he was trying to rape you? Then, to save you, your mother killed your father and then shot herself out of guilt. This way, both will die, and we won't get caught. Then, this property is yours, and we can spend our lives together, indulging in luxury," Jasmine's boyfriend suggested, picking up the pistol nearby.
"You're right. This way, we kill the snake without breaking the stick. I'll become a victim myself and give a statement to the police that my father was always drowned in lust and had physical relationships with many women, which caused arguments between my parents. You do one thing: first, put some scratches on my body using my father's hands, and then I'll scratch my father's body. The police will believe my father was forcing himself on me and my mother killed him to save me." Saying this, Jasmine went near her father's body, pulled up her dress, and used her father's hands to scratch her breasts, waist, and back.
Jasmine then used her own nails to inflict some scratches on her father's face and back, to prove that her father was trying to force her, and she was resisting him.
Watching all this, Claire wanted to stop Jasmine, but Stephnie reminded her that everything they were seeing had already happened and couldn't be changed. "Just stand quietly and watch everything, as the Doctor's spirit intends," Stephnie advised.
"Listen, Jasmine, untie your mother's hands and hold her tight, because I need to shoot her in the temple to make it look like she committed suicide," Jasmine's boyfriend said, moving towards the Doctor's wife.
Following that, Jasmine and her boyfriend murdered the Doctor's wife exactly as they had planned. The police investigation concluded in their report that the Doctor was a rapist who wanted to have relations with his daughter. To stop him, his wife murdered him and then shot herself out of guilt. Everything went according to Jasmine's plan, and she and her boyfriend took all the money and moved to Los Angeles.
However, Jasmine could never truly possess the house because the Doctor's spirit haunted it, meaning no one wanted to buy or rent it. Over time, the house became an abandoned horror house where young couples often came to satisfy their physical urges. Among those couples, the Doctor's spirit would kill the girl and trap her soul inside the house.
Now, Stephnie, Claire, and Lily finally understood the full story of the haunted house. But the three were confused: was the Doctor's spirit an evil one, or just the soul of a betrayed man seeking revenge, which led him to kill innocent people?
"Claire, we have to pacify the Doctor's spirit and send him to the afterlife. Along with the Doctor's spirit, the souls of his wife and all the girls the Doctor's spirit has killed are also trapped here," Stephnie told Claire.
"I agree with you, Stephnie. Even though something wrong happened to the Doctor, he is also doing wrong by killing innocent people in this manner," Claire said, supporting Stephnie's point.
But then, the entire house reverted to the state it was in when the three girls first entered. However, the atmosphere inside was even more terrifying now. Outside, the weather had turned bad, and lightning flashed across the sky. Clouds had covered the moon. And amidst all this, from the Doctor's room on the first floor, the Doctor's spirit could be heard laughing loudly in a booming peal, simultaneously, hundreds of souls began flying across the house, screaming in voices filled with immense pain.