Ghost Record

  Three people filled the soil quickly, no one wanted to let these bugs escape, so they were all panting with exhaustion. The old man didn't know whether he was frightened or too tired, and directly sat down on the ground with a thud, saying "I hope we haven't dug into the land god's house! That would be unlucky!"

  The young man took a stick and parted the grass to check all around, until he didn't find any insects, then asked the old man: "What's with those insects just now? They looked really scary. He has lived for over 20 years and had never seen them before."

  The old man squeezed out a difficult smile and said, "When he was young, one night he pulled up a fish net and found this worm inside. He never saw it again after that, and he didn't know what to call it."

  Seeing these two people scared to death, I wanted to laugh but held back. They probably had never seen such a bizarre phenomenon before. In their opinion, they could only guess that they had dug into the home of the Land God and the Land God sent out these insects.

  Actually, these worms were brought by Tiantian. Suddenly, so many of them crawled up, and it's estimated that the leeches in the river segment of several hundred meters all came out. I don't know how much energy Tiantian consumed.

  I was just about to talk to these two people, but Tiantian urged me to hurry up! The more nonsense you talk, the more likely you are to reveal your true intentions. So I left immediately, and the boatman was still waiting for me there, and we set off on our return journey.

  It was a very small boat, probably made by the boatman himself, with a tractor head as an engine. The speed was quite fast and it didn't take long to return to the opposite bank of Jiangkou Town, where I took another ride back to Shepo.

  I returned to my uncle's house and it was already past four in the afternoon. I opened the door, went back to my room, and picked up the small ancient bronze knife from the floor. Tongtong told me that all the ghosts in the room had disappeared, but they would definitely come back once I left. I asked Tongtong how she managed to get so many blood centipedes at noon, and she said she attached herself to a centipede king's body, which attracted all those blood centipedes to gather together. Normally, these insects hide in the mud and sand at the bottom of the river during the day, but Tongtong somehow managed to get so many of them out, it was really impressive. Tongtong said she thought that running on land during the day would damage her soul body, but nothing happened, and she couldn't figure out what the reason was.

  Tongtong's soul was once damaged, it was when I stabbed her fish body to death. Fortunately, she hid in Zhang Shenpo's hawthorn wood sign in time. Moreover, she had eaten more than a dozen boys before, otherwise, her soul might have dissipated into the river water and disappeared forever.

  After a day and night of running around, I felt a bit tired, so I went back to my room to sleep. My room was empty, with only a wooden bed board, a corner piled high with sweet potatoes, most of which had already sprouted. I tidied up the moldy bed board, took out the quilt and mat from my uncle's cabinet, spread them out, and lay down, feeling really good.

  Although I haven't slept in this room for almost a year, I don't feel out of place. After all, this is my home, or at least my grandparents' house, and as their granddaughter, I should have a share here. Thinking about this, I even have the idea of driving my uncle out of the house.

  When it got dark, I went to my aunt's house for dinner. Her house is just three houses away from my uncle's house. My elder uncle and my uncle are cousins of the same ancestor. When I arrived at their home, they were cooking and the kids in the house were playing and making noise. My elder uncle invited me to sit down, asked about my well-being, and said "Why did you leave by yourself last year? If your uncle didn't let you stay, you could have stayed at my place!"

  I know it's just a polite remark, every family is poor anyway, who wants to raise someone else's child? Reality is cruel, the only people who really care about themselves are parents or grandparents.

  Of course I knew that what Big Uncle Tang said was just a polite remark, and of course I couldn't say he was being hypocritical. All I could say was that I wanted to go look for Little Sister, but didn't find her and came back.

  After dinner, my aunt asked me where I had been for the past year. I made up a story to tell them, which roughly went like this:

  After my uncle drove me out of the house, I took a hoe to dig up herbs and sell them. By chance, I found a place with many herbs, dug for more than half a month, earned almost 50 yuan, and then went to Wuzhou with this money to raise ducks and fish for others. During the period of digging herbs, I lived in a small temple, usually stealing corn and sweet potatoes and fishing to eat.

  When the meal was almost finished, I asked my uncle and aunt if they knew where my sister had been sent by my uncle in Hunan. At this time, my uncle's answer made me so happy that I almost jumped up, he heard it was a place called Yongzhou Daoxian in Hunan, but as for the details, they couldn't remember either.

  Although so, this news is already a great good news for me. The original search range was the entire Hunan Province, and now it has narrowed down to one county. So even if I go door-to-door in this county, it won't take a year's time!

  I was so excited that I almost kowtowed to my aunt and uncle, but it would be too exaggerated if I really did. I asked my aunt's niece if she had gone to school, and my aunt said not yet, in two more years, they can't afford it now.

  There are three children in my aunt's family, one daughter and two sons. The eldest son is already studying, the second daughter is 7 years old this year, and she will be 9 years old after waiting for another two years. It's not good to start school so late.

  I deeply understand the taste of not having books to read, so I took the initiative to offer to send my cousin to school. My uncle and aunt repeatedly refused, saying how could we use your hard-earned money? Just take good care of yourself.

  After dinner, I still went home to sleep. The village had been electrified for a year after leaving home, but my uncle's house was not installed, and it was still lit with kerosene lamps. I lay back on the bed, thinking about the plan to go to Hunan in my mind, and fell asleep unknowingly.

  I had a dream about that stone duck. In the dream, I was sitting on a bamboo raft floating on the river, with fog all over the water's surface and a huge black shadow swimming beneath. The bamboo raft floated to Xiangsi Zhou, where I heard a lot of noise, so I ran up to see what was happening, only to find dozens of little people carving a big stone, and they had already carved out the shape of a duck.

  These little people were only as tall as beer bottles, and the slightly taller ones were only about knee-high to an average adult. They spoke in a language that sounded like "gibberish" to me.

  I curiously walked closer to these little people, but they seemed not to see me, only busy with their own affairs. I stretched out my hand to catch one of the little people, but my hand passed through their bodies, as if they were just projections and couldn't be caught at all.

  I tried several times but couldn't catch one, so I squatted down to observe them carefully. Just then, a hand suddenly stretched out from the ground and grabbed my face, pulling me straight into the earth.

  I suddenly woke up, feeling uncomfortable on my face, as if something had really caught me. So I reached out with my hand to touch my face and caught a soft and hard thing. After being caught by me, this thing was actually struggling, scaring me to throw it away immediately, and the room was filled with a pungent sour smell instantly.

  I immediately felt for the flashlight and shone it on the ground, and when I did, I saw what I had thrown out. My goodness! On the ground was a huge scorpion, as big as a shoe, probably as big as Yao Ming's shoe.

  The whole body of this earwig was glossy black, and after I threw it to the ground, it didn't escape but instead raised its two pincers as if ready to fight.

  Who in the countryside has not seen a whip-tailed scorpion, often appearing at night in the grass at the corner of the wall, catching cockroaches, spiders and earthworms for food. If encountered with an enemy, it will spray out a foul-smelling acid smell to scare off the enemy and then take the opportunity to escape.

  But the whip scorpions we usually see are only as big as a thumb, so where did this big one come from? I carefully skirted around it and went to another room to fetch a bamboo basket used for rice, aimed at the large whip scorpion and covered it up, catching it.

  The stench in the air was really unbearable, my nose felt like fainting after just one sniff. I found a piece of cloth to cover my nose and only felt slightly better after wetting it a bit. After returning to the room, I used a rope to make a loop around the scorpion's belly, then hung it from the bamboo pole in the kitchen doorway where clothes were usually dried.

  This large whip-tailed scorpion looked intimidating, but it was tied up at the waist and could only struggle blindly. I thought it couldn't escape, so I went back to wash my face and took another look in the mirror without finding any wounds or discoloration.

  It's terrifying to think about, such a big whip-tailed scorpion crawling onto my face at night, I don't know what it wants to do. I recall someone saying that at night, insects crawl into your ears and lay eggs, I couldn't help but get goosebumps all over.

  I took a flashlight and checked the room once, except for a few cockroaches, nothing else was found, lit the kerosene lamp and fell asleep again.

  I got up early when it dawned, wanting to take this whip-tailed scorpion to the village to ask the old people, but saw that only the rope was left on the bamboo pole. I went over and took a closer look, and there were still a few broken legs and some residue on the ground. This big whip-tailed scorpion didn't seem to have escaped, but rather had been eaten by something.

  This is even more frightening, I don't know what kind of monster might be hiding in this room. To be honest, if it comes out, I won't be afraid, but what exactly is it and where is it hiding, I have no idea, saying I'm not afraid is just deceiving myself, after all, fear comes from the unknown.

  But whatever monster it is, it can't stay in my house. I'm going to take a look at this thing that eats the giant whip scorpion.

  I bought two chickens from my aunt's house, one will be used as bait tonight, and the other must be my dish today. After putting the chicken in the cage, I went out for a walk.

  It's been a year since I returned to this village, and the changes are not big, just more electric poles. I went to the river ditch where I often scooped up small fish with a bamboo basket when I was young, went to the fields where I often caught frogs, and climbed trees. Although my childhood was not happy, these are all things worth remembering.

  I don't have any playmates in this village. Firstly, they won't play with me and say I'm an orphan, it's already good that they're not bullying me. Secondly, since I was seven years old, I had to work every day and rarely had time to play, while most of them were attending school.