Chapter 1: The Paper Doll Ghost

  In the dimly lit bedroom, a long-haired woman wearing a snow-white nightgown walked to the bedside, took off her nightgown, and crawled onto the bed naked, embracing the man waiting on the bed. A moment later, low moans of gasps kept coming out.

  I was lying on the ceiling, looking through a small hole at the rolling men and women on the bed.

  Suddenly, a sour and smelly smell drilled into my nose, and I instantly felt numbness and itching in my lower abdomen, with a scorching heat that was hard to bear. My hands and feet were soft and weak, and the numbness in my lower body seemed like a small beast, devouring my consciousness.

  "Hmm... uh... ah..."

  I strained against the ceiling, trying to jump down, jumping right between this couple.

  "Hmmph..."

  Someone suddenly spat a mouthful of water directly onto my face.

  I let out a loud cry and woke up with a start.

  It was just a dream I had earlier, and I couldn't be perverted enough to go peep at other people's houses.

  "Little Buddha?"

  Grandma held a white porcelain empty bowl and stood beside the bed, anxiously calling out my nickname.

  I came to, wiped the water from my face and forced a smile: "Grandma, I'm fine, I've gotten used to it." Every time these dreams had me tangled up to the point of almost stripping off my clothes with those mixed-gender "brawls", Grandma would rush over and use holy water to wake me up.

  I got out of bed and changed into a clean set of clothes, then helped my grandmother make the bed.

  My grandmother is a village shaman who helps people resolve their karma. She said that I had deep sin in my past life, and this life I have an unlucky birth chart, killing both parents and having no children... destined to be lonely and wandering all my life. So when my parents gave birth to me, they handed me over to her. Until now, 15 years later, I've seen my parents less than 10 times. I heard that they had a younger brother for me in another place, already 14 years old. As for these strange dreams, my grandmother explained that it's because on the day I was born, it happened to be the day of worshiping the goddess of grain, and I was fumigated with the incense ash used in the ritual, so I can smell some scents that others can't smell.

  Also known as yin soul flavor.

  The village where I was born is called Jiangyuan Village, located in the southwest of Hubei Province, and has been worshiping He Gu Niangniang for generations.

  The secular name of Goddess Nugua is Jiang Yuan.

  Folk legend has it that the Goddess of Fertility is in charge of the five grains, but that's not true. To be precise, she's actually a fairy who presides over childbirth. My grandma said I have a connection with the Goddess of Fertility, which is why I often dream about giving birth. These dreams are incredibly vivid and varied, it's like watching free adult movies.

  In order to give me a good marriage, my grandmother named me Yunhe, saying that she wanted to get some of the spirit of Hebo Goddess. But I've been single for 15 years and still haven't seen any romantic luck coming my way.

  By the way, my surname is Bai.

  It would be a waste of He Gu's marriage fate!

  Let me say that having those colorful dreams is not in vain, the stench I smelled in my dream has a great help for grandma's funeral.

  Generally speaking, those who have done evil deeds in their lifetime will carry a foul odor after death, while those who have accumulated good deeds and virtues will carry the fragrance of flowers.

  The degree of good and evil is related to the depth of right and wrong.

  Clean up the room, and outside the window, the sky has already turned white. I accompanied my grandmother out of the house, the air outside was crisp, birds chirping and flowers fragrant, another busy spring farming season.

  The old house has a central hall, with two rooms on either side. I live in one room and my grandparents live in the other. In addition to these rooms, there is also a small incense-burning room built at the corner of the house, which was specifically designed according to grandma's requirements. It is said that this tradition has been passed down from our ancestors.

  The walls of the fragrant house were hung with red cloth, large pieces of that kind of red cloth, all sent by people who had been cured of strange illnesses in the past, and also counted as the "spoils" of Grandma's journey to the underworld.

  On a wooden cabinet in the southeast direction of the room, there is a shrine.

  The shrine is a specially made horizontal rectangular wooden pavilion, with a semi-circular arched frame woven from bamboo on top. There is no door, only a red cloth covering the top, inside which are placed the statues of the gods. The statues number around thirty, all carved from red wood and inlaid with gold powder, each about half a meter high. The shapes and appearances are all different, some holding large knives, others grasping jade scepters, all with exaggerated postures, representing the titles and ranks of each god.

  Grandma lit three incense sticks and inserted them into the incense burner in front of the shrine.

  This move indicates that someone will come to the door within three days to ask for something.

  Before that, the grandma would first cast divination blocks in front of the idol and then dream about some fragmented things at night. Generally speaking, these fragmented things are all related to the visitor.

  This is a very magical power.

  I took out the soft cushion that was placed under the god's seat and put it in front of my grandmother. My grandmother knelt down on it, and I skillfully took a few yellow blank talismans, which my grandmother received and burned on the spot. As she burned them, she muttered something to herself, but her voice was too low and her speech was too fast, so I couldn't hear clearly, and could only stand silently beside my grandmother.

  After finishing all that, Grandma went to make breakfast as usual. I followed behind her, helping out with some small tasks.

  After having breakfast, my grandma took me to the pond at the back of the village that everyone was afraid of.

  Every summer, someone drowns here. My grandma said there's a water monkey in the water and told me to come less often, or I'll be taken away by the water monkey as its new bride. With my small courage, I absolutely won't come here to swim.

  The sun rises at the horizon and is reflected in the water with a sparkling wave, looking very beautiful.

  My grandmother took out a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to me. I took a look and found that it was a news clipping from the newspaper. It said that a 28-year-old woman from Wuhan, Hubei Province, who had been married for several years but had not given birth to a child, was discriminated against by her husband's family. She then went to the hospital for in vitro fertilization at the Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Wuhan.

  The pregnancy went smoothly, and it was a dragon and phoenix fetus.

  But when she was 17 or 18 weeks pregnant, the hospital's examination results showed that one of the babies in her belly was growing and developing normally, while the other had stopped developing. This is a heartbreaking thing. But everyone couldn't help it, in order to keep the normal fetus, they didn't take out the fetus that had stopped growing, but kept running to the hospital and doing prenatal checks. The B-ultrasound showed that as the normal fetus developed normally, the fetus that had stopped growing was being compressed, becoming smaller. After more than nine months, the fetus developed fully, and the pregnant woman underwent a cesarean section and gave birth to a 6-jin (about 3 kg) baby girl. At the same time, the doctor found the fetus that had been compressed into a thin piece on the wall of the uterus, only about ten centimeters in size and a few centimeters thick.

  This fetus that died in the abdomen and was compressed into a thin sheet is medically known as a paper-like fetus.

  The family of the newborn had a serious preference for sons over daughters, and they didn't show much joy at the birth of their daughter. Instead, in order to mourn the "son" who was crushed, they brought his thin body back home and stored it in a plastic bag.

  Seven days later, on a night, the baby girl mysteriously died.

  Some people say she was pinched to death by her grandmother, because she wanted to have a second child and give birth to a boy; some people say that the paper fetus turned into a fierce ghost and took away the female infant.

  News has truth and falsehood, who knows?

  I looked at my grandmother in confusion and asked her why she wanted me to see this. My grandmother stroked my hair and said, "Little Buddha, go to Qing Shui Village and see your grandma, she won't live for many more days." I asked her what the connection was between Grandma's life and death and the paper fetus. My grandmother said that it wasn't someone else who had killed Grandma, but rather Grandma's own brother.

  More than 70 years ago, my great-grandmother was pregnant with twins, but grandma pressed the other fetus in great-grandmother's belly into a thin paper sheet.

  This paper fetus was pressed to death by a close relative, and it has grievances. If no one resolves this grievance, the paper fetus will become a vengeful spirit after a long time, causing the person who pressed it to death to pay with their life.

  My grandmother sighed and told me that I was in the same situation as my mother, because when I was in my mother's womb, I had also squeezed out my twin "brother". Fortunately, I was by my grandmother's side, otherwise my fate would be hard to say. I asked my grandmother why she didn't look for you? My grandmother shook her head: "The things of the world are very mysterious, some people believe and some don't. I couldn't control her, and she couldn't control me either."

  I didn't quite understand, so I just went "oh" and clenched the newspaper tightly.

  Paper fetus, scientifically speaking, most paper-like fetuses occur in twin or multiple pregnancies and have nothing to do with supernatural things. They are the result of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. During pregnancy, the blood circulation between the two fetuses is incorrect, and they compete for blood supply and nutrition. The stronger one swallows the weaker one, which quickly dehydrates and dies due to lack of nutrients. In the growth process, it is compressed into a thin paper-like piece by the stronger one. This is also the result of human survival of the fittest.

  Paper-thin ghost, this term is fresh and eerie.