Guai Dao Hu Zong Ren

  After hearing the bell, I quickly told my male classmate, "Don't mind him, he's just joking with you." Then for the rest of the time, Hu Zongren and I stood silently in the classroom, waiting for our classmates to disperse. Until the last student asked us a question, "Uncle...I'm going to lock the door, are you leaving?"

  Of course, we have to go. The one who locked the door was a girl who looked silly. I took advantage of her inattention and quickly checked the storage room door again, then scooped out some soil and sprinkled it on the ground, covering up the mark I had drawn earlier, and followed Hu Zongren out of the classroom.

  Director Wang had been waiting for me and Hu Zongren in the staff office at the end of the corridor. After meeting, he told me that since Teacher Ma was currently suspended from work and resting at home, he had called Teacher Ma earlier when we were in the classroom and said that this side had found two experts to help get rid of evil spirits. He asked if it would be convenient for us to visit him tonight and ask some questions. Teacher Ma agreed very eagerly after hearing about it. I told Director Wang that we really didn't dare to be called experts, we were just making a living by our skills in this line. However, I thought that since Teacher Ma was so eager to see us, it meant that he had indeed been frightened badly that day.

  Then Director Wang drove us to Teacher Ma's home. As a veteran teacher, Teacher Ma's home is not luxurious at all. Although it's located in a convenient transportation area, the house itself is from the 90s. As soon as we entered, I saw two large characters hanging on the wall. The one on the left reads "Respect Literature and Value Education", while the one on the right reads "Teach with Virtue". Both are written in bold brush calligraphy, but it's unclear whether Teacher Ma wrote them himself or someone else gave them to him as a gift. The door was opened by Teacher Ma's wife. Teacher Ma had his son when he was over 30 years old, and now the son is studying at a university abroad. Teacher Ma's wife is also a teacher, but not from the same school. After we exchanged greetings and entered, Teacher Ma was sitting on the sofa under the two characters, with a blanket draped over his legs, looking rather listless as he watched TV.

  Director Wang introduced us, and Teacher Ma wanted to stand up and shake hands with us. However, Hu Zongren told him to sit still and rest well. Both of us knew that some people may never see a ghost in their lifetime, or they might have seen one without realizing it. But once the concept of a ghost appears firmly in real life, most people would be strongly shocked. What's more, Teacher Ma is a scientist who has devoted his whole life to research. If it were under normal circumstances, someone like him probably wouldn't even give us a second glance. Yet at this moment, despite his weakness, he looked so eager.

  After Mr. Hu and I sat down, we asked Teacher Ma to tell us about the whole process of how he fainted that day. Teacher Ma said that on that day, while proctoring the exam, he heard a noise and quickly realized it was coming from behind the door in the storage room. At first, he thought it was a mouse, but didn't want to disturb the students or make them lose focus because there were many girls in the class who didn't like mice. Mr. Hu chuckled and said, "There are quite a few girls, and they're all pretty too..." But before he could finish speaking, he noticed me staring at him and quickly stopped talking. Teacher Ma seemed to have not noticed what Mr. Hu said and continued, saying that he himself was not afraid of mice, so until the moment he opened the door, he thought it was just a mouse. However, when he opened the door, he found a girl wearing school sports uniform standing in the darkest corner of the storage room, with her feet together and her hands by her sides, her head hidden in the shadows. Teacher Ma said that at first, he thought it was a student from another class hiding there on purpose, but just as he was about to ask her something, the girl's head emerged from the shadows, and that's when Teacher Ma saw her face clearly.

  Mr. Ma held a white ceramic teacup with both hands, his hands slightly trembling as he lifted it to take a sip. He seemed to be struggling to recall the scene from back then. He said that the girl's head emerged from the dark, illuminated by the classroom lights at night, and he was standing very close, clearly seeing her face. How to describe it? Until her head came out, he only realized that the girl in front of him had a half-transparent appearance all over. He said it wasn't very faint, but rather like looking through a glass, except that his own reflection on the glass became the darkness in the corner of the storage room. The girl's face was the most terrifying part, as her left half-face was twisted, with blood and water seeping out from her eyes, nose, and mouth corners, and her face was extremely asymmetrical, as if it had been misplaced. Her hair on top seemed to have been torn off in a chunk, and Mr. Ma emphasized that it was the kind of feeling where even the scalp was torn away. He almost saw the flesh on her skull through the bloody mess. The girl's entire right half-face was not strange at all, except for being pale with red lips, and there was a small beauty mark on her right cheek. There was no clear boundary between the two halves of her face, making her look particularly terrifying.

  Mr. Ma took a sudden intake of breath, as if he had just sucked in a mouthful of cold air, and then said that this was not the scariest part yet. Although at that time he was already so frightened that he couldn't move, it was only for an instant. And then, the girl suddenly smiled with her neck twisted at a 45-degree angle in a very eerie way. Mr. Ma said that when she twisted her neck, it looked as if her neck had been broken. And when she smiled, blood started flowing down her face from her mouth, and just like that, the nerve in Mr. Ma's brain snapped. He felt as if his temples were being strongly impacted by something, and he couldn't stand steadily, so he fell to the ground.

  Mr. Ma said excitedly that he himself was not in good health, with low blood sugar, and often had to supplement his diet with sugar, otherwise he would easily fall into a coma. So this was not the first time he had fainted, but in the past when he fainted, he would immediately lose consciousness. However, this time, in the few seconds after he fainted, he clearly saw the girl stretching out her stiff hands and feet, moving to his side, and then putting her head close to his face, less than an inch away. And before he completely lost consciousness, the last fixed image was that girl's face filling his eyes.

  At this point, Teacher Ma stopped talking and sipped his tea mouthful by mouthful. Because we had entered the room, Teacher Ma had specially turned off the TV's volume, so at that moment, except for the light from the TV flashing on my wall and Teacher Ma's body, all I could hear was the ticking of the old clock.

  I couldn't help but ask Teacher Ma, when you first opened the door and found someone inside, didn't you feel that something was off? Teacher Ma said that at first, he just thought it was strange why someone would hide in such a small storage room. He hadn't considered anything unusual about it before then. He had heard countless ghost stories from others, but he only listened to them as stories and never took them seriously. In his mind, the existence of ghosts was something he had never acknowledged, so at that moment, it was hard for him to think of it. He told me that initially, he thought it might be another student hiding inside to cheat on the exam by passing notes to their classmates. Director Wang chimed in, saying that since this is a vocational school, the students' knowledge level is somewhat lacking compared to many regular high schools. As a result, cheating incidents often occur during exams.

  I nodded, because I was always very good at cheating from a young age. Sometimes cheating wasn't even about getting high scores, but about outsmarting the proctors, a game of cat and mouse between a thief and a detective, for the thrill of it. So in that sense, I'm still quite abnormal.

  Hu Zongren took over the conversation and asked Teacher Ma, "You said that female student was wearing a sports uniform, what kind of sports uniform is it? Is it from your school?"

  Teacher Ma furrowed her brow and said to Hu Zongren, "Isn't this what's scary about it? This sports uniform is indeed our school's uniform, but the style has been replaced many years ago. Starting from 2000, this kind of uniform was replaced."

  I asked Teacher Ma, "What kind of uniform is it?"

  Teacher Ma said, "It's the kind that many schools chose in the 90s, with the school emblem printed on the chest, made of cotton fabric, and the top and pants are a set."

  I remember now, I also wore this kind of school uniform when I was a kid. Our school's uniform at that time was navy blue and white for boys, and red and white for girls. My family still has one at home, but my mom took it away to wear while cleaning the house. Although looking back now, this style is really tacky, but at that time, it was a must-have item for every student, and even wearing a pair of white tourist shoes with the uniform was something worth showing off to classmates. And because I was quite mischievous, the school uniform also became a symbol to distinguish between schools in our area. Sometimes we would fight with people on the street, maybe without any reason, just because they were wearing a different school's uniform.

  Teacher Ma said, "That school uniform, if I'm not mistaken, was customized in 95 or 96. Now, we can't even find one piece in our school." Hu Zongren asked, "Then how are you so sure that's your school's uniform?" Teacher Ma said a bit anxiously, "Because of the school emblem on the chest! I've worked at this school for decades, wouldn't I recognize it? I'm absolutely certain, it's our school's uniform!"

  Teacher Ma said it with great certainty, so certain that we almost couldn't doubt it. This inevitably raises another question: since it's a female ghost wearing a student uniform, an old-style uniform at that, does this suggest that the time of her death was many years ago? And was she wearing this uniform when she died? Furthermore, the girl's facial features were distorted, her seven orifices were bleeding, and her neck was broken - could these phenomena be the appearance she had when she died? What could have caused such an appearance at the time of her death?

  Car accident.

  As I thought of this, I was going to share the results of my analysis with everyone, but Hu Zongren took a step ahead and asked Teacher Ma and Director Wang, "Has there been any incident in your school over the past decade or so where a student was hit and killed by a car?"