Chapter 2 The Living Dead

  It was already daylight when I came out of the station, and once again I set foot on this land that was not unfamiliar but not familiar either. The exit was crowded with people coming and going, squeezing me so tightly that I could hardly hold onto my luggage. After walking for only a few dozen meters, several begging children grabbed at my feet. I threw them a few coins and hastily left.

  After dozens of hours on the train, I boarded a bus heading for the village.

  The room was filled with smoke and fog, I walked through the living room and directly into the mourning hall. A wooden board about two meters long and one meter five wide was placed on the ground. My grandfather lay properly on the board, his eyes closed, his hands clasped in front of his chest. In the mist, I couldn't see my grandfather's expression. I only faintly felt that his eyebrows were furrowed, as if he were thinking deeply.

  My mother wept silently, my father knelt beside her with his head bowed and said nothing. Relatives came and went in groups, apparently treating this as an occasion for a gathering. Some asked about recent business, some chatted idly about whose daughter-in-law had run off with someone again, and others wanted to introduce me to girlfriends. I'm not very used to interacting with elders, so I responded with a few words and then made an excuse to slip away.

  In the Northeast, there is a custom that when someone dies at home, the first thing to do is not to contact the crematorium or look for a burial site, but to rent a big horn and play mournful music. This indirectly notifies the neighbors to come and pay their respects. The second part of the ritual is wailing. At every funeral, the person who cries the most miserably is not necessarily the son or daughter, but rather the person hired to wail. For now, let's call her a "spirit woman". According to villagers, most people can communicate with spirits. Nonsense aside, this profession has evolved from centuries of burial customs, seeming absurd yet reasonable at the same time.

  A woman with a rich demeanor walked in, surrounded by a crowd of people. Her attire was different from ordinary people. Two braids hung down to her waist. Her face was covered with multiple layers of makeup, making it look pale and eerie. Her eyebrows were shaped into an unusual arc, and her bright red lips made the face even more bizarre. She walked up to Grandfather's body, asked Mother some questions about Grandfather, and before I could react, she suddenly knelt down on the ground with a thud, wailing loudly in grief. I was startled, marveling at her acting skills and emotional investment. Her crying was heart-wrenching, making me wonder who was really Grandfather's grandson between us.

  She wept for about half an hour, and after half an hour she glanced at her watch, and the crying stopped abruptly. Then she patted the dust on her knees, slowly got up, looked at her mother, indicating that it was time to settle the bill. Her mother gave her a few bright red tickets, she stretched out two fingers to take them over, stuck out her tongue from her bright red mouth to lick her fingers, counted the bills several times. Then put them in her pocket and turned around to leave.

  Who would have thought that just as she was walking to the door, she suddenly fell straight down. The people in the house were in an uproar, and several relatives helped her onto the kang (heated bed) behind Grandfather's memorial tablet, while Mother hurriedly dialed 120. Before the phone call even connected, the woman on the kang slowly opened her mouth and said, "You all go out, I'm just dizzy from the smoke in this house, I'll be fine after a bit, I just need to borrow your place to rest for a bit." Mother didn't refuse, but only asked if she needed to go to the hospital for a check-up. The woman declined, saying it wasn't necessary. Mother turned around and went out to attend to the banquet, and the people in the house also dispersed.

  I didn't have a good impression of her to begin with, and suddenly she said she wanted to rest at our house. I was unwilling, but since my mother had invited her to stay, I couldn't say much. With only the two of us left in the room, I felt extremely uncomfortable. Just as I was about to leave, the fortune teller spoke up again: "Young man, wait a minute."

  I took a step back and retracted my leg. I turned around to look at her, and she was staring at me with an expression that I couldn't quite understand. It was as if she were an old acquaintance of mine, about to pour out a long-held greeting. She just kept gazing at me with a hint of a smile, making the hairs on my head stand on end. 'I have something for you,' she said again.

  "Give me?" She ignored my question, turned around and went down to the floor, fished out a key from under the incense burner, walked to the closet and opened it with ease, took out an iron box placed at the bottom of the closet. I couldn't hide the surprise on my face, and even began to speculate about the relationship between this woman and my grandfather. In just a few dozen seconds, my head spun rapidly, but I couldn't think of anything.

  "Stop thinking about it," she said. "You're impossible." I hated this kind of conversation, I was completely suppressed.

  Although I said it a bit rudely, please don't mess with other people's things. My tone was a bit harsh. She actually smiled "My stuff, what can't I touch?" I was about to speak, she waved her hand, signaling me to come over "Kid, don't be angry first, come and see something, I don't have much time". I thought, no one is chasing you away, while thinking, I walked to her side.

  The box looked old, and the paint was almost gone. She opened the box, inside there was a notebook and a copper ball the size of an egg. The fortune teller handed me the box, telling me to take good care of it. I flipped through the notebook with a lot of questions in my mind, something fell out from the notebook. I picked it up and took a look, it was an envelope.

  The fortune teller grasped my hand and said, "I don't have much time left, what happens next is up to you, be careful not to let anyone know, including Yulan." Before I could react, she collapsed on the ground again. Yulan? How did this fortune teller know my mother's name?! I held onto the box and looked down at her. She suddenly opened her eyes, startling me. She asked me, "How did I end up here?" Is she kidding me? Doesn't she remember what just happened? She rubbed her temples, muttering to herself as she stood up. Her gaze towards me had returned to its previous strangeness, no longer filled with the enigmatic smile that left me bewildered.

  I waved the box in front of her 'Whose box is this and why should I hand it over?'

  "It's definitely yours at your house, how do I know why you want to give it to me?" The fortune teller seemed to have completely forgotten what just happened. "Then how did you know the key was under the incense burner?" I asked again. "You kid must be sick in the head, what key or not key nonsense!" It seems this fortune teller's temper isn't very good. I wanted to continue questioning her, but she pushed me away and walked towards the outside of the house, muttering to herself "This house is so gloomy, so gloomy". I was left standing in the house staring at the box in my hand full of doubts.

  "Sun Yi! Come out and help!" My mother shouted from outside the house, I put the box back in the closet and thought to myself that I would take a closer look when I had time. My mother asked if the fortune teller was still resting inside, I just said she had rested enough and left on her own.

  Grandfather passed away in the second half of the night, and according to custom, he should be placed at home for three days before cremation. These three days are a protracted war, and they consume a lot of energy.

  The night was already half gone, I let my father go back inside to rest for a while, and I kept watch over the mourning hall. Occasionally, a gust of wind would blow by, causing the candlelight to flicker. Behind the candlelight, Grandfather's face in the photo seemed a bit unfamiliar to me. Twenty years, what was different after all?

  No one ever mentioned the things that happened back then again. The year I left the village, I was only in my teens, and my impression of many things wasn't very deep, but I clearly remember the feeling of leaving at the time, it wasn't relocation, it was escaping. This feeling made me feel a bit oppressed.

  Although it has been twenty years since I last saw my grandfather, as soon as I enter this courtyard, I seem to recall all sorts of things from my childhood. It's as if I can turn around and see my grandfather sitting under the trellis in a rocking chair, smoking his pipe.

  In these twenty years, my mother wanted to come back and take a look several times, but was stopped by my grandfather. He didn't want to leave when I wanted to take him away, saying that everything hadn't ended yet and he couldn't leave. As for why he was in such a hurry to let us move away at the beginning, he refused to say, only saying that one day he would tell me the whole story. Thinking of this, I felt a little annoyed in my heart, so I lit a cigarette and walked out of the gate. I don't know why, but after coming back for such a long time, I still feel a bit strange. The village has always been filled with an uncomfortable atmosphere that makes me uneasy, I don't know why, it's just very awkward.

  The two locust trees at the door are still there, and the stone pedestal under the tree is also there. I remember that after dinner when I was a child, my grandfather liked to sit on the stone pedestal and chat with the villagers. Since the reservoir incident, no one has sat here again. My grandfather always said a sentence: "Power in hand, for the people's consideration" Unfortunately, his people once forced him to lower his head, and I couldn't help but smile bitterly.

  "It's Sun Yi Ba" I was thinking, when suddenly someone called out to me.

  I looked up to see a man in his 40s, dressed in a suit and tie, which was out of place in this remote village. I racked my brain trying to recall an impression of him, but couldn't think of anything.

  "It's been a long time, how have you been lately?" I continued chatting with him to avoid awkwardness.

  "When we were young, you always followed me around calling me 'brother', now I'm almost old. I said 'no way, not at all'."

  He also said 'In those years, our village only had the two of us university students, now we can both be considered successful.' I echoed his words. He then asked me where I worked, I said at the archaeological team, which is also a civil servant. He chatted with me for a few more sentences before leaving.

  It's strange that he spoke to me in a very light tone, not at all like the way one would speak to someone who had just lost an elderly family member. I thought he had just returned to the village and didn't know about it. But the strange feeling in my heart never went away.

  All the way back to the house, I was thinking about who that person was. The moment I stepped into the door, a figure flashed through my mind, and this person made me feel cold all over, as if I had been electrocuted. I was scared by my own absurd thoughts. The older brother in the backyard, university student... he is Ye Hua!

  Although twenty years have passed, he has gained some weight, but his appearance hasn't changed much. What's going on here? Didn't he die? But I clearly remember the funeral in the backyard and Ye Hua's mother's wailing. So what's going on here? My mind is a mess. There are no thoughts at all.

  I rushed out and saw Ye Hua's figure disappearing at the entrance of the alley. I hesitated for a moment, but still followed him.

  Ye Hua walked into his own courtyard with his head down. I didn't dare follow him in, so I stood at the gate and listened to the movements inside the yard.

  Ye Hua walked straight into the house and soon came out, no, floated out! His feet didn't move at all, but he directly floated out of the house.

  I rubbed my eyes hard to avoid seeing things wrong, but what happened next surprised me even more.

  Ye Hua floated to a tree in the yard, like a snake, and coiled up from the trunk. Because of the darkness, I couldn't see how high he climbed, but for the next two hours, he didn't come down.

  I concentrated my attention on the rustling of the wind in the trees, and when a gust of wind came, I shivered. On such a cold night, a drop of sweat had actually formed on my forehead. I glanced around the house several times, but didn't see Ye Hua's mother. Could it be that the whole family was up in the tree? The tree in front of Ye Hua's house was at least fifty or sixty years old, and its trunk alone would require two or three people to encircle. A tree like this could easily support two or three people. But what were they doing up in the tree in the middle of the night? Looking at Ye Hua's gait, it seemed as if something was on his back. Had this family encountered some kind of evil spirit?

  The strange things that have been happening continuously today have made me more and more suspicious. I had thought the repression of this period was just because my childhood didn't leave a good impression here, but now it seems like that's not all. This village really does seem to be full of suspicious points.