Witchcraft

  I don't know if the long-faced young man recognized me, he just lazily looked at me and walked past me. Liu Zhen noticed my reaction, after going downstairs, he asked me: "What? Do you know that person from just now?"

  I shook my head and said, "It's not that I know him, just that we've met before, and now I'm not even sure if it's the same person."

  Liu Zhen didn't ask much either. We ordered a few home-style dishes at a small restaurant near that old apartment building.

  The sky is overcast, the air is stifling, I raise my eyes to look at that old apartment building, in contrast with the new-style small buildings with red walls around it, it looks out of place, the white-gray wall is like a shroud, looking eerie and desolate.

  I ordered two bottles of beer and drank them by myself, Liu Zhen only sipped tea on the side, he was notorious for not touching a drop of alcohol. As for Bu Jin, she remained as quiet as ever, but I occasionally stole glances at her, finding her eyes cast downward, her slender eyebrows slightly furrowed, no longer expressionless like before, and apparently deep in thought about something.

  I didn't ask her what she was thinking about, in the past few days of getting along with her, I have already figured out her temperament. As for Bo Jin, you can only passively wait for her to speak, if you want to actively chat with her for a few sentences, it's simply harder than climbing to heaven.

  As I drank, I said to Liu Zhen: "There's still one thing that I don't quite understand."

  "Speak." Liu Zhen stuffed a slice of sausage into his mouth.

  "Since my father knew Yunnan was treacherous, why didn't he let me return as soon as possible instead of continuing to stay in Yunnan?"

  "I've asked this question before," said Liu Zhen, "but the teacher's answer was somewhat vague. He said that if you were to appear now at major train stations or airports in Yunnan, you would be discovered immediately."

  "Them? Who are they?"

  Liu Zhenyi waved his hand and said, "Who else could it be? Of course, it's that group of people who pretended to be your father and Wang Chengbao."

  I frowned and said, "If what you say is true, then that gang's influence is still quite considerable, isn't it?"

  "It was roughly like that, he didn't say much to those people either. That night, his main conversation with me was still about asking you to help find Duan Yuwen, and he specifically instructed me not to write the address on paper, but only remember it in my head, and then meet up with you to go find Duan Yuwen together." Liu Zhen sighed, suddenly lowering his voice, saying: "However, I think that group of people's power should be very strong, otherwise the teacher wouldn't have told me to be careful about phone tapping."

  I nodded, in life, those who have the right to eavesdrop on others' conversations are probably only the police. Of course, this is not to say that eavesdropping on others' conversations is difficult, for many electronic device experts, wanting to eavesdrop on someone's phone call is as easy as turning one's hand over, especially with my family's old-fashioned landline phone. However, such things are suspected of infringing on privacy, and in serious cases, may even constitute a crime.

  At this time, the boss of the small shop brought a plate of braised fish. Liu Zhen was more cunning than me and hastily stopped her, saying: "Boss, I want to ask you something."

  The boss's wife smiled and said in a thick Yunnan accent: "What do you want to ask, speak up."

  Liu Zhen pointed to the old apartment building and asked: "How many years has that building been there?"

  The boss's wife looked in the direction of Liu Zhen's finger, thought for a moment, and replied: "It must have been at least thirty years ago. Why are you asking about this?"

  "Oh, it's nothing, just asking casually." Liu Zhen didn't mention anything about looking for someone. "I'm just a bit curious, you see the location of this old apartment is so remote, and it seems like not many people live there, and new buildings have been built around it, but why hasn't that old building been demolished?"

  The boss's wife smiled stiffly after hearing this, looked around the store and saw that there was only one other table of people inside, so she sat down next to us and said in a low voice: "That building used to have many residents, but since a crazy woman moved into that apartment over ten years ago, somehow all the residents in that building gradually moved out."

  “Crazy old lady?” As soon as I heard it, I immediately thought of that frightening-looking old woman, and my curiosity was piqued. But what surprised me even more was that Bo Jin also seemed taken aback after hearing it, looking at the boss's wife. I thought to myself, could it be that Bo Jin understood what the boss's wife said? But a closer look told me that my guess was wrong, because as the boss's wife continued speaking, Bo Jin gradually lost interest, probably still due to not understanding Chinese.

  The landlady responded to me: "That's right, everyone calls her that. Although I haven't seen the crazy old woman myself, but about the strange things of that crazy old woman, I've heard a lot."

  "What's this strange thing? Come on and tell me." I don't like it when others dawdle, so I often urge them like this.

  The boss's wife looked at Bo Jin and said: "Oh dear, that story is a bit scary. There are still girls here, it's not good to scare them."

  "Her?" I pointed at Bo Jin and said: "Don't worry, the combined bravery of my brother and me may not even be as great as hers. Just speak quickly."

  The landlady's eyes rolled around and she said, "Now this story is going to be interesting. I think I'll give you those two bottles of wine again. You drink while I tell it to you."

  I waved my hand and said, "No need, this guy doesn't drink."

  "No." Liu Zhen retorted, and said to the boss's wife, "Then bring two more bottles." After finishing speaking, he gave me a look. I immediately understood his meaning, it turned out that the boss's wife was using storytelling as an excuse to get us to buy two more bottles of wine. My own drinking capacity is not bad, so I said, "That's okay, then let's have two more bottles."

  The landlady went to get us wine with great joy, and after she came back, she began to tell us the story of that crazy old woman. Here is her account:

  About that crazy old woman's story, I've heard people talk about it a lot when I was young. The people around here know more or less something about her, and many parents use her story to scare naughty kids.

  Let me start from the beginning. Twenty years ago, everyone in our small town lived in those old-fashioned apartments, but now that the town has developed, many of those old apartments have been demolished and relocated. The only one left standing is that one building, and a very important reason for this is because of that crazy woman.

  I mentioned it to you before, the apartment building used to have a lot of residents because it was built early and almost all the old households in the town lived there. The days were also peaceful. But one day, a woman on the third floor hanged herself at home. The reason for her suicide is also simple, it's the kind of story about a heartless man that we often hear, I won't mention it.

  The husband proposed a divorce, and although the wife was heartbroken, she didn't react excessively at the time. The neighbors often came over to persuade the husband, but it was all in vain as he had made up his mind to leave his wife. In the end, the wife agreed to the divorce on the condition that she would take care of their child, and the husband happily agreed. They went to the civil affairs bureau to complete the divorce formalities. However, the husband deceived the wife, and on the same night after completing the divorce procedures, he secretly took away their child and all the valuable things from home, escaping without a trace. The wife was left heartbroken and unbearable, and in a moment of impulsiveness, she hanged herself. When the neighbors discovered her body, she had already been dead for three days, and due to her originally slender figure, her entire body looked like a paper doll hanging from the ceiling, swaying back and forth. As for the appearance of someone who died by hanging, you can probably imagine it, so I won't say more.

  The woman was left with no one to rely on, and nobody knew if she had any relatives. So everyone chipped in some money, hastily cremated the body, found a place to bury it, and that's how the matter came to an end. As for the house, naturally, nobody would go live there again.

  At first, both the adults and children were still a bit afraid. Although everyone said they didn't believe in ghosts, who would dare to say for sure that something strange wouldn't happen to them?

  However, it has been several years since the incident and nothing strange has ever happened in the old apartment building. As time went by, everyone gradually stopped mentioning that matter.

  Just then, the crazy woman appeared. Her appearance immediately attracted other people's attention, because her looks were really too terrifying. Both hands drooped in front of her, and her back was severely hunched, from a distance, it seemed like she was crawling on the ground rather than walking.

  I heard others say that the madwoman claimed to be the mother of a deceased woman, and her own daughter had died, wanting to seek justice. Everyone told her that her daughter's husband had taken their children and run away for many years, with no one knowing where they went. However, the madwoman firmly believed that the scoundrel would definitely return, so she insisted on moving into the room where her daughter had committed suicide, and no matter how others tried to dissuade her, it was of no use.

  However, people soon discovered that after the crazy old woman moved in, many changes occurred in the old apartment building. First of all, since the crazy old woman moved into the old apartment building, people clearly found that the number of stray cats around the apartment building increased day by day, and most of them were black-haired old cats. Older generations know that where black cats appear, there must be resentful spirits, and the number of stray cats is increasing every day, making everyone feel a little uneasy. Secondly, many residents said that they often heard someone digging with an iron shovel in the middle of the night, accompanied by the screams of many cats, which sounded like babies crying, but it was unknown whether the group of cats were playing or had been frightened. It's strange that although almost all residents heard the sound of shoveling, there was no sign of any pits around the apartment building the next day.

  In addition, people have also noticed something strange about that madwoman. The first family to notice was the Liu family, who had just given birth to a baby boy. The baby boy was very robust and rarely cried or made a fuss, but as soon as he saw the madwoman, he would immediately burst into loud wailing, sometimes for an entire afternoon. At first, the Liu family didn't pay much attention, but over time, they discovered that the baby's crying seemed to have nothing to do with the madwoman's frightening appearance. Sometimes, even when a member of the Liu family was holding the child and passing by the madwoman's door, the baby would point at the iron gate and cry loudly, his face turning purple as if he had received some kind of shock.

  Of course, these are nothing out of the ordinary. What really terrifies the people in the old apartment is that more and more people claim to have seen that crazy woman in the corridor at midnight.

  Because old-fashioned apartment buildings generally have a public toilet on each floor, it's a bit like a collective dormitory. As a result, it's unavoidable that some people get up to use the toilet in the middle of the night.

  It is said that almost everyone who gets up at midnight to go to the toilet has seen that madwoman, and every time someone sees her, she is doing something different.

  Some people say they saw the madwoman standing foolishly at the end of the corridor, while others claim to have seen her wandering around the corridors of the entire apartment building like a ghost in the middle of the night. Her eerie gait made people's hair stand on end; some even said they saw the madwoman chatting with a strange woman in the corridor at midnight, only to discover that it was actually a woman who had hanged herself years ago.

  However, all of the above are what I've heard from others, and the person who told me also heard it from someone else, so whether or not there's any exaggeration, I don't know. But I once heard a person involved tell me about an incident where they ran into a crazy woman at midnight.

  The man's surname was Cao, and because he had broken a leg in a bicycle accident when he was young, everyone called him Cao the Cripple. At that time, Cao the Cripple was only in his thirties, working in a factory, not very old but very honest and capable.

  That night, in the middle of the night, he suddenly had a stomachache and urgently wanted to have diarrhea. I'm telling you this, don't be surprised, and don't let it affect your appetite.

  Cao Limp had naturally heard about the various strange things that happened when people ran into Crazy Woman in the apartment complex at midnight, and his family just so happened to live on the third floor. That night, he really couldn't control his stomach, and with no other choice, he steeled himself and came out into the corridor.

  He pushed open the iron gate of his own home, looked around to the left and right, but didn't see the shadow of the crazy old woman. Thinking that maybe the crazy old woman was asleep tonight, he walked towards the toilet with a relieved heart.

  The public toilet is at the end of the corridor, where there is also the only window in the corridor.

  Cao Limp walked and walked, suddenly, cold sweat broke out. Because he raised his eyes to take a look, unexpectedly found that at the end of the corridor, on the windowsill of the window, a vague black shadow appeared. Through the moonlight outside the window, Cao Limp only felt a chill run down his spine. The black shadow on the windowsill was actually that crazy old woman.

  What's even more chilling is that the madwoman somehow managed to get her hands on a shroud and put it on, and she was still wearing those clothes as she crouched on the windowsill, seemingly staring at something outside.

  Right after that, a cat meowed downstairs, sounding extremely jarring in the silent darkness. And that crazy woman seemed to have reacted to something, and eerily laughed along with it.

  That eerie laughter echoed back and forth in the empty corridor, scaring Cao Lisi so much that he almost lost control of his bowels. Fortunately, the madwoman seemed to have not noticed Cao Lisi's presence. Cao Lisi took advantage of the situation and quickly ran into the toilet, not even daring to breathe loudly. He rushed into a stall, locked the door, and squatted down, but by then he had already lost the urge to go. He just sat there motionless in the stall, saying that it was the most eerie experience he had ever had in his life, feeling extremely frightened, and even starting to shiver with fear.

  But anyway, he was a young man in his prime, and although he felt scared, he soon used his willpower to control his emotions.

  Just as he had barely calmed down, suddenly, a series of footsteps came from the toilet. Cao Dazhu's scalp was numb, and he instantly broke out in a cold sweat, and then the footsteps got closer and closer, sounding like they were heading straight for him.

  In a moment, a pair of eerie blue cloth shoes appeared in the gap under the toilet partition, which was obviously a woman's shoe. At this time, Cao Cuozi was so scared that he couldn't make any sound, he didn't move at all, or rather, he was completely stiffened there.

  However, after a while, the cloth shoes didn't move again. Cao Quzi couldn't help but lower his head and take a closer look at the shoes. As he looked carefully, through the faint light, he found that there was only a pair of shoes there, and what was terrifying was that there were no human feet inside the shoes.

  At this moment, the toilet door suddenly made a rustling sound, and Cao Laozi's scalp almost exploded when he heard it. It sounded like a woman scratching the door with her fingernails. He looked up in the direction of the sound and saw that the crazy old lady's face had already appeared above the highest point of the partition board, staring at him with a mouthful of black and yellow teeth, her mouth twisted into a ghostly smile.