Chapter 64: The Elbow Joint's Sudden and Frightening Dislocation

  Chen Xiaojian brought Chen Xue to the entrance of the tent, and Chen Xue said: "There is an uncle collecting money at the door. You have to give him money before you can go in and watch. I don't have any money."

  Chen Xiao Jian mischievously said: "I don't have money either, but we can still go in and take a look. Just follow me!"

  Qima's Chen Xiao Jian bypassed the entrance and ran to the back of the huge tent. The back of the tent was not directly illuminated by any lights, so it looked very dark, and there were almost no people coming and going.

  "What are you doing, Xiao Jian?" Chen Xue Xia asked fearfully, looking at the coarse canvas of the tent that was being pulled continuously.

  "What's there to be afraid of? There's no one here! Don't just stand there, hurry up and come help!" Chen Xue Xia had no choice but to walk over and help pull the tent.

  Before long, the two of them tore open a huge gap. Chen Xiaojian proudly said to Chen Xuexia: "How's that? Impressive, right? Can still watch without spending money!"

  "What if we go in like this and get caught by someone?"

  "Chen Xue Xia, you're really as timid as a mouse! Anyway, I'll just go take a look, whether you come or not is up to you!"

  Chen Xiaojian finished speaking and ignored Chen Xuexia, like a nimble little mouse, suddenly drilling into the gap of the torn open canvas tent, and suddenly disappeared. Only Chen Xuexia was left standing there, looking around, behind him was an immeasurable darkness, a vast wilderness, as if there were some floating ghost fires.

  Chen Xue Xia plucked up his courage, bit his lip and bent down to enter the tent. When he got inside, he found that there was no one there. There were only some rusty iron cages. Inside the cages, there were some scattered wooden puppet wrists. These wrists did not look like they were made of wood, but rather looked very much like bamboo, with each section polished and painted to resemble human wrists.

  It turned out that this was the backstage behind the stage, so Chen Xue Xia didn't run into anyone. Chen Xue Xia looked around but couldn't see any sign of Chen Xiao Jian.

  "Little Jian, Little Jian, where are you?" Chen Xue Xia could only softly and quietly call out, not daring to be too loud, afraid of being caught by the adults.

  Chen Xue Xia continued to walk forward because he heard the sound of children's laughter and applause coming from ahead. The backstage was messy, with many tall boxes and simple rooms scattered about. Just as Chen Xue Xia was about to reach the stage, he suddenly heard the crying voices of some little kids. He thought it was Chen Xiao Jian's voice, so without thinking, he walked into a room.

  It wasn't really a room, just some green fabric used to separate out private spaces. Chen Xue Xia walked in and saw two huge iron cages inside, with two small children standing inside the cages. Chen Xue Xia was startled and burst into tears, crying uncontrollably, he had no idea why there were two children locked up in the cages.

  But he took a closer look and couldn't help but burst out laughing, because the two little ones locked in the cage were not human, but two wooden puppets. They looked so lifelike due to their intricately carved heads and faces, and the dim lighting in the room had led Chen Xue Xia to mistake them for real children.

  These two wooden puppets should be the roles of children, with round heads and realistic faces painted on them. Their bellies look strange, just a few large bamboo sticks supporting their necks - the neck of the puppet is a hollow bamboo stick. Usually, the puppets seen on stage wear bright and beautiful clothes, so you can't see that they are actually so simple inside.

  The strangest thing is their hands, which look a bit strange. In the past, Chen Xue Xia had also seen wooden puppets, most of which were hidden inside with only the palms exposed, and the sleeves inside the clothes actually hid the operating mechanisms, making it convenient for the puppeteers to manipulate the puppets' bodies.

  However, the two wooden puppets' arms in the iron cage that Chen Xue saw now had no mechanism, just four arms, which looked a bit fat, similar to those thick arms of New Year's painting dolls. They didn't look like they were made of wood or bamboo, but rather like those long balloons that clowns often play with. And also a bit like the kind of sausage wrapped in a layer of plastic film that is commonly bought in stores. Moreover, their four limbs were not separated, but connected, just like human arms.

  It is well known that the arms of a wooden puppet are separated to facilitate manipulation and make various movements. Taking one arm as an example, the joint at the elbow of the wooden puppet's arm is also separated, even if it is tightly connected, it is tied together with threads, rather than looking like a sausage without removing the outer layer of wrapping film. The left hand holds one end, the right hand holds the other end, and then both hands twist in different directions - the sausage will be twisted open in the middle, but the outer wrapping film does not break, still wrapped around, only becoming very small at the middle position.

  Now Chen Xue Xia saw that the elbows of these two wooden puppets were just like this. Chen Xue Xia looked at the two wooden puppets in the cage and began to feel afraid, because these two things reminded him of monsters and ghosts.

  In the isolated and eerie atmosphere of the mountain village, all sorts of strange and bizarre ghost stories emerged one after another. Chen Xue had heard many since he was a child.

  He turned around, just about to run, but then heard a child's voice coming from behind, seemingly crying in pain. Chen Xue Xia couldn't help but turn around again to look, and saw that the two wooden puppets inside the cage were actually moving slowly on their own without anyone controlling them. Their arms creaked as they moved, and one of them, which was originally not facing Chen Xue Xia's head, slowly turned around, its mouth seeming to say a sentence: "Save... me..."

  Chen Xue Xia was so scared that he let out a loud shriek and ran outside as fast as his legs could carry him. Most children who grew up in the countryside had heard many ghost stories from the elderly villagers since they were young, and Chen Xue Xia had long ago heard from Guihua Auntie at the village entrance that ghosts would attach themselves to cloth dolls and come out to scare people at night. Now seeing a wooden puppet that could talk, he thought it was possessed by a ghost.

  Just as he ran out of the room, Chen Xue Xia found himself colliding with something soft and springy, while also catching a whiff of a smell similar to fish mint. Since childhood, Chen Xue Xia had always been extremely afraid of fish mint because he remembered that once when he had a cold and was constantly coughing, his father bought pig lungs and added fish mint to make a soup for him to drink. That was the first time he drank fish mint, and the nauseating, irritating smell made Chen Xue Xia dizzy, almost vomiting, and he refused to drink the soup no matter what, resulting in him suffering a violent beating from his father.

  Chen Xue Xia nervously lifted her head to see what he had bumped into, and the result was a terrifying clown's face that scared people to death. The clown's mouth was so big that it occupied the entire lower part of his face, and his eyes looked very large too, with black eye sockets and a white face, his gaze looked extremely frightening.

  Chen Xue Xia was so scared that he broke free from the fat clown's belly and ran out screaming. He actually screamed very loudly, but the sound of the children laughing in the audience was even louder, completely drowning out his screams.

  Chen Xue Xia was so scared that he ran out of the stage like a madman, then sprinted out of the safety passage in front of the audience seats and fled back home. Chen Xue Xia didn't even know how he managed to run all the way back home; it's as if his memory of that part had been erased with an eraser. After returning home, Chen Xue Xia started running a high fever, with his temperature reaching 40 degrees Celsius. He was so delirious that he kept talking nonsense in his sleep, mumbling what sounded like dream talk.

  His father had to send him to the town hospital for treatment, and after three days of intravenous drips in the town hospital, his high fever finally subsided. But his neighbor and good friend, Chen Xiaojian, that mischievous and eccentric boy, disappeared and never showed up again.

  ……

  Chen Xue Xia finished talking about his childhood experience, he said: "Actually I don't remember if anything happened on the way back home or if I saw Chen Xiao Jian who also came out. My memory of running back home along that riverbank is completely gone. I even went to find a hypnotist to hypnotize me and see if there was a segment of memory that I intentionally blocked out. Unfortunately, after seeing several hypnotists, none of them found that segment of memory."

  Chen Xue Xia continued: "It was that high fever, I remember it vividly, the feeling of dizziness and spinning is still etched in my memory. I felt like I was sleeping soundly but my brain was clear. I kept thinking I was floating on a vast expanse of calm yellow water, with ripples on the surface. Then my head became extremely heavy... And then there were those two things that looked like either humans or wooden puppets... The most vivid impression was that fat clown I bumped into, his appearance was really terrifying. Not long ago, I just watched 'American Horror Story 4 Freak Show', and there's a killer clown wearing a mask, the one I saw back then was similar, except it didn't have that terrifying mask with two rows of teeth."

  I said: "Do you want us to help you find Chen Xiaojian?"

  "No, if things were that simple it would be great, unfortunately they're not—"

  ……

  After Chen Xue Xia became popular, one day an investor found his agent and offered him double the pay to act in a horror movie "The Puppet Master". His agency helped him take on this role. When Chen Xue Xia received the script, he discovered that something was off: The plot of "The Puppet Master" is about how the male lead, when he was young, went with his neighbor friend to watch a puppet show at a circus, but his friend mysteriously disappeared, and the male lead abandoned him and ran away alone because he was too scared. 17 years later, the male lead became a star and was invited to participate in the filming of "The Puppet Master", only to find that a series of terrifying supernatural events occurred on the movie set, as if all the fingers were pointing at the male lead...