Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Strangely enough, after Aunt Chen did whatever it was she did, Chuxue’s raging fever actually came down.
Seeing me still holding on to her and refusing to let go, Aunt Chen frowned faintly. “Put her down, now. If you keep this up, you’ll get her killed.”
At that, the surrounding villagers immediately turned their accusing gazes on me.
Crossing the Yin seemed to be something wrapped in taboo.
The young woman from earlier glared at me even more fiercely. “Wait a minute.”
“You’re not from our village. Who are you?”
I didn’t get angry at her unfriendly interrogation. I only said coldly, “I’m Bailu. I came here especially to see Great-Aunt.”
“What, none of you remember me?”
Faced with my expression, one of the women looked me over suspiciously.
“You’re Bailu?”
As if she couldn’t quite believe it, she said doubtfully, “Girls really do change as they grow up! I remember you had a mole around your philtrum, didn’t you?”
I said mildly, “I had it removed ages ago.”
She nodded slightly and gave an “oh.”
After that, their guard finally dropped quite a bit.
When she heard I wanted to see Great-Aunt, she led me to a grayish-white, two-story villa.
After so many years apart, Great-Aunt had already become a shriveled old woman.
I greeted her, but the moment she saw me, she pointed at me and screamed herself hoarse.
“No, you’re not my grandniece!”
“Who are you?”
Only later did I learn why.
She had Alzheimer’s disease-senile dementia, in plain terms.
Great-Aunt had led a bitter life.
She had two daughters. One had been abducted and sold when she was very young, then disappeared without a trace.
The other had to take care of her mother while running all over the place searching for her younger sister. She withered away and died young, leaving behind only one little girl named Chuxue.
Thankfully, that only surviving seedling had not met with disaster.
After Chuxue woke up, I brought her back to that little building.
Great-Aunt was still sitting on the threshold in a daze, as if waiting for someone. Because of Alzheimer’s, the old woman could no longer take care of herself. Feces and urine were smeared all over her body.
A foul stench hung in the air, so disgusting it almost made me retch.
Even so, I forced myself to bathe the old woman.
Afterward, I rummaged through the kitchen and found a little cornmeal, then made a few flatbreads for Chuxue, who had just woken up.
The child looked utterly starved. She ate the whole pot of flatbreads by herself.
Seeing that it was getting dark, I tried to chat with her, only to find her shaking her head in fear. I couldn’t help being surprised. “You can’t talk?”
She looked at me pitifully and kept shaking her head.
“What exactly happened?”
When I pressed her, she timidly took out a stubby pencil and wrote, “I can’t talk. If I talk, the ghost will hear me.”
“…When it gets dark, It will come catch me!”
Her innocent little expression was both amusing and heartbreaking.
So I deliberately teased her. “Then what does this ghost look like?”
To my surprise, she actually took up the pencil and began drawing on the paper with great seriousness.
The picture was full of dark scenery and twisted lines. In the very center was a pitch-black, thin little ghostly figure, no different from something out of a horror movie.
People always said children her age could easily see unclean things.
But I thought she simply had too much imagination.
Then I looked at the bloodshot whites of the little girl’s eyes. She had clearly been terrified. Pity stirred in me, so I gathered some tiny flowers from the window crack and made her a little daisy ring.
“There are no ghosts in this world.” I slipped the ring onto her finger and said seriously, “Behind every phenomenon that seems impossible to explain, there is science.”
The girl asked in bewilderment, “What is science?”
I thought for a moment, then found two pieces of scrap wire and a small light bulb. I stuck one wire into each side of a cut-open apple.
Miraculously, the bulb lit up.
I smiled and said to her, “As long as you have knowledge, you can go anywhere under heaven without fear.”
Then I used ink to solemnly write four words on her wrist: “Knowledge Discerns Ghosts.”
After all, she was still a child.
It was Chuxue’s first time doing an experiment, and she was overjoyed.
That night, she hugged my arm as if she had finally found someone to rely on, and gradually sank into deep sleep.
Lying in the moldy-smelling bedding, however, I suddenly remembered that horrifying scene.
In the gloomy basement, that group of burly men had all looked at me in unison. Yet their eerie gazes seemed to pierce straight through me.
They were looking into the thick darkness behind me.