Chapter 119

Chapter 119

Xia Dong’s family was relatively well-off by the standards of Xia Family Hamlet.

Her husband worked in the city year-round. He had risen to become a minor construction subcontractor and earned quite a bit of money.

The payments he sent home during holidays and festivals were always in the five figures.

Even in a town or city during the late 1990s, that would have been considered a very good income.

As a result, a little over a year ago, Xia Dong’s family had torn down the old mud-and-timber home left by her parents and built a three-story concrete house in its place.

She had an eight-year-old daughter named Xia Mi who attended the township elementary school. In a sense, that made her my schoolmate.

After all, there was only one elementary school for miles around. Children from more than a dozen nearby villages all studied there.

Then, a little over a week ago, tragedy struck.

Xia Dong was washing clothes in the courtyard while Xia Mi went up to play on the rooftop terrace alone.

The three-story homes built in the countryside usually had a flat rooftop terrace, like a small paved yard. People could dry grain there, store odds and ends, or climb up to enjoy the distant view. It had all kinds of uses.

Xia Mi also liked to spin what children in Sichuan and Chongqing called an “old ox” on the terrace.

In standard Mandarin, it was simply a spinning top. A child whipped it hard with a thin, flexible lash to keep it spinning. It was a favorite toy among country children.

No one could have imagined that Xia Mi would lose her footing while playing with the top and fall straight from the rooftop.

She landed in the courtyard directly in front of Xia Dong.

Normally, someone who fell from the roof of a three-story rural home would most likely break an arm or a leg. Death wasn’t especially likely.

But Xia Mi’s luck was terrible. She fell headfirst, and her skull struck a raised stone in the courtyard.

She died instantly.

The sight drove Xia Dong into hysterics. She screamed like a madwoman.

Neighbors heard the crash and her anguished wails and hurried over to help.

They asked several brave young men from the village to guard the scene, then sent someone to the township clinic to fetch a doctor.

In truth, there was no need for a doctor.

Anyone could tell at a glance that Xia Mi was already dead and beyond saving.

But the formalities still had to be observed.

After the doctor from the township clinic examined her and issued a death certificate, the villagers began arranging the funeral.

Xia Dong’s husband was away, and she herself was in a daze, so naturally she couldn’t handle any of it.

Fortunately, relationships among villagers were still close and sincere in those days.

Everyone was related through the clan, and Xia Dong was well liked. The village chief and Party secretary took the lead, helping the family find a folk Taoist master to perform the funeral rites.

Xia Dong’s husband rushed home from the city the next day after receiving the villagers’ phone call.

When he saw his daughter’s body in the coffin, he wept until he nearly collapsed.

It was a true tragedy.

The other villagers could only sigh.

One accident had torn a happy family apart.

But what had happened could not be undone. They had no choice but to accept reality.

To everyone’s surprise, Xia Dong adamantly refused to let them bury her daughter’s body.

Whenever anyone tried to reason with her, she lunged at them like a rabid dog, biting, clawing, punching, and kicking.

She even bit Xia Sanjin’s hand.

After that, no one dared approach her again.

Since Xia Dong’s husband had returned, the other villagers eventually dispersed.

The following morning, however, he burst from the house in terror and announced that both his wife and his daughter’s body had vanished.

That frightened the entire village.

Everyone hurried out to search with him.

After more than half a day, they finally found Xia Dong in the nearby mountains.

She sat sprawled before a mound of freshly raised earth, her hair disheveled and her body covered in dirt. She laughed and sobbed by turns.

Every one of her fingernails had peeled backward, and blood streamed from all ten fingers.

One look at her was enough for everyone to guess what had happened.

During the night, while her husband slept, Xia Dong must have secretly carried her daughter’s body out of the coffin and taken it up the mountain. Then she had dug a grave with her own hands and buried Xia Mi.
Everyone found her actions strange.

If Xia Dong had ultimately accepted her daughter’s accidental death and was willing to bury the body, why hadn’t she allowed the folk Taoist master to complete the funeral rites, select a place with favorable feng shui, and have professional coffin bearers carry Xia Mi to her grave?

Why insist on taking her daughter’s body into the mountains and digging the grave herself?

Her behavior was deeply peculiar.

At the time, though, no one thought too much about it, including Xia Dong’s husband.

They assumed she believed that only laying her daughter to rest with her own hands could soothe her wounded heart.

Because of everything that had happened, Xia Dong’s husband, Xia Degui, decided to stop working in the city for a while and remain home with his wife.

Once her grief eased somewhat, the two of them could leave for the city together.

Perhaps getting away from the painful memories of Xia Family Hamlet would improve her state of mind.

But before long, something horrifying and inexplicable happened.

Late the next night, Xia Dong had already fallen asleep, but Xia Degui was suffering from insomnia.

He lay in bed with his eyes open, staring into the empty darkness.

Suddenly, he heard a faint sound from the main room outside.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

It sounded like someone walking very slowly and softly.

At first, Xia Degui assumed he had misheard it or that a mouse was moving around inside the house. He didn’t give it much thought.

But the sound didn’t stop.

It kept rustling through the main room as though someone were pacing back and forth.

A thought immediately leaped into Xia Degui’s mind.

A thief!

Xia Family Hamlet might have been deep in the mountains, and nearly everyone in the village belonged to the same extended clan.

But outsiders did sometimes sneak in to steal, and even the village had a few idle good-for-nothings who might slip into someone’s home and take things.

Xia Degui was already overwhelmed by grief after losing his daughter.

Anyone who chose this moment to rob his home was pouring oil on a raging fire.

He intended to teach the damned thief a lesson.

Xia Degui gently lifted the blanket and got out of bed.

He grabbed a wooden shoulder pole from the cabinet beside him and carefully left the bedroom.

A corridor connected the first-floor bedroom to the main room.

Not wanting to alert the intruder, he left the kerosene lamp unlit and felt his way through the darkness.

As he moved, the footsteps grew clearer and clearer.

Closer.

Closer.

When he reached the end of the corridor, with only a turn separating him from the main room, the shuffling footsteps suddenly stopped.

Silence fell around him.

Dead silence.

In the darkness, Xia Degui could hear only his own breathing and heartbeat.

Did the thief discover me?

That was his first thought.

If so, there was no longer any reason to hide.

Brandishing the shoulder pole, Xia Degui charged into the main room.

“Who the hell are you? Come out now, or I’ll beat you to death!”

He sounded utterly ferocious.

In those days, anyone who could leave such a remote mountain village, find work in the city, and rise to become a subcontractor despite having no education–all while earning tens of thousands a year–had to be tough.

At construction sites, Xia Degui had often led his men into fights with tools in hand to wrest projects away from rival crews.

Of course he wasn’t afraid of some thief who had broken into his home.

Yet the main room was utterly silent, as though no one were there.

And there truly was no one.

It was hard to explain, but people who spent their entire lives in rural mountain villages were far more sensitive to human presence than those raised in towns and cities.

Even in pitch darkness, they could usually sense whether someone stood within a small space nearby.

It wasn’t any special ability, merely an instinct shared by many people who grew up in the countryside.

No one’s in the main room. Did the thief run away? That’s impossible. I’m standing with my back to the front door.

Xia Degui was baffled.

Then an icy breeze seemed to brush past him.

He shuddered.

A chill crawled slowly from the base of his spine to the top of his head, and an inexplicable dread gripped his heart.

What if…it isn’t human?
Even a hardened man like Xia Degui felt fear once the thought took hold.

He hurried to the dining table and lit the kerosene lamp. Xia Family Hamlet had recently gained access to electricity, but the supply was limited, and power to the village was cut off every night after ten.

The glow of the kerosene lamp illuminated most of the main room.

Xia Degui raised it and looked around.

The room was empty. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

Then he suddenly noticed something.

Rows of muddy footprints covered the floor.

They were far too small to belong to an adult. They had to be a child’s.

The prints were everywhere, as though a child with mud-covered feet had wandered back and forth through the main room, leaving tracks all over the floor.

They formed a chaotic jumble with no discernible pattern.

Only one trail was clear: the line of footprints that passed right beside Xia Degui.

They continued toward the front door, then vanished in the courtyard.

At the sight of those muddy tracks, Xia Degui’s head began to buzz. Pain stabbed through the back of his skull as though someone had struck him with a club.

His mind went completely blank.

That was the kind of sensation people experienced when terror overwhelmed them.

A horrifying scene formed in Xia Degui’s mind.

In the silent darkness, a child with mud coating both feet had paced endlessly around the main room.

When Xia Degui entered, the child had walked straight toward him, passed within inches of his body, and finally disappeared through the door.

And he had been unable to see any of it.

That child couldn’t possibly have been alive.

The more Xia Degui thought about it, the more terrified he became. His entire body began trembling.

At construction sites, he was willing to draw a knife and risk his life fighting anyone who tried to steal his work.

But faced with an unknown terror hidden in the darkness, his courage deserted him completely.

Clutching the shoulder pole and kerosene lamp, he hurried back to the bedroom.

Bang!

He slammed the door and fastened the bolt.

Only when he looked at his sleeping wife, Xia Dong, did he feel a little safer.

But Xia Degui had already been struggling to sleep. Now there was no hope of rest at all.

Unease churned inside him. He was terrified that footsteps would start moving through the main room again. If that happened, he really might wet himself.

As he lay in bed, he heard his wife muttering in her sleep.

Her words were faint and slurred.

Normally, Xia Degui would never pay attention to whatever Xia Dong mumbled in her dreams.

But since he couldn’t sleep anyway, he listened carefully.

The words made his scalp crawl.

Xia Dong was murmuring incoherently.

“Xia Mi…Xia Mi, are you back?”

“Xia Mi, shouldn’t you come home and visit your mother?”

“Xia Mi, Mommy can’t bear to let you go…”

Xia Degui’s heart lurched, and a strange thought entered his mind.

Could Xia Mi have come back?

He had loved his daughter dearly too.

But men tended to be more rational.

No matter how much he had loved her, she had died in an accident.

The dead could not return to life.

If a dead person came back, the sight would inevitably inspire fear.

Still, Xia Mi was his beloved daughter. If it was truly her spirit returning home, the thought didn’t seem quite as terrifying as before.

Compared to some wandering ghost breaking into his home, even a visit from his deceased daughter frightened Xia Degui far less.

Eventually, in the latter half of the night, he drifted into a fitful sleep.

When Xia Degui woke the next morning, he was alone in bed.

He hurriedly got up, put on his shoes, and left the bedroom.

Xia Dong was sitting in the main room, staring blankly into space. The muddy footprints he had seen the night before had vanished, and the floor was spotless.

It was as though the entire incident had been nothing but an illusion.

But he soon discovered it hadn’t been.

A woman’s furious cry rang out from the neighboring courtyard.

“What godforsaken bastard did this? All the chickens in my yard are dead–and so is the dog!”

Xia Degui rushed outside.

A crowd of villagers had already gathered in front of the neighboring home. They pointed into the courtyard and whispered among themselves.