Chapter 4

Chapter 4

That night, I had a dream.

In the dream, I was driving a big truck down the road, my heart pounding with anxiety.

The sky outside was black. Wild woods lined both sides of the road. Faintly, I could hear a lot of people shouting, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

In a daze, it felt like someone was sitting in the passenger seat beside me.

I didn’t turn to look. Somehow, I seemed to know who it was, and yet I also didn’t.

All I did was keep driving forward in a panic.

After a while, my mind cleared a little.

I realized the reason I was in such a hurry was because a child had gone missing back in my hometown.

At some point, the truck had driven into a village.

The village gave me a strange sense of familiarity, but at the same time, it felt deeply wrong.

It was completely different from the village I grew up in, and yet, instinctively, I felt it couldn’t be far from my hometown.

The villages in our area used to be very backward.

When I was little, every family’s house was short and cramped, and several people in one family would have to squeeze together to sleep.

But the houses in this village all had wide gates, broad courtyards, and large tiled roofs.

They just looked pitch-black inside, as if no one had lived there for a very long time.

The road soon came to an end, and I had no choice but to stop.

A strangely shaped house blocked the way in front of my truck. It looked octagonal, with white walls and black roof tiles, but I couldn’t see a front door anywhere.

I jumped down from the truck. The headlights shone directly on the house.

Then, all of a sudden, I saw a child standing behind a glass window.

He seemed to see me too. He began pounding desperately on the glass, shouting something at me at the top of his lungs.

Faintly, I heard him. He seemed to be calling for help. “Brother! Brother, save me!”

It was Tang Dong!

In the dream, I was no longer a man in my thirties. I had become a child too.

Anxious, I ran toward that house, but behind me, there suddenly came a rapid banging sound-bang, bang, bang.

I spun around and saw someone in the passenger seat of my truck, hammering nonstop against my windshield.

Just then, the headlights dimmed a little, and I finally saw the person sitting in the passenger seat clearly.

It was my wife.

“Changdong, stay away from Tang Dong!”

Those were the last words my wife ever left me with. I woke from the dream with a start.

I had no idea why I would dream something like that.

When I woke up, dawn hadn’t broken yet, and the room was pitch-dark.

My home was on the sixth floor. The curtains were billowing inward, ballooned out into a huge bulge.

Had I forgotten to close the window?

Still groggy, I got out of bed to shut it. But after only two steps, I suddenly felt that something was wrong.

My bedroom wasn’t big. With the curtains blown out like that, I should have felt the wind.

But I didn’t.

Just then, the swollen curtain suddenly shrank back and wrapped itself into the shape of a person.

Once again, I heard Tang Dong’s voice. But it wasn’t his adult voice. It was the voice he had when he was still a child.

He said, “Brother, I can’t find the door…”