I have been a bit silly and bold since I was a child. When I walk at night, I am afraid of the living people who threaten the road. I am not so afraid of dead people and ghosts. On the contrary, I have an inexplicable interest in dead people, ghosts, the night, etc., and I seem to feel that

There is always endless magic and mystery in that dark mystery.

The first time I came into contact with a dead body, I was probably only eleven or twelve years old.

That was an old man with five guarantees in front of my house. I called him Grandpa Gao. He never married a wife, and of course he had no children. I vaguely remember that in winter, he liked to squat in front of his adobe house, wearing dirty clothes.

He was wearing a shiny torn cotton-padded jacket, folding his hands, squinting his eyes lazily, and looking up to bask in the sun. His toothless mouth was still moving, and his goatee was also trembling.

I remember one year in early summer, I felt like I hadn’t seen him for many days in a row. But usually every morning he would sit under a nearby big locust tree, then go to the fields to cut grass and feed his two skinny goats.

, I have to go out and sit for a while in the evening.

The adults in the family are busy working in the fields, and no one pays attention to whether he comes out or not. But I am very sensitive to whether he comes out, because almost every afternoon after school, I will go to play under the locust tree, and he will usually be there.

.He likes to talk to me very much and always asks questions, but I can't always hear clearly what he is saying.

What has Grandpa Gao been doing? I haven't seen him for so many days, and he has gone to visit relatives? But I have never heard that he has any relatives, and I have never seen him go out for so many days.

I still remember that it was an evening, and I suddenly had the urge to go visit his house. In fact, his house didn’t have a courtyard wall or gate. I just put some corn stalks around it and built a fence that was about to fall apart.

It was already dark at that time, and in the thick twilight, I saw that his dirty door seemed to be ajar, and there was a strange smell permeating the yard. The closer I walked to the door, the stronger the smell became.

When I pushed the door open a crack and tried to go in sideways, the strange smell suddenly hit my face, penetrated into my nose, and then seemed to quickly penetrate into every cell in my body. I have grown so big, that is

It was the first time I knew what it felt like to feel uncomfortable. I quickly turned around and ran out. As soon as I got outside the yard, I started vomiting, and my nose and tears kept flowing down. I cried loudly. I will never forget that strange smell:

It's not just a stinky smell, but a strange, sweet smell mixed with it. That smell is like a cat's claw, scratching your breasts, scratching your stomach, and scratching every cell in your body.

Since then, I have never eaten watermelon again because the smell of watermelon is a bit like that smell.

I ran home crying, and my parents asked me what was wrong, but I couldn't say a word. I just kept crying and crying, and then I fell asleep.

The next day, I went to school as usual. Because I was busy with the work in the fields, my parents didn't have time to cut grass for the sheep, so they asked me to go graze the sheep after school. There is a big river embankment outside our village, and there is a lush forest on the river embankment.

, usually it feels dark inside during the day, and the light inside is even darker in the evening, but there is a lot of grass inside. After school in the afternoon, I led three sheep into the woods.

Alas, why in the woods, not far from me, I saw an old man standing there, it seemed to be Grandpa Gao, but why didn't he look like he was mowing the grass, but stood upright, as usual.

The slightly hunched back is no longer so hunched, and the clothes he wears are quite strange - not the usual dirty sweatshirt, but a very white robe, a bit like an opera costume. On such a hot day,

It's really weird to wear something like this.

As I walked over, I shouted: "Grandpa Gao, I've seen you for a few days, what have you been doing?" Grandpa Gao didn't seem to hear, he still stood there in a daze, looking somewhere, waiting for me.

When he was about five or six meters away, he suddenly turned his head to look at me. Yes, it was Grandpa Gao. He looked at me and suddenly grinned. In the dim light, there seemed to be something in his dry mouth.

He had fine, snow-white teeth! And his face was so pale! The hairs on my body immediately stood up and I stood there unconsciously.

Grandpa Gao muttered something in his mouth, and instead of leaning towards me, he turned around and walked down the river embankment. The strange thing was that he walked so lightly, without his usual hunched back.

I moved around in an old-fashioned way. For some reason, I suddenly got goosebumps all over my body, and a chill went straight down my spine. Although I had only been here for a while, I wanted to go home immediately.

On the way home, when I passed the yard of Grandpa Gao's house, I found several people in the yard, including the village party secretary. I felt inexplicably panicked, not interested in anything, and wanted to go home quickly.

When I entered the house, my parents had already prepared the meal. I wanted to tell them that I saw Grandpa Gao in the woods on the river bank, but my body was shaking and I couldn't speak. But my parents saw

I also stopped what I was doing and stared at me. Mom asked: "Mingming, what's wrong with you? Why do you feel uncomfortable? Your face is so white?"

I wanted to answer my mother's words, but it felt like when I had a nightmare, when I wanted to shout or speak, but no sound came out, as if there was some power stopping you from speaking. I gritted my teeth and tried my best to force myself out.

He squeezed out a few words through his teeth: "I was in the woods on the river embankment, and I just saw Grandpa Gao."

After hearing this, my father's hand shook, and the bowl fell to the ground, breaking into pieces with a snap. My mother also looked horrified, and pulled me into her arms, hugged me tightly, and rubbed me with her hands.

head.

My dad suddenly said loudly: "Uncle Gao, we have been good neighbors for decades, you can't pester my family." I seemed to have been wronged in some way, and started to cry loudly.

Later I found out that in the evening when I was tending the sheep, Grandpa Gao was found dead at home for many days, and his body was rotting and infested with maggots.

So was the Grandpa Gao I saw in the woods a hallucination? But that scene was so real that I still remember it decades later.

Grandpa Gao had no children and no relatives, so the day of the funeral was very deserted. Everyone pooled their money to buy a thin coffin, and hastily packed up Grandpa Gao. A dozen strong young men who took turns carrying the coffin were given a bottle of white wine to each of them -

—Drink a few sips by yourself, and then pour it on yourself. This is to resist the disgusting corpse odor, but even so, several people still vomited.

According to regulations, he should be cremated, but cremation costs thousands of dollars. Considering Uncle Gao's situation, no one was willing to pay for him. His superiors turned a blind eye and let it go.

Once Uncle Gao died, his yard and adobe house were in ruins. When he was alive, few people went there - except for people from the village committee, who occasionally gave him rice and noodles.

People who live in rural areas know that every family is most afraid of a house that is unoccupied and where people have died. This is because such houses are often home to rats and fleas, which will infect nearby homes.

I suffered from it. One month after Uncle Gao's death, I obviously felt that there were more rats in our house. Sometimes when I came home from school and pushed the door into the house, I would often see rats running away in all directions. Even my mother

A new piece of clothing was bought for me, but even before I was willing to wear it, the rats chewed it up.

My parents decided to get a cat.

One noon in the midsummer of that year, it was stuffy and hot. My parents went outside to enjoy the coolness under the big tree. I turned on the fan and watched TV series at home alone. As I watched, I fell asleep at some point.

Already.

Suddenly, something snapped and woke me up. I turned over and sat up suddenly. It turned out to be a fat and big black cat. It jumped down from the beam and held a mouse under its paws. Then it

Pick up the mouse neatly with your mouth, walk to a hidden place, and enjoy its delicious meal.

This is a cat of unknown origin - at first I thought it belonged to a neighbor, but later it was confirmed that it was not. If someone's dog or cat is lost in the village, the owner will often call out with the loudspeaker at the end of the village.

.But this cat has been in my house for more than ten days, and no one has found it.

As time goes by, I feel more and more weird about this cat.

For example, one day, my mother said: "This cat has been in our house for such a long time and I haven't fed it yet. You can give it this bowl of remaining fish bones."

It was lying lazily basking in the sun at the door. I followed my mother's instructions and walked over with a bowl of fish bones. Then I squatted down and when I put the bowl in front of it, it looked up at me.

This was the first time I looked at it, and it was also the first time I observed it so closely. Suddenly, I felt like I was getting an electric shock.

That face! Those eyes! That mouth! So familiar! Its eyes are not like ordinary cat eyes at all - the kind of round eyes that squint under strong light - but more like human eyes.

It's flat and long, even like eyelashes, and the eyeball is very turbid. The left eye is the same as Grandpa Gao's left eye - there is a shadow. And the mouth, it doesn't look like a cat's mouth at all, more like a

The old man has a pouty mouth with missing teeth. Oh my god, this is not a cat face, it is simply a human face like a freak.

I sat down on the ground and it took several minutes to recover. Then I realized that my crotch was wet and I peed.

I don’t know what my psychology was at that time, but I didn’t mention the strangeness of the cat to my parents at all. Instead, I kept the secret silently in my heart. I remember that during that time, I often had nightmares and was often frightened. The whole thing

I also became taciturn, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep well, and became dark and thin. My parents even took me to the hospital in the village for a checkup. The doctor said that there were parasites in my stomach, and I would just take some medicine and it would be fine.

.

When my parents were not at home, I tried to drive the cat away several times, but when I used a shovel to scare it, it didn't run away like a normal cat. Instead, it arched its front legs and stretched its hind legs in an offensive manner.

It glared at me and confronted me. At that moment, its face became less and less like a cat's face, and more like a human face with vivid expressions. This made my hair stand on end. I had to put down the shovel in frustration and ran out of the house in fear.
Chapter completed!