Uncle Chen's figure vanished into the rainy night, as if utterly swallowed by the boundless darkness. Chen Hui leaned against the cold door for a long time without moving. Uncle Chen's final, hurried, and frightened warnings were like cold nails, hammered word by word into his heart.
Don't go near the locust tree after dark. Don't respond to strange sounds at night. Don't look at things you shouldn't see. Forbidden from going to specific places around town.
These weren't ordinary small-town superstitions. They were desperate, helpless rules for self-preservation in the face of some omnipresent, utterly terrifying threat. The "they," the "thing," the "boundary" from his father's notes fit these warnings perfectly.
Chen Hui slowly walked back to the table. The candle flame flickered unsteadily with his movement, making the shadows on the wall claw and distort. He picked up the pale finger bone again—now he had no doubt. It was likely human. Whose? Why was it buried in the backyard flowerpot? Hidden by his father? To suppress something? Or… was it the work of that "thing"?
He reopened his father's notebook, rereading those desperate phrases. "It got in!" "Saw it… outside the window… that face…" "It's here." After Uncle Chen's warnings, these words became terrifyingly concrete and vivid. What horror had his father experienced in his final moments?
And the blurred figure in the shadows of the old photo, the fleeting white shape behind the second-floor window… Were they the same kind of thing? The source of his father's and Uncle Chen's fear?
Chen Hui felt his scalp prickle. The old house was no longer just dilapidated and sorrowful. Every dark corner, every creak, seemed to harbor an indescribable presence watching him. The sound of wind, rain, and rustling leaves outside also seemed to hide countless whispers and footsteps.
He forced himself to calm down. Fear wouldn't solve anything. His father's death needed answers, and those answers were clearly being deliberately hidden by Uncle Chen and the townspeople. Uncle Chen knew the truth, but he was terrified, tight-lipped. Getting it directly from him seemed difficult.
He needed other clues. His father's belongings were one source. What about the other townspeople? The other elders who had grown old alongside his father and might also know the secret?
He remembered his father's note: "The people in town are all avoiding us." The town's reaction to his father's passing had indeed been strange. Uncle Chen's urgent tone on the phone, the hasty, simple funeral arrangements, the desolate, closed-off feeling he got entering the town—it all felt wrong.
He decided to go find some of the town's elders to inquire first thing in the morning. But for now, the night was deep, the rain continued, and he had to spend his first night in this unsettling old house.
Uncle Chen's words echoed in his ears: "Lock the doors and windows. Tonight… no matter who knocks, don't open it."
He carefully checked all the doors and windows, locking and bolting each one securely. He reinforced the kitchen's back door especially. After finishing, holding the candle, he hesitated, but decided to go upstairs to check. That fleeting white figure was like a thorn in his heart.
The wooden stairs groaned under his weight, the sound carrying far in the silent night. With each step upward, his heartbeat quickened. The upstairs hallway was even darker, the air colder, flowing with a stale odor of dust and decay.
The door to his old room was slightly ajar. He took a deep breath and gently pushed it open with his foot. The hinges screeched. The room was empty, just some old furniture covered in white sheets, looking like silent specters in the candlelight. The window was shut, its glass covered in water trails, beyond which was an impenetrable darkness and swaying tree shadows.
He checked every corner of the room carefully, even opening the empty wardrobe. Nothing. No footprints, no strange objects, as if the white figure had never existed.
An illusion? Or had that thing already left?
He relaxed slightly and left the room. He checked the other empty rooms, finding nothing amiss. The entire second floor was deathly still.
Returning to the living room, fatigue and tension washed over him like a tide. He fixed the candle on the table and lay down on the worn sofa in his clothes, placing his father's notebook and the bone fragment within reach on the coffee table. He didn't dare sleep deeply, his ears pricked for the slightest unusual sound from outside.
The wind, the rain, the rustling leaves… these monotonous sounds persisted, eventually forming a kind of white noise that lulled him toward sleep. Just as his consciousness blurred on the edge of being captured by slumber—
A completely different sound, extremely faint, slipped through.
Tap… tap… tap…
Like very, very light footsteps on wet leaves, or like some small, hard object lightly tapping against the windowpane.
The sound came from… outside the window? Or the backyard?
Chen Hui's drowsiness vanished instantly. Every muscle tensed. He snapped his eyes open, held his breath, and listened intently.
The sound stopped. Only the wind and rain remained.
An illusion? Or just the wind blowing a small stone?
He waited several minutes. No further sound. His tense nerves relaxed slightly.
Just as he thought it was a false alarm—
Ooooh—oooooh—
A faint, intermittent sound drifted over. It sounded like a woman's weeping, or like the wind wailing through a narrow crack, fragmented and almost illusory amidst the storm.
Chen Hui's heart nearly leaped out of his chest. He remembered Uncle Chen's warning: "If you hear any strange sounds at night, whether it sounds like crying, laughing, or calling your name, do not respond, and definitely do not go out to look!"
He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to lie still on the sofa, even closing his eyes, pretending to be asleep. But the sound seemed to possess a certain magic, growing clearer, more sorrowful, threading its way into his ears, plucking at his nerves of fear.
It seemed to move around the old house, sometimes to the east, sometimes to the west. Sometimes it felt like it came from the direction of the backyard locust tree, other times it seemed close, just beyond the thin windowpanes.
Cold sweat beaded on Chen Hui's forehead. He clenched his fists tightly, nails digging into his palms, using the pain to fight the powerful urge to get up and investigate.
After what felt like an eternity, the weeping-like wail gradually faded away, finally disappearing completely into the sound of wind and rain.
Chen Hui felt almost drained, his back soaked in cold sweat. He slowly unclenched his fists and let out a long breath.
This night was destined to be sleepless. Later, he heard more vague noises intermittently—sometimes like low voices in the yard, sometimes like branches scraping the roof. But he firmly remembered Uncle Chen's warnings, never again yielding to the urge to respond or investigate, maintaining the highest alertness until the sky outside the window gradually turned from ink-black to murky gray.
The rain finally eased into a light drizzle. Daylight filtered through the grimy windows, dispelling some of the unsettling darkness inside. Though still gloomy, the arrival of daytime offered a faint, fragile sense of security.
Chen Hui sat up on the sofa, feeling sore all over, his eyes dry. The experiences of the night had made him fully understand that Uncle Chen's warnings were not baseless. This old house, this locust tree, this entire town, were indeed haunted by something extraordinary and malicious.
He had to act.
He washed his face with cold water to clear his head. Then, he carefully wrapped the bone fragment in cloth and placed it, along with his father's notebook, maps, and wooden placard, into his backpack. He decided to go out, to find the town's elders and discreetly ask around. If Uncle Chen wouldn't talk, surely someone else would know something.
Locking the old house's main door, he stepped into the early morning of Huaiyin Town. The post-rain air was fresh but carried a damp cold that seeped into the bones. The bluestone paths, washed clean by the rain, reflected the leaden gray sky. The streets were still deserted. Only a few early-rising elders were opening their shops. They cast complex looks at Chen Hui as he passed—curiosity, sympathy, but more than that, a wariness and aloofness, as if he were a bearer of ill omen.
He first went to the town's only small tea house, where a few old men were having morning tea. When he walked in and introduced himself as Chen Hui, Old Chen's son, the quiet murmuring in the tea house instantly ceased. The old men looked at each other, eyes shifting.
"My father just passed. I wanted to ask you uncles about his past," Chen Hui said, keeping his tone as calm as possible.
The old men offered dry laughs and vague replies. "Old Chen ah… was a good man, just didn't talk much." "Yes, yes, accept our condolences, young man." "It's getting late, I need to go feed the chickens." "I have to go watch my grandson."
Almost instantly, the old men found excuses to get up and leave, avoiding him like the plague, quickly emptying the tea house until only the embarrassed owner remained, wiping down tables.
Chen Hui's heart sank. The townspeople were indeed deliberately avoiding his family.
Unyielding, he tried stopping a few other elders he met on the street. The reaction was identical: upon hearing he was the Chen family son asking about his father, they either waved him off and hurried away, or shook their heads evasively with sighs of "let the past be the past" or "don't know, don't know anything." Some even looked fearful, backing away repeatedly.
A feeling of isolation and rejection tightly enveloped him. The whole town was like an airtight cocoon, fiercely guarding a secret at its center, and he, an outsider yet also the son at the vortex's heart, was completely shut out.
Was there really no one willing to talk?
He wandered aimlessly through the town, unconsciously finding himself at the southern end. Here stood a long-abandoned old opera stage, its wooden structure rotten, weeds growing on its roof. He suddenly remembered Uncle Chen's prohibition and his father's map—the old opera stage to the south was one of the forbidden places!
He stopped, observing from a distance. The area around the stage was unusually quiet, devoid of even bird calls. Though daytime, it was enveloped in a dead atmosphere. He noticed that the side of the stage facing the town seemed to have some faint marks carved into it. From this distance, they were hard to make out, but the twisted line quality immediately reminded him of the symbols on his father's small wooden placard!
This place was indeed strange! Uncle Chen's prohibitions were not without reason!
As he stared intently, a hoarse, aged voice came from behind him:
"Young man, that's not a place for you to look."
Chen Hui started, whipping around. An old woman wearing a coarse dark jacket, her face a network of deep wrinkles, stood under an eave not far away, leaning on a cane, her cloudy eyes fixed on him. She looked much older than Uncle Chen, her back severely hunched.
"Grandma, what did you say?" Chen Hui took a few steps closer.
The old woman's gaze shifted from the abandoned stage back to Chen Hui's face, scrutinizing him carefully. Her voice was low and raspy: "You're the Chen family boy? You look so much like your father when he was young."
Chen Hui's heart jumped. He nodded quickly. "Yes, Grandma. You knew my father?"
The old woman sighed, her voice full of vicissitudes, the wear of time. "Knew him? Of course I knew him. Who among the old folks in this town didn't know your father, and who dared… ai." She trailed off, shaking her head.
"Grandma, how did my father really die? What's really happening in this town? Why won't anyone tell me?" Chen Hui asked urgently, grasping at this straw.
A flicker of sympathy and deeper fear passed through the old woman's cloudy eyes. She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "Child, some things… not knowing is a blessing. Listen to the Mayor. Finish your business and leave quickly. Get out of Huaiyin Town. Never come back."
The same words again! Chen Hui felt a wave of despair. "But I need to know the truth! My father died unclear, without reason!"
The old woman hesitated, glanced around warily, confirming no one was around, and spoke in an even lower voice. "Your father was a good man. He gave his life to guard… guard 'that thing'… for the town, and for you…"
"Guard what? What is 'that thing'?" Chen Hui's heart rose to his throat.
The old woman's lips trembled, her wrinkled face contorted with extreme fear. "It's… the thing from within the 'shade'… the thing under the old locust tree… Can't say it, can't speak its name! It's a debt, a debt owed by our ancestors, passed down generation to generation. Now… now it's the turn of…" She stopped abruptly, seeming to realize she had said too much, and fearfully covered her mouth with a withered hand.
"The turn of what? Grandma! The turn of what?!" Chen Hui pressed urgently.
"Sinful ah… it's fate…" The old woman didn't answer further, just muttered to herself, turned, and began to leave, her steps unsteady but hurried.
"Grandma! Wait!" Chen Hui tried to stop her.
But the old woman seemed startled, didn't look back, quickened her pace, and soon turned into a narrow alley, disappearing from view.
Chen Hui stood still, his mind reeling. Though still vague, he had finally caught some key words! "Thing from within the shade," "thing under the old locust tree," "debt," "owed by ancestors," "passed down generation to generation," "guard."
His father's notes about the "boundary," "it's hungry," Uncle Chen's fear, the townspeople's avoidance—all seemed connected to this "thing under the locust tree's shade." It sounded like an ancient curse or contract, and his family seemed deeply entangled, bearing some kind of guardianship duty, and the price of this duty was extremely high.
His father's death was part of that price.
And the old woman's unfinished sentence—"now it's the turn of…" The turn of whom? His turn?
An icy chill shot through his entire body.
He suddenly remembered the desperate "It's here" at the end of his father's notebook, and the complex, pitying look Uncle Chen had given him.
Could it be… that the next target of that thing… was himself?
Chen Hui stood on the cold, damp, deserted street but felt as if he were in an ice cellar. He looked up towards the west end of town, towards his old house. The huge locust tree stood out against the gray sky, its outline menacing.
Return to the shade ...Return to the shade…
The two characters now seemed filled with ominous portent.
He had to go find Uncle Chen again! This time, he had to get answers!