Li Xiu had a dream.
He knew very well that this was a dream, because the red rope around his waist was getting slightly hot, as if reminding him of this.
In this dream, Li Xiu found himself back in the Xiao family villa that he had just visited during the day.
"Is it because I was so shocked during the day that I keep dreaming about these things?" Li Xiu said to himself in his dream. Because this time, he dreamed not only of the quiet and eerie haunted house, but also of Teacher Xu and others whom he had met today.
He stood in the corner of the room, unable to control himself, watching Teacher Xu and the others engaging in various strange activities in front of the small storage door he and Fang Qian'an had previously studied. He watched them, sweating profusely, as they filled the brazier with large amounts of talisman paper. He could faintly hear Teacher Xu chanting.
"Zizizi…"
There was an unpleasant, wet sound coming from the brazier.
Li Xiu frowned and looked into the brazier, only to find that what was burning in the brazier was not a flame, but on the contrary, there was only a pool of thick and sticky black and red mud.
Like some kind of living thing, the "mud" kept climbing and entangled on the inner wall of the basin, which was disgusting.
Li Xiu felt nauseous, and some instinct made him want to avoid the things in the basin. However, in his dream, there seemed to be some invisible force restraining him, making him get closer and closer to the small door of the storage room.
It was not until this time that Li Xiucai discovered that the storage room door in his dream was actually completely different from the one in reality.
The scarlet door was covered with densely packed yellow talismans, and countless iron chains as thick as a baby's wrist were welded to the rock wall, locking the door tightly.
One after another, long and shrill screams continuously squeezed out from the gap in the door.
["It's not me… Let me out… You've got it wrong…"
["He ran away, he ran away a long time ago, hehehehe…"]
"Please, let me out… You've made a mistake… Let me out… It hurts, it hurts so much…"
…
It was the howl of a grown man, and every syllable contained immense pain, as if it could be transmitted to other people's souls through sound waves.
Li Xiu's figure swayed, and his body began to tremble uncontrollably.
So painful, so disgusting...
He covered his ears with his hands, unable to listen any further.
However, no matter how he resisted, the screams of the thing inside the door always followed him like a shadow, extremely clear.
However, it seemed to realize that no one would pay attention to its painful cries.
The screamer's voice became sharper and more vicious, and finally, its howl turned into an extremely sinister and ferocious curse.
"You will all die."
There was a strange mixture of hissing laughter in the crying.
["No one can escape… Hehehehe, you thought you suppressed Him… Hehehe, He is no longer here…"]
"I will never be able to be reborn... But you... It's the same for you... Everyone is the same..."
"Everyone will die. Everyone will die!"
Along with the man's curse, black and red blood plasma as sticky as asphalt seeped out from the crack of the tightly closed door with a hissing sound.
"Hmm…"
Even though he knew it was just a nightmare, Li Xiu couldn't help but take a step back.
Then, he felt as if he had crashed into a cold embrace.
Li Xiu's body froze instantly.
Although he was clearly in a dream, the cold touch coming from behind him was so clear, so clear that he couldn't control his hair standing on end and his heart tightening even in his dream.
A pair of hands slowly reached from the shoulders to Li Xiu's chest. In Li Xiu's trembling eyes, the pair of hands without nails slowly grasped Li Xiu's body.
The dead man's lips were pressed against his ear, and when he spoke, his breath was as cold as the polar regions.
"Don't be afraid, Xiu."
"Brother won't kill Ah Xiu."
"Brother loves you."
*
"Ding ding ding—"
The alarm of the mobile phone rang beside the pillow, successfully pulling the boy lying on the single bed with a frown and cold sweat on his forehead back to reality from the nightmare.
Li Xiu groaned with great difficulty, rubbed her hands to find her cell phone and turned off the alarm, and after several seconds she forced herself to open her eyes.
My head feels heavy.
The joints in his body were extremely stiff. When he stood up, Li Xiu almost thought he was carrying another person on his back. The person was so heavy that he could not even lift his head.
Did I seem to have a nightmare again last night?
Having experienced many similar moments since childhood, Li Xiu didn't pay too much attention to the abnormality of his body.
Just when he got up, he vaguely felt that something was wrong. When he thought about the reason why his body felt heavy at the moment, Li Xiucai suddenly realized that there was one person missing from the bed.
All of Fang Qianan's things had disappeared. It was obvious that he had left before Li Xiu woke up.
Li Xiu looked at the bed, not knowing for a moment whether he should feel unhappy or relieved.
Now that I think about it, the latter is more likely.
...It always feels a bit weird to wake up in the same bed.
The thought flashed through Li Xiu's mind for a moment. He glanced at the time on his phone, and suddenly he was completely awake. He had no time to think about his poor and awkward interpersonal relationships.
Because he was almost late.
Li Xiu quickly washed up, changed into her school uniform, and prepared to rush into her brother's room to take out the raw rice that she had placed under the bed yesterday.
However, there was nothing under the bed.
Li Xiu's heart suddenly tightened, and he even took out his mobile phone to shine the light under the bed several times, but the bowl that should have been there was still no sign - until Li Xiu went to the kitchen, he found that his brother's bowl had been washed clean and placed on the dining table.
Li Xiu stood by the table, looking at the bowl. She felt that the house seemed particularly cold after she woke up this morning.
There seemed to be a faint sweet smell in the air...
Teacher Xu's words from yesterday were still fresh in Li Xiu's mind. He calmed himself down and forced himself not to think about anything supernatural.
After taking a deep breath, he stood beside his grandmother's bedroom and whispered to the quiet room.
"Grandma, did you take away my brother's job?"
…
He waited for a long time before he heard an extremely vague and hoarse response from the room.
"He's full... Ah Xiu... He's full."
Is he full?
Does it mean that "brother" is full?
Just as Li Xiu was at a loss, she heard her grandmother continue to nag: "Don't pay attention to these things. Go away, Xiu. Go away."
The old man's voice became normal and he started urging Li Xiu to go to school.
Li Xiu sighed silently at the door of the room: "Oh, grandma, I'm going to school first."
Recently, my grandmother's behavior has shown that her Alzheimer's disease is getting worse. Maybe in my grandmother's mind, the "brother" trapped under the bed has finally eaten his fill?
Although he was still very worried, Li Xiu was indeed getting closer to being late.
Li Xiu had no choice but to worry and hurriedly rushed out of the house with her schoolbag on her back.
When I closed the door, I could still seem to hear my grandmother's chatter.
[A Xiu, hurry up.]
Let's go.
*
"Hey, is that Xiu'er?"
Li Xiu kept his head down and walked hurriedly when going downstairs.
But when he passed by the neighbor downstairs, he was stopped by the neighbor lady in the street and stopped in the alley.
"Aunt Liu? What's wrong?"
Li Xiu raised her head and saw the neighbor's elder sister with a very long face.
"Hey, can you please stop making that relative of yours cry in the middle of the night every night? I've really been putting up with you for so long. Even though I live next door to you and across the street, I can't sleep because of the noise. It's been like this for a couple of days, crying every day. Aren't you the one who's being disturbed? My kid has to go to school too. It's so annoying."
Li Xiu looked at her neighbor with a confused look on her face.
"Relatives? Aunt Liu, we don't have any relatives coming..."
"Of course not, I can see it through the window!"
Aunt Liu was furious when she heard Li Xiu's response. She pointed towards the window of Li Xiu's living room while yelling.
Houses in urban villages are always built wherever there is space. Although Li Xiu's house and the neighbor's house are indeed two houses, the distance between them is so close that one can just climb over and run from one house to the other.
The neighbor's balcony is indeed facing Li Xiu's living room.
When Li Xiu suddenly became extremely silent, the neighbor's elder sister was still yelling in anger.
"In the middle of the night, she was walking around in circles in your living room, crying. I called out to her through the window, asking her to be quieter, but she was pretending to be deaf."
"But..."
"I'm speaking so kindly here because you're a learned kid, and you're still lying to me. What do you mean you have no relatives? That woman has lived here with your grandmother for years. Do you think we're blind?"
…
The neighbor's sister's shouting gradually became distant.
It was as if a pair of invisible hands gently covered Li Xiu's ears.
However, on this ordinary weekday morning, Li Xiu stood downstairs of her home and couldn't help shivering from the cold.
He knew very well that for so many years he and his grandmother had been the only ones relying on each other.
But at the same time, he also remembered the "guest" he would see in the living room every time before returning home, and the pair of high heels that the guest left at the door.
Some things that Li Xiu had inadvertently overlooked suddenly became extremely clear.
For example, when he returned home yesterday, he clearly saw the pair of old high heels at the door.
But when he entered the house, there was nothing there.
For example, a long time ago, grandma seemed to have hugged him and murmured.
[Ah Xiu...don't touch those shoes.]
Those are the shoes of a dead person. Her soul will only go in the direction the toes of the shoes are pointing.
If you mess up her shoes, she won't know how to get home.
The author has something to say:
Just in case, I'd like to add that the term "shoe tip" comes from a ghost story I heard before.
This means that before going to bed, everyone should not point the toes of their shoes towards the bed, otherwise ghosts will climb up along the toes of their shoes.