The Body-Borrower Comes Home - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I didn’t sleep that night.

I sat on the edge of the bed in the back room, rummaging through my suitcase from top to bottom.

Clothes, laptop, charger, two packs of cigarettes, wallet, train ticket-everything was there.

Nothing was missing.

But the row of footprints in the courtyard, the sweater in the back room, and the bowl of medicine on the table were not hallucinations.

Chen Du stood guard in the main hall.

My mother had been crying and making a scene at first, but later he persuaded her to take some medicine, and she drifted off into a daze.

Around two in the morning, he came in carrying a cup of hot water.

“Have a drink first.”

I didn’t take it.

“You know what that thing is, don’t you?”

Chen Du set the cup on the table and stood still.

“Tell me first, have you really not come back once in these ten years?”

“No.”

“Have you ever even bought a ticket back to the village?”

“No.”

He said, “Think again.”

I was already agitated, and his words made me even angrier. “What do you mean by that?”

“Do you think I’m crazy, or do you think I’m playing dumb?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then stop asking such nonsense.”

Chen Du was silent for a moment before pulling out a chair to sit down.

“Lin Jianxia.”

“In the month before Uncle Lin died, everyone in the village was certain you had returned.”

“You brought medicine to Aunt Zhou, you kept watch in the main hall at night, and two days ago, you even went up the mountain to find a coffin maker for Uncle Lin.”

“If you really didn’t come back, then who did all those things?”

I stared at him, speechless for a moment.

His tone was too flat.

It was so flat that it didn’t sound like he was talking about something supernatural; it sounded like he was stating a fact that had happened a long time ago.

“You’ve seen her too?” I asked.

“I have.”

“When?”

“Three years ago.”

“Did she look exactly like me?”

Chen Du looked up at me. “At first, no.”

My heart tightened.

“What do you mean?”

“At first, it was just the silhouette from behind. Later, she learned your voice and mannerisms. After that, even the face became the same.”

“The village elders call it a Body-Borrower.”

When he spoke those three words, my fingers went cold.

I had heard that name when I was a child.

I just hadn’t heard it often.

The elders of Baishui Village were gossipy and loved to talk about ghosts and gods, but whenever the Body-Borrower was mentioned, every one of them would fall silent. They only used it occasionally to scare children, saying, “Don’t wander around at night; if you run into a Body-Borrower, it will take your face and go home in your place.”

I hadn’t believed it when I was little.

Until I was twelve years old.

On that rainy night, I got up to use the outhouse in the backyard and saw with my own eyes my father dragging a soaking wet thing into the woodshed. The thing had long, matted hair and was thin and small. It cried while pounding on the door, and the word it screamed was “Dad.”

That voice was exactly like mine.

The next day, there was nothing in the woodshed.

I told my mother, and her face changed instantly. She covered my mouth and told me never to speak of it, even if I saw it.

From that day on, the way Lin Guosheng looked at me changed.

It was like he was staring at a well that was bound to collapse sooner or later.

Later, my desperate desire to escape wasn’t entirely because of poverty.

It was because I knew there was something wrong with this village.

But over the years, I never dared to think too deeply about it.

I thought that as long as I left, these things wouldn’t be able to catch up to me.

“Why would she come to our house?” I asked.

Chen Du shook his head. “It’s not that it sought out your family.”

“It’s that the door to your house has always been able to sustain this thing.”

I looked up at him.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember your grandmother?”

“A little.”

“In her later years, she also mistook someone for another.”

My heart skipped a beat.

I had an impression of this.

In the two years before my grandmother died, she would often get up in the middle of the night, carry a bowl of rice to the courtyard gate, and say my aunt had returned. But my aunt had clearly married into a family far away and hadn’t returned to the village in over a decade.

At the time, the family just said she was senile.

Thinking back now, it might not have been senility.

“The older generation all knew about your family’s situation,” Chen Du said. “It’s just that no one dared to speak it plainly.”

“What would happen if they did?”

“People would die.”

The room suddenly went quiet.

I stared at him. “Who died?”

Chen Du’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Your aunt.”

My entire body froze.

“Didn’t she die of an illness?”

“That’s just what your family told the outsiders.”

My mind was a mess.

I had always thought my aunt had married far away, later died of an illness out there, and her ashes weren’t even sent back. But now Chen Du was telling me she didn’t die of an illness; she died because of this thing.

“My father knew?”

“He knew.”

“And my mother?”

“She knew half of it.”

My chest felt like it was blocked by something, and it took a long time before I could catch my breath.

“Then what about you?”

“How much do you know?”

Chen Du looked at me, his eyes holding something I couldn’t quite read.

“A little more than you.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Would you have believed me back then?”

I didn’t say anything.

Because I knew I wouldn’t have.

At eighteen, all I wanted was to leave. If anyone had tried to stop me with talk like that, I would have just thought they were crazy.

“So where is she now?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The other me.”

Chen Du fell silent for a moment.

“Maybe at your house.”

A chill ran through my heart. “Are you joking?”

“Or maybe she’s right here in the yard,” he said. “A Body-Borrower isn’t always willing to show its face. If it wants to hide, you won’t find it even if you search every inch of this place.”

I clenched my fingers, my nails digging into my palm.

“What does she want?”

“To live.”

“By using whom?”

“By using you.”

Chen Du’s tone was flat as he said this.

“She’s using your name, living in your room, taking care of your mother, and doing everything you haven’t done all these years. The more time passes, the more she becomes like you.”

“Once everyone in the village accepts her, you’ll become the one who’s extra.”

“In the end, even if you stand right in front of them, they won’t remember you.”

My palms were slick with sweat.

“How do you know?”

Chen Du looked up at me.

“Because when she first arrived, anyone could tell something was wrong with her.”

“But it’s been dragged out until now. Aside from me, there are very few people left who still treat her like an outsider.”

Those words were like a bucket of cold water poured over me from head to toe.

More than the monster itself, what chilled me was the fact that this had been going on for three years.

Three years.

It had been living my life for three years.

My mother accepted her.

The villagers accepted her.

Even Chen Du hadn’t driven it away immediately.

“Why didn’t you do anything?” I asked.

Chen Du didn’t answer right away.

I stared at him. “Weren’t you always the one most afraid of these ‘unclean’ things?”

When we were kids, whoever dared to take a lap around the graveyard on the back mountain at midnight was the ‘King of Bravery.’ Chen Du never went. He wasn’t afraid of snakes or dead bodies, but he was terrified of these things that couldn’t be explained.

Yet now, he had allowed a Body-Borrower to stay in the village for three years.

“Because it didn’t harm anyone.”

“It’s stealing my identity!”

“But it saved your mother.”

I froze.

Chen Du spoke slowly. “Three years ago, your father collapsed from a stroke. Your mother was deathly ill and couldn’t recognize anyone half the time. One night, she walked down to the river and nearly jumped in. That thing dragged her back.”

“After that, it stayed by her side every day-giving her medicine, cooking, changing her clothes-pulling her back from the brink of madness bit by bit.”

“The villagers are afraid of it, but no one dares to drive it away.”

“Because if it leaves, your mother might be the first one to break.”

My lips moved, but no words came out.

My anger was suddenly stifled.

I had thought that as long as I found that thing and tore off its mask, everything would be clear.

But now I realized it wasn’t that simple.

That Body-Borrower didn’t show its fangs the first day it came to cause harm.

Instead, it did everything I hadn’t done over the years.

It was more like a daughter than I was.

That was what disgusted me most.

“Tomorrow, take me to see the people in the village who know about this.”

Chen Du looked at me. “You want to investigate this to the end?”

“Obviously.”

“Getting to the bottom of it might not lead to the result you want.”

“It’s still better than this.”

I looked out the window, my voice tight.

“I can’t just let it steal who I am and pretend nothing’s wrong.”

Chen Du didn’t try to persuade me further.

He stood up to leave, but paused at the door.

“Lock your door tonight.”

“And don’t look in the mirror.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“I’m afraid you won’t be able to tell the difference.”

He left after saying that.

I sat alone in the back room as the night deepened.

The wind rattled the window paper.

Eventually, I couldn’t help myself and stole a glance at the old full-length mirror in the room.

There was only me in the mirror.

I stared at the face in the glass for a good thirty seconds.

She stared back at me the whole time.

It lasted long enough that a very strange sensation suddenly washed over me.

The person in the mirror wasn’t reflecting me.

She was waiting for me to move first.

I tilted my head to the left.

She tilted hers accordingly.

I reached up and touched my earlobe.

She did the same.

But just as I was about to look away, I clearly saw the corners of her mouth curl up first.

It wasn’t a wide grin.

It was just a very slight, upward twitch.

My scalp went numb instantly.

I lunged back a step. When I looked again, it was still just me in the mirror.

But at the very bottom of the glass, I didn’t know when it had appeared-a blurry, wet handprint.