Xiaolei - Chapter 4

“What happened after that?” I asked.

Chen Wei stared at me. The terror on his face gradually gave way to grievance, and he suddenly shouted, “I don’t know! I don’t know! I didn’t do anything to Xiaohui! But none of you believe me! None of you! Ahhh!”

Hearing the commotion, Uncle Chen hurried in and held him down. I helped from the side.

Uncle Chen reached for a bottle, trying to give him more medicine.

Chen Wei knocked it from his father’s hand. White pills scattered everywhere.

“I’m not crazy! I’m not! I ran into a ghost! Why won’t any of you believe me?”

I hurried to soothe him and asked Uncle Chen to step outside for the moment.

At the doorway, Uncle Chen’s eyes brimmed with tears.

“Jinjiao, please. You’re the only person he’ll listen to.”

After I sat down, Chen Wei said, “They claim I tried to assault Liu Xiaohui. Her family wants to sue me, and mine wants to send me to Anding. Jinjiao, today I just need one answer from you…”

His eyes filled with tears.

“Am I insane, or did I run into a ghost?”

I hesitated, then said, “Don’t worry. You’re not insane.”

“Then what did you see on Xiaohui?”

“Nothing much. Just a hand.”

The first time I saw Liu Xiaohui, a deathly pale, bluish hand rested on her shoulder.

Its nails were long. The fingers rose and fell one by one, like an elegant pianist playing the keys.

At that, Chen Wei burst into tears, as if someone had finally understood an unbearable injustice.

“I knew it was a hand…”

“You saw it?”

“No. But when Liu Xiaohui patted my shoulder from the back of the bike, I realized—”

Chen Wei’s eyes widened. The terror of that night still had not faded.

“—she never had her arms around me at all. The thing holding me… was something else!”

He snatched a medicine bottle from the windowsill and hurled it to the floor, shouting over and over, “I’m not crazy! I’m not crazy!”

Seeing how agitated he was, I hurriedly agreed with everything he said.

What I did not tell him was this…

When I first saw Liu Xiaohui, there really had been one hand on her shoulder.

But as she walked downstairs, there were six or seven deathly pale, bluish hands across her back, shoulders, waist, and legs.

Their nails were long. Blood streamed from them as they tore at something on Liu Xiaohui’s body, as though filled with endless hatred.

As for the tapping sounds he had heard against the bicycle wheels…

If my guess was correct, those were fingers being severed by the spokes.

I told him none of this.

It was enough for Chen Wei to know that I had also seen the hand.

At least it proved he was not insane. He had simply encountered something.

“That thing bewitched both you and Xiaohui,” I said.

“Bewitched? What do you mean?”

I explained that those things had three tricks: beguile, conceal, and frighten.

To beguile meant to confuse the senses. Strange bodily sensations, hearing someone whisper in your ear, becoming angry, excited, or afraid for no reason—all of that counted.

The strongest form clouded the mind, making a person unconsciously do inexplicable things.

Then came concealment. It prevented you from sensing, hearing, or seeing things you normally could.

Finally, fright meant nothing more than changing appearance to scare people.

In short, these were attacks on the mind and senses. If you paid them no attention, nothing would happen. They were all illusions.

Chen Wei glared at me. “Illusions? Do you know where I woke up? I was all the way in Ci County, and both bicycle tires were burned black! What kind of ghost could bewitch me that badly?”

Alarm stirred in my heart.

I knew Chen Wei had run into something. I had not realized it was something so dreadful.

An ordinary gentleman could never have done that.

Noticing the change in my expression, Chen Wei grew nervous again and felt himself all over.

“Did you see something on me?”

I said nothing.

The hands were long gone from Chen Wei’s body, of course. But his home…

His home was packed with gentlemen.

A woman in a yellow dress sat cross-legged atop the wardrobe. Her tongue nearly reached Chen Wei’s head, and saliva dripped steadily from it.

A child beside me kept bouncing a ball. The ball was actually his own head. He counted with every bounce, and I was already sick to death of the little brat rolling his eyes at me.

There was also a gang of teenage delinquents hacking at one another with watermelon knives, dying over and over. Their intestines could trip a man.

At first, there had only been those few. The longer I sat there, the more crowded in, until the room was more packed than an old green train carriage during the Spring Festival rush.

Ever since I had spoken that word in the art studio, these things had noticed me.

They could not harm me, so now they were making trouble for the people around me.

If I did nothing, they might drive Chen Wei to a complete breakdown.