Raising Ghosts Records

Chapter 2 Sangu and Concubine Xue

I slept in the small temple all night, got up in the morning and kowtowed three times, took the peanuts on the table to eat, and said to the god statue while eating, if there is a day in the future, I will kill a fat pig to repay.

For more than a week after that, I went out to look for food during the day, bathed in the river when I got dirty, and spent the night in this small temple until one day someone came to this small temple.

I was still sleeping in the temple that morning when a woman in her 30s came in suddenly.The woman was startled when she saw me, she scolded someone's wild son, and came to sleep at the fairy's house, isn't she afraid of stomachache at night?
The woman walked up to the altar, holding a bamboo basket in her hand, which contained incense paper money and a small piece of pork the size of a palm.She put the basket on the table, knelt down and kicked me and asked, "Which family are you from, you little man (meaning child), you look so unfamiliar, why do you come here to sleep?"

I hurriedly got out of the table and told her in a low voice as if I had done something wrong. I was from Shepo, but I was kicked out by the adults and had no home to return to.

After hearing what I said, the woman looked me up and down, and said, "You look honest, did you fight and steal something? Which wild boy is so cruel to drive you out. Shepo is 70 miles away from here." Ah! Have you eaten yet, come to my house to eat!"

As soon as I heard that there was food to eat, I nodded like a chicken eating rice, so I followed her back home and stayed for more than half a year before leaving. Of course, this is a later story.

The village is a hill past the small temple. The woman asked me to call her Sangu, and she took me home after she worshiped the gods.On the road, a wretched man with a hoe on his shoulder asked Sangu with a smirk, where did he steal such a big boy!The third aunt scolded him like a dog.

Sangu was married from Tengxian County. There are only two people in the family. There is a 9-year-old daughter named Xuefei, who is in the first grade of elementary school. Her husband has passed away for two years, and she is planning to remarry.

I stayed at Sangu's house. Her family was very poor, so she vacated a corner of the firewood room and made a bed for me.There is a pigsty at the door of the house, with two pigs. The income of the family depends on these two pigs. Concubine Xue's tuition fees, usually buy this and that for the New Year and holidays, rely on the income from raising pigs.Except for raising pigs, I usually plow the fields for self-sufficiency, and basically have no income.

The pig was sick that day, and the veterinarian in the next village did not get the injection. I asked the witch in the village and said that the pig was missed by the starving ghost. The third aunt asked the witch to send the starving ghost away, and then went to the temple. Burning incense and worshiping gods met me.

Since Sangu's family doesn't have a man, she is both a mother and a father at home. Fortunately, Sister Concubine Xue is sensible and rarely worries her.But she does all the farm work that men and women do outside, and sometimes she can't sleep because of her tired back and back pain, and she asks someone to help her scrape twice every three days.There are bachelors in the village who often want to help Sangu with work, but their purpose is not pure. Sangu always refuses because she is afraid of being gossiped, and does all the tiring work by herself.

Although I am 14 years old, I have been malnourished for a long time, so my height is only 1.4 meters. However, I have been working for many years since I was 7 years old. Diligent, shared a lot of fatigue for the third aunt.

Although the third aunt's family is poor, but because there are few people, the food is settled in the village. A piece of pork is 6 cents and 90 cents a catty and bought once every three days.In the rural areas of the [-]s where supplies were still scarce, pork could be eaten once every three days, and there were no three households in the whole village.

Almost a month passed in a flash, and it was almost the Dragon Boat Festival. Sangu asked me to get up at dawn on this day and go with the villagers to pick zong leaves and make zongzi. Speaking of which, the sun was too late to kill people.

After I got up, I ate a bowl of porridge left over from last night, then took a snakeskin bag, and went to the entrance of the village to wait for the bamboo leaf pickers.That day happened to be the weekend, and Sister Xuefei didn't have to go to school, so she wanted to tell me to see if there were any wild mushrooms to pick.

Just after six o'clock in the morning, we set off to pick bamboo leaves. We were accompanied by friends who usually play together, Agui, Damei, Afei, Xiaochong, Guitou, and the only adult was Damei's father.The rest are fourteen-year-old friends, and nine-year-old sister Xuefei.

The partners bounced and walked for more than half an hour, and came to the bamboo forest where I encountered the will-o'-the-wisp that day. However, because it was broad daylight and there were many people, I was not afraid, but I couldn't help but look around.

The bamboo forest was too dark that night, so I couldn't see the bamboo forest clearly. It turns out that there are many kinds of bamboo in this bamboo forest, but I can't name them.There are thick and long thorns on thighs, slender ones the size of sugar cane, and thin fingers.The bamboo forest is densely packed, except for a one-meter-wide path in the middle, it is impossible to walk anywhere else.

The bamboo leaves of these bamboos are no more than five inches in size, and the smaller ones are no more than the size of a finger. They cannot be used to make zongzi. We have to go through the bamboo forest to the foot of the mountain to pick the larger leaves.

After entering the bamboo forest, we walked for about 10 minutes, passed a small stream and finally arrived at the destination. We spread the snakeskin bag on the ground to rest, and Damei’s father took out the shredded tobacco paper and rolled a cigarette.Damei and Ah Fei were turning over stones in the stream to catch crabs, while Xue Fei's sister was bitten by mosquitoes, she cried and said that she knew she would never come.And I sat on the ground and looked east and west, always feeling chills in the back.

At this time, the sun had just climbed to the top of the mountain, the sun was shining over, and water was dripping on the stone wall. We rested for nearly 10 minutes, and Damei’s father threw the second cigarette butt and stood up, and caught crabs with Damei and Ah. Fat called over to pick the zong leaves.

Damei's father took out a chopping knife, chopped a long bamboo and knocked off all the dew on the zong leaves to be picked, and then took the bag and got into the bamboo bush.

This piece of bamboo is different from the bamboo forest that came in. It has big leaves, and the bamboo is no thicker than a little finger. I believe anyone who grew up in the countryside knows it.

I also picked up the snakeskin bag on the ground, and followed it into the nearby bamboo bushes. I just picked two bamboo leaves, and I felt something secretly watching me from behind. I felt uncomfortable. I asked Agui to come and talk I picked it here, and Agui responded and began to drill over.

Agui got halfway through, and cursed what the hell!I immediately drilled over to see that there were some baby clothes and a dustpan for harvesting rice on the ground.The dustpan was turned upside down on the ground, and a calf was exposed, and there were some unburned paper money candles beside it.

Obviously, the dustpan covered the dead body of a baby. Agui yelled at Sixth Uncle twice and called Amei's father over.

Amei's father came over, and before we could speak, he found the upside-down dustpan and the paper money, his face changed, and he waved his hand without saying a word to signal us to get out.

There is a common saying in our countryside that one cannot speak when one sees a dead body outside or a coffin washed out by rain, otherwise one will be in bad luck for the rest of his life.

Agui and I quickly got out of the bamboo bushes, Amei's father also got out, and then Ghost Head Afei and the others also came out, but I didn't see Sister Xuefei coming out.

I hurriedly told Amei's father that Concubine Xue was gone. Amei's father's face darkened, and told us to wait for him by the creek. Don't run around or call out Concubine Xue's name. After speaking, he turned and got into the bamboo bushes.

We didn't know what happened, we just felt scared, so we crowded together and walked to the resting place on the other side of the stream.

The distance from the bamboo bush to the stream was only 50 meters. As soon as we walked over and sat down, we saw Amei’s father coming out of the bamboo bush, carrying Sister Xuefei on his shoulders, and ran to us after a while.

Sister Xuefei seemed to be asleep. Amei’s father’s face was not very good-looking. He only said one sentence and went home immediately. Follow and don’t get lost. say.

A group of people walked in the bamboo forest, no one spoke, only the hurried footsteps, very strange, when the sun came out, it was blocked by dark clouds, making the bamboo forest dark.

When we walked out of the bamboo forest, Damei's father asked Agui to take us home, and he trotted all the way home with Sister Xuefei on his back.

After Damei's father left, several of our partners started talking, talking as we walked.

A Gui first said: "The one we saw just now should be Guo Xi's son. A while ago, my grandmother said that Guo Xi's wife gave birth to a child, and the child died immediately after giving birth. Maybe it turned into a ghost."

Afei took Agui's words and said: "It is said that Guo Xi and his two brothers packed up their dead son and went to the mountain overnight to bury him."

I was terrified when I heard this, and couldn't help asking them: "What happened to Sister Concubine Xue?"

Although I have only been at Sangu's house for less than a month, Sister Xuefei has already regarded her as my own sister in my mind.Sometimes I often think that my sister was not given to the Hunan couple by my uncle, and it would be great if Concubine Xue was my own sister.

But no one answered what happened to Concubine Xue's sister. Guitou said that she was caught by Guizai, Agui said she fainted from fright when she saw Guizai, and Xiaochong said she was hit by evil spirits.

I was in a bad mood after hearing this, so I didn’t speak any more, left them behind, and hurried home. As soon as I entered the village, I saw the village witch Zhang walking towards the third aunt’s house, and I followed closely behind Zhang. .

Goddess Zhang is nearly 50 years old, she looks like 60 years old, with black and white hair all over her head, and she is tall.

Back at Sangu's house, many adults from the village had already come to the house, and Amei's father was fanning the air with a bamboo hat.The third aunt was in the room, her eyes were red and she had just cried, and she didn't speak when she saw me walking into the room, while Sister Xuefei was lying on the bed at the moment, her eyes were open but she was motionless.

After walking around outside Sangu's house, the sorceress walked into the room.When the third aunt saw Goddess Zhang coming in, she burst into tears and said to her, "Fifth sister-in-law! Why is my life so hard? I always come to my house for any bad things. You must help me see what happened to my little concubine." I have nothing to look forward to if there is something wrong with her."

Goddess Zhang asked Sangu to prepare a bowl of rice, an egg, a stick of incense and a bowl of water.I cleared the table, and Sangu put a bowl full of rice on the table, with an egg hidden in the rice, and then lit a stick of incense and inserted it into the rice.

Goddess Zhang sat on the bench in front of the table, closed her eyes and sang a song like singing, then knocked her head hard on the table and did not move.

(End of this chapter)