Margaret's Secret

Chapter 3 The Mysterious Sheepskin (1)
Perhaps, it was doomed from that night in Paris 430 years ago.This story begins on April Fool's Day in 2005 AD.

April 4st, Friday, a cold and wet spring in Shanghai.

Until 3:33 in the afternoon, when I stepped into the "Yunjianwang" company on the [-]th floor of a building on Nanjing West Road and sat in the guest chat room, my drowsy mind seemed to be stimulated by something , suddenly realized what day it is.

I quickly took out my phone to check the time, yes, today is April 4st, and it's still Friday.

I looked suspiciously at the editors of Yunjian.com, and saw that they were whispering, probably because they didn't expect me to be so young.

An editor MM looked back at me, smiled and said, "Shall we start?"

"Why today?"

"Today? Are you talking about April Fool's Day? Hehe, because it's innocent to joke around on April Fool's Day, no one will blame you even if you exaggerate later."

After listening to her explanation, I can only bow down.Fortunately, they invited an honest person like me today. If they meet my friends Mr. L, Little D, and Old B, wouldn’t they blow the roof of this [-]-story building?

In fact, I don't care too much about foreign festivals such as "April Fool's Day" and "Valentine's Day". I just worry that what I say as a guest later will be taken as an April Fool's joke by netizens.

If you have read the two books "Desolate Village Apartment" and "The 19th Floor of Hell", you will know why I am so worried, because these two books are selling well, which has attracted many readers and netizens to speculate. Whether the story told is true, whether I am a certain hero in the book, whether a certain heroine in the book is still wandering in the subway.

Because of so many speculations and doubts, this well-known portal website in China, Yunjian.com, specially invited me as a guest to chat with netizens from all over the country.Although I have also participated in many activities such as book signings and radio interviews, I am still a little nervous when facing the editors and MMs of Yunjian.com who are rumored to be full of beauties.

At 3:45 p.m., the guest chat room of Yunjian.com officially opened.

The beautiful host first introduced me to the netizens, and then asked more than a dozen irrelevant questions. Although today is a special day, I should be careful in answering, so as not to let people misread my meaning.

But the questions from netizens behind were all kinds of strange. A netizen named "MARZOLINI" asked: "I have read your "The 19th Floor of Hell", and I want to ask you what the 20th floor of Hell is."

There is also a netizen whose name is particularly scary, the big name "Sadako Yamamura", "she" said: "I finished watching your "Desolate Village Apartment" at the bottom of the well, and I am crawling out of the TV right now, but we There was a sudden power outage here, and half of my body was stuck outside the TV screen and I couldn't move. By the way, I want to ask you a question—have you and Xiaozhi met again?"

The IDs of these netizens seem to have all been drilled out of my books, and those strange questions made me burnt out. It turns out that this is the benefit of April Fool's Day, which can make guests make fools of themselves in the chat room.

When I spent two hours like suffering, the scheduled time was about to expire, and I was about to get out of the sea of ​​suffering early, a netizen named "De La Mole" suddenly appeared.

De La Mole?

This strange name appeared on the screen like a ghost, and I was stunned for several seconds, holding my breath, as if a needle had been stuck in my brain.So I closed my eyes and racked my brains to think about the name, as if I had known this person a long, long time ago.

MM, the editor of Yunjian.com, patted me lightly: "Are you okay?"

I shivered and opened my eyes, and saw that there was already a line of text on the screen——

Netizen De La Mole: I have read your novel "The Lover's Head". The heroine takes away the head of her beheaded lover. Why do you write that?Is it because of Stendhal's "The Red and the Black"?

Looking at this text on the screen, the needle in my brain seemed to be pierced deeper, making me forget all the problems just now, and there seemed to be only a hooked crescent moon in front of me...

It was an era I don't know how many years ago, a white shadow flashed out from the red wall and green tiles, her footsteps seemed to be made of silk, so soft that there was no sound, her seductive body was wrapped in plain clothes, and she came to the city like a ghost. under the door.She held her lover's head in her arms, and the blood stains on her mourning gown were like plum blossoms blooming in the dark.The head moved over her fair neck, rouge-like red lips, and pool-like eyes.She boldly looked at the head until her fiery red lips pressed against her lover's dead lips.

Strangely, on the afternoon of April Fool's Day on April 2005, 4, in the guest chat room of Yunjian.com, I was suddenly immersed in a novel I wrote five years ago, so that I could hardly extricate myself, and forgot the people around me. The existence of a website editor MM.

When I emerged from the abyss of the novel to take a deep breath, I saw the strange expressions of the MMs around me. They probably thought I was nervous.I smiled bitterly in embarrassment: "Excuse me, maybe I ran into a friend from the past, please answer him, 'You guessed it right, do you know Margaret?'"

The editor MM paused for a moment, then looked up and asked me: "Is this the only thing?"

"Yes, just answer him like that."

After a few minutes, the guest chat finally came to an end.Originally, I didn't want to stay for dinner, but looking at the clouds of beauties around me, no one could resist, so I could only follow them to the second floor of the building and have a meal at a Hangzhou restaurant.

Facing a table of MMs, it is reasonable to say that I should be full of energy, but I am absent-minded. They have said a few big jokes, but I still don't understand them, which makes them all very embarrassed.

In fact, I was still thinking about the question raised by the netizen named "De La Mole" in the chat room just now - why did the heroine take away the head of her beheaded lover?
I didn't touch a drop of wine during the dinner, and I didn't listen to all the jokes the girls said. Only this strange question kept haunting me, just like the familiar name "De La Mole".

No, I can't stay any longer, there always seems to be a voice in my ear, urging me to leave here.

At eight o'clock in the evening, I hurriedly bid farewell to them and walked out of the gate of this forty-story office building.

April Fool's night.

Nanjing West Road is the most bourgeois place in Shanghai. Even the plane trees on both sides are covered with lights, illuminating the fashionable men and women cuddling together.

In fact, we celebrate April Fools' Day every day.

Suddenly, there was a strange feeling beside him, like a gust of cold wind blowing on his face.Before I turned around, a young man's voice sounded next to my ear: "Excuse me, are you the author of "The 19th Floor of Hell"?"

I quickly took a step back, and saw the man clearly in front of the advertising light box at the entrance of the office building—he looked very young, only in his early twenties, tall and thin, wearing black clothes and pants all over his body. The night on the street matches well.

His movements were very strange, as he approached me, he kept looking around, as if someone was following him.

My vigilance also raised, and I turned sideways and said, "Yes, it's me, how did you know?"

"I saw your picture in a book." Under the illumination of the advertising light box, the other party's face gradually became clearer. He looked more like a college student. Although his eyes were not very big, they were dark and dark. Liang, with a pale and thin face, beautiful nose and lips, looks a bit like Jay Chou at first glance.

"Then how did you know I'd be here?"

"Actually, I've been waiting for you here for more than two hours." His voice was soft and deep, as if he was swallowed by the wind as soon as he said it. He carefully looked around and hid on the side of the advertising light box and said , "I know that this afternoon, you will be a guest in the guest chat room of Yunjian.com, so I am specially waiting for you here."

No wonder when I was eating just now, my heart was always up and down—I used to hear old people say that when someone is waiting for you, you will feel a certain feeling in your heart.

But I still shook my head and said, "You said you waited for me downstairs for two hours?"

"Yes, in the afternoon I was surfing the Internet in the Internet cafe across the road, and I also entered the guest chat room of Yunjian.com. After your guest chat is over, I will immediately come out of the Internet cafe and go downstairs to wait for you. "

"But what if I go out through the other door of the building?"

He was silent for a moment, and a secret smile appeared on the corner of his mouth: "No, you can't go out through the back door, I know you will definitely come out through this door—my premonition can't be wrong."

The tone of the last sentence was a bit wizardly, which was very out of proportion to his age.Suddenly, I realized that I might be interested in this, which made me more vigilant and uneasy, and quickly asked coldly: "Enough, who are you? Why are you looking for me?"

"My name is Lin Hai, the Lin of the forest, the sea of ​​the ocean." He approached me, his pale face made me take half a step back, and he continued, "I'm sorry, I have something important to tell you, Please listen to me."

What makes it so mysterious?We writers are no different from ordinary people, so why do people always mystify us?
He looked around for a while, as if there were a pair of eyes staring at him anytime and anywhere, which made me look around cautiously, like a CIA agent passing information.

He came close to my ear and said in a trembling voice——

"Do you believe in ghosts in the world?"

I was immediately stunned by this sentence. On the bustling Nanjing West Road, at the gate of a forty-story high-end office building, this boy who appeared like a ghost suddenly asked me a question in my ear. The oldest and most dreaded question.

Before I could react, his second whisper came again——

"I've been haunted by a ghost, and it's with you."

Hearing the special tone of this sentence, and looking at his straight eyes, no matter who it is on, they will probably be terrified.Naturally, I was no exception, I just felt a sway in my heart, and then a cool night wind swept over my body, as if the ghost "passed" through my body.

I immediately shivered, and then I looked around, there were still a lot of people, and there were no ghosts under the bright lights, but this boy named Lin Hai looked more like a ghost.

Suddenly, I thought that today is a special day, and the sudden appearance of this boy in front of me, could it be an April Fool's joke?

Just as I was showing displeasure, his expression softened, and he said apologetically, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have spoken too directly. Can we find a place to talk?"

But I didn't answer him right away, and stood there hesitantly.

Lin Hai looked into my eyes, and after a moment of silence, he said: "When you were chatting with the guests this afternoon, I once asked you a question—why did the heroine in "The Lover's Head" take away the head of her beheaded lover?"

He finally got the words out, and my eyes widened immediately, and a name blurted out: "De La Mole! You're the 'De La Mole' online, right?"

Lin Hai showed a strange smile, nodded and said: "Yes, I used the name 'De La Mole' to ask you a question, and your answer did not disappoint me, so I must wait for you here. "

I was a little inexplicably excited. At this moment, this man named "De La Mole" was standing in front of me, and the problem that had been entangled with me for more than two hours was about to be solved.

I immediately agreed to his request and went to the small cafe across the road together.

Strangely, on the night of April Fool's Day, the business of the cafe is particularly light, probably people don't want to talk about any serious business tonight.Lin Hai purposely found an inconspicuous corner and sat down face to face with me.

The lights here are bright enough, although Lin Hai's face is still pale, his hair is messed up, and he looks haggard.But he is indeed a very handsome boy, especially those Jay-like eyes, which must be very attractive to girls.

Lin Hai still looked out of his mind, peeping behind me from time to time, his eyes made hair stand on end, as if there was really a female ghost standing behind me.

I finally interrupted his looking around: "I'm sorry, you waited for me for more than two hours, isn't it just to ask me about "The Lover's Head"?"

"Of course not, that's just a beginning, a very small beginning."

He specifically emphasized the "beginning" again, and still looked behind me. After making sure that there were no people or ghosts behind me, he carefully put his schoolbag on the table.

Lin Hai slowly opened the zipper of the schoolbag, and his hand trembled for a while, almost making me think he was electrocuted.

Finally, he stretched out his schoolbag, and pulled out a tin box as if by magic.

This new discovery immediately lifted my spirits. The tin box is about [-] centimeters long and [-] centimeters wide, equivalent to the thickness of a book.

The tin box looks very old, but there is no rust on it, and it seems to be well preserved.

Lin Hai's hands were still shaking, he took a deep breath, and then carefully opened the tin box.

The moment he opened the lid, I suddenly and inexplicably thought of the scene when the archaeologists opened the pharaoh's coffin in the Egyptian desert.

Strange, how could you think of this?
Such a small tin box, of course there will be no pharaoh inside, so what kind of mysterious thing would it be?
A parchment.

Yes, I've seen the contents of the box, a scroll of parchment curled up in a tin box like a dried-up baby corpse.

I can’t be mistaken, I once saw ancient Middle Eastern and European parchments in a museum, basically they all looked like this, withered, yellow and wrinkled, just like the face of a centenarian old woman.

The parchment was produced around the eighth century BC, and the oldest known parchment is the "Persian Ancient Book" from the sixth to fifth centuries BC.The earliest form of parchment was a scroll, and it was changed to a book in the fourth century AD, which is more durable and easier to preserve than papyrus scrolls.Parchment books in Europe remained the standard form of manuscript until the fifteenth century when they were replaced by printed books made of paper.

However, not all medieval parchment books are books, and ancient parchment scrolls have been used all the time. The parchment book in front of me seems to be a work of the Middle Ages.

I didn’t dare to take a big breath anymore, I held my breath and looked at the parchment in the iron box. In this cafe on Nanjing West Road, it seemed that I had traveled through a tunnel of time and space and arrived at a certain castle in the era of Charlemagne.

Looking up at Lin Hai again, there was a strange look in his eyes, but then he carefully glanced behind me, it seems that this scroll of parchment is very precious and must not be seen by a third person.

Lin Hai slowly stretched out his hand, took the parchment book out of the tin box, and then carefully unfolded the scroll, just like the hand scrolls in ancient China. It seems that the East and the West still coincide in this regard.

At the beginning of the scroll, there is a strange pattern like a curtain, which is a common decoration in ancient Europe.I didn't find the title, it was just a line of text, densely packed, all handwritten Latin letters, my foreign language level is already terrible, plus this is the handwritten text of the ancients, it is tantamount to an alien to me It's a bible.

As the ancient parchment scrolls unfolded little by little, a special musty smell emanated, which reminded me of an unlucky sheep that was slaughtered 800 years ago.

Finally, the entire parchment scroll appeared in front of my eyes. The long scroll was densely covered with European characters. There were probably hundreds of lines, and at least thousands of words in Chinese.

I shook my head as if facing a code, and said softly, "What's written on it?"

Lin Hai immediately made a silent gesture, then covered his mouth with his hand and said, "Be careful, don't splash your saliva on the parchment."

"I'm sorry." I can only cover my mouth with my hands, it's a bit ridiculous to speak like this, "What kind of text is this?"

"It's Old French." Lin Hai replied softly, frowning, "France in the Middle Ages was feudal and divided, and there were many dialects. In the thirteenth century, the Capetian Dynasty unified the whole of France, and the dialect of the Paris area gradually became the common language of the French nation. , that is, Old French, which appeared in official documents around the beginning of the thirteenth century."

"You mean to say that this parchment comes from France in the thirteenth century?"

"Analyzed from the text, I think it is like this."

But I wondered again: "But how do you know?"

"Because I'm majoring in French now." Lin Hai lowered his head again, looking a little shy, "I'm already in my third year of university this year, and I just learned ancient French last semester."

"Then do you know what this parchment says?"

Lin Hai shook his head helplessly: "I'm just a third-year French student, not an expert in history and linguistics. These ancient French of the thirteenth century are very different from modern French. If you don’t do professional research on fonts, even authentic French people won’t be able to understand them.”

"Well, you're right, just like ancient Chinese bamboo slips or hand scrolls, it's hard for us people to understand today."

I looked carefully at the decorations on the parchment, and it seemed that there was a faint evil spirit. Wasn't the European Middle Ages the age of magic and witchcraft?
Since it is a parchment book from the [-]th century, it is naturally a very precious treasure. How did Lin Hai, a college student, get it?I immediately expressed my doubts: "How did the parchment book get into your hands?"

Lin Hai was silent for a moment, then rolled up the parchment, and said slowly: "I came to you today for this matter, but... I'm worried that you won't believe it."

(End of this chapter)