I always fall into that terrible dream, like getting lost in a section of the stone paved Huangquan ghost road, in the darkness only my own lonely head walking, the universe is like being sucked away from all living things, there is no ghost shadow footsteps, the only thing left: not far ahead, an evil spirit threw away the flickering cigarette butt and groped for his trouser belt.

With a smirk, he pulled out the ugly thing and looked at it, and then proudly tucked it back into his crotch, as if ready to stand still where I would surely go...

I struggled in fear, trembling in my limbs, waking up wet in fear that had been carved into my bones...

When I woke up, the memories that had been frozen in the gloom exploded in an instant, and the scenes of that year brutally pierced my skull one after another, and my limbs trembled...

It was the early morning after the Mid-Autumn Festival, the cold night moon was still hanging high, the lonely stars were still faintly visible, the sky revealed layers of dark and dark blue, and the only vitality on a curved stone mountain road was the girl carrying a floral cloth schoolbag.

In the whole universe, the only living thing that accompanies her is her shadow.

Girl, newly developed breasts and buttocks, the graceful waist that comes out, and the taste of chicks are the most likely to provoke men's desires.

That girl is me in the year of cardamom.

Carrying his grandmother's schoolbag spliced with scraps, carrying a pair of broken sneakers inherited from his cousin, and holding a thin penny coin tightly in his palm, he drove on this gravel mountain road, ready to drive to the township middle school twenty miles away.

I grew up in a village on the bank of the Huai River that didn't seem to have changed much for many years, and I lived with my grandmother, and I accompanied her to grow old and become short, and she watched me grow up and grow taller.

During the autumn harvest, my grandmother and I went to the field to pick up wheat and rice, and the rice grains and flour that were ground were white and cute.

As for eating vegetables, no matter how diligent my aunts and uncles were in taking care of the vegetable fields, we always had to eat, drink, and sleep, so we could always get into the cracks, steal some radish greens, and most of the rest of the time we would buy some sugar, and I would thrive with rice soup and noodle sauce, and my grandmother would continue to do needlework day and night for the little daughters-in-law in the village who liked the format, so that I could have tuition to finish elementary school.

When I was about to go to junior high school, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make up enough tuition, and in the end, my grandmother begged the so-called parents who had cruelly abandoned me back then, but my food expenses were still made up by my grandmother.

I especially cherished this opportunity to study, and I was always at the top of my class.

The junior high school was in the township, 20 miles away from my grandmother's mountain village, which was very time-consuming for me, who was only about 30 centimeters long at the time. In order to be able to arrive at the classroom before 7 o'clock so that we could study the textbooks in advance, and because the thatched hut where my grandmother and I lived could not afford an alarm clock, and because we did not have even a penny of spare money to buy a plastic clock that could check the time, my grandmother and I would get up when we heard the third rooster crow.

My grandmother cooked, and I packed my week's recipes—my grandmother's pickled leeks or garlic sprouts—in a glass jar that I had picked up and washed, packed them in my school bag, and prepared to go to school for the new week of living on campus.

But that day was different, and I had to arrive a little earlier than usual.

Because there was an envelope that made my heart flutter in the book, waiting for my reply. I was so young, I secretly pondered for two days, and I had to think about how to write it again, so that I wouldn't hurt this boy, not make enemies, and still have such a good friend who was very good to me.

At the first time, I called my grandmother to get dressed and leave the bed together, she made a nest, and I packed my schoolbag. Finally, I don't know what time it was, but I took a bite of the hot nest, and set off with the night on my head.

I stood against the moonlit starlight, which coveted the beauty of the world and had no intention of retreating, and stared intently at my feet with one pair of eyes, as careful as possible to avoid the stones that my eyes could see, and which might be holding the soles of my feet.

This mountain road used to be a mud road, there are always a big car carrying the sand of the Huai River from the city to get sand here, back and forth, the road is often crushed to collapse, especially on rainy days it is difficult to walk, when I was in junior high school, I was in time to catch up with the completion of the poverty alleviation road in the township, and the twenty-mile road was paved with small stones fished out of the river.

In fact, after I finished junior high school, it was only a year, and the road surface was very strong, and stones the size of a human head have been made to both sides of the road by picky pedestrians, and even rolled down into the ridges on both sides, and the middle part of the road was crushed quite delicate and flat, and the largest was the size of an egg.

At least the biker's wheels don't jump too high, and at least as long as my feet don't grow too fast, my sneakers should be able to walk on them for another two years.

The sky was slightly cool, and I walked to the thin sweat, and the pool of dark blue above my head seemed to be poured into ink, getting darker and darker, and then it was like being mixed with water, and it became more and more gray.

Although the moon would emerge from the drifting clouds from time to time, it could not warm the air around me.

The mountain road was too dead and silent, and fear came at me from all around, and all the stories about wolves and wild boars told by my grandmother's village when I was a child were in my ears:

When I was five years old, a wolf infested and bit the neck of my second grandmother, who was watching an open-air movie from a neighboring village at night and carrying a chair on her back, causing her to skip food and finally die tragically.

When I was seven years old, the daughter-in-law of the village bell butcher put the cradle and her son on the ridge of the vegetable field, and she bowed her head to weed. Later, Zhong Butcher not only killed pigs, but also expanded his business scope to slaughter wolves and dogs.

I also witnessed it when I was eight years old, when I went to school with the children in my grandmother's village, and wild boars infested the ridges of the fields, and the fangs crippled a lone seedling next door who called the second uncle's house. There was no clinic in the village, Dumiao was sent to the township clinic by the adults for treatment, and finally died tragically, and the second aunt later followed the goods seller who went into the village to sell sugar, and the second uncle eventually became a lonely old man.

The coin in my palm has been pinched and drenched with water, and it is constantly pumping the source of courage into my heart, driving my limbs forward.

I didn't dare to make a sound, but the road was quiet, and I was more afraid of ghosts than animals.

I need to be brave, pretend that there are a lot of people, we talk and walk together, pretend to be lively, pretend not to hear the surroundings, so I let go of my voice, make noise, and comfort myself:

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, what is this, it's a little earlier than before, the sky should be bright soon, and some people will go to the township to sell vegetables in a while, and there will be more and more people on the road after a while. I should have walked three miles, and I was halfway through it soon. ”