I thought to myself, Xiaomi's face is dirty, and it is indeed not clean.

Everyone in the family was a little afraid of my father, and when they saw that I was fine, they didn't ask more.

Millet is here again at dusk.

It was raining before she came. Everything outside is **, and there is a smell of dampness in the house. The dark clouds gradually dispersed, and it seemed that they no longer pressed on the roof and the date trees, but the sun had not yet shone down. Grandpa was still dozing off in the old bamboo chair, holding a finished teacup in his hand. The teacup hooked on his fingers, as if it would fall at any moment, but it didn't.

The watery wind blowing through the hall made people very comfortable, and the teacup in my father's hand shook slightly.

I watched an ant climb up the foot of my grandfather's old bamboo chair and when it reached a bend, it slid down and fell to the ground. Because the place around the corner was touched by my father, the ants couldn't catch it when they got there. It was a very stubborn ant that fell down and climbed up again, and so on several times.

After watching for a while, I heard giggles outside.

I followed the sound and saw Xiaomi sitting on the threshold and laughing, her face was still dirty, her braids were still **, and she was still wearing the red cotton jacket. The dirt outside was wet from the rain, and it must have been very sticky, but there was not a single bit of mud on her shoes. I looked at those shoes for a long time, so I remember them vividly. It was a pair of embroidered red silk shoes, and the sole was the common thousand "one ~ book" read the novel xstxt needle sole at that time. When she rested her foot on the threshold, the sewing thread on the sole of her shoe was still visible. It can be said that the soles of her shoes are spotless and frighteningly clean.

"Xiaomi?" I was afraid of waking my grandfather, so I called her softly.

She beckoned to me and told me to go to the door.

I dropped the ant and walked over to her.

When I was close enough, she suddenly reached out and grabbed my clothes, and said in a begging and unquestioning manner, "Come with me to the garden in the back." ”

"Is there anything interesting there?" I asked.

She nodded, but didn't say what was fun.

There was really no fun in being alone in the hall, and I was tired of seeing the ant, so I stepped over the threshold and prepared to go to the back garden with her.

The threshold of my grandfather's house was more than a foot high, and it was very difficult for me to step in and out as a young child. Each time I had to hold on to the door frame with one hand to barely lift one foot out. I once asked my grandfather why he had made the threshold of the gate so high. Daddy said it was to keep the zombies at bay. I said, can a high threshold stop zombies? Daddy said that because zombies are jumping and walking, their legs will not bend, so a high threshold can block it and prevent it from entering. For a while after that, I often dreamed of a swarm of zombies jumping around outside the threshold.

As soon as I stepped out of the threshold, I heard my grandfather's voice.

"Don't go!" Daddy shouted, and before I could react, he ran to me.

Seeing that my grandfather was awake, Millet hurriedly loosened my clothes and wanted to escape.

Grandpa put the teacup in his hand on Xiaomi's head, and Xiaomi couldn't run. She danced and cried fiercely.

Grandpa's teacup is not an ordinary white porcelain teacup, but a purple sand one, with some words engraved on the outside that I don't recognize, and a person, a tree, and a cloud are also engraved. Later, my mother said that if I hadn't broken that teacup when I was a child, it would have been worth a lot of money to keep it now. It was because it was later broken and lost, and I still don't know what words were engraved on it, but I remember that the man's expression was very strange, and the man sat under a pine tree, looking up at the cloud, and seemed carefree, and seemed to have a lot on his mind.

I saw that Xiaomi was crying loudly, and I was immediately very nervous, afraid that her family would come over when they heard the crying, and that her family would scold her father for bullying a child.

But Grandpa didn't care about Xiaomi's crying at all, and still yelled fiercely: "If you get out, you won't get out!" Now don't blame me for being ruthless! ”

Millet cried even harder, heartbreaking.

Daddy pinched the handle of the teacup with one hand, pressed the bottom of the teacup with the other, said "hey", and pressed the teacup down vigorously.

The next scene is especially memorable.

Grandpa stumbled and almost fell, but he squatted down and pressed the purple sand teacup to the ground.

Millet was gone, but her cry came from the purple sand teacup.

I watched my grandfather push millet into his teacup as if I were watching a trick.

At this time, my grandfather came back from the farmland with a teapot. At that time, watermelons were very expensive, and everyone brought tea to the fields to drink. My grandfather came back to fetch tea. When he saw this, he hurriedly threw the teapot on the ground, carried me into the house, told me not to look at it, and covered my ears to prevent me from listening to Xiaomi's cry.

At dinner in the evening, I saw an extra clay pot under my grandfather's old bamboo chair.

I ate absentmindedly with my rice bowl in my hand, my eyes always looking under the old bamboo chair. My gut told me that there must be some special purpose for that crockpot.

My grandparents kept putting vegetables in my bowl to distract me.

Grandpa smiled indifferently: "Let him see, it's okay." Then he said to me, "The millet is in that crockpot, and tonight I want your grandfather to bury it in the garden behind." If you want to see her in the future, go to the garden to see her. Grandpa sat weakly on the old bamboo chair when he said this, and it was estimated that millet had made him use all his strength just now.

And the purple sand teacup drank tea in his hand again.

If it's winter, the little man on the teacup will look at the steaming water.

After eating, my grandfather didn't want me to follow him to the back garden to see him bury the clay pot, saying that he was afraid of scaring me. Grandpa waved his hand and said, "Let him go and see." If you don't let him see it, he will see it in his dreams. ”

With my grandfather's permission, I followed him and watched him dig a pit in the garden, put the clay pot in it, cover it with earth, and finally get a big dung spoon from the hut and pile it on it.

I asked, "Why are you piling up dung on it?" ”

My grandfather said, "The dung is filth, and it can suppress the evil spirit, so that she will not run out again." ”

I asked, "What the hell is she?" "At this time, I already knew in my heart that she was not an ordinary child. It is impossible for an ordinary child to fit into a teacup.

Grandpa said, "She's Xiaomi." "Grandpa was obviously perfunctory to me. In the same way, my grandfather was always secretive to me, but my father didn't seem to care. Later, my mother said that my grandfather was afraid that I would be hurt by unclean things, so he deliberately kept me away, and my grandfather was familiar with the I Ching and deep understanding of gossip, ten times stronger than my grandfather, and had full confidence in protecting me, so he didn't care that I was exposed to those things.

I said unhappily, "I know she's Xiaomi." I asked what the hell she was. ”

Grandpa had no choice but to say: "She is the soul of Xiaomi, and she has deceived the souls of many other children." If your father hadn't caught her, your soul would have run away with her. ”

This was the first time I can remember being protected by my grandfather.

My grandfather was eighty-one years old and I was four years old.

Since then, every time I go into the back garden, I go to look at the millet, worrying that there will be a hole there, that the crockpot will be broken or missing. My grandmother noticed my thoughts, so she planted a cucumber seedling in the crockpot. The cucumber seedling grew very fast, jumping up the melon rack like a living snake. The melon stand is made up of several bamboos stuck in the soil. Sometimes tiny bamboo-leaved green snakes will appear on the melon stand, and I don't know if they climbed up from the ground or fell from a tree at a high place. The tip of the cucumber vine puffs out like the head of a small snake, and often scares the cucumber thief.

When my grandfather saw the tip of the cucumber vine, he smiled and said, "Millet is still not convinced." ”

Later, when I went to middle school, it was nearly ten years after my grandfather passed away, and once when my grandfather was picking cucumbers, he said, "Millet is still not convinced."

I almost forgot about it, and I immediately remembered it. At that time I already knew what Xiaomi was.

Millet is a type of metamorphosis called the ghost of the spores. Some of our adults scolded children and scolded, "You incarnate!" "It's a very vicious curse. Because only young people who unfortunately die are called metamorphosis. People who die untimely generally do not hold funeral ceremonies, but mostly use a few ordinary wooden planks nailed into a rectangular wooden box to collect the deceased, this kind of wooden box is called a "fire box". If he dies in the morning, he will be carried up the mountain in the afternoon to dig a pit and be buried. The burial place is called the "ghost nest".

When a child under the age of 12 dies, it is considered to be the reincarnation of a "ghost", specially coming to the yang world to coax people, making people lose everything after hard feeding, so people think that it came to the world to cheat and eat and drink. After burial, a clay basket is placed upside down on the grave to prevent it from causing harm and increasing suffering.

The ghost is one of the "ghosts of the people", but it is more terrifying than the metamorphosis. Because of its young age, this ghost usually appears in front of children more often, and children will also see them, so adults sometimes see children talking to themselves in the air, but they are actually chatting with it. This ghost is dangerous to children.

However, there are also good and bad in the ghosts, the good ones are just playing with the children, and the bad ones are taking away the children's souls when they play.

The ghost is not only a spoof of himself, but also makes other normal children swindle, so it is especially terrifying.

That time, if it wasn't for my grandfather guarding me in the hall, my soul would have been taken away by millet.