What do I see?

A piece of dead rats under black pressure, one by one in the holes in the soil that extend in all directions, looking densely packed, some have been dead for a long time, some have not completely rotten, the strange smell smoked and can't open their eyes, it is not only terrifying, with strong nausea, I can't stand it, I haven't jumped out of the pit and vomited over the river and the sea, until there is nothing in the stomach, and I am still grunting vigorously.

It was so disgusting that I didn't want to describe it. I staggered out of the pit and ran into the yard, and it took me more than ten minutes to get over the momentum. The night breeze was a little cool, and the dizzy head gradually sobered up, and when I thought about it slowly, this matter was a little eyebrow-raising. The rats were all heading for the wall under the bed in Grandpa's bedroom, but they didn't really get close and all died on the periphery.

I don't know how those rats died, the big pit that was just dug up, and to be honest I don't want to take a second look at it again for the rest of my life, but the more it happens, the more curious I am about what is buried under the wall. I adjusted my mood in the yard, covered my nose again with a cloth stained with alcohol, and went back to the house. Thinking along the way, I remembered that in the past, people in the village often proudly told people from other villages that there had never been rats stealing food in our Xiaopanhe Village. It's some gossip, and I've never paid attention to it, but when I think of what I've just seen, I think to myself, is there really no rat in the village? There are probably more rats here than anywhere else, but they all burrowed under Grandpa's bedroom.

I endured my still tumbling stomach and squatted on the edge of the pit, this time mentally prepared and more meticulously observed. The pickaxe continued to dig through the dirt, and I found that there were not only rats, but also rotten small animals, and snakes as thick as their forearms. At this moment, without anyone explaining, I can vaguely guess that all this mess is drilling holes under the bedroom, and they are all running towards the thing buried in the wall.

What exactly could that be?

Without saying a word, I jumped back into the pit, this time adjusting the direction, digging exactly in the direction my grandfather had said. In fact, the pit was already very deep, and if I hadn't diverted it halfway to find the source of the smell, I would have dug it up.

This time he dug less than a foot deep, and the pickaxe slammed into something, and then a small tin box emerged from the earth. The small tin box was less than a foot long, and it was wrapped in several thick layers of oilcloth, which was very strong, but the oilcloth was accidentally broken by me, revealing the tin box itself.

I slapped all the dirt chips off the outside of the tarpaulin, and needless to say, it must have been something my grandfather left me.

The tin box was not locked, the gap in the lid of the box was sealed by rosin, I couldn't stand the smell, dug out the tin box and left the bedroom, in the yard by the moonlight overhead, slowly opened the oilcloth, there was a rosin that knocked off the seal. The tin box is airtight, and if you don't open it, it's impossible to know what's inside. The rosin was knocked off, and at this point, as soon as I moved my hand, I could see the contents of the tin box.

But I was a little hesitant, I don't know why, I always felt that if I opened the box with my own hands and saw the contents again, then I might be carrying some burden that I couldn't have anticipated. This is my hunch, and this hunch may come entirely from my grandfather's solemn confession. Hu Laosan was obviously dead in the river, but the strange way he brought his grandfather's message was enough to explain everything.

At that time, I could have thrown the box away, or buried it again, and if I did, my life would have been simpler, more plain, and more relaxed. But how could a nineteen-year-old think so much, so, I opened the box.

To this day, I believe that the reason why I am involved in these things may be the same as what my grandfather said, that is, fate.

The moment the box opened, my eyes froze, and my hand holding the box trembled. There was only one thing in the iron box, and once it was opened, it was clear at a glance.

Inside the box, there is a hand, a person's right hand.

In an instant, an indescribable feeling came to my heart, I have been patrolling the river with my grandfather for so many years, and I have seen the floating corpses in the river more than three or five times, and one hand will definitely not scare me, but the strangeness of things makes it difficult for me to calm down my emotions. Grandpa's solemn explanation is a hand?

I looked at the severed hand carefully, and I could see that it had been cut off from a human body with a full wrist, and it must have undergone some special embalming treatment, and the whole hand was like a piece of air-dried bacon. I don't know what Grandpa meant, or how many years of storage of the severed hand can be done.

I was completely confused, and stood in the yard for a long time, no one would store a human hand for no reason, and all the weirdness and unsolved in it were cut off by the disappearance of my grandfather.

I thought about it, and it might be a little inconvenient if I carried this thing with me because I was going to go to my grandfather, and I didn't know how long I would have to drift alone. After some consideration, I went back to the hall and re-wrapped the iron box and placed it on the beams.

Then, I backfilled the big hole dug in the bedroom, and I wanted to clean it up thoroughly, but when I thought about the dense rat corpses, I suddenly lost my courage. Almost all night, Hu Laosan's door of the ringer team did not know when to stop blowing, blowing, blowing, I took a nap in my room, slept for two hours, and when the sky was just polished, I got up to wash my face, took the things that had been packed, and walked out of the house.

It's still early, and the people in the village may not have gotten up yet, and all the chickens, ducks, pigs and dogs in a village have jumped into the river, which seems unusually quiet. I felt a little strange as I walked, and under normal circumstances, at this time of the day, women like Grandma Seven in the village had already gotten up to cook, so that the men in the family could go to work after eating. Thinking of this, I slowed down and looked back, the spiritual shed at the door of Hu Laosan's house was blown down by the wind at some point, and through the half-open courtyard door, I could see a thin-skinned coffin placed alone in the courtyard.

At that moment, I felt uneasy, but I couldn't tell where my uneasiness came from, I wandered for a while, and wanted to go to Hu Laosan's house to have a look, but after all, my own affairs were also very important, so in the end I gave up the idea and walked to the river beach.

I have walked back and forth from the village to the river beach many times over the years, and I can't make a mistake with my eyes closed. However, walking on this road today, I always have a feeling of panic, and that feeling is indescribably irritating. I put aside all the distractions in my heart for a moment and walked with my head down. When I walked to the beach near the river, I looked up and immediately realized that I had a faint unease about how it had come from.

Almost every village of people stood on the riverbank, they didn't know when they came, and they stood upright like a wooden stake, and they were there with a dumb pestle. Through the crowd, I suddenly saw a boat floating on the murky river, a very strange boat.

The boat was not big, it was completely different from the small boats that we people usually walked on the river, and there was a thin layer of mist floating on the river in the early morning, which made my vision a little blurry. There was no one in the boat, as if there was a large bell hanging from it.

clang

When I was full of doubts, a bell floated from the boat to the shore, and the villagers standing on the river bank were like demons, straight and slowly walking towards the river, I immediately panicked, and quickly ran from a distance, and when I ran to the front, the first row of people who walked in front of me had already drowned in the river.

"Jinbao! You are crazy! "I was tugging at people I knew so well on a daily basis to try to stop them. But when I saw Jinbao's expression, I was immediately shocked, and I couldn't help but want to let go of my hand. He was probably completely unconscious, half-open, rolling his eyes vigorously, and walking slowly but firmly towards the river.

"Seventh Grandma!" I turned around and ran to Grandma Seven, the old woman with her hair disheveled, her face almost all wrinkled into a ball, and like everyone else, she rolled her eyes and walked step by step into the river. I have heard people say that before liberation, the seventh grandmother worked as a goddess for a period of time, and she was very bold, and she was more assertive than ordinary men.

I shook her hard, trying to sober her up. The seventh grandmother stopped, the two eyeballs in the eye sockets were rolling in an orderly manner, I lay in her ear and shouted loudly, about two or three minutes, the seventh grandmother looked back at me indifferently, as if she had a little consciousness.

"Seventh Grandma! What are you doing! "

The old woman's eyes stared at me from her gray mess, her thin body shook suddenly, and her facial expression began to change dramatically, making it impossible to tell whether she was crying or laughing, in short, it was very strange.

"They" Grandma Qi stammered, and said to me word by word: "They are going to pull people from a village over to fill the river."

"They? Who are they? I finally heard a normal sentence, and hurriedly asked anxiously.

"The old ghost in red" Grandma Chen's teeth were gritting, and every word she said seemed to be extremely difficult: "Chen Liujin"

"What did you say!" I was shocked, I don't know if Grandma Seven is talking nonsense, but what she said Chen Liujin is my grandfather's name.

I realized something at once, and stood up straight and looked out into the river. The strange ship seemed to be unaffected by the current, and although no one was in sight of the boat, it did not move in the current. Just as I looked into the past, I suddenly saw the huge stone coffin, which had been found more than once, next to the strange ship, slightly protruding from the water.

"The old ghost in red" I gritted my teeth, and immediately remembered the strange man in red when I first saw the stone coffin.

The people of a village were slowly rushing into the river like walking corpses, and the front row of people was already flooded to the neck. I couldn't have stopped so many people, left them behind, pushed the boat parked on the beach into the water with all my might, jumped on it, and rushed to the strange boat and the stone coffin as fast as I could.