"Auntie Liu!" Old Du's eyes were already red when he turned around.
The old lady in the room waved her hand and said, "Xiao Du, come in quickly, come in quickly."
I could tell that the old lady must be Lao Du’s old neighbor. I also had some questions to ask him, so I went into the house with him.
The person who opened the door was probably a relative of Auntie Liu. He poured us some water and went to the kitchen to work. Auntie Liu held Lao Du's hand and said, "Xiao Du, how have you been these years?"
"Fortunately..." Lao Du choked up and said, "Why is my front door sealed?"
Aunt Liu shook her head and said, "Xiao Du, you don't know that after Wan Qiao and her mother left, they came back. During the days when you were away, the neighbors upstairs and downstairs could hear them crying in the house every night."
"Wanqiao kept calling for her child, and Tongtong was crying for his mother. It was heartbreaking to hear! I know Wanqiao is a kind-hearted child and will not harm anyone, but others are afraid!"
The old lady said, "Later, several neighbors pooled their money and found a great monk to come and pray for Wanqiao and the others. At that time, your house was sealed off by the police, and the monk couldn't get in, so he sat in the corridor and chanted sutras for a whole day and night."
"Before he left, the monk said that the two ghosts still had grudges. Even though they were sent away, they might come back someday. He asked us to contact him if we had any problems."
The old lady talked to herself without even looking at Lao Du's expression: "We neighbors lived in fear for several days. We finally lived in peace after we no longer heard them crying in the house. But, two days ago, Wanqiao and the others came back again."
"This time, they didn't cry, they were laughing. But that laughter was scarier than crying! It sounded like a night owl, 'haha, haha', never idle. At first, the noise seemed to be in the house, but as I listened, it sounded like it was at the door."
The old lady pointed at the door while trembling. "That night, I heard Wanhua squatting outside my door crying. The sound came through the crack in the door. My old man was so scared that he had a heart attack."
"After I called 120, I was afraid that Wanhua would not let us out, so I knelt at the door and said to her: Wanhua, please be kind and show mercy! We did not do anything wrong to you in the first place! If you want to find a scapegoat, find me, don't go after my old man."
"Later, Wanhua's movements began to recede little by little. It sounded like she was crying and walking home. After a while, there was no movement and the ambulance arrived."
The old lady changed the subject at this point: "After that night, we planned to look for the monk again. Who knew that the monk had already passed away, and his nephew came with us to take a look..."
"The little monk said that there are things lost by a ghost in your house, and she won't leave unless she finds them. If you don't want the ghost to come out, you have to let him nail the door shut."
The old lady looked at our faces and said, "At the time, we thought that you hadn't been back for so many years, maybe... maybe you had started a family outside... and would never come back here. So we simply asked the monk to nail your door shut."
Although Lao Du's expression was no longer as gloomy as before, it was extremely complicated.
It was just as I thought. When I saw the wooden board at the door, I thought it must be something left by my colleagues. However, before I could figure out what method the other party used, the board was kicked into pieces by Lao Du.
I asked, "Auntie, what else did the monk say?"
Seeing that Lao Du didn't say anything, the old lady said, "The monk said that if we seal the door for 49 days, the ghosts inside will know they can't get out and will leave, allowing us to live here in peace."
I asked, "When did the monk come here?"
The old lady took out the desk calendar and flipped through it a few times: "Wanqiao and the others came on the 5th, and on the 8th the monk came and nailed the door."
After I roughly calculated the time, I turned to look at Xie Wanhua, and the other person's face turned pale.
On the 5th, I had already returned to my hometown. If I am not mistaken, Xie Wanhua must have flipped through the diary on that day.
I said in a deep voice: "Auntie, do you think it would be convenient for us to stay at your house for a few days?"
Without waiting for the old lady to speak, I opened my mouth and said, "I guess Sister Wanqiao came back to look for Brother Du. Now that the door has been kicked down by Brother Du, it's definitely not enough to lock Sister Wanqiao in. We have to talk to Sister Wanqiao too. You see..."
Before I could finish my words, the old lady shook her head and said, "I'm not going anywhere. The people upstairs and downstairs have moved out, and they asked me to leave, but I can't bear to leave this nest, so I'm not going anywhere."
I tried to explore: "How about we stay at your house for a while, until the evening..."
"No!" Before the old lady could say anything, the man in the outer room came running over. "Go wherever you want! Living in someone else's house will attract ghosts, which is so damn unlucky. Auntie, I'm telling you, this is absolutely not allowed."
The old lady scolded, "Get out of here! Xiao Du and we have been neighbors for more than ten years. We have known each other since before his child Tong Tong was gone. How could he possibly harm us? Get out of here."
The old lady seemed to be scolding her nephew, but actually she was speaking to us.
Although distant relatives are not as good as close neighbors, it does matter. No one wants to do something that will bring bad luck to the family.
I was about to speak, but Lao Du waved his hand and said, "Xiao Wu, don't be rash. Let's go and come back in the evening."
After Lao Du and I got back in the car, he finally said, "Tell me, is Wan Qiao really back?"
"It's more than 90% impossible!" I shook my head. "A ghost that even the monks can't save must have deep resentment, even more than the level of a fierce ghost. A ghost of this level won't be afraid of you even if you are a policeman. Besides, you can't wear a police uniform 24 hours a day, so why didn't your sister-in-law come back to look for you?"
Lao Du said: "Wan Qiao should come back to find me?"
"The person she should look for the most is you, and then Dr. Xie." I explained, "After a person becomes a ghost, they often have some kind of connection with their closest relatives, because the thoughts of their closest relatives are more likely to make ghosts enter the other person's dreams, which is what ordinary people often call dreaming. Have you never dreamed of your sister-in-law?"
Lao Du nodded sadly and said, "I thought she was blaming me for not fulfilling my responsibilities, so she didn't want to see me..."
"Impossible!" I waved my hands and said, "No matter how much she resents you, she will never leave you."
Xie Wanhua couldn't help but interrupt: "Then how do you know that the person who came here eight years ago was a great monk?"
I said seriously, "The liar won't let you go to him again, and the ghost in the house hasn't made any waves in eight years."
"But..." Xie Wanhua bit her lip and said, "What do you want to do?"
"I'll go get some yellow paper and offerings, and set up the offerings for the ceremony in the evening and see how they react." After I said that, I got out of the car and found five offerings, three meat dishes and two vegetable dishes. I stayed in the car with Lao Du and the others until midnight before going upstairs again. I asked Lao Du to place the offerings in the corridor facing his front door, and then started burning the yellow paper in the middle of the corridor.
Not long after Lao Du put the yellow paper into the fire, a woman's sharp laughter suddenly came from his door. Lao Du suddenly raised his head and said, "Wan Qiao, is that you?"
I said coldly, "Don't talk, just keep burning paper. No one moves until I tell you to."
Although Lao Du's hands were still putting paper into the fire, his eyes were fixed on the door. Soon, the sound of "hehehe" came close to the door. It sounded like someone squatting at the door, laughing eerily at the door.
I said the other party was facing the door because I heard the sound of fingernails scratching the door frame. It was clearly someone moving his hands up and down on the door frame, as if he was desperately trying to see the scene outside through the crack in the door.
When Lao Du couldn't help but turn his head to look at my face, a sneer came from far behind the door: "Hahahahaha... Mom, is Dad back? Hahahahaha..."
"Who knows?" The woman's voice was unusually sharp. "You don't know when your father will be back. What do you want him to do?"
The child's cold voice came faintly: "I want him to come back and eat meat! I haven't eaten meat for a long time..."
Lao Du's hands couldn't help but tremble. Just as he was about to say something, I quickly covered Lao Du's mouth from behind: "Don't say anything!"
My words were not addressed to Lao Du, but to Xie Wanhua who was standing on the stairs. She chose to stand on the stairs instead of standing with us because she was afraid. The distance between her and me was neither far nor close. If something happened, I would not be able to take care of her.
When Xie Wanhua covered her mouth tightly and looked at me, I heard someone on the stairs above say faintly: "Tongtong, come up, there is Rourou at your aunt's house..."
When I suddenly raised my head and looked upstairs, Xie Wanhua also leaned sideways and looked upstairs.
I was standing on a flight of stairs and saw someone stretching out a hand from the handrail and gently waving downstairs. My first reaction was "that person's hand is broken"... In her position, unless she broke her hand and put it down through the gap, it would be impossible to show her entire palm.
"Ah—" Xie Wanhua on the stairs suddenly screamed, "Upstairs... There's a ghost upstairs... She has no feet..."
"Hehe..." the woman upstairs sneered, "How do you know I have no feet? Aren't my feet here?"
While the woman was speaking, a pair of human feet with toes pointing downward appeared under the stair handrail. Soon after, a pair of dusty legs began to hang down from the gap between the stairs.
The woman upstairs seemed to have been forced down through the gap, hanging down a little bit between the two stairs. The woman's legs swayed back and forth, and she was getting closer to Xie Wanhua.
Is the ghost's target her? (To be continued)