Chapter 025 A New Story about the Ghosts

I must have seen about thirty ghosts clad in black as we left the deserted village. Among those garbed in black and looking like shadows, there were a few that wore flamboyant colors and stood out like eyesores. I don’t think they were able to see us. As they passed us by, even the lively ones didn’t spare us a glance.

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I felt my knees shake and my legs weaken as the first ones came upon us like a plague of locusts, but they walked right by. Zhao Laohei grabbed me by the arm and hoisted me up the first time I faltered. Near the edge of the village he and Granny Hong Rong were practically carrying me. They couldn’t see the throngs of dead moving past us and were unafraid.

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“Hold on to me.” Zhao Laohei whispered through clenched teeth. “I don’t know what there is, but we won’t let it hurt you.”

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When we finally reached the edge of town and left the deserted village, we walked along the path for half an hour. The main road hid behind the horizon until then and I almost cried when I saw it. The train station loomed ahead all at once and our party rushed to it. When we arrived however, we had to wait for the bus.

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Master Liu must have seen my pale face and wide eyes while we rode back to town. When we disembarked he told us to wait at a bench and disappeared. I was baffled when he reappeared from nowhere and handed me an ice cream. I ate it slowly and came back to reality.

“What was that place?” I asked.

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Master Liu looked more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him. "It is destiny. Everything happens for a reason, my boy. We will follow it some day. Many years from now we will come back here.” He looked at me gravely, “Then you will know all."

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"No. I won’t come back." I told him simply.

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When I finished my ice cream, Master Liu led us to a restaurant. We ate a meal in silence and very abruptly Master Liu bid us goodbye.

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“We were supposed to go away for five days!” I told him. “It’s only been one.”

“How can I brag to Zhao Jie and Yuan about all of our adventures if I go home today?”

Master Liu’s wise eyes fell to me. "I didn't think it would go so smoothly. We had no trouble Xiao Yong, you should be happy that it only took a day!”

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I would later come to understand the happiness he described. At the time though, it stung a little that he’d be leaving so soon.

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Before he turned to leave, Master Liu gave me an engraved piece of jade curved delicately into the image of a fat baby holding a fish. The design was crude and rough, but I loved it at once.

"Here you are, boy. Wear it! It will help treat your eyes and keep the spirits away. If you can keep the jade in good condition… well, it may be expensive some day!"

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“How do I keep it in good condition?” I asked.

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"Just wear it." He grinned.

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Master Liu smiled cordially at Zhao Laohei and Granny. He left the restaurant alone without another word. Zhao Laohei paid the bill and it made me wonder once again why Master Liu had refused Sun Sheng’s money.

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With that, Master Liu was gone. We were still quite a ways from home and our party had dropped by one. Zhao Laohei took charge and led us to the bus station. We boarded the first bus heading back to our village in silence. We rode in silence too. Granny snuffled and wiped her nose every so often. Zhao Laohei looked at me in scarce little glances and cleared his throat when I caught him doing so.

When we arrived back at my house on foot my mom leaned against the doorway to our house and whistled in surprise. “Look who made it home early!” She called with a real smile on her face.

Zhao Jie and Yuan came to our house later to mock me. “Why are you back so soon? Did you chicken out? Did you scare Master Liu away with your super eyes?”

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"Master Liu didn’t have any money so he ran away.” I told them, surprising both of them with the genuine confusion on my face. “I have no idea. I didn’t know what else to do so I came back..."

The next few weeks passed uneventfully. Master Liu had left, but the gossip about Sun Yueying and I had spread quite far. Boys and girls I didn’t know gave me fleeting glances when I played in the yard.

“New things will happen soon,” My father told me. “They’ll find something else to talk about.”

He was right. It wasn’t long before Master Liu’s name was no longer in the villagers’ realm.

After the summer holiday my parents arranged that I go to preschool. It might’ve been strange, but Zhao Jie was with me.

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Most of the children in our class were already seven. My father pulled some strings in efforts to “Get me in with the crowd.” Or so he told me.

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The school was a simple building made of adobe and stones. Villagers often rented the building for extra activities outside of school hours, so we’d sometimes find strange left overs inside after the weekends. The ceiling leaked when it rained and the teacher would cancel class if it got too wet. We went four days in a row without class that summer due to rain.

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The desks inside the school were more rustic than the building itself. Most of them weren’t desks at all, but long stone benches made of bricks and wood. Five students were assigned to each bench. Zhao Jie and I tried to sit together most of the time, but the teacher separated us every now and then because he’d make me laugh.

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I had higher scores than Zhao Jie, his attention would always fall to our classmates or he’d stare out the window while we were singing the day songs. I don’t think I was ever smarter than my friend. I think it was because my dad was a teacher and he’d make sure I reviewed what I learned after school, even if I didn’t want to.

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As a result, Zhao Jie and I didn’t get much time to play.

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I made more friends at school. Even better, I learned new stories. Over time, after what felt like months, I forgot about Master Liu. I think it’s good for children to forget some things. It is a way of letting go of trouble. I had accumulated my fair share of trouble worthy of letting go that year.

The following year I became a big boy, one of the big boys who could rule the summer and poke fun at the little kids. I was a first-grade student in primary school and man, I could not have been more proud of myself. Zhao Jie and I were moving up in the world.

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We graduated from the pre-school building with its shoddy tables and upgraded to first grade chairs and desks. The grade school was in much better condition.

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When I started the first grade, my mother reminded me that Master Liu would come back that summer. He had told me that he would come back to visit with a gift. I’ll admit now that I was more interested in a gift than the vaguely forgotten Master Liu, but I hardly consider myself worthy of blaming. I was seven after all.

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In the spring of 1995 something happened in our village that very quickly become a hot topic for mealtime gossip.

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A traffic accident occurred on the main road at one of the sharper turns up the mountain. Drivers that were familiar with the region knew it to be particularly dangerous, but because of that most everyone avoided the path.  

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This road was built after the liberation in 1992. Similar to most of the roads at the time, it was simple gravel composite. We hadn’t begun to pave the mountain roads yet Tractors loaded with mineral ore were the only vehicles that ever made their way to Shanxi Province by mountain. The tractors could turn over the sharp turns and steep slopes easily though.

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In the spring of 1995, it rained more than usual and the road became extraordinarily muddy. Any expert driver knew not to shift into neutral or clap on the brakes when going downhill.

The driver was a young man who lacked experience. He was going too fast around the curve and must not have been familiar with the gears.

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When the brake didn’t work he shifted forward, but felt his hand stop when the stick didn’t move. He looked through the windshield and saw the tractor rolling downhill at a horrible speed. Then he saw the turn moving towards him. He cranked the wheel and watched the tires turn. He had a second to hope, only an instant, that the tread would catch. Instead the tractor slid easily on the muddy road giant tires shied away from the drop as if afraid of it.

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Many tractors had gone that way and never came close to the edge. The one that did, however, was made of sheet iron. The soft, thin, red metal was crumpled and torn to pieces as it went over. The machine flew out over a ten-meter drop. Two other boys, who had been accompanying their friend on a fine day’s work, woke with a sudden fright in the back end of the tractor cabin. One of the boys considered jumping out of the window. He chose a side at random, the right one that was closer to the road, and pushed it open in a frenzy. He had his head out the window, checking to see how much time was left, when the tractor rolled.

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The hard sound of metal meeting rock countered a sickening one of people meeting metal as the machine vaulted down the hill.

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The windows surrounding the cabin were quickly stained with blood and then shattered, releasing the cries of the boys within.

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The crushed cabin, engine compartment, and newly separated wheel wells came to rest at the base of the mountain. When it stopped moving two of the three men were still inside.

The driver was lodged under the seat covered in scratches and bruises but mostly unharmed. The other was unconscious where the steering wheel had been, one leg sticking out at an unnatural angle.

The boy who had tried to jump from the window lay upside down against a large rock just behind where the tractor came to rest. His feet stuck ungainly into the air and blood still pumped into the grass from where his head had been before the tractor merged with the hillside, crushing the boy’s screaming face as it went.

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