I said, "You're drunk, and you threw up on my friend. Go home quickly. Otherwise, you'll be in trouble with my friend."
"Ah? I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She smiled apologetically and said, "I'm really sorry. I've been dealing with a lot of nasty stuff lately, so I have to drink to numb myself."
Then, suddenly, she pointed at me and said: "Hey, I know you."
" You know me?" I looked her.
After thinking for a few moments, the woman said, "You lived with your master, and my family lived diagonally across from your house."
"Is it?" I looked at the woman carefully, and recognized her from the small mole on her chin. I was pleased to say: "Lei Qiaoqiao?"
"Yes."
She said: "It's me, it's me."
I laughed.
As a child, I used to play with her. There was a mole on her chin, and she always said that it was a beauty mole.
Later I found out that a beauty mole was in the middle of the eyebrows; her mole was called a foodie mole.
When we grew up a little, she went to another to go to high school. We hadn't been in touch for many years, until unexpectedly meeting now.
Her character was very cheerful. Her laugh was even more cheerful.
Everyone says women should be smiling. In fact, a laughing girl at one's home is a treasure.
What sadness a man feels to see this kind of smile suddenly disappear without a trace.
She asked me, "Shui, what are you doing here?"
I said I opened a tattoo parlor here. My main business is called Yin and Yang Tattoos.
I recited my advertisement and said: "Yin and Yang Tattoos, tattoos of Yin and Yang. Riches in life or death; safe travel. If you have friends who are troubled by ghosts, tell me, and I can help."
"Is it so powerful?" She asked me.
I laughed: "We both know each other. You know my master was a master of Yin and Yang Tattoos. So am I... Our Yin and Yang Tattoos are very magical."
She clapped her hands and said to me, "Hah, Shui, I am depressed these days. I always feel haunted."
"Have you ever met a ghost?" I asked her.
She said, "Yes, every time I walk down the street, I always feel like I'm being followed."
"And then?" I asked her.
She said that when it rained the day before yesterday, she turned round and found a woman in a big red dress looking at her.
She had an old paper umbrella.
I knew about these oiled paper umbrellas. A long time ago they used to have oiled paper umbrellas. Now that technology was better and fiber cloth umbrellas were common, oiled paper umbrellas were almost entirely phased out. You only ever saw them as props in period films.
"What did that woman look like?" I asked her.
She said: "I could not see clearly, but I could see her eyes. She looked at me with very hateful eyes."
"Have you offended anyone?" I asked her.
She shook his head and said, "No."
Then she frowned slightly and said, "No, really."
"Really?" I asked her: "Don't lie to me."
In fact, I felt she was not very sly. This woman, after all, was a funny person, was very joyful; I felt it.
She didn't lie often.
I said, "Common on, it's written all over your face that you're lying. Say it straight. Let's say something real, OK?"
"I can't cheat you. But this thing? I really can't talk about it." She covered her abdomen and said timidly, lest I would be angry.
However, hearing her say "I really can't talk about it" subconsciously made me think of the ghost house matter.
Liao Min often said, "I can't talk about it."
Was Lei Qiaoqiao also one of the few people involved with those ghost houses?
Wasn't that a coincidence?
I hurriedly took out the picture of the ghost house from my pocket and studied the faces of the seven women. She wasn't in it.
Fortunately, she was nothing to do with the ghost house, so I was relieved.
I continued to persuade her and said that there was nothing to hide.
Suddenly, Feng Chunsheng rushed over: "Damn it. I washed my hair for a long time. There is still a very disgusting stench. I demand that you compensate me for my spiritual loss."
I quickly stopped him: "Cut it out. It was an accident."
Seeing he was angry, she also hurriedly bowed, "sorry, sorry. I really wasn't in control just then, I didn't do it intentionally."
When she spoke, Feng Chunsheng suddenly fell on his butt and crawled away from her, desperately clawing at the ground with his hands as if her apology was a very terrible thing.
"What's the matter? Is she going to eat you?" I pulled Feng Chunsheng.
He raised his hand, pointing to her and said: "She... Behind her, there's a woman… She's carrying a woman in red clothes."
Hearing, plus knowing she recently started noticing strange things, I immediately became afraid. She had just told me that the creepy woman who used an oiled paper umbrella was dressed in red clothes.
How can this be?
I slowly turned around, wanting to see if the red-clothed woman was behind her.
I looked back and found that she was squatting on the ground, holding her head, and something indeed flashed red behind her.
The red flash disappeared too fast. I could not see whether it was a woman, but it was really weird.
I helped Feng Chunsheng up. "The red dress woman is gone. She's gone."
"This is very weird." He was a little shaken up.
Lei Qiaoqiao was squatting on the ground, shivering: "No, how can I be carrying a woman around? The woman in the red dress just keeps following me."
I grabbed her and said: "it's OK, really OK."
She was in shock and kept mumbling, seeming to comfort herself.
Feng Chunsheng pulled me aside and said, "This woman is very weird. I won't give her trouble, and you let her go quickly! Normal ghosts are very difficult to reveal. If revealed, she'll be even fiercer than the female ghost from the ghost house, on account of too much grievance."
"Is that true?" I looked to him: "If we don't help her, what happens to her?"
"What about her? She's dead." He asked me: "Do you know why there is a custom of the first seventh day from the day of death?"
In our rural country area, basically everyone observed the first seventh day custom.
It meant that, after death, the coffin had to be sealed on the same day, and after seven days the coffin was to be opened to scrub the body clean. Then the coffin was resealed in a funeral.
I said I knew. The old people said that ghosts will look at their relatives after seven days. It was called 'back soul day'.
Feng Chunsheng smiled coldly: "You just know a little. Why is it the first seventh day, and not the first eighth? A long time ago, it was said this ghost harmed people after seven days. Six days ahead, it sticks to you, but on the seventh day, it will certainly do harm."
When a person died, his or her family members would put them into the coffin and leave the coffin at home for seven days. It was thought that if the person did not die in a natural way, they would have enough time to take out their resentment in seven days. After that, the family members would clean the body and bury it.
He said: "The female ghost is in this woman's back, it possessed her. In no more than seven days, she will die, no doubt."
"So weird?" I said.
He smiled coldly: "In the ghost business there are many rules. I knew few, but there are too many things I do not know. You have to learn. Quickly, let this woman go."
I said with a bitter smile: "I can't let her go."
"Why?" He asked me.
I said, "She is my childhood friend, my neighbor, Lei Qiaoqiao."
"What?" He shouted loudly, then sat on the ground, shook his head, and sighed, "Alas, ever since I met you, it has been a bloody hell. You love to help your friends, so I guess, this time, you have to help too."
I smiled and said to him, "Brother Chun, don't be so upset. We can settle this thing."
"Settle? Bullshit." He said, "No matter who meets this thing, they will die. You go and ask her how many days she has been haunted by the red woman."
I walked over to her. Her mood had slightly eased by now. I asked her, "For how many days have you been haunted by that female ghost?"
"How many days?" She thought for a while: "Five days."
"Five days?"
I trembled in my heart.
According to Feng Chunsheng, the ghost would take its revenge on the seventh day. After midnight will be the sixth day. If she did not clean up the female ghost on her back tomorrow, then she would die.
I was in a hurry. Suddenly, she broke out a strange laugh: "Heehee."
I was startled by the laughter and looked up quickly. I felt her face, I couldn't see clearly. She seemed to suddenly become very terrible.
She giggled and sang a nursery rhyme.