[Netherworld's Notes] Night talk about sprites (1)

[eyes open]

The memory of the three-year-old is condensed and devoid of the essentials. From the height of immaturity, everything becomes grand and broad.

At that time, I lived in a place called Zi Zhi St., which was far away from the main road of the city. There were no trees on the roads leading in all directions. Except for the scattered dwellings, the rest of the vacant land was farmland and sheep herding. pasture. My grandmother's house is a two-story single-family house. The house is at the entrance of the alley. Outside the red iron gate and behind the fence, there are endless rice fields.

The neighbors lacked children of the same age, so I often stood alone on the thatched mound with a dozen bleating sheep in the background.

[spring]

In the early spring, the dry and cracked land of Inada began to introduce green water from the irrigation ditches. Standing on the edge of Inada, looking down at the earth greedily sucking in the water waves, people couldn’t help but feel thirsty, as if hearing joy from a distance. Laughter, whistling like an air flute of boiling water.

Following the source of the sound, a few transparent feet were running on the field after the soil was loosened with the vague air.

In the evening, three or five farmers on the field ridge were resting and chatting, with their dark fingers holding the lit cigarette, the white smoke was as soft as silk, the feet in the distance stopped, and the toes turned to this side, and after a while, they started Running towards the farmer, running and running out of his calf, brown ripped trousers, beige short-sleeved cloth, arms, palms, neck, head, and the hair on his head is shaved very short, only green marks can be seen.

The two boys seem to have eyebrows and eyes, but they are very flat, like dolls drawn on paper.

They gathered in front of the field ridge and puffed out their mouths, blowing the cigarette between the farmers' fingers.

Wow, where is the little brother from? It's amazing. I wonder.

The peasants looked at each other for a moment, and invariably left the cigarettes on the ridge together, as if nothing had happened, quickly packed up the ploughing machinery and tools, and left.

This obscurity and blindness made me even more curious, and regarded the daily waiting at the gate as an extra but interesting piece of investigative work.

[summer]

On the summer solstice, the luxuriant paddy fields reflect the sky, and the little brothers will always appear in the afternoon. They happily run around the fields laughing and running.

A student sent a box of peaches to my grandfather. The peaches were round and full, with a pale yellow and pink gradation, and the fragrance was overflowing. My grandmother picked the largest one for me, and the precipitation fruit almost overflowed my hands. I happily held the new toy, threw it high, and then caught it. I played all the way from the house to the gate, and suddenly I stumbled on my foot. , The thrown peaches rolled onto the industrial road in front of the door, and the side of the road next to the field was a vertical angle with a drop, so the peaches rolled down the field without turning back.

Seeing the picture of the peaches disappearing on the spot, I was so frightened that my heart almost stopped working. I wanted to cry, but I was not reconciled. I walked to the roadside and looked at the wet black mud in the paddy field. Where is the trace of the peaches?

At this moment, the shrieking laughter came from far to near with the wind. I looked up and looked at the opposite Ina seedlings, and stood one of the little brothers. He raised his hand faintly and pointed to a muddy place on the side of the field. Lying down cautiously, he pressed his body against the warm road, lowered his head and stretched his arms vigorously, trying to fish out the peaches.

It's a pity that he has small hands and short hands. No matter how hard he tried, he didn't even touch the surface of the water.

"What are you doing?"

Grandma's voice came from behind.

"The peach fell into the field..." As if waking up from a big dream, I struggled to get up, looked at my grandmother and said, "...I can't get it."

"Good peaches will fall too?! I told you not to take them out and play with them...... Say, where in the field?"

"There." Pointing to a place below, I answered with certainty.

"Did you see clearly? Don't talk about it casually." Grandma said while looking down at the field, trying to identify the location of the peach.

"It's not casual, the little brother saw it clearly, and only told me..."

"Little brother? What kind of brother is there then?"

"There are... two little brothers, there." Pointing to the place where the younger brother was standing, I still answered with certainty.

Grandma looked around, and the boundless sea of rice seedlings was peaceful under the bright afternoon sun.

Except for our grandparents at this moment,

no one else,

Only the slight grass waves carried by the wind caressed past his ears.

At the location I mentioned, my grandmother really found the peach. She frowned and picked me up into her own courtyard. The bright red tin gate closed behind us, which also covered the light from the fields.

[Autumn]

At the beginning of autumn, the flower spikes on the awns form clusters of grains, the crowded clumps are dark green carpets, and the full-bodied Ina valleys are three-dimensional gold double-sided embroidery on the carpet.

The incense in the field attracted the beautiful damselfly. I chased the insects smaller than the dragonfly on the ridge, and lightly caught their wings that were parked on the stalk with my fingers, and then showed them to squatting in the distance. Look at the little brother on Injian, when they got up and ran, the wind was loud, and the colorful damselflies were really beautiful.

Every afternoon, I sneak out. If I meet my little brother on the industrial road, we will play together until the evening. They will always be on the top of the waves and never cross the border and cross the road, so it is not so much "together" "Playing" might as well say that I follow them shamelessly.

The farmers who patrol the paddy fields often put a stick of incense at the beginning of the ridge. Although I didn’t understand what it meant when I was young, I knew why the fire on the top of the incense burnt down so quickly, because the little brothers He is puffing out his cheeks and blowing and playing.

[winter]

In the early winter, the harvesters and threshing machines were still working on the land that had already been drained. The precious grains symbolized the fruit of a bumper harvest. After about two weeks, only the dry yellow barley stalks remained in the whole mu of land.

Looking at the endless dry land, the sheep in the pasture next door could not wait to walk into the field one after another.

[Ah, I can finally go into the fields, and the sheep are fine, so I can't do it? ] I thought happily.

The more adults talk about the places they can't go, the more worried they are. The attraction of the new world is greater than all fears for a three-year-old child, and this time he can play with his little brother at close range. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages. It's okay to catch me.

The soil mixed with the smell of indica washed away between the wads of dry indica stalks. The sky was wide and the earth was wide. I was walking up and down in the field. The wind was blowing from all directions, accompanied by whistling laughter, little brother. Their figures appeared in front of them, and they had a dim and hazy luster, creating a very abrupt contrast with the fresh tones around them.

That twilight looks like the sky before the northwest rain will come.

This is also the only color on the little brothers.

The feet on the field were still running, the owner of the feet flickered like a translucent watermark, the clothes and trousers hung on the dilapidated body and drifted in the wind, the lines were rough, and even the face was cloudy and out of focus.

However, I don't know why I can feel the mouth on my little brother's flat face.

And the mouth cracked left and right, smiling to the roots of the ears.

This was different from the usual mild feeling, and I suddenly took two steps back.

The wind went and returned, and my feet started running towards me with a screeching whistle.

Driven by the "instinctive response of small animals", I turned around and ran, on the dry and cracked land, among the scattered rice stalks, escaping for my life.

The fields are constantly widening under my feet, the surrounding houses are gone, and even the flocks have disappeared. The space is unfamiliar and depressing. I try to identify the direction to go home, but every point of view is the same and repeated. It's the rhythm of getting lost.

I was panicked and scared.

Suddenly I stumbled on my foot, and my whole body flew out. I saw that I quickly propped up my body with my hands before I was stunned by the rice stalks. The dried rice stalks in the ground pierced into my palms like hard-shelled straws. Pain, and started a new round of running away in the screaming laughter.

"Xiaotong, Xiaotong, come back!"

A shout broke the status quo.

"Mother......" I seemed to fall into the water, and the whole person shuddered.

In an instant, everything came back, the fields were still fields, the surrounding houses were still sparse, the sheep baa baa slipped from the pasture into the fields and nibbled the rice stalks leisurely, and the grandmother walked down anxiously from the other end of the field, bumping from the rice stalks. When I came over, I stood there stupidly, still in shock.

Originally, when my grandmother saw me sneaking into the field from the balcony on the second floor, she thought that I was just having fun and would come back when I had enough. He ran like crazy in circles, and then fell blood on his hands, got up and ran wildly, running with a dirty and frightened face, it didn't seem like he was having a good time, he was clearly running for his life.

She went downstairs out of the yard and went straight to the road. She glanced at the fields. There was a strange atmosphere in the air. She suddenly remembered what I once mentioned to her about "playing with my little brother." The nickname, fortunately, stopped everything like "ghost hitting the wall".

And I left a scar on my left palm near my wrist, and since then it seems like a switch has been turned on, and I can see "probably from another world" fantasy things.

Other stories are documented in the following articles in a timeline:

[The realm of the bardo]

There is a dark red tinted iron gate under the tree. When you walk in, there is an atrium. On the left is the district health clinic run by the municipal government, and on the right are two rows of old cement bungalows with opposite doors. Layers of peeling off, from white to yellow and then from yellow to black, under such "annual rings", it seems that generations have been sent away in life and death. It's like looking out through the gorgeous world, only to find that this life is just a piece of bad foil left over by time.

[fourth room]

My parents' home is in the countryside, and the apartment they live in is the tallest building in the neighborhood. At night, there are few street lights, and all the scenery is hidden in the dark. From the outside, the apartment looks like an island on the sea.