What Ghost Story Has Frightened You for More Than Ten Years?

One of my assistants told me this story. It was about his university shijie, and it was pretty frightening.

Translator’s note: Shijie is a female senior from the same school or teacher; the male version, shixiong, shows up later.

His shijie graduated from Northeast Normal University. In the civil arts, she could play the qin, play chess, paint, and do calligraphy; in the martial arts, she could climb walls and tear tiles off roofs. Back then, she was a famous tough girl at school, and out in the jianghu, people called her Qin Erjie.

Translator’s note: Erjie means “Second Sister,” here used as a nickname. Jianghu, literally “rivers and lakes,” is the martial world of wuxia novels, used playfully.

After graduating, Qin Erjie went to one of the best elementary schools in the province. She coasted along for two years, and then her miserable life began: she became a homeroom teacher.

Lots of people think being a homeroom teacher is great. You can receive gifts, you have face, and however small the position, you’re still an official of sorts.

Actually, veteran teachers don’t want to be elementary-school homeroom teachers, especially for the lower grades. There’s a lot of work, a lot of fuss, and the kids are hard to handle. On top of that, this was one of the best elementary schools in the province. The parents were either rich or powerful, and you couldn’t afford to offend any of them.

But she had no choice. Her position was low and her words carried little weight. Even knowing it was a pit, she could only jump in. But only after taking the job did she find out that this goddamn thing was a bottomless pit!

Because in her class there was a, how should I put it, a very eerie child.

At this point, some people might laugh. She’s just a kid. How eerie could she possibly be?

Let me give you a few examples.

When the other children were in class, they all sat. She didn’t. She wanted to stand, and stand with her head tilted to one side.

Before Qin Erjie started teaching, the higher-ups had already given her a heads-up: this student had, well, a slight “ailment” of the mind, and they asked Qin Erjie to look after her a bit more.

So fine, let her stand. Qin Erjie endured it once.

She didn’t just stand, either. She let her head droop onto her shoulder, muttered something under her breath, and walked circles around her own desk. Around once, then around again.

Qin Erjie pretended not to see and endured it a second time.

After more than a dozen circles, the little girl stopped dead. Her head still drooping, she pressed her face against the face of the classmate beside her, stared straight at them, and said in a sinister voice, “Oh. You’re going to die.”

Although it was a clear child’s voice, it carried an indescribable chill and malice. Even Qin Erjie shuddered, never mind the little kid caught in that death stare, who burst into loud wailing on the spot.

Qin Erjie was a heroine among women, the kind who could have a man stand on her fist and a horse run along her arm. The third time, she couldn’t endure it anymore!

She slammed her hand down on the desk so hard the blackboard eraser on it jumped a full foot into the air, and roared, “Get back to your own seat!”

When the little girl heard her, she suddenly went still. Then she struck a very strange pose.

Half her body had been sprawled over someone else’s desk. Now her head suddenly moved. Her body stayed perfectly still in that same position, and only her head slowly turned around, a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Then she stared fixedly at Qin Erjie and went on in that icy voice, “You’re going to die. Your whole family is going to die.”

In a scene like that, even a heroine like Qin Erjie felt her heart tremble a little.

Because that little girl didn’t feel like a person. She was more like a venomous snake rearing its head, flicking a blood-red tongue, about to strike at you.

In her panic, Qin Erjie couldn’t help swearing at her: “Die, die, die! Why don’t you die?! Why don’t you go jump off the building?!”

Almost the moment the words left her mouth, the little girl spun around, shoved the desk aside, and charged out toward the corridor. She was so strong she knocked over several desks on the way.

She really was going to jump!

This was the fifth floor!

Qin Erjie lunged after her and grabbed hold of her. She felt that little body was full of strength, like a nuclear warhead. More than half of it was already hanging in the air.

The little girl stared straight down. She didn’t do anything else, and she wasn’t distressed. She simply wanted to break free and jump. Qin Erjie screamed with all her might until she brought several teachers running, and only then did they haul her back.

Qin Erjie was going crazy. She went to the principal and demanded that the school expel this student immediately, or else she’d quit!

The principal was in no hurry at all. First he poured her a cup of tea, then listened to her tearful complaints for ages, and only then did he start soothing her.

First he highly praised her conscientious, responsible attitude, then praised her spirit of self-sacrifice, and finally he held forth about the loftiness of education and the mission of teachers. After all that talk, Qin Erjie forgot what she had come for and went back thoroughly satisfied.

Only later did she find out why the school hadn’t expelled the little girl.

Her parents were both locals with a bit of a gangland background. They had a monopoly on the pork supply for one district and were small-time local bullies. The school couldn’t afford to offend them in the first place, and on top of that, the father was generous and often sent the school gifts, so the principal treated the little girl differently.

The father knew there was something wrong with his daughter, which was why he was so generous. A few days earlier, the school had held a sports meet and gone to the parents for sponsorship.

The parents were all heroes from every walk of life. Some sponsored drinks and food, some sponsored athletic gear, some sponsored sporting goods. And then this little girl’s father waved his hand grandly: he sponsored a BMW!

What did a BMW have to do with a sports meet?

Not much. But the principal accepted it with a beaming smile, and that car never once showed up at the school.

Luckily, after this incident, the little girl became a little more normal. She kept walking in circles during class, but at least she no longer pressed her face against other kids’ faces to talk.

Qin Erjie resigned herself to it. If Dad dies, Mom remarries; some things you just can’t control. As long as it didn’t affect the other students, she’d let the girl be.

A whole winter passed in this harmonious, relaxed atmosphere.

Qin Erjie had thought the little girl had finally turned normal. She never expected that the girl hadn’t mended her ways at all. She just went by the seasons.

In winter she was sluggish and didn’t like to move. Spring and summer were when she went wildest, especially in places thick with water plants. It was like a nest blowing up; you couldn’t hold her back no matter how you pulled.

Her second incident happened during the spring outing.

It was called a spring outing, but it was actually already early summer. The weather was warming up, all things were coming back to life, and the school organized a spring outing for the kids.

The kids wore their school uniforms and caps and carried little schoolbags, and they obediently went to the park to see the animals and have a picnic. It was a pretty heartwarming scene.

But that scene was soon shattered.

At a classmate’s scream, Qin Erjie rushed over in a few strides and saw the little girl stark naked, sprawled beside a puddle. Her cheeks were stuffed full, like she was chewing something, and blood squirted out between her teeth, splattering all over her face and body. She looked especially hideous.

This time, Qin Erjie was truly scared out of her wits. Without thinking, she hugged the little girl tight. Had someone beaten her?! Who had done this? Where were her clothes?!

She thought about how young the girl was, and a bit simple on top of that, and the more she thought, the sadder she felt, until tears spilled out.

Then security rushed over, and the medical staff arrived soon after. They did a quick examination, and the doctor’s face twisted.

He said there wasn’t a single injury on the little girl, and the blood on her wasn’t hers!

Qin Erjie was stunned: That’s impossible, then whose is it?!

The doctor looked disgusted: It’s from the thing in her mouth!

Qin Erjie turned her head and saw that the little girl’s mouth was still moving nonstop, as if there were something alive inside. Afraid she had eaten something filthy, Qin Erjie went over, squeezed her cheeks, and tried to dig it out.

The moment she pried the mouth open, a thick smell of blood rushed out. Then a chewed-up toad’s leg stuck out, still twitching, and stream after stream of bloody water ran down from the corners of the girl’s mouth.

Qin Erjie threw up on the spot.

Qin Erjie didn’t sleep all night. The next day, as soon as it was light, she went to the classroom and opened the little girl’s desk drawer to look.

The moment the drawer opened, a stench came out. It was full of half-gnawed rotten apples, little toads, even a filthy pair of underpants. It was practically a garbage dump.

Qin Erjie didn’t give up and kept searching, and finally she found a small black notebook.

Whenever the little girl wasn’t up to mischief, she liked to write away in it with a pencil. Qin Erjie wanted to see what on earth this little girl was studying.

The notebook was filled with lots of small characters written very neatly. The handwriting was dignified and delicate, tidy, every stroke done properly. It was very pleasing to the eye.

But Qin Erjie couldn’t read a single character.

Because what she had written wasn’t Chinese at all.

That’s right. The little girl had written very seriously and very neatly, and each one looked very much like a character, stroke by stroke, but Qin Erjie didn’t recognize any of them. And they looked very bizarre, both like characters and like some kind of symbols. Some stretches were longer, some shorter, as though she were writing a diary. It was just completely unreadable.

Qin Erjie thought it over. To hell with privacy. She took a few photos with her phone and sent them to a shixiong of hers who studied philology.

The shixiong couldn’t make out what it meant either, but he told her with certainty that it had to be a written language.

He pointed out that to judge whether these ghostly scribbles were writing, you looked for characters that showed up again and again, like the Chinese linking words de, de, and de, or “because,” “therefore,” and “as well as.” If characters like that showed up in a pattern, it meant this was a script, and a fairly mature one.

Translator’s note: The three “de” are three different characters, all pronounced de, that tie Chinese sentences together. Every schoolkid gets drilled on them.

There were lots of characters in this notebook. He looked carefully and found that some of them appeared often, so he concluded this was a special script that had never been discovered before, and judging by the number of characters, a very mature one.

He asked Qin Erjie where she had found it. This was a major discovery in philology, and he wanted to apply for a research project on it!

Qin Erjie’s head swelled up. She made up some excuse and fobbed him off.

She thought it over. This kid had probably run into something evil. No, she had to get in touch with the parents.

At first, the parents denied it every which way. Their daughter was clever as ice and snow, everyone who saw her loved her, a little pink dumpling of a baby. How could she possibly be possessed?!

Later, Qin Erjie flew into a rage too and declared that if they didn’t tell the truth, she would go to the principal and have the girl expelled, and if that didn’t work, she could always quit herself. Let’s see which teacher would dare take her then!

Only then did the mother finally tell the truth. She said they all knew their daughter had run into something evil. They had invited masters to perform rituals, but nothing had worked.

They had tried every school, and none would take her. They had only gotten her into this one by pulling enormous strings. If Teacher Qin wouldn’t keep her either, they’d have no choice but to send the little girl to a mental hospital!

As the mother poured out her troubles with tears and snot running down her face, Qin Erjie learned that the little girl was actually doing well now. Her temper used to be even more perverse. The mother gave an example: after going to the toilet, the girl never used to pull up her pants. She would drag them along and run wild around the playground with her bottom bare, saying the same thing to everyone she saw: “Oh. You’re going to die.”

Qin Erjie felt this family had it hard too, so she introduced them to a local master who was a chuma medium.

This chuma medium channeled the Yellow Immortal. As soon as the immortal came onto the medium’s body, the first thing it said was, “Oh, why is it you?”

Then it asked, “Didn’t you leave? Why are you tormenting a little girl?”

Translator’s note: Chuma, “going out on horseback,” is a northeastern Chinese folk practice in which animal immortals possess a medium. The Yellow Immortal is a weasel spirit; the Willow Immortal who appears below is a snake spirit.

The little girl, meanwhile, was acting rather manic. She swayed her head and hummed a tune no one could understand. It was a bit like Peking opera, and a bit like someone dancing to summon the gods. She hummed and sang, and no one knew what she was doing.

The great immortal was actually pretty good-tempered and seemed to know this “person.” At first it coaxed him in a soft, slow voice. Later, its voice grew lower and lower until no one could hear it clearly.

Afterward, Qin Erjie quietly asked the immortal what was actually going on.

The immortal said this little girl was just unlucky. She was atoning for her grandfather’s sins!

It said the little girl’s grandparents had been local overlords. The grandmother was a shrew and the grandfather a ferocious bandit. With one pig-butchering knife and one rolling pin, the two of them had forced their way into a monopoly on the whole town’s pork supply. They were the kind of hardened rogues who would curse Buddhas and scold gods and feared neither Heaven nor earth.

It all happened on the day her grandfather died.

By rights, in the Northeast at that time, everyone had to be cremated. But this family was notorious for being troublemakers. They insisted on a burial in the ground, and nobody dared to interfere.

Fine, if you want to bury him, bury him. Just hurry up and do it on the sly after dark. But the old woman refused. She said the old man had lived a cowed, put-upon life, and now that he was dead, he was going to get a grand, glorious funeral. She would hire several opera troupes to play and drum, and get a crowd of monks and Daoist priests to perform rites, so the old thing could depart in peace!

So on the day of the burial, several opera troupes plus a crowd of monks and Daoist priests completely blocked the country dirt road.

As they were walking along, a small sedan chair came toward them from straight ahead, moving along at a leisurely pace.

The man at its head spoke very politely. First he bowed to the deceased, then he cupped his fists in salute and said that today was the Willow Immortal’s birthday. The old lady was resting in the sedan chair and wanted to go out for a little stroll. Would they please do her the favor of clearing a path and letting the old lady pass first?

The leader’s words could be called courteous and humble, eyes lowered and all. But the moment he raised his head, that family’s old woman charged over in a few steps and gave him a huge slap across the face. It knocked him dizzy, and before he even worked out what was going on, he saw the old woman rush forward and overturn the Willow Immortal’s bridal sedan.

Of course, the two sides ended up brawling into a pot of porridge, and that was how the feud was born.

The old woman had a fiery temper, and the Willow Immortal couldn’t handle her, so it waited until the little girl went to pay respects to her grandfather, possessed her, and tormented her every which way.

Luckily, the Yellow Immortal and this Willow Immortal were old friends. They had cultivated in the same place and had a few hundred years of friendship between them, so after some kind persuasion, it finally talked the other one into leaving. From then on, the little girl would be fine.

Only then did Qin Erjie breathe a sigh of relief. Half a semester went by like that, and the little girl really did become normal. Not only did she stop circling during class, even her writing turned into Chinese characters. She even got shy when she looked at people. She had truly become a little pink dumpling everyone loved.

Her family’s business, however, plunged. First another gang of strongmen took over their pork trade, then the two sides fought and the family had to pay out a lot of money. Later they even sold their house in Changchun and were going back to their hometown.

On the day they were leaving, the little girl came back to school one last time. She walked up to Qin Erjie, looking bashful and stammering, and said she had done wrong before and wanted to formally apologize to her teacher.

Qin Erjie’s eyes grew a little hot too. Holding back tears, she crouched down to give her a hug.

The instant she hugged the little girl, she heard her say in a sinister voice right by her ear, “Teacher, let me tell you a secret. Actually ah, I was faking it the whole time!” Then she started giggling, ge ge ge.

Qin Erjie shot to her feet. Every hair on her body stood on end. She felt like she was facing a demon.

When she looked down at the little girl again, she had already gone back to how she was, like any ordinary little girl. She waved at her and skipped away.