Chapter 4: Totem

The young people always have a kind of inexplicable sense of admiration for the people who started from nothing, but successful, of course, I am no exception, but I can not get too close to the current Zhao Bashi. This point is of course to take care of my father's feelings, think about it, when the brother is now mixing too much better than their own, coupled with Zhao Bajie once with my mother's engagement, if I am with Zhao Bajie too close to the words of my father may be very embarrassing.

Other things aside, back to my grandfather's things, in order to not let my grandmother to see, placed my grandfather's remains of that a house was locked, usually my father will go in to change a ice cube or something, this is going to be the seventh day, the night time our family will discuss my grandfather's remains of tomorrow's funeral things.

I've been to a funeral before. Out of the coffin, this is the whole village knows the matter, so tomorrow's funeral can only be carried out in secret, not to mention that tomorrow's this funeral with other people's different, grandpa can not put on the birthday suit, can only put on the usual clothes he wears, and in the day of my grandpa's death has been put on the birthday suit, tomorrow will inevitably have to go through a undressing and then dressing process, to the old people through the delivery of the old clothes understand that the remains of the body in ice preserved for a week, had become so stiff that undressing and dressing was very difficult.

This is not to mention, this secret mourning is to be carried out in no one's time, then can only choose the morning when everyone did not get up or at night when everyone has gone to bed, and our side has a noon not funeral sunset not mourning rules, so the old man is ready to say that is to choose the early morning mourning, by me and he went to the ground to dig a pit, and then to the other side of the graves can be leveled, the general direction of the matter is so fixed! The general direction of the matter was thus set.

This day, is the seventh day after grandpa passed away, if according to grandpa's notes, this day will be the seventh day of grandpa's life, this night grandpa will return to his soul, but at this time grandpa's body is still present in my home, this feeling is very strange, of course, I'm not afraid, if I can see grandpa again, even if it's a ghost, is also considered to satisfy my heart's desire, grandpa for the missing Li Erdan Grandpa worried about the lost Li Erdan for the whole second half of his life, and gave me all his love and affection. But I didn't see him one last time before he died, which is my regret.

Because early tomorrow morning my old man and I will send away my grandfather's body, tonight I slept early, I am a person who has a habit of locking the door before going to bed, this may be because of the lack of security in my bones.

Before I went to bed, I thought that if I could really see my grandpa tonight, then I would definitely have to have a good talk with him, maybe it was because of the daydreaming and nightdreaming, after I went to bed, I really dreamt about my grandpa.

In the dream, my grandfather opened the door to my room, a smoke, I saw this old figure, he just stood at the door of my room quietly looking at me, I was not afraid in the dream, and even asked him to come in and sit on the edge of my bed.

"No, Grandpa just won't get too close to you, it's not good for you." Grandpa said.

I looked at this old man who seemed to be distant from me, my heart was so hard that I called out, "Grandpa."

"San two ah, don't be sad, grandpa is gone, I just came to explain you, bury that erhu with me, some other day that old friend of mine really came, also know that I didn't forget him, there is also that grandpa's back is itchy, can you help grandpa scratch itch? Just like when I was a child?" Grandpa asked me.

"OK." After I said that I sat up to go and scratch grandpa like I did when I was a child, when I put on my slippers, I saw grandpa laughing at me, laughing while backing up, I wanted to chase him but I couldn't catch up with him.

I was very anxious in my dream, suddenly my feet were empty, I felt like I had fallen off a cliff, this woke me up to realize that I had actually fallen out of bed, I looked at my phone and realized that it was already two in the morning, and the time I had agreed to with my old man was three o'clock, so I wasn't going to go back to sleep.

That's when I looked up and saw that the door to my room, which I had unlocked before I went to bed, was wide open at some point.

This sent a slight chill down my back.

Read my grandfather's notes actually kind of subverted one of my outlook on life, but I'm not sure that my grandfather said in the notes above the demons and ghosts is not true, thirty or forty years ago, when people's knowledge is limited to a lot of things that do not understand to ghosts and monsters, after all, I have never seen a ghost, can not say that ghosts and such things are really exist.

But now let me have a kind of illusion, just now I dreamed that my grandfather opened the door to my room, is it really open, or just my dream? If it was a dream, why was the door to my unlocked room strangely opened?

This question sent chills down my spine, and in the end, I could only explain to myself that I might have misremembered, and that I hadn't actually closed the door to my room during last night, or else? I hadn't at least seen my grandfather while I was now absolutely awake, had I?

I just sat still and played with my phone for a while, I clicked on my email, a strange email from that deceased person from my grandpa's early days seemed to be a guidance for me, now that 7 days had passed, what if another guidance email had been sent?

But no, the mailbox is in there are unread emails, there are seeds sent by the kind owner, and there is also the feedback of my job search, there is just no email from the mysterious person, which undoubtedly makes me very disappointed, I just rambled on, and then I couldn't help but to think that if I hadn't followed the email's words and buried my grandfather on the normal three days, with a coffin and wearing a life jacket, something unexpected would have happened, what would have happened?

It was a curiosity that I was even tempted to try, and of course, I wanted to ask the man for the answer.

I recovered that email, and afterward sent this sender's information to my classmate in the computer science department, who must be up right now, and I left him a message saying to check this sender's location information for me. I invited him to dinner when I was done, yes, I was going to confirm our suspicions and find the person who sent this email.

After doing this, my father and mother also got up, they do not say that they sleep in separate beds, but the two people usually have very little communication, my mother gave a good meal we simply ate, my grandmother sent a grandpa usually can't wear the clothes, this is a Tang suit, the previous gift to grandpa from others, satin material feel very delicate, my father took the clothes and pushed my grandmother back to the room.

It wasn't that she was afraid of the remains, but that he would be sad.

Opened the door of that room, saw my grandfather's remains quietly tripping on the ice, I exhaled a breath, afraid that in these seven days, my grandfather's remains itself changed in some way, after all, I also read too many ghost novels, plus the influence of that email, I just feel that the world is full of ghosts and zombies and so on.

Luckily it was fine.

Pop took off the birthday suit that Grandpa was wearing and greeted me to help me put on that tunic, and that's when I thought of a dream I had just a few hours ago, where Grandpa wanted me to tickle him, but he was getting farther and farther away from me as I got up.

"Dad, turn Grandpa over." I said to my old man.

"Eh?" He asked.

"I just had a dream about my grandpa, and he said he wanted that erhu buried with him, and for me to tickle him, like when I was a kid." Looking at my grandfather's quiet face, his face has a kind of iron blue color because of the long time of death, my heart and unusually hard.

Pops did not say anything, quiet grandfather turned around sort of lying down, I touched the grandfather's cold back, gently help him scratch the itch, while scratching while he said: "Grandpa, after the back itchy, but also look for me, I help you scratch."

I give grandpa scratching is just a psychological comfort, can scratch how much?

However, just after I scratched a few times, grandpa's back, which was a bit white next to the ice, suddenly reddened, and with the reddening, a totem-like pattern gradually appeared on his skin.

I blinked for a moment thinking I had misread it, and the movement of my hands stopped, but as soon as it did, the pattern disappeared.

I continued to scratch a few times, and this time I was sure that I was not mistaken, on Grandpa's back, a pattern really did appear! His back flushed red with just a casual scratch, and there was a strange black lotus pattern amongst the red color, like a bizarre tattoo!

"Dad, look!" I exclaimed to my old man in amazement.