“What the hell do you mean, she’s possessed?”
Su Dawei yanked his arm out of Zhu Chunjuan’s grasp, his face full of impatience. His dry fingers leisurely rolled the hand-rolled tobacco between them.
He struck a match. It flared with a hiss, and he lit the cigarette. After taking a deep, hard drag, he snorted a cloud of white smoke through his nose in disdain.
“That dead girl just doesn’t want to get married. She put on that whole act of playing crazy right in front of us on purpose! Does she really think that throwing a tantrum and rolling around on the ground is going to scare me? Bullshit!”
“But… but you saw what happened yourself.”
Zhu Chunjuan still felt a chill crawling up her back. She pressed herself shamelessly against Su Dawei’s warm body again.
“You and Hong Qing are both grown men, and you could barely hold down one little girl… She was unbelievably strong!”
With a click, Su Dawei reached over and pulled the lamp cord by the bed.
The room plunged into darkness.
In the blackness, only the stub of the cigarette between Su Dawei’s lips glowed on and off. Its scarlet ember wavered in midair, like a ghostly eye blinking ominously in the dark.
Zhu Chunjuan stared at that red glow, her skin crawling. She wanted nothing more than to reach out and snuff the cigarette out herself.
But she was afraid Su Dawei would get angry and beat her, so she could only swallow hard and pretend her throat was itchy, coughing twice.
“I told you, she was just putting on a ghost act!” Su Dawei blew out a smoke ring, then suddenly gave a mocking, ominous laugh. He deliberately taunted her. “What is it? You haven’t really been doing something shameful behind my back, have you? Is that why you’re scaring yourself half to death?”
That woman needed to be taught a lesson.
You had to be ruthless to keep your footing!
At his words, Zhu Chunjuan’s heart lurched up into her throat.
“N-no, of course not!” she stammered, hurriedly defending herself. “Husband, you know me. I’m at the stove all day long. What could I possibly have to feel guilty about?”
“If you haven’t, then go to sleep. Stop imagining things all day.”
“Oh…”
That was what he said, but guilt gnawed at her. Another layer of cold sweat broke out across her back. She didn’t dare say another word; she could only cling to Su Dawei’s back like a dog-skin plaster, forcing herself to close her eyes.
Fortunately, Su Dawei was tired after a day of farm work. He soon finished his last drag, ground the cigarette butt out on the edge of the bed, and turned over to lie flat on his back. Before long, thunderous snores filled the room.
Listening to his heavy snoring, Zhu Chunjuan felt her anxious heart settle a little. Before she knew it, she too had drifted off.
But she had barely fallen asleep when…
In the darkness, Zhu Chunjuan suddenly felt a bone-chilling gust of wind whistling up from beneath the bed.
Then, half asleep, she thought she felt a pair of wet hands, dripping with icy water, slowly, ever so slowly, crawling up over the edge of the bed.
They carried the foul, fishy stench of the riverbed as they inched toward her.
Zhu Chunjuan shuddered in her sleep, still desperately trying to reassure herself: It’s a dream… This has to be a dream! Ignore it. If I ignore it, those hands will disappear on their own in a moment!
Well, wouldn’t you know it? As soon as she thought that, the sensation of wet hands clinging to the edge of the bed vanished as if it had never been there.
Whew…
Zhu Chunjuan silently let out a long breath of relief.
But just as she had let her guard down, she suddenly realized something was wrong.
Su Dawei’s scorching body, which had been pressed tightly against her back, had somehow become as cold as a block of ice.
Zhu Chunjuan jolted, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.
“H-husband…” Summoning her courage, she shakily reached back and felt for Su Dawei.
The moment she touched him, the blood in her veins froze…
What her hand met wasn’t the warm body of a living person.
It was a set of clothes soaked through with freezing river water. She could even feel slimy strands of waterweed clinging to them.
Water was seeping through the fabric and onto her, drip, drip, drip.
That wet, icy sensation burrowed straight into her bones!
Just then, a hollow, mournful voice she knew all too well whispered right against her ear:
“Little sister… The water’s so cold… Come here. Come keep your older sister company…”
As the mournful ghostly wail rang out, an ice-cold dead hand suddenly clamped around the back of Zhu Chunjuan’s neck.
Boom—
Zhu Chunjuan felt her heart stop completely.
Terror made her scalp explode with gooseflesh. She let out an inhuman shriek, twisted around, and opened her eyes.
The bleak moonlight shone through the crack in the window onto the bed.
The person lying beside her wasn’t Su Dawei at all. Somehow, sometime, he had turned into her own older sister, Zhu Xiuxiu—the one who had drowned!
Her face was swollen and rotting from soaking in the river, its skin the grayish-white peculiar to the dead. Her eyes bulged as she stared at Zhu Chunjuan, her gaze venomous and unrelenting.
“AAAH!”
The thread in Zhu Chunjuan’s mind called reason snapped with a sharp pop.
Her sheer terror instantly turned into a desperate will to survive.
No!
She couldn’t die!
Why should she die?
Zhu Chunjuan had a man and a son now, and soon she’d have more bride-price money than she could ever spend. She was about to start living the good life!
She didn’t want to die…
If I could push you into the river and kill you once back then, I can kill you a second time today!
“I’ll strangle you! I’ll strangle you, you shameless bitch who just won’t stay dead!”
The next second, Zhu Chunjuan sprang up like a mad dog and flipped onto her “older sister,” straddling her. Her hands became iron pincers as she clamped them around the person’s throat and squeezed with all her strength, her face twisted into a vicious grimace.
In reality—
Su Dawei had been sleeping soundly, snoring away, when he suddenly felt a tremendous force lock around his neck. He couldn’t draw breath and nearly choked to death on the spot.
He snapped his eyes open and looked by the moonlight.
His wretched wife, Zhu Chunjuan, was straddling him, her hair hanging loose. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she gritted her teeth and strangled him, muttering curses in a daze.
That woman was clearly trying to murder her own husband!
Su Dawei’s eyes rolled back as she choked him. His face turned purplish red, and a gurgling sound came from his windpipe.
In desperation, he clenched his huge fists and dealt Zhu Chunjuan several heavy blows to the head.
“L-let… go…” Su Dawei cursed furiously. “You stupid woman!”
“Ow!”
The blows to Zhu Chunjuan’s head made her cry out in pain, finally jolting her awake from the nightmare.
She slowly opened her eyes. When she saw what was in front of her, she went completely blank.
What was going on?
She had just been desperately strangling that water ghost—her older sister. So why was the person beneath her, with her hands locked around his throat, Su Dawei?
“Get the hell off me!”
While Zhu Chunjuan was stunned, Su Dawei roared. He thrust his hips and hurled her off the bed, sending her crashing to the floor like a torn sack.
“Cough, cough… Hah… hah…” Su Dawei clutched the two deep, purplish-red nail marks on his neck and greedily gulped in breath after breath.
Before he could even catch his breath, the furious Su Dawei sprang out of bed, raised his thick foot, and kicked Zhu Chunjuan square in the face.
“You shameless bitch! You’ve gone too far! Trying to murder your own husband, are you?”
“AAH—” The kick sent blood gushing from Zhu Chunjuan’s nose. She sprawled on the ground and slid half a meter.
When she opened her mouth, a mouthful of bloody spit mixed with broken teeth came out.
“Husband… no, Su Dawei, I didn’t!” Zhu Chunjuan clutched his leg, scrambling over to him on hands and knees and sobbing as she tried to explain, heedless of the pain in her face. “I… I was just having a nightmare…”
“A dream? Bullshit!” Su Dawei ignored her and kicked her in the ribs again and again. “Are you trying to copy that little money-losing brat and pull some spirit-possession stunt? Huh? Or have you got some bastard on the side and want to kill me so you can go sneak around with him? I’ll beat you to death, you whore!”