This story takes place in Malgou.
Maergou used to be called Maoergou, and it is one of the weirdest places in our area.
Maoergou used to be the territory of wild cats and dead dogs. It was a depression in the woods of Dabei Mountain. Wild cats and dogs would gather there when they were about to die. The ground was full of bones and dried dogs. The rotten hair and skin.
Later, Maoergou became a circle of wild graves. During the famine years, many people died and were dumped there. Everyone shouted and called it "Ma'ergou".
The name has changed, but the haunting rumors have not. Malgou is too dead, especially in foggy days. People often hear wild cats meowing, and the sound of the meowing sound sends air-conditioning down the spine of the person who makes it, which is very scary.
The old people say that it is the spirit of a wild cat, and I am afraid that there will be a new doll grave in Malgou.
Usually at this time, every household will lock the doors and windows, hang a copper bell on the door frame, and wrap up all the children under the age of thirteen in white and black quilts. This night He won't turn off the lights. It is said that only in this way can the meowing spirit be hidden and nothing will happen to the child.
Later, the surrounding villages all had such a common rule - the bones in Maergou could not be moved, and the wild cats in Maergou could not be beaten.
Actually, there is another one: children under the age of thirteen must wear a copper bell and have a domestic cat as their godfather.
Why do this? This is a saying passed down from our ancestors, "A yellow chicken is not as good as a fierce dog barking, and a fierce dog is not as good as a black cat's urine." It refers to animals like cats, which have a spiritual spirit that can penetrate life and death and connect yin and yang. The master who came out of the underworld.
Is it that big that he walked out from under the nose of the Lord of Hell?
Anyone who is cared about by the Lord of Hell will not live long. This cat is the King of Hell in the underworld, and he specializes in collecting lonely ghosts wandering around in the underworld.
If a child under one year old cries at night, in addition to worshiping the "Crying Night Master", he will also go to the house of a black cat in the village to borrow cat urine and wipe the child's Tianling Cap with fresh cat urine.
It is said that the yin energy of cat urine will cover the yang energy of children, so that little ghosts will not disturb them.
Of course, these are some popular sayings among the people, but no matter how advanced society is, people’s fear and awe of the unknown will never disappear.
I grew up listening to the legend of Maoergou. This incident brought a lot of shadow to my childhood, so that until now, I never see cats (especially pure black cats). ) will feel furious.
The story I am going to tell you is the most evil one among all the legends about Maoergou.
The thing is like this -
In those years, there was not enough crop land, so some people went to clear up wasteland in the valley, not far from Maoer Valley.
Before liberation, several serious battles were fought in that mountain ridge, and there are still fortifications left in the ravine. During the land reclamation, some people dug up some rusty boxes of gun shell casings and muted land mines (we fought land mine wars there).
These things were basically sold as scrap metal, and no one thought it was strange. There is only one thing that scares people when they see it -
Someone dug up a pile of bones in that ravine.
At first, everyone thought that these were all people who died in the war, so they still had some respect. After lighting incense and burning paper money, they buried them again and erected a monument.
But it is not the usual marble tablet inscribed with the words "Loving father XX, filial son and filial grandson XX" in the cemetery, but a warning tablet carved with the words "Heroes sleep forever, no one can enter". .
This is nothing, the strange thing is that since the bones were exhumed, the crop land has been deserted, and no crops have grown again.
What’s even more weird is that some people who come back from other places on their night journey and take a shortcut in the ravine will always hear some weird noises in that place, as if someone is whispering.
Walking at night in the mountains is taboo. When you hear this sound, you must not look back. In this case, it's most likely that a lonely ghost is looking for a substitute. You'll fall for the kid's trick as soon as you turn around. Being seduced is a trivial matter, and it's most likely that you'll be chewed down to the skin and bones.
But some people didn’t believe in evil and had the courage to take a sneak peek. When they turned around, under the hazy moonlight above their heads, they saw a group of people with missing arms, legs and heads. Going in circles in the ditch...
Anyone who walked in Maoergou at night would most likely be frightened out of their wits. Therefore, in those years, the old woman who could call out ghosts in the village was particularly popular. .
This happened not only at night, but also in broad daylight, when the sun was high in the sky. When some children herding cattle and sheep entered the mountains, most of them were frightened back, and the children's urine and tears could leak out.
I heard from my father that when he was a child, he often heard that children went to herd cattle near Maoergou and lost them. The cattle were still alive, but the people were gone. Do you think it is strange?
No one dared to walk near Maoergou in those years.
Later on, in my generation, when I was just a little older, there were people who went to the village market to sell crafts, perform monkeys, sing operas, or perform acrobatic stunts. Walk around the alleys to earn some food and drink.
At that time, there was a strange man. He was wearing a leather jacket in the summer, with a trousers with a very large opening on his shoulders. There was a big black cat squatting in the trousers.
How big can a cat get? It's almost as big as an adult native dog, half a meter long, with a head as big as a rice bowl, especially those cat teeth, which are long and thin and pointed, as long as a little finger, like iron awls that want to bite you. Wear a hole in your body.
I was deeply impressed by this black cat, even to the point of fear, not just because of its unusual size, but because of something that happened later -
Bringing the Cat This man claimed to be from Anhui and had earned a living by working for people along the way to escape hardship.
He is very thin. When he talks, his eyes keep turning up. The black eyeballs are almost invisible. They are as white as a layer of lime mud. He is blind.
At that time, every household was not rich, but it was not a problem to support a person fleeing famine. At that time, there were many fortune tellers and feng shui practitioners walking around the streets in the countryside. Most of them were old bangers who wandered around the world. The ability of hands cannot escape the aspects of Yin and Yang house with eight characters.
So many people invited him to sit at home to check out their Feng Shui luck and so on.
But this person said that it was okay to seek help from him, but he needed to meet three conditions: one could not have dogs in the house, the other could not have pregnant women, and the third was even more ruthless. After the job was done, what did he see? Just take whatever.
Although fortune tellers were popular in those days, they were not so awesome. They usually asked for more than ten yuan in loose money. This one was the first to speak so casually.
So as soon as he said this, everyone who wanted to join in the fun and let him calculate the fortune of his family dispersed. Those who wanted to help him shook their heads, thinking that this man deserved to be unlucky. Why should he pretend to be a big-tailed wolf when he already had food to eat?
This man didn't care, he was holding the cat alone and squatting on the roadside at the entrance of the village to guard it.
In this way, he stayed in the village for two days and two nights, and then he left.
A few days later, things started to happen in the village, and there were a lot of unusual things going on.
What to do?
What we do is red and white affairs.
In those days, many people died in the village, and most of them were strong laborers in their forties or fifties.
Isn’t it strange that a village always has a strong workforce? It’s quite an evil thing!
When I was a child, I heard a saying: The number of lives and deaths in a place is certain. If there are dead people, there must be babies. Regarding this matter, the elders in the village also shook their heads: We did both the wedding and the wedding. This is the only time this happened in so many years.
Strange as it is, something has to be done, whether it’s a funeral or a delivery, it’s a human life!
At first, everyone didn’t think much about it, but then some people felt that something was wrong: cats would meow in the middle of the night from any house where they were doing weddings or weddings.
To be more precise, a cat cries. The sound was like it was buried in the soil three feet below, whimpering so horribly.
Especially newborn babies, when they hear such ghostly meows, they will be frightened and cry. Some children are weak and cry until they are out of breath.
Regardless of hanging a red light beside the bed, covering the eyes with red cloth, or going to worship the "Crying Night Man", these usually effective tricks all failed, and the child's face became swollen. It's red, it means I can't stop crying, and I can't hold myself together until I can take a breath.
At that time, it happened to be a few days after the blind man holding the cat came to the village. Strangely enough, when he came, the village became quiet at night, the children slept soundly, and the meowing of cats stopped.
For two or three days in a row, someone in the village began to spread a rumor. Someone went out to play mahjong at night and saw the blind man holding a cat wandering around the village, specifically picking out those who had recently done weddings and funerals at home. Go to other people's homes.
Instead of going in, he stood at the gate. The cat in his arms was no longer sleeping. It swooped into the house and jumped out again soon, as if it had something in its mouth. thing.
The strange thing is that after the big black cat jumped out, those with children at home immediately stopped crying and became as quiet as dead.
As soon as this statement spread, the village became lively, and the old people said, this man is a master, he must have some magic.
So someone invited him to go to his house to see what was going on. This person was just like what he said before. After watching, he just took what he liked, but what he took was basically rags and small fish. of.
The man had been in the village for three days and was about to leave. Before leaving, many people came to see him off, and he said to everyone: "Your village is unlucky because it killed many wild dogs and cats before, right?"
Everyone remembered that there had been a period of rat trouble in the village and they ate a lot of food. Later, almost every household kept cats.
People in rural areas don’t keep cats the same as in cities. Who would really keep a cat as a pet?
Generally, if you are sick or eat something bad, you will let it go. Some people don't have cats, so they just poison the mice to death. Some other people's cats catch and eat them, and they just poison them to death.
What to do with a dead cat? Throw it all directly into the ditch, which is Maoer ditch. So over the years, there are more and more wild cat and dog corpses in that place.
At that time, there were so many cats running around the streets in the village, and some cats turned into wild cats and roamed around the village all day long. Some naughty children were mean-spirited and chased wild cats when they saw them. They beat them with slingshots and stoned them, killing many of them. Some female cats with cat fetuses were also beaten until their intestines were pierced and the kittens were still unformed. All the fetuses were taken out and hung directly on the branches. The cat corpses were just thrown away.
At that time, the smell of dead cats could be smelled everywhere in the village. Walking on the road in the dark, you might see a ball of dried cat intestines when you look up.
The old people all shook their heads and said that this was an evil act. It was so cruel. Isn’t it the same as beheading a Japanese dog?
But no one listened. At that time, children could not be raised well, so who would try their best to raise a cat or a dog?
When I told the old blind man about this, his expression changed and he shook his head.
Everyone is thinking, is it hopeless? They were all on tenterhooks. A lot of strong laborers had died. If they continued to die, their families would be shut down.
The man sighed and said: "If you want to get better, there is nothing you can do about it. Just do less killing in the future. Find two strong laborers and come with me to burn incense. You will be able to protect your health in the future." Peace."
Two people from the village went with him to the Maoer ditch in the back hill where dead cats and dogs were buried.
As soon as the cat in the man's arms went to that place, it began to meow, a whimpering sound like crying. It began to vomit after meowing, and vomited out a lot of white stuff. Something black and hair-like.
The man said that this was the resentment of the cats who had been tortured to death before. From now on, people would come to this place every year to offer incense, but they would no longer come after three years, but try not to let anyone come.
"Remember from now on, human beings are not much more noble than other animals. They all have one life. If you can be kind, treat them kindly."
After the man finished speaking, he hugged the black cat and Gone.
He was never seen again.