There are many people standing by the well, and there are often long queues. People pass the time by greeting each other and talking and laughing, until the sun comes out and the rising sun shines on them, just like wearing a soft coat, which is very comfortable.
I asked my father, isn't there a well in our backyard Why did you come all the way here to fetch water? Father smiled and said that the water here is sweet. Can't you see that the whole village drinks the water here?
This is a reason that is difficult to convince me. In my opinion, water is water, tasteless, and there is no difference between sweet and sour, so I pursed my lips. My father stretched out his index finger and scraped my mouth, saying that only by getting up early every day and exercising your bones and muscles can you grow into a good body.
But I'm thinking about the well in the backyard that has long been lost in weeds. The well is covered with moss. Once I stood on tiptoe and looked in. I only see dark water. I found a stone and threw it down. Strangely, there are no ripples.
Children in the village often ask me mysteriously, aren't you afraid of that well in your house? Don't you see anything strange happening?
I looked up proudly, afraid of what? Don't you just look at the well and the basilisk can get out? In the grass near the well, there is a cricket crying loudly every night, which is what I yearn for most. Unfortunately, I have never been able to catch it.
In order to prove my fearlessness, I called my friends home, climbed to the eaves in front of them and waved to them: "Did you see that? Do you dare to come up? " The edge of the well is so slippery that I have to walk around it carefully. Until grandma cried and held me down, grandma's hair was messy and her eyes were white, which looked scary. She shouted at the wellhead, "I know you want revenge, but it's all my fault that you don't want to hurt the child." If you want me to die, just give me a dream and I'll come down right away. "
That night, I seemed to hear a burst of laughter from the well in my sleep, so I came to the well with my eyes blurred. The moonlight is white. I saw a child about my age, wearing a small watermelon hat and a red cotton-padded jacket, climbing on the eaves by the well and making faces at me.
"Who are you?" I asked.
The child has been laughing, and the drum in his hand is beating. So I asked again, "Whose child are you, and where is your mother?"
The child waved to me and I walked beside him. The child pointed to the well and said to my ear, "Mom is down there. Be quiet and don't wake her." The child's face is very cold. Although it is close to me, I still can't feel his breath.
I was surprised and asked, "Do you live down there?"
The child said, "Yes."
I reached out to touch the child's cotton-padded jacket, which was cool and soft, seemingly absent, but actually very dry, without any signs of getting wet. I said, "It's all water. Why isn't it wet at all?"
The child looked at me doubtfully and said, "No, this is my door. How can there be water? "
The moon is setting in the west, and the wellhead is completely shrouded in the shadow of the well site. I only see the black rumble. I stared at the child. His face was so white that there was almost no blood. I asked, "Have you always lived here?"
"Yes, I have lived for decades, and no one has ever played with me. I am very lonely. " The child bowed his head.
As soon as my heart warmed up, I grabbed the child's hand and said, "Can I be your friend?"
The child's eyes lit up, but suddenly he lowered his head and whispered, "Mom will scold when she knows." The child suddenly held my hand tightly. "I'm not afraid to scold."
"Is your mother still sleeping?"
The child nodded.
I couldn't help being curious and said, "Can you show me around your house?"
The child looked at the wellhead uneasily, as if afraid, held my hand tightly and finally made up his mind to say, "of course we are friends." However, you have to be quiet, mother may be very strict ... "
It never occurred to me that there was a ladder hidden in the well. We walked down the ladder hand in hand, and the child crept quietly. I looked around curiously, but unfortunately I couldn't see anything in the dark, just feeling that it was very big, and the wind in the cave whispered in my ear.
Suddenly I heard a woman's cough, and I felt the child holding my hand shaking violently. "Mom, mom ..." I was just about to ask him what happened, but I felt my hands were empty. I stretched out my hand to pull him, only to find that he had disappeared, surrounded by no one, silence, only darkness.
I heard a sound like a tidal bore, surging. After a while, I felt the water rush to my feet and slowly overflow my knees. I ran back as fast as I could, but my feet were empty and my original steps disappeared. I fell into the water. I shouted for help, but the tide drowned my voice.
So I struggled to swim upstream, but I couldn't swim. My foot is entangled in a nest of silk, and I can't get it off. I reached for something, and all I touched was moss and walls. The well water didn't reach my head, and I struggled in despair.
When I woke up, my grandmother was fumigating my whole body with wormwood. With endless fatigue in her eyes, she murmured, "It's all my fault. It was my ignorance that hurt you and your mother. If you want revenge, you can get back at me alone. Please don't embarrass the children ... "
I jumped up, my grandmother froze, and then knelt on the ground and kowtowed. I said I saw a child in red. My mother covered her mouth before I finished. My mother said that you have slept for two days. Are you hungry? Eat something.
I came to the backyard again, and the well had been sealed. It was covered with thick slate and plastered with cement, so I couldn't see what was inside at all.
But since then, I often have similar dreams. Once I even followed my children down to the bottom of the well and saw a bright place there. Through a garden full of countless flowers, a house appeared in front of me. I almost cried out in surprise.
That house looks just like mine! It's just that the house at home is dilapidated, but it's as fresh as new, with white walls and red columns, just like a fairyland against the background of flowers.
The child dragged me under the window of the west wing and whispered, "My mother is inside. She is reading a book. "
The door of the room is unlocked. Through the crack of the door, I saw the silhouette of a woman in white. Her hair is very long. She leaned back in a chair with a book in her hand, but her eyes were looking ahead. I don't know what she is thinking.
I said in the child's ear, "Look at your mother, she is not fierce at all."
The child is scared. "You don't know, she is very severe ..."
"Xiao Xin, you come back? -"the woman shouted, her voice is very sweet, as if the spring breeze touched my ears.
Suddenly, the door opened and a gust of wind blew in. I was surprised to see the child floating away in front of my eyes like a fallen leaf.
The woman turned her head, her long hair covered her face, and stretched out to me like a hand, firmly entangled me, pulled more and more tightly, and gradually buckled into my flesh, as if to tear me apart. ...
My curiosity is getting stronger and stronger. I tried to pry open the slate several times to see what happened, but my family stopped me in time. I have the same dream over and over again, and people are getting thinner and thinner.
Grandma began to get sick, too. She often lay in bed with her eyes in a daze and said something that people didn't understand at all.
One day it rained heavily, and the old house tottered in the rain, and the rain dripped into the house along the wall. The next day, when the weather was fine, we found a few lines of big dark red words on the wall of grandma's room: "Send someone under the fence, you can't hold your breath." Why don't we go with you and meet again in the spring? "
Grandma sat up at once when she saw those words. "You finally won't let me go. Ok, I'll be right there. " Grandma lay down again, called the whole family to her side, pointed to the scarlet letter and said, "See those words? This is my karma. "
Father immediately said: "This was written by predecessors, but it just rained and the lime on the surface was washed away by the rain, so it was exposed." If I scrape it off, it won't happen again. "
Grandma shook her head with a relieved smile on her face: "Forget it, it's all my doing, and the debt I owe will be paid back sooner or later." You have heard some rumors about the well in the yard. Anyway, I'm leaving today, so I'll make it clear to you. "
It turned out that my grandfather used to be a businessman, ostensibly doing business. In fact, his task was to purchase the most scarce medical equipment for the revolutionary armed forces at that time. This is an extremely dangerous and difficult job, because we must try our best to get medicinal materials from enemy-occupied areas and then transport them back to the liberated areas, so that the enemy can't see through their identities. So even to his family, Grandpa never dared to say a word.
On this day, grandpa came home tired and brought back a woman and a child. The child is six or seven years old. Grandpa said, "These are the women and children in my city. It is not safe to fight there recently, and I am going to take them home for a while. "
"I have been waiting for him at home, waiting, waiting, dreaming, only hoping that he can come back to see me. But he either doesn't go home once every two years and brings a woman as soon as he gets home. The children are so big that I suddenly fell into the ice cave. " Grandma said.
"I hated it at the time. I looked at that woman in pain. She is really beautiful. Her face is as white as snow and smells like a woman in the city. She greeted me and looked timid. She is still young, less than thirty years old, wearing a white cheongsam. I thought to myself, "No wonder he never misses home. No wonder he doesn't go home once every two years. It turns out that he has a woman in the city. My heart ached, but he sat there lazily smoking a cigarette without looking at me. Seeing that her mother had settled down, he left at once. He didn't say a word to me, but said to the woman, "Yan Yan, you should take care of yourself while I am away." . I hate it in my heart. There was no news when he left. I hate that woman, but I have to act like a good mother after my predecessor. I really like that kid. This is white courtesy and wisdom. Just the thought of being born by that woman makes my heart like a pair of scissors.
One day, this woman went to church. I thought quietly at home, he has been gone for half a year, why hasn't he come back? I watched the foreign clock he brought back from the city tick away. Suddenly, I heard Xiao Xin's cry for help from the yard. I went to the window and saw a pair of hands hanging under the eaves by the well. Xiao Xin was in the well, with only one head exposed, crying for help.
I rushed out desperately and tripped over the threshold of the room. At the moment I fell to the ground, I suddenly thought, what am I doing? That's someone else's child. What can I do to save him? I stood up slowly and listened blankly as Xiao Xin's voice faded away in the yard. By the time I entered the yard, the child had sunk to the bottom of the well. "
"I am doing evil!"
Grandma said this sentence and went back with anger.
Massage, rescue, grandma woke up leisurely: "the day the child left, he was wearing a red coat."
"The woman came back and saw Xiao Xin's body without saying a word. That night, after writing this line in blood on the wall, she and Xiao Xin jumped into the well again. ...
A month later, I received his letter, only to know that he wrote to me in prison, when he was no longer alive.
The letter said that the woman was the wife of one of his comrades-in-arms, died to protect him, and entrusted his wife and children to him before she died. Because their identity has been exposed and they can't live in the city, he had to take them back to the countryside to live temporarily. But if you bring back a woman and a child for no reason, others will suspect, which is why you have to find such an excuse. "
"Small new, small new ..."
Grandma's eyes began to glow strangely, and her breathing stopped.
Soon after, the old house was demolished, a new building was built at home, and the well was filled in. I never saw the secret of the bottom hole again.