The first story, Slender Man
At this point, I actually feel a little regretful. I shouldn't have been so quick to talk about the past of my childhood playmate. I shouldn't have nicknamed that kid Jiaer just to show off my joke with Sanyi.
But at this point, Dr. Hu became serious and asked out of professional habit: "How many injuries are there? Was he sent to the hospital in time? Is the oral bleeding serious or minor? Are there any internal organs ruptured?"
I smiled bitterly, told her to calm down, and then continued talking.
When I saw Jia Er's miserable condition, I, as a young child, was struck by lightning. Tears fell all over the floor without a care in the world, and I rushed to see how he was doing.
My parents are both very kind-hearted. They told me not to move so as not to worsen his injuries. They protected me behind them and immediately went over and squatted to check on his condition.
But when Jia Er saw the concerned looks on my parents' faces, he felt as if he had been whipped. His face suddenly turned fierce, and he shrank back and tensed his whole body, showing great vigilance and aggressiveness.
I actually know that he has always been very disgusted with adults.
But at that age, I couldn’t quite understand the pain hidden behind this defense, and I didn’t know that my healthy and warm family was itself a kind of harm to some people.
Suddenly, he was at a loss and shouted in confusion:
"Don't hide. Mom and Dad are not bad people."
(Hearing this, Sanyi sneered. Doctor Hu frowned and asked him what was so funny. He said he was making fun of me for being too naive and not being able to speak.)
(Looking back now, I have to admit that Sanyi was right.)
After hearing what I said, Jia Er did not relax at all. Instead, he spat out a mouthful of blood on the spot. His scarred face still looked nonchalant, and he said sarcastically:
"You are not a bad person, I am."
As he was speaking, he suddenly got up by himself and took two steps away from us. He moved as smoothly as a normal person and seemed not to be injured at all.
I was stunned, and my mother was also a little surprised. She looked him up and down and asked softly, "Are you okay?" At this time, we all smelled a faint sweet and sour smell. It turned out that the blood that Jia Er vomited was faked by mixing it with ketchup or something like that.
Jia Er crossed his arms, "What else? I'll trick them. They are such cowardly idiots that they peed their pants and ran away on the spot." Seeing that I was still crying, he was a little uncomfortable and reluctantly tried to explain, "Hey, can't you see? Idiot, I'm fine, this is all drawn."
He was harsh as usual, "This can scare you, you don't believe it, do you?"
I didn't care about him. Sometimes children don't need any reason to cry. They don't even know what they are crying for. They immediately let out a "wow", turned their heads and hugged my mother's legs and cried so hard that they almost fainted.
Jia Er looked at me. It was probably the first time for him to encounter such an unfamiliar situation. He had no idea what to do. He looked at my parents again and said to me in a panic:
"I didn't mean to lie to you... I didn't tell you about this..."
As he said this, he probably felt frustrated and embarrassed, so he took two steps back, all the way to the back window of the shabby house, jumped onto the windowsill, and tried to climb out and escape from us.
When he was stuck on the windowsill and was about to leave, he hesitated and shouted to me:
"There's a tall and thin figure chasing me. Seriously! It's very dangerous. Go back with your family and don't come looking for me again!"
I didn't hear clearly and asked subconsciously, "What? When can I come to see you again?" I burst into laughter before I even wiped away my tears.
Jia Er was speechless and clenched his palms in extreme distress.
After a while, he suddenly said with a little expectation, "I will hide here tonight to avoid that ghost. This is the last night." He looked at me deeply and asked in a low voice, "I'm a little scared. Can you come and accompany me when the time comes?"
I was stunned: "I can't go out at night, I have to stay at home with Pingping."
Jia Er suddenly laughed miserably, as if mocking himself, and jumped out from the windowsill, disappearing without a trace.
Only then did I vaguely realize that I shouldn't have answered like that, but at my age at that time I had no idea what the right thing to do was.
I was picked up by my mother while I was confused. Maybe I was tired of crying. Before I could ask my parents, I yawned and fell asleep in my mother's arms.
In a trance, my parents seemed to be discussing something. They were worried about what might happen to a child wandering around alone, and they were also a little confused about what he called the thin tall ghost.
After much discussion, they finally decided to send me back home, and the two adults came to the broken house at night to watch over the situation.
Up to this point in the story, there is actually nothing strange or bizarre about it, and there is no trace of the tall and thin ghost at all. It is simply boring to talk about.
Doctor Hu frowned, thought for a long time, and asked me:
"Are you sure that the child's injuries were all fake?"
Now I am naturally aware of the anomaly and said solemnly: "I understand what you mean. Even if the blood is fake, it doesn't mean that Jia Er is in a safe situation."
If a child wants to fake so many lifelike wounds, he must be very familiar with injuries, or even accustomed to them. The fact that the fake wounds are new and old and overlap, shows that he often needs to use his injuries to intimidate and force others to retreat.
Doctor Hu nodded and sighed. A doctor is like a loving parent. She was really concerned about the child from those years ago.
I recalled it carefully again and came to a bad conclusion. I found that when my parents broke into the house that day, Jia Er was probably really unable to move.
After all, as he said, he had no intention of telling me or shocking me. It was completely unexpected for him that I brought my parents in to rescue people.
In this case, it is impossible for him to have foreseen the future and fall to the ground in advance to scare us.
There is only one conclusion, that he was indeed seriously injured at the time. He might have been beaten by the older children who surrounded him, or he might have been injured by that ghost.
On the contrary, he was lying to me when he told me that everything was fine.
I guess he was trying hard to hold on, afraid that my parents and I would see that he was just strong on the outside but weak on the inside, so he ran away in a hurry.
As they were discussing this, Sanyi became a little impatient and said coldly, "Why are you talking so much nonsense? What happened next? Did you go there at night? What kind of deceptive thing is that tall and thin ghost?"
I said goodbye and urged him to go, of course I went.
Sanyi was stunned for a moment, then suddenly glared at me, "You said you were five or six years old at that time. How could your parents let you go out in the middle of the night?"
I glared at him too. "Then tell me, I was only five or six years old. Why did my parents let me, a little kid, play with strange kids downstairs alone?"
"Besides, why are there so many whys? It's all about childhood, and I can't remember clearly, so there are naturally many vague parts that need artistic processing." I turned the tables and became more and more excited. "Ask me all sorts of questions, do you still want to listen to the story?"
He was confused by my question and couldn't answer. I thought to myself, it was a close call, he almost stumped me, it turns out that the most important thing in a quarrel is an unreasonable attitude.
"Okay, do you have anything else to argue?" I said angrily, "I allow you to accuse me of my mistakes to my face."
Sanyi choked and had to wave his hand to let me continue making up stories.
I wouldn't make up a story, but I really can't explain how I managed to sneak out of the house that night.
Anyway, as I recall, I really did sneak to a street lamp in the middle of the night, sniffing frequently due to the cold, and looking around, until I finally found the road leading to the dilapidated house in the back street.
Doctor Hu interrupted here and raised his eyebrows to ask me, "Aren't we a family? Why are we so confused about the issue of adding two and have no unified opinion?"
It would have been fine if she hadn't asked. As soon as she asked me, I was shocked. My old habit of seeing things in context came back immediately. I started to recall the past over and over again, wondering if there was some unknown ghost story in my childhood that had confused and bewitched the three of us, three talented people.
Amidst the suspicion, Zhang Tianyi laughed and said, "Doctor, the two of us who are older than Ranzi are two years older. They are only seven or eight years old. What do you think they were doing at that time?"
——At school.
It suddenly dawned on me and my face turned red. Then I remembered that normal human children have to go to school and do homework.
Not to mention, at that time, the primary school near us was a boarding school, and school-age children only went home on Saturdays and weekends. Those who could afford it occasionally had to go to the very rare and fashionable Children's Palace for extra lessons. At such a young age, the workload was so heavy that it was more frightening than a ghost story.
No wonder my cheap brothers didn’t seem to appear in this anecdote of mine. It turned out that they were suppressed and sealed by schoolwork, and it was the time when I could run wild and happy all by myself.
I just don't know who had to do more homework when Zhang Tianyi and Sanyi took turns sharing the identity and served as the deadly elementary school student with secrets.
The topic has gone off track, so I slapped my forehead and started again.
But I was walking alone on the street at that time. There was indescribable silence everywhere. The elongated shadows of the street lamps were thin and lonely, and there was a kind of weird and hazy loneliness.
The further I walked, the more frightened I became. My steps gradually became heavier and I couldn't move.
As she was struggling, she suddenly missed her parents and Pingping. She whispered to her brother a few times, rubbed her eyes and wanted to go home.
However, deep down, I still remembered Jia Er's sad expression as he almost asked for help, and vaguely felt that he was very pitiful.
I remembered that every time I played with him, he would say goodbye after a while, saying that his parents were waiting for me. He seemed to be punched in the chest and returned to a nightmare. He said ok in a daze and told me to leave quickly because it was time to go home.
From afar, whenever I said goodbye to him and walked home, his figure would slowly follow behind me, as if escorting me. He was indeed like a terrifying and pitiful ghost.
As I thought about it, I gradually mustered up my courage under the street light, and for the first time in my young and simple mind I realized the problem: Why doesn't Jiaer go home? Where is his home?
Aren’t his parents teaching part-time at the Children’s Palace? Why have they never shown up to take care of him?
It seemed that he had no place to go back to, only places that he was deeply afraid of and had to avoid. He had told me more than once in a stern voice that I was not allowed to approach the Children's Palace or go there. If one day I couldn't find him, I would completely forget about him as a friend.
My heart was pounding and a voice in my head was shouting, it was real, he was really in danger, the Slender Man must be real, he was asking me for help to save him!
When I came to my senses again, I was already running towards the dilapidated house. I ran faster and faster, and my heartbeat almost jumped out of my chest.
But there was no Jia Er in the shabby house. He didn't wait for me.
In the memory of a childhood that ended abruptly, the dilapidated house was empty, with only a long, twisted bloodstain that ended abruptly at the door.
I cannot describe the loss and fear I felt at that moment. Only the bloodstain clearly told me that a child had struggled and crawled on the ground for a long time.
Where did he go? What happened? Why didn't he wait for me as promised?
My eyes went dark and I heard my parents calling my name in surprise. They asked me how I got out of the door and how I was one step faster than them.
I didn't answer, but lowered my head to pick up a folded piece of paper in the bloodstain. On it was written crookedly:
"Thank you."
It was a very old note, very strange, as if Jia Er had written it a long time ago, ready to give it to someone, but never had the chance to do so. It was so wrinkled and faded that it was carefully folded up until that moment, and Jia Er left it in the shabby house.
I had a sudden realization that I would never see Jia Er again.
My parents looked at me worriedly and picked me up.
"Don't cry, Ranran, don't cry." My mother patted me and whispered with deep confusion, "...you smell the 'blood' on the ground...it seems to be sour and sweet."
.
"—My story is over."
I let out a breath, and the melancholy of my childhood was still in my heart. As I gradually recalled the past, it became a mystery that would never be known.
The car fell into a brief silence, as if everyone was immersed in this inexplicable story.
After a while, the team leader, who had woken up at some point, scratched his head and asked with wide eyes:
"So... in this case, the blood is fake? The kid should be fine?"
"But why did he leave such strange marks?"
I shook my head. I didn't have an answer to this question either.
In fact, from childhood to adulthood, I have never heard of any tragic cases of children being killed in the small county town of my hometown. In such a remote place like ours, it is difficult to conceal trivial matters.
My parents went to the local police station the day after they found the bloodstains. Although the police officer in charge found it unbelievable, he still went to check it out immediately.
As a result, not only in the residential area where we were, but even in the homes of all the named employees at the Children's Palace, no child had ever been in an accident or lost, and the existence of Jia Er had never been found.
He seemed to have really become a ghost child. After being seen and discovered by me, and after having a face-to-face encounter with my parents, he suddenly disappeared like morning dew.
The house was searched thoroughly inside and out, and the trace investigators told my parents seriously that the bloodstains were probably some kind of prank and that there had definitely never been a murder in the house.
I could only comfort myself by saying: Maybe, he had successfully gotten rid of the tall and thin shadow that night, and finally didn't have to wander anymore, so he was eager to go home and didn't have time to wait for me.
"Maybe," Dr. Hu was not quite able to accept it. "Well, let me tell you my story next."
"It was my first day on duty many years ago, and I received an emergency call for help." She paused, "It was also a misunderstanding that the person was not found."
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