I spread my hands and said, "You still want to evade responsibility? If you hadn't suggested coming here, would that classmate have died?"
The boss got angry when he heard this. He grabbed my collar and said, "Don't act like you have nothing to do with it! Don't forget, you are also an accomplice!"
"I'm not distancing myself from the matter!" I broke free, "But everything was done by us. As a man, I think we should take responsibility!"
"What did you say?"
"Call the police!"
"you try?"
The boss and I were arguing with each other, both of us raised our fists and were about to fight, but at this moment, a pair of strong arms pulled me away from behind.
"Stop messing around, what time is it now?"
Turning around, the third brother looked at me with a serious face, and he tried hard to wink at me.
I sighed heavily and finally unclenched my fist. On the other side, the eldest brother also calmed down after being comforted by the fourth brother.
"I don't think this is what we should be thinking about right now." The third brother suddenly said sinisterly.
"What do you mean?" The boss and I asked in unison.
"Think about it, when someone is kidnapped, are you all involved?"
"Of course, everyone was so excited at that time, how could there not be any?" I snorted coldly.
"That's right. I remember when I pulled it up, I checked the rope and confirmed that it was tied properly. It was just a thick hemp rope. How could the student fall down?"
Hearing this, we shuddered at the same time.
The third brother was right. Because the student was hung quite high, the rope was tied very tightly and there was no way it could break. So how could the student fall down?
"Did he untie it halfway?" the boss said.
"No, I just took a look and the ropes on your body are still tied up properly," I retorted.
"Then…is there really a ghost here?" The fourth brother asked tremblingly.
We were all shocked. If the rope was fine, how could the classmate fall down? Unless…
In the pitch-black environment, I was sweating profusely. I seemed to see a pair of pale hands in the dim light, quietly climbing up my classmate's body, covering his mouth, and then slowly untying the knot…
Woo woo woo! The night wind picked up again, the stars and the moon were dim, and some thick branches swayed in the wind, like countless ghost claws stretched out, slowly pounced on us.
"Never mind, I've decided to do this!" The eldest brother was the first to come to his senses. He took a flashlight and stepped forward.
"What are you doing?" I quickly chased after him.
He bent down and, ignoring the disgusting scene, tried to untie the hemp rope on his classmate.
"I absolutely cannot go to jail. I just thought that if we can coordinate our testimony, maybe we can escape."
"Collusion?" We all looked at him in confusion.
"That's right. This is a desolate mountain area. Every year, people die in accidents. If we say that he climbed up a tree to catch an owl and accidentally fell to his death, then everyone can escape. Isn't that good?"
I was the first to express my opposition, because even if we escape legal sanctions, we will be condemned by our conscience for the rest of our lives, which is obviously wrong.
But what I didn’t expect was that this time, the third and fourth brothers both stood on the side of the eldest brother.
Their reasons were simple: they also didn't want to go to jail and didn't want their lives to be tarnished. I was firmly against it at first, but later I couldn't stand their coercion and inducement, so I agreed.
In fact, the eldest brother’s mother is a lawyer. She patted her chest and said that as long as we string together the confessions, everyone will be fine.
So, we agreed without thinking.
Even though I had a moment of clarity, I still fell in the end. What does this mean?
Yes, I had selfish motives too! In order to escape responsibility, I even told the biggest lie of my life.
The next day, everyone called the police.
Because we had already agreed on the confessions, we really escaped the police's suspicion. After all, people die in Caoshan every year, and no one would suspect anything.
We returned to the city with a lucky mentality. Everyone thought that the rain would stop and the psychological shadow would disappear after a period of time.
But we never expected that all this was just the beginning of a terrifying experience.
In the following days, we were immersed in a state of fear.
In fact, the police were fine. Under the guidance of the boss, we did not reveal any flaws, but what really scared us was the guilt in our hearts.
I heard that if a person dies accidentally or unjustly, his soul will stay in the human world until the culprit is found.
I was very worried, I didn't know if my classmates would come to see us.
Anyway, he must have hated us. Yes, we didn’t treat him as a friend at all. We just bullied him and had fun with him every day, and finally killed him.
I still regret it until now, but what's the use?
On the seventh day after our classmate's death, we couldn't bear it anymore, so we went to our eldest brother's house together.
It soon became dark, and although it was a cool early spring day, we felt freezing cold, as if we were in a morgue.
In the small room, the four of us sat opposite each other.
Normally everyone was very arrogant, calling themselves the king of the campus, and liked to show off, but now, no one dared to speak. We just sat in silence for the whole afternoon, and until the evening, no one said a word.
In fact, I know what they are thinking. We were the ones who killed our classmate. Although we escaped legal punishment, what about our classmate?
We lied and didn't even dare to attend his funeral.
I don’t know how angry he is. Maybe he is on his way here now.
It was completely dark outside the window. The night wind was very strong, and it made a strange rustling sound when it blew across the roof, which was creepy.
After a long silence, everyone was not in a good mental state. Finally, a question from the fourth brother broke the silence.
"Do you think he will come back?"
"What the hell do you want to say?" The boss was furious and grabbed him by the collar.
"I… I once heard from my grandfather that people will return to a familiar place on the seventh day after death. If… if our classmates really come to find us, what should we do?" The fourth child asked tremblingly without resistance.
"What should we do? Just leave it alone!" the boss yelled, "The matter is already over, why do you keep bringing it up? Did we have to kill him? Maybe it was really an accident?"
He looked very angry, but I knew that was just a disguise. In fact, he must be extremely frightened in his heart, so he pretended like that.
"But…but the rope really didn't break. I heard from the police that it was untied. His hands and feet were tied at the time, so…if it wasn't a ghost, how could it be…" The fourth brother continued.
I shuddered.
Thanks to the netizen "cameron***@qq.com" for his contribution
Dear friends:
Hello!
My name is Lin Yu, an ordinary high school student.
You must be wondering why I would write to a stranger. Actually, I have no choice, because I am dying.
Seeing this, maybe you will sneer and throw it into the trash can. Maybe you will laugh out loud, what kind of lunatic is this, actually writing a letter to a stranger and cursing himself to death?
But I can tell you clearly that I am not crazy and I am not joking. This letter is really my suicide note.
Even as I was writing these words, my hands were still shaking, cold sweat covered my forehead, and it was so cold that it was horrifying.
I can't write novels, let alone tell stories, I just want to tell you one thing.
I'm haunted.
Yes, I did have a ghost, and it not only appeared to me, but also to other people. I was scared because everyone wanted to kill me.
Yes, I don’t know who it will possess next, or how it will appear. Anyway, it has only one goal, which is to kill me.
The candle in my hand flickered unsteadily, just like my panic. I knew there was no escape now, I could already smell the scent of death.
That's why I decided to write this suicide note.
I sincerely implore you to read on and take this as a warning forever, because everything I say below is actually happening to me.
The story begins half a month ago.
We were still in school at that time. Generally speaking, students were divided into two types: one was the bully who specialized in bullying others, and the other was the good guy who was bullied.
Obviously, I belong to the former category.
In fact, I don’t really like this kind of bad taste, but it’s a school where the strong prey on the weak. If I don’t bully others, I might be the victim.
And so, I joined them.
There were four of us in total. The eldest had a bit of background. It was said that his father was related to gangsters, so he was always bullying in school. As for the third and fourth, they were like-minded people. After I joined, they soon followed suit.
In a quiet campus, once cliques are formed, they will soon become the topic of conversation among students after dinner.
Therefore, we quickly became famous, and almost everyone was afraid to mess with us, fearing that they would become the target of bullying like him.
He is in the same grade as us, so I won’t mention his name, let’s just call him a classmate.
My classmate has good academic performance and his family is quite wealthy, but his only shortcoming is that he is timid.
Yes, he was a very introverted person, and he didn't dare to speak up even when he was bullied, let alone tell others. Because of this, he became the target of our bullying.
Every morning, we would block the door and take away his food money for the whole day. If he chose to bring his own food, we would take it away and humiliate him mercilessly.
After school, if we were bored, we would also ask him to play, of course, we would use him to do all kinds of strange experiments, such as seeing what would happen if a person drank beer and Coke at the same time, or asking him to pee outside the office door.
Anyway, we have tried almost everything we can think of.
Do you think we are hateful and want to beat us up? To be honest, I feel the same way.
Whenever I think back to the past, I hate myself very much. Why did I torture my classmates? Why did I refuse to change my ways?
If I hadn't followed them and hadn't turned bad, I might not be so scared now, and I wouldn't have written this suicide note.
But unfortunately, there is no medicine for regret in the world.
It all started one summer vacation when we made an appointment to have a picnic at Caoshan.
Caoshan is a primeval forest in our area. It is very large, with towering trees that block out the sun. Usually, not many people set foot here, but for us bad boys, this is nothing.
Especially the eldest brother, he often comes here to play, so he is more familiar with the environment.
That day, we specially invited some classmates to come over. It was called a picnic, but in fact it was an experiment.
It's about fishing for wild ghosts.
Fishing for Wild Ghosts There is an old legend in our area that after a person dies, his soul will remain in the human world, looking for a replacement for reincarnation. If it cannot find one, it will continue to wander around the place where it died.
As long as you hang the offering on the locust tree, if you are lucky, you will see some wandering ghosts catch him, slowly entangle him, and finally take away his body.
Of course, the sacrifice must be a living person.
To us, this was just a legend to scare children, but for some reason, the eldest brother suddenly became interested in it. He even dared to bet with us that there were no ghosts in this world and that everything was just human ignorance.
His idea was soon followed by the third and fourth brothers, and among the four, I was the only one who raised objections.
Because I know very well that Caoshan is an extremely evil place.
It is said that during the Republic of China period, that place was a place used specifically for executing death row prisoners. Many dead bodies were buried underground. Over time, it became a well-known haunted place.
Even today, many people die there. People accidentally fall off the cliff, drown in the river. Since I was old enough to understand, there have been all kinds of accidents there almost every year.
So, at first I was strongly against it.
However, under their instigation, I began to waver. On the one hand, I also wanted to see whether the legend was true or not. On the other hand, there were five of us, and even if a ghost really did exist, it probably wouldn't dare to come out.
Just like that, I made the worst decision of my life.
I didn't know that such an ordinary promise would put us into an irretrievable situation.
The weather was very bad that day. It was gloomy all the time. The sky was like a dirty rag, extremely depressing.
Now that I think about it, it might have been a hint from God, but at the time we were all so excited that we didn’t think too much about it. We just wanted to verify the legend of fishing for wild ghosts.
Of course, my classmate didn’t know about this. He thought we had accepted him and we had officially become good friends. When we were setting up camp, he even smiled for the first time in a long time.
But of course, this was his last smile.
I finally made it to the evening and the boss patted me on the shoulder.
"Brothers, the time has come, let's get started."
"Hehe, let me come, let me come."
We smiled knowingly and rushed out of the tent.
The surroundings became dim and uncertain, and the woods were full of rustling sounds. My classmate was washing dishes outside, of course, it was just an excuse for us to send him away.
"Brothers, go ahead!" The eldest brother secretly hugged him from behind, and we rushed forward to control his limbs.
"You…what do you want to do?" The classmate was shaking with fear. He struggled a few times and turned around to look at us.
"Don't move!" The boss was a little angry and pushed him hard. "There will be an experiment later. You'd better cooperate, otherwise…"
His voice was quite threatening. After hearing it, the classmate immediately stopped moving. Perhaps he remembered his previous experience and did not dare to resist anymore.
In this way, we successfully tied his hands.
The eldest brother walked to the old locust tree alone, looked around for a while, and waved to us.
"Okay, just hang on it."
Under his command, the third and fourth children pushed their classmates over. At first, he probably didn't know what was going on in the school , but when he saw the old locust tree, he probably thought of something and shouted loudly.
"No…no, don't tie me up, please…please!"
"Don't talk nonsense, we want to verify the legend of fishing wild ghosts."
"Cooperate well, or you will be in trouble!"
Even though he begged for mercy with his head down, the others still ignored him, and in a blink of an eye, he was dragged near the locust tree.
The night wind suddenly grew stronger, and the lush branches and leaves were swaying from side to side, as if countless ghosts were whispering.
The classmate was so scared that he even wet his pants, but we had no humanity at all. The eldest brother even suggested hanging him higher so that the ghost could hear him.
After hearing this, we all laughed and expressed our agreement.
When we arrived under the locust tree, to our surprise, the classmate did not cooperate as usual. He pushed the third brother away and actually tried to escape.
We were all shocked. The students who had always been submissive had actually learned to resist. This was even stranger than a sow climbing a tree.
At that time, I had no idea that my classmate didn't want to resist, but was afraid. He must have encountered something more terrifying than us, so he chose to run away desperately.
If only I had thought it through sooner, but unfortunately, that was another opportunity I missed.
We caught this kind of weakling without any effort. The boss was furious and beat him up severely.
But even so, the student was still reluctant to go up. He was always talking and stuttering.
Thinking about it now, it felt like someone was strangling him.
But we were in a playful mood at that time and didn't think too much about it. At the boss's order, we hugged him and hung on the thick tree trunk.
“Help…Help! Don’t do this, there…there really is a ghost here!”
The students were still struggling desperately, but it was obviously useless. We had done a good job of fixing our position, and the tree trunk was thick, so we would not fall down even if there was a strong wind.
"Very good, just use this as bait, and we'll wait for the rabbit below." The boss clapped his hands and said with a laugh.
"Don't be like this, how about…how about I give you money, 500 each, and you let me down first, okay?"
"It's no big deal to have money!" The boss spat and punched us twice more. The classmate was in so much pain that he could only beg us for mercy.
"Just be the bait. Don't worry, we'll be watching from the side." The boss raised his eyebrows and turned to ask us, "If we take a photo later, how much do you think it will sell for?"
"Haha, at least 500 per person." The third brother said, imitating his classmates.
We laughed knowingly, then sat down nearby and started playing cards.
At first, the classmate was still begging, but later, perhaps knowing that it was useless, he stopped talking. Although I was playing with them, I would still look over there from time to time.
Deep down, I still felt that something was wrong, but as time went on, this feeling gradually weakened. We were immersed in the fight between the four of us and completely forgot about the classmates in the tree.
Everyone thought that nothing was wrong, and even if there was danger, he would take the initiative to ask for help.
It is this terrible thought that paralyzed us and led to what happened later.
We played for an unknown amount of time until it got darker and darker, and the flashlight we brought with us seemed to be running out of battery, and we fell asleep in a daze.
I don’t know how long it was before I was awakened by a loud crash.
When I got up and looked, the flashlight was flickering and it was so bright that I couldn't open my eyes.
"Damn, who is using the flashlight? It's so noisy." I cursed in dissatisfaction.
Then, a tall figure approached me, and I could clearly feel him trembling.
"Old…Old Second, someone's dead…"
"What? Who died?" I rubbed my eyes and looked in the direction of the flashlight. I saw a person lying in the dense bushes and a pool of thick liquid on the ground.
What is it? I squinted my eyes, and the next moment, a great fear swept over my body like a tide.
I saw it clearly, it was a pool of blood, a very large pool of blood!
And the person lying on the ground was undoubtedly a classmate.
"How…how could this happen? Weren't you watching him the whole time?" I grabbed the fourth brother and asked angrily.
"I… I don't know either. I fell asleep at that time, and when I woke up… I heard a crash. It turned out that he… he had…" The fourth brother lowered his head. He was so scared that he couldn't speak.
I let him go and turned my gaze back to my classmates. Although we were far apart, I could clearly smell the blood.
Is he dead? But weren't we tied up tightly? How did he fall? Was there really a ghost? Was he used as a substitute?
I was shivering violently and was at a loss for a moment.
"Hey, what happened? Why are you making so much noise?"
At this time, the eldest and the third brother also woke up. They came over and looked at me with sleepy eyes.
"My classmate…he fell down…" I raised my head and said it tremblingly.
"What did you say?" The boss pushed me away and shone the flashlight over. Soon, his face turned pale and he stepped back in disbelief.
“No…no way, I tied him up so tightly, how could he fall down…?” The eldest brother shook his head, muttering to himself.
"But he did fall down and he's dead!" I cried.
"Who's dead! If you don't know this, don't talk nonsense. How can you be sure he's dead?" The boss grabbed my shoulders with his backhand.
"Get out of here!" I broke free and pointed at Ai Min in panic. "I saw everything just now. There was a large pool of blood, and…even his brain was exposed. How could he still be alive?"
Hearing this, the boss stumbled back as if struck by lightning, and it took him a long time to come back to his senses.
I know what he was thinking. Originally, we just wanted to verify the authenticity of fishing for wild ghosts, but in the end… in the end, because of everyone's negligence, our classmate died.
How should we explain this? How should we explain this to his family? If the police start investigating, perhaps all the past events will be dug up, and we will be doomed.
The branches rustled in the howling night wind. The woods were filled with a strange and depressing atmosphere. Everyone lowered their heads, not knowing what to say.
"Then…then what should we do?" After a long time, the third brother's question finally broke the silence.
"Let's call the police. We can't just leave like that." I put forward my suggestion, but was strongly opposed by the boss.
"No, you must not call the police!"
His eyes widened. "If we are discovered by the police, our lives will be ruined. Do you know how terrible prison is? It is full of inequality. If we go in, it will be like seeking death!"
"What else can I do?" I retorted.
"I don't know! Anyway, I can't turn myself in. I'm going abroad next year, and I absolutely cannot have a criminal record. I absolutely cannot!" He shook his head vigorously, as if he had lost his mind, and didn't look as arrogant as usual at all.