Chapter Three: The Infant Corpse by the River

“Huh? What’s wrong?” I looked at him, utterly perplexed, as Old Tan turned his head as well.

“You really don’t know? There’s no one left in Huiping Village now,” the boatman replied, looking at me as if I were the odd one.

“No one? Hey, my dad said there were still a few families in the village. He even hired someone to watch over our old house.”

“That was half a month ago. The two old folks in the village died, and the last two families moved out. Now there’s not a soul left. If you go, you probably won’t even find a meal.”

I had always thought my father had settled everything, but hearing the boatman’s words, anxiety began to creep into my heart.

“Lao Yuan, it seems you haven’t quite taken care of the groundwork,” Old Tan leaned in and whispered.

Seeing our faces, the boatman said, “I think you two should stay in town tonight. Going back home is just to visit the graves anyway. I’ll come pick you up first thing tomorrow morning—won’t charge you a penny. You’re from Huiping Village; you should know how spooky Mount Lu is. Just a few days ago, seven or eight young people took my boat, insisted on hiking up Mount Lu, and, sure enough, called me at three in the morning, bawling that they’d seen ghosts and begging me to bring them down. That mountain’s never been peaceful, and now it’s deserted. You’d best not spend the night there.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. The mountain where my hometown lay—Mount Lu—had always been haunted, or so the stories went. The forest was ancient and dense, parts of it so wild even the villagers seldom ventured in. What had left the deepest impression on me was a pitch-black cave halfway up the mountain, not far from the path down, yet no one had ever dared to set foot inside. Once, Liu the Daredevil and I wanted to explore it. We’d barely walked twenty meters in when both our flashlights inexplicably blew out, the bulbs bursting with a pop. I was so frightened I nearly wet myself, and even Liu, usually fearless, was left stunned. We never went near that place again.

“I think the boatman’s right. Let’s go tomorrow,” Old Tan muttered, staring at the forest-clad mountain.

I had considered it too, but I was born on that mountain. Now, so close to home, to be scared off by a few ghost stories felt ridiculous. I frowned at Old Tan, “Tsk, look at you, acting like a coward—and you call yourself educated. My father and his men might already be waiting in the village. Besides, I know that place inside out. If there were ghosts, I’d have run into them years ago.”

Seeing I was determined, the boatman didn’t press further. As we got off, he gave us his phone number, telling us to call him anytime and he’d come right away.

I didn’t think much of it, but after his boat left, the bone-deep silence of the valley settled in. Though it was afternoon, the sun barely pierced the dense forest. There was only one path up the mountain, paved long ago—maybe during the Ming or Qing dynasty. Looking up, the once-familiar Mount Lu now seemed strangely aloof.

I was about to tell Old Tan to get moving, but when I turned around—good grief! That fool had already stripped off and was splashing about in the river.

“Are you crazy?” I cursed, dropping my bag.

“Hell, I’m here to travel! It’s sweltering—why not take a bath? We’ve been riding buses all day. Can’t show up all dusty to meet your grandpa... Ah, this water’s fantastic...” He dove back in, splashing.

The river was the Zhou, but after crossing a few hundred meters of confluence, the water of Ba River shone emerald, reflected by the mountains. Watching Old Tan frolic, I couldn’t resist. I started pulling off my own shirt, eager for a swim.

No sooner had I stripped off my T-shirt than I heard Old Tan cry out from the water. I thought he’d twisted his ankle on a rock, but he surfaced holding something.

It was a pale, amorphous bundle—unrecognizable at first glance. Old Tan wiped his face. “Damn, what the hell is this, stuck on my head?” He peered at it more closely. That’s when I noticed one end was rounded, with strands of black hair.

I was about to say it looked like a doll when suddenly, Old Tan let out a guttural scream, his eyes bulging, his face contorting in horror.

His cry startled me. He flung the wet thing toward me; it rolled twice and came to rest by my feet.

“What the hell are you yelling about?” I was ready to scold him further, but when I looked down and recognized what it was, I collapsed onto the ground in terror.

At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. But as I looked closer, I realized the pale bundle was a baby’s corpse—a girl. Her face was turned toward me: one eye gone, the other bulging grotesquely. Because of Old Tan’s earlier jostling, that eye began to slip out of its socket, held by a strand of tissue, until it hung there, suspended in her gaping mouth.

I was nearly paralyzed with fear, retching uncontrollably. Old Tan had it worse—he’d been struck on the head by the corpse and stared at it for ages. Now he was scrambling to pull on his pants, vomiting as he went.

We squatted together, retching for ages before finally regaining some composure. I spun toward Old Tan and snapped, “Why the hell did you toss that thing at me? Couldn’t you have just thrown it back in the river?”

“Damn it, I was scared out of my mind! I wasn’t thinking straight!” Old Tan was clearly in worse shape, turning away to heave again.

When we’d finally settled down, Old Tan eyed the corpse from a distance. “Hey, Yuan Jie, what do we do? Toss her back in the river?”

I had no idea how to handle something like this. Staring at the baby’s twisted, horrifying face, I wanted nothing more than to walk away. But a child drowned in the Ba River—it couldn’t have been her choice. Some monster must have thrown her in.

I kept those thoughts to myself. After a moment, I took out my phone.

“You... you’re calling the police?” Old Tan’s natural aversion to trouble was obvious in his voice.

“What else can we do? This is a human life. We can’t do anything, but the police might find a clue.”

Call the police when in trouble—it was a city-bred instinct. Little did I know that would be the last time I ever thought of “calling the police.”

I checked my phone. “Damn, no signal?”

Old Tan grunted, “In these wild mountains? Of course there’s no cell service... Hey, Lao Yuan, maybe we should think of something else.”

I had planned to call the police, but with no signal, there was nothing for it. It was summer—if we left the baby here, the wild dogs would find her within hours. In the end, Old Tan and I decided to dig a grave and bury her. It was hasty, but better than leaving her to rot in the open.

Luckily, we had a German entrenching tool among our gear. Old Tan took up the spade and started digging, while I searched for a cloth or plastic to wrap the body. After searching fruitlessly, I pulled out a T-shirt from my bag and walked over.

The baby’s face was so ghastly I couldn’t bear to look, so I circled behind her. Just as I was about to cover her with my shirt, I froze.

There was a mark on her back.

“Hey, Old Tan, come look. There’s a pattern on her back.” I called out.

Old Tan straightened up, “Please, let’s just bury her and get on with it,” he begged, resuming his digging.

But I was transfixed by the mark. It appeared faintly red on her back, vaguely resembling the head of some door god, the lines exaggerated, almost like a surge of flames. As I leaned closer, I realized it wasn’t just a pattern—it was an eye, wide open amid fire. Not drawn—tattooed.

My mind went blank. What possible reason could there be to tattoo an infant, barely three months old?

But that wasn’t all. I noticed something even stranger.

“This is summer—why isn’t there any smell from her body? Even if she’d been soaking in the water, that’s not right. Normally, by now, she’d be crawling with maggots.”

Muttering to myself, I glanced around. The riverbank was swarming with flies and mosquitoes, yet in all this time, not a single fly had landed on the body.

Suddenly, a chill of nameless dread crept over me. Looking again at the fiery eye tattoo, I felt something almost... evil.

I dared not use my shirt. Instead, I wrapped the body in a plastic bag. We buried her hastily, and neither of us wanted to linger. Gathering our things, we made for the mountain path without looking back.