By the time John Smith graduated from college, he had completely forgotten about his hard fall on the ice that day in January 1953.In fact, he didn't remember much of it when he graduated from high school.But his mother and father didn't know anything about it. They were skating that day on a frozen pond in Dürheim, the older boys playing hockey using two potato baskets as goals, and the younger boys skating clumsily on the edge of the pond, water At the corner of the pond, two rubber tires were burning and emitting black smoke. Several parents sat beside them, watching their children. There were no snowmobiles at that time, and ice skating was the main form of entertainment in winter.

Johnny came down from the house with his skates slung over his shoulders.He was six years old and was already skating pretty well, not good enough to play hockey with the older kids, but better than the beginners.These beginners always have to spread their arms to keep their balance, otherwise they will fall to the ground. He was skating on the edge of the pool, wishing he could skate backwards like Timmy Benedicts.In the distance he heard mysterious crackling from beneath the snow-covered ice, the shouts of children playing hockey, the roar of pulp trucks driving across the bridge, and the murmurs of adults.On this cold, sunny winter day, he was perfectly happy, feeling alive and carefree, wishing only that he could skate backwards like Timmy Benedicts.

He slid past the fire and saw two.Three adults are passing around a bottle of wine. "Give me a drink!" he called to Chuck Spall, who was wearing a long lumberjack shirt and green flannel trousers. Chuck grinned at him. "Go away, kid, I heard your mother calling you." Six-year-old John Smith slid away laughing, and as he slid to the side of the road he saw Timmy Benedict himself coming down the hill, followed by his father. "Timmy?" he called. "Look!" He turned and began to slide backward awkwardly.Before he knew it, he slipped into the hockey circle.

"Hey kid," someone yelled, "get out of here." Johnny didn't hear it.He succeeded!He can slide backwards!He grasped the rhythm all at once, swinging his feet like this... He looked down, fascinated by the movement of his feet. The big boys' hockey pucks flew past him, and he didn't see it, and a big boy who wasn't a very good skater was chasing the puck behind him, rushing desperately; Seeing this, Chuck Spar stood up abruptly and yelled, "Johnny! Attention!" Johnny looked up—and the moment the big one hundred and sixty-pound boy hit John Smith Jr. at full speed.

Johnny was sent flying with his arms outstretched, and a moment later his head hit the ice hard and his vision was black. Black... black ice... black... black ice... black, black. They told him he passed out.All he really knew was these strange ones.Recurring thoughts and a sudden look up to see a circle of faces—a terrified hockey boy, an anxious adult, and a curious toddler.Timmy Benedict was giggling.Chuck Spar was holding him. black ice.black. "How are you?" Chuck asked. "Johnny... are you okay? You got hit hard." "Black," said Johnny hoarsely. "Black ice. Stop pinching, Chuck."

Chuck looked up, a little scared, then looked down at Johnny, feeling the lump on his forehead. "I'm sorry," said the boy who hit him. "I didn't see him at all. Children are supposed to stay away from hockey." He looked around uneasily at the people around him, hoping for their approval. "Johnny?" said Chuck. He didn't like the look in Johnny's eyes. It was mysterious. It was vague and indifferent. "Are you all right?" " "Don't pinch any more," said Johnny, not knowing what he was talking about, only thinking about ice—black ice. "Explosion, acid."

"Should we send him to the doctor?" Chuck asked Bill Gundlen. "He's talking nonsense." "Wait a minute," Bill suggested. They waited a while longer, and Johnny cleared his mind. "I'm fine," he said, "let me up." Timmy, Benedict was still giggling, the goddamn guy.Johnny decided to give Timmy a hand, and by the end of the week he was going to skate around Timmy...forward and backward. "You get a rest by the fire," Chuck said. "You got hit hard." Johnny let them help him to the fire.The strong, pungent smell of molten rubber made him a little nauseous.His head hurts, and the lump above his left eye is swollen like a mile long, and it feels weird.

"Do you remember who you are?" Bill asked. "Of course, of course I remember. I'm all right." "Your father. What's your mother's name?" "Herb and Vera, Herb and Vera Smith." Bill and Chuck looked at each other and shrugged. "I think he's all right," Chuck said, and then added a third time, "But he did get hit pretty hard, didn't he?" "Kids," Bill said, looking up lovingly at his twin eight-year-old girls, who were skating hand in hand, and then back at Johnny. "With such a violent impact, even adults may be killed."

"But you can't kill a Pole," Chuck said, and they both burst out laughing.Then, they started passing around the bottle of wine again. Ten minutes later, Johnny was back on the ice, the headache gone and the lump on his forehead like a weird brand.By the time he got home for lunch, he had completely forgotten about the fall and was just happy to know how he slid backwards. "My God!" exclaimed Vera Smith, seeing him, "how have you come to this?" "I fell down," he said, and began to drink the soup. "Are you all right, John?" she asked, gently touching the bump on his forehead.

"It's all right, Mom." He was really all right, but in the next month, he had occasional nightmares and sometimes felt drowsy during the day, which he had never had before.When he stopped having nightmares, the drowsiness disappeared. He's fine. One morning in mid-February, Chuck Spall woke up to find his car battery was dead. He tried to remove the battery from the car. When he clamped the battery for the second time, the battery was in front of his The surface exploded, spraying him with debris and caustic battery acid.He lost an eye.Vera said that, thanks to God, he did not lose both eyes.Johnny thought it was a terrible and tragic event, and he and his father went to visit Chuck at Livingstone General Hospital a week after the accident.Johnny was horrified by the sight of the tall Chuck lying on the hospital bed, looking weak and small—he dreamed that night that he was lying in the hospital bed himself.

Over the ensuing years, Johnny used to have a lot of hunches—he knew what the next record was going to be before the DJ played it, and that sort of thing—but he never related it to his wrestling on the ice. been linked together.At that time, he had forgotten about it. Those hunches aren't surprising, and they don't come around very often.It wasn't until that night of the country fair and the masks that something shocking happened, just after the second accident. Later, he often thought of that incident. The fate wheel happened before the second accident. Like a warning from his childhood.