Chapter 4 2.childhood in the presence of the devil

Some childhood things they always have.They are, they are chasing me.At this time, there will be some wind sounds in my ears, sometimes someone's words, the girl's panting, and sighing.And the sound of hair snapping.Over the years, these voices have been with me, and I have become convinced that they mean no harm to me, but I still can't let go of them.Just like kind ghosts are still not loved by people. I can no longer tell exactly when the disease of auditory hallucinations haunted me, and when my ears were entangled with messy sounds, as if I had been there since childhood.When I was very young, I could hear the wind and the tide in the evening.The rising and falling sea seems to be right under my feet, but my mother said that our city is far away from the sea, and she said that when I grow up a little more, she will take me to see the sea.Sometimes, when I am eating, I can hear another chewing sound besides me.The sound of chewing was accompanied by the sound of swallowing the fish and vegetables in my mouth, and sometimes even the sound of drinking soup and hitting the spoon on the bowl.My mother often saw me holding a spoon in a daze. She saw me frowning and bowing my head without saying a word.Poor woman, she always thinks she makes food I don't like.

There may be crying at night, even after I have fallen asleep, the sound opens like a slowly opening door.I sat up in a dark, dark room.The door is still closed, but the crying has filled my ears.The girl's depressed voice overwhelmed me like a cloud that suddenly collapsed.Raindrops drenched me.I'm covered with a thick quilt but feel the rolling cold, am I in a cave? Am I besieged or captured? These are like blank and smooth walls for me when I was young. I have no way of climbing. What is hidden behind these voices. And the singing, sometimes for no reason, the same girl who weeps, I guess, she sings.I remember the first time I heard singing I ran into the bathroom and shut myself up, trying to hear the sound in this small space.I pulled myself to hear the song clearly.But I still don't know what song it is.Fragmentary humming repeated and disorderly, sometimes mixed with coughing.I filled the bathtub with water and kept pumping up the water, trying to cover up the sound with the sound of water.But the singing seems to be on my body, and the sound of the water is outside, which cannot be defeated at all.I was terrified, what kind of magic was cast on me?I took off all my clothes, hoping to find the ghost who could no longer hide and fled.One by one I shook off my clothes and threw them hard on the floor.But the singing continued.In the end, I looked at myself in the mirror naked and carefully, and said viciously, to see where you are hiding.Little me, buried myself deep in the tub, constantly flooding myself with water, cleaning myself, I was terrified, I didn't think I could clean myself anymore.That afternoon, I kept taking a shower, but I still didn't wash away the singing that was out of tune.

And it's not just about sound.I always feel flustered, and I can't tell if it's the strange sounds that make me flustered, or the fluster and the sounds are two different things at all.Sometimes I feel out of breath, not when I'm running, going up stairs or other strenuous activities, but when I'm quiet, even when I'm sitting at my desk reading a book. When comic strips.Suddenly I couldn't breathe.A kind of uprooting force spread out from the depths of my heart like a cyclone, pushing up circles and circles, almost grabbing my whole body.I was still too young at that time, and I hardly knew where the heart was. I just felt the pain inside, and the whole inside was writhing with pain.I clutched my chest and crouched on the ground, unable to stand up.

During an angina pectoris, I suddenly fell down a slide, my knee was broken, blood was seeping out, and my skirt was dirty.The kid sent me to the infirmary.I was lying on the treatment bed covered with white sheets, my angina slowly inflated like a secretly inflated balloon, accompanied by sporadic groans.That moaning sound is not mine, my mouth has been closed tightly by me, but there is still a moaning sound coming out of my body, I don’t know whose voice it is, I don’t know who is replacing me sad.The aunt in the infirmary bandaged my wound and told me to be careful in the future.I looked at her, she was in her thirties, put on some white powder, and put a gentle hairpin on her head.When she leaned over to me, the stethoscope in front of her flickered in front of my eyes.My eyes were dazzled, and finally I couldn't help but say to her:

"Auntie, can you use your stethoscope to listen to this place for me?" I pointed at my body randomly, because I couldn't tell exactly where the pain was. "Help me listen and see what is moving inside my body?" She looked at me in surprise and asked, "My little friend, is there something wrong with you? Tell Auntie." "Help me listen." I insisted.My aunt put on a stethoscope and listened to me for a while.She said with a smile: "It's your heart beating in it." "Is it still fine? Is it not sick?" I asked anxiously. "It's fine, and you're fine too." Auntie patted me and told me with certainty.

During the kindergarten, the infirmary checked the children every month. Although I was a little apprehensive before each check-up, I got only one answer after all: I am extremely healthy. At that time I tried to tell my mother about it.I figured my mom would always save me even if I was a bad girl with a ghost on her back.She's so kind, maybe she'll just kiss me with her mouth.Or my father, his eyeballs can always illuminate all the dark things, and he will definitely be able to find that ghost out when he probes into my heart.But just as I was about to tell it, I heard a story.The story was told by sister Mei from the kindergarten.She is the aunt who takes care of us. She is the youngest among all the aunts. She has a round face and likes to wear a pink corduroy skirt with two braids on her chest, like a doll.I like listening to her tell stories the most. She always laughs intoxicated when she tells a beautiful story.But the story she told that afternoon kept me from being safe.She said that every child has a guardian angel. She watches over the child from a distance in the sky, and the child will grow up safely and look as good-looking as an angel.Angels teach children how to love and how to give.If the child is in big trouble, the angel will fly over, bend down, pick the child up in his mouth, and take him away.

"Uh, what if, what if it's not an angel watching the child? What else?" I suddenly interrupted the unfinished story and asked.At that time, all the children sat in a circle, quietly listening to stories and basking in the sun in the yard in the afternoon.No one noticed, I suddenly stood up to ask questions, with a helpless and helpless expression.It was only early spring, but I was sweating so much that my sweater was soaked.Sister Mei looked at me, and she looked at me without speaking for a long time.At this time, I heard those voices from other places again.I heard the sound of running, and the girl was panting heavily.I feel like I'm going to break and fall, and the ghost in me will come out and step on me, and everyone here will know from today that there is a ghost in me.

"If there is no angel, then the one with the child is the devil!" Sister Mei increased her voice and strength. "Then, the child will grow up to be an ugly and evil person, just like a devil." She looked like a heroine punishing evil and repelling rape, as if she was about to stand up as she spoke, and catch the child with the devil on her body . Everything was finally confirmed. It turned out that I was a child that the devil had been taking care of, so there was a strange sound in my ear, and there was a wave of pain in my body.Before Sister Mei could see through me, I hurriedly covered myself up, sat down slowly again, curled up into a ball, and hugged my knees with my hands——I was worried that ghosts would come out of my chest, so I could press down Hold her, don't let her jump out.

"If you meet an evil child under the care of the devil, you should stay away from him, he will lead you to ruin." Sister Mei added.She spoke more fiercely than ever this time.She wants all the children to remember these words. I am one of them, I sit among them, I look around and I cannot see any difference between myself and them.Then I told myself categorically, never, never let them know about ghosts.Forever, I'm going to look like them.No one noticed that the children who were listening to the story that day were all gone, so I left. No one noticed that I was wet and cold, but I was still sweating non-stop.

Since then, I have given up the idea of ​​telling others.Just stick to it like this, no one will say anything, I will swallow all the voices.Even if all the voices swell and turn me into a hopelessly fat man, even if all the voices turn into horrible bugs that eat me up and turn me into a shell, I will never let those voices out .Time and patience will always give me enough strength to drive away those voices when I grow up. Later, my hallucinations suddenly became very serious.That voice seemed to have suddenly increased its horsepower, becoming extraordinarily powerful.It all started in the summer when Duan Xiaomu appeared.I was 6 years old, I grew my hair long for the first time, and sang a song for the first time on a stage with a large audience.

I still remember the way from my old house to the small kindergarten.I remember that I carried a white hard plastic schoolbag with two large side pockets on my shoulders, and walked across the road into the kindergarten with a pair of slippery and shiny leather shoes.My house is on the fifth floor with a semi-circular balcony.I like to water my small green plants with a mushroom-shaped sprinkler, and at the same time look at my kindergarten from the gap in the iron railing of the balcony.The oblong gate of the kindergarten is diagonally opposite. The gate of the kindergarten is full of animals. In the second row, there is an elegant giraffe with its neck gently protruding forward. It is painted in soft orange, which I like the most.In addition, there are naive hedgehogs with red faces and deer with almond-shaped pupils.Looking out from the window sill of my house, I can clearly see the aunts and children playing in the yard.I like them, even when I am sick, I will lie on the windowsill of my room and watch them.I think getting them to like me is very important to me.I had to dress myself up and look pretty in everything I did so they wouldn't notice the things I was doing with the devil. So I try my best to be a beautiful and warm-hearted little person.In that season, I like to wear bright pink skirts, very short and very short, paired with spotless white leather shoes, my hair should be tied into two braids, and all hairpin elastics should also be pink.Then I asked my mother to stuff the pockets of my little peach dress with candy, which I took to kindergarten and distributed to the kindergarteners.I always say sweetly, you open your mouth and I will put it in your mouth.I was also the first to learn how to use glass candy paper to fold up the dancing dolls with big tutu skirts.I saved up a lot of candy wrappers as colorful as butterfly wings and distributed them to kindergarten children, and then I taught them how to fold them.They stood in a circle and I sat in the middle of the circle.They listened to me quietly and studied patiently according to the steps I taught.We stacked many, many, and opened them in a row on the windowsill, letting them dance in pairs in the sun.I look at my little friends and I know they all like me. There are several swings in the small courtyard of the kindergarten.In my memory they are rust red with a smell of pig iron.But I was obviously wrong, the swing was always refurbished by paint, and turned into sky blue, bright yellow, and snow blue.But these are always ignored by me.They are with me forever the rusty chains that stain my skirts, the quivering polished boards.However I still like them.I've always loved all things dangling, wobbly.Like when I was growing up I really liked boats.When I was a kid my favorite was the swing.A swing is enough to be a boat in the eyes of a six-year-old.The skirt is filled with wind, soaring into the air like a bird.I still remember the swings in the kindergarten next to the grape trellises and fig trees.Sometimes when I fly, I can touch the leaves of that tree lightly.If it is midsummer, there will be a sweet and sour aroma of grapes, and you can also see small blue heart-shaped figs.And when flying, the strong wind can cover some sounds in my ears, and I can feel that my clean body is with the wind and the sky. "Why do you always open your mouth and scream when you are sitting on the swing?" Ji Yan, a boy in the same class, asked me.He was a fluffy little boy with limp eyelashes and hair, like Winnie the Pooh in a cartoon. "How happy, you can also cry with me." I sat on the swing and continued to call. No one, no one will ever understand my six-year-old simple wish: to fly and maybe throw the ghost out of my body.If you bark louder, you will no longer be disturbed by the sound in your ears. However, just as I was about to jump off and leave after sitting on the swing once, the voice in my ear suddenly came unexpectedly.This time, it's very different.This time it was a kind of whispered reading that had never happened before.It was low, almost weeping, without the slightest ups and downs, as calm as the electrocardiogram of a dead person.This is a strange sound that I can't distinguish. It slowly penetrates into my heart, illuminating and seeing everything inside me like a cold stethoscope.But, at this moment, what else is in my heart? Except for the floating large block of fear with no edge.I leaned down bit by bit, thinking that if I could, I would lie down and let the cement support me firmly against the cold ground.But I can't, I want to look like a normal kid.I couldn't even let other people see me looking pale and fidgeting.My pink skirt and my pink hairpin are still flying in the wind, I still look like a bright girl, nothing can go wrong, I have to look good. I had to swing again, swinging fast, calling all the winds to fight the terrible sound.That time I kept swinging until I was so dizzy that I started to vomit.The sound had ended, it was already night, there was not a single child in the kindergarten, not even a light.I crouched down and vomited.Did I win and the voice left?I rolled off the swing and fell onto the hard concrete floor, my hands still tightly covering my ears.After a long, long time, the light of a flashlight shone on me, and I almost screamed.Then I slowly saw that the person who was walking was Sister Mei, and she said, "Wanwan, why are you lying on the ground? Why are you still home so late? Are you feeling unwell? Ah! You vomited, must you be sick?" , why don't you say anything? Come on, sister will take you home. " The moment I put my hand in Sister Mei's hand, my heart was about to twitch.I was worried that she would find out that I was different from other children, and I was worried that she would suddenly turn her face and say to me in a terrified and hateful voice: "Ah, so you are the child possessed by the devil!" When I hesitated, she had already pulled me up, and she took my hand and took me home.I felt that her hands were extremely hot, and a warm air flowed into my body.The comforting touch quickly calmed me down, and I was so addicted to this tight protection that I was even eager to fall asleep peacefully on the way.She walked in front and I followed behind. Several times, I almost yelled "Sister Mei, please help me, I have a ghost! But I am not a bad boy, please help me, please help me what!" However, I finally didn't open my mouth. I didn't make this dangerous attempt, because I can always remember Sister Mei's vicious expression when she talked about the devil. She won't forgive, I know. It was a night in early summer, and the braids that my mother had neatly tied up for me had all been untied, and the beautiful pink skirt was covered with vomit, and I was sent home by Sister Mei just like that. At night, I said loudly to Sister Mei in my dream: "Sister Mei, Sister Mei, that ghost always bullies me, you know that?" Afterwards the sound of chanting is there every week.Nervous and chattering over and over again.Once a week for a long time.When the sound came, I would push the door quietly and go out, and I would go to the kindergarten opposite by myself.Most of the chanting time is on Sunday morning, and there is no one in the kindergarten.I started sitting down on the swing, and it was fine to fly, it was fine to fly, I said to myself.I thought, if my mother poked her head out of the balcony window, she would be able to see her little daughter making countless attempts to throw herself into the sky.