The Tale of the Ghost Eyes Chapter 82 The Man Buried in the Snow

A black shadow rose from the ditch to our right. My arms acted before I knew what was happening and I threw the book I was carrying at the growing figure. Whatever it was made no attempt to avoid the incoming book and took the unconventional projectile full force. With a grunt the figure and the book collapsed into the ditch behind it.

Zhao Jie let out a little yelp and turned to me, "Xiao Yong did you just kill a guy?"

"It was book!" I said, "You can't kill anything with a book!" I took a step forward to try and see what happened, muttering under my breath, "Besides he jumped out at us first!"

"What was he doing in the ditch?" I asked, stepping gingerly towards it.

"Maybe he was pooping?" Zhao Jie said with a laugh.

"Oh I hope I didn't get shit on my book!" I said, starting to laugh as well. I reached the edge of the road and looked down at the dark lump. "Hey!" I called to it. "Who are you? Why did you try to scare us?"

The pile of coat and man let out a groan. "Are you okay?" I asked.

The man didn't respond for a very long time and then started to hum a strange tune. Zhao Jie whispered to me in his honking whisper, "Is he crazy?"

The man rolled over, his green coat was now a wet dark black color, but it served as identification. "It's you!" I said. He smiled a dirty yellow grin and started to crawl out of the ditch. When he reached the top and got onto the road, he lifted himself to his knees, now singing under his breath in that foreign language. With a shivering motion, he held out his hands. In them was my textbook, and some of the bread we'd given him the day before. With that he shakily got to his feet, sang a short phrase that sounded like, "Yip ker shi munda," and walked away in the direction of our school.

We managed to watch him disappear into the distance before bursting into laughter. "What the heck was that?" Zhao Jie asked through a bout of guffaws that doubled him over.

"I dunno!" I added, "But at least he gave me my book back!" I tossed the half chewed bread into the ditch. "Weird day."

The next day word ran rampant around the school that a strange man was singing outside of the locker rooms. During lunch Ku Tou gave us the details, "I heard him!" He said, smashing a puddle of potatoes on his tray. "He was just walking around outside the gym during P.E., screaming and singing like a loon!"

"Did Coach do anything?" Zhao Jie asked.

"Not really. He herded the class into a circle in the gym and waited until the dude left. Some of the girls were freaked to the point of tears!" He grinned at us. "Not I though," He finished with a flourish, "I'm brave as can be."

Zhao Jie and I exchanged a glance. "We saw him yesterday." I whispered across the table. "There's nothing to be afraid of, he's just a weird old guy."

We passed him again after school that day. I made the mistake of looking right at him and he gave me that unkempt grin again, flashing bright yellow teeth. Zhao Jie and I both made the polite smile and walked past with our heads down. Just as we were getting away from him, he made a strange barking noise that sounded vaguely like the word 'food'.

I turned around and raised my empty hands at him. "Sorry fella, we don't have anything." His smile turned into a grimace.

The man kept popping up around the village the following week. He was seen dancing in front of the food vendors and singing unintelligible songs. He was found sitting and begging for food outside the school grounds. You Xiaoqing and some of her girl friends were kind enough to bring him lunch a few times. He became part of the morning message in our classrooms, the teachers warned us, "Don't interact with the clown outside. He is simply a fool begging for scraps and will be gone with the season."

At the end of the week we were released with warnings that the weather was to take a turn over the weekend and recommendations to find a good book and settle in. Zhao Jie and I joked about that as we walked home. The forecast was right though. The sky was filled with dark gray clouds that threatened snow.

When we came to the spot the man usually sat and begged for food, he wasn't there. Instead, he was standing in the center of street, pointing an ungloved hand at the sky and shouting. Through his jumbled language I heard one word that I understood, "God." The man shook his hand and repeated, "Ku tak shimun god!"

"Why don't you go home?" I called to the man, "It's going to snow! You'll freeze!"

The man stopped shouting at the clouds, turned to me and uttered an array of barking laughter. He shook his finger at me and then pointed up again, shouting, "Ku tak!"

"Where do you live?" I tried again.

Zhao Jie pulled on my arm, "Let's go, Xiao Yong."

"Do you have a home?" I called to the man.

"You keep asking and he might follow you home!" Zhao Jie said in his terrible whisper.

I thought about that for the briefest of seconds and was about to suggest the man come stay in our house when he turned back to me and yelled, "Shimun god!" The man pulled his coat tightly closed and took a shuffling step towards us.

"Oh no," Zhao Jie said. "Let's go!"

We took a step back. The man saw us and stopped in his tracks, and then he turned and ran towards the ditch on the side of the road. Sliding into it like a human bobsled, he regained his feet with another nonsensical shout and dashed down the ditch away from us. As he disappeared into the darkness at the end of it, the sky started to fill with snowflakes.

We walked in silence the rest of the way home.

Both nights that weekend I dreamt of a snow covered man knocking on my door. In the dream I didn't want to answer his calls or didn't dare to. Something felt wrong about letting him in. Monday morning I explained the dream to my mom and she brushed it off.

"You need to spend more time outside. You were all cooped up all weekend." She told me.

I told Zhao Jie about it on the way to school too. He shrugged and gathered some snow in his hands, rolling it into a ball. "Maybe you're psychic and a magical snowman is gonna come knock your door down." I pushed him and we spent the next few minutes pelting each other with snowballs.

Our snowball fight turned into a war when we caught up with You Xiaoqing and several of her girl friends. Snowballs flew left and right until Zhao Jie and I were soaked and retreating into the ditch. "Down!" He yelled, laughing, and tackled me off the road. We landed with a heavy thump on something that felt much too hard to be just snow in the ditch.

"What is that?" Zhao Jie asked, pointing to a spot of snow by my boot. We sat up and brushed away the snow. A pair of hands seemed to be squeezing my heart as I recognized the shape.

"I think…" I said, not wanting to unearth any more snow. "I think it's a person!" I swallowed loudly.

I stood up and brushed myself off. Moving forward at a snails pace, I kicked away a chunk of snow. I heard one of the girls walk up behind me and gasp. Another girl followed with a scream. Sticking out of the snow by my boot was a hand.

I let out an, "Ugh," and tried to step backwards. My footing slipped and I stumbled back onto Zhao Jie. He barely managed to stay upright, holding the two of us as far from the body as possible.

"Go get help!" I yelled. As one, Zhao Jie and I turned and clambered up the ditch, getting our feet as the girls dashed ahead of us towards the school. We arrived just as two of the teachers were coming out of the front door.

"Where is it?" One of them asked the girl who'd gotten there first.

"In the ditch by the main road!" She said.

The teachers ushered us towards the door and dashed to the road. Inside the school, the secretary was glued to the window with a phone pressed to his ear.

Within the next fifteen minutes a police car arrived and several adults had unburied the frozen body of the mad man. The students who were near enough the school windows claimed he was blue when they pulled him out.

"He came to my door." I whispered to Zhao Jie during lunch. "It had to've been him! He froze to death and his ghost came to me for help!"

Zhao Jie's eyes widened. He shushed me and darted a glance around the cafeteria. "You don't know that. It was just a dream!"

"Still…" I said, feeling a pocket of guilt settle into my stomach.

That afternoon the mad man's frozen body was put into the morgue next to the police office. Both the police station and the village morgue were less than a block away from the school. An officer came to the school and pulled the few of us that found the body out of class for what they called a 'witness report'. I told them everything I'd seen, careful not to mention my dream. Zhao Laohei also came to the school. He spoke with Zhao Jie and then pulled me out of the office and into the hallway.

"Xiao Yong," He said in a low voice. "I know this is strange, but I need one of the amulets you've been making."

"Why mine?" I asked, suppressing a surge of pride at the idea.

"You found the body. If his spirit has any complaints, they might concern you. Do you have any soul suppressing amulets here?" He asked.

"Not at school, no. I keep them all at home. But Uncle Zhao-" I started.

"I'll take care of it." He interrupted. "I have faith in your amulets. I'll fetch one from your house and use it to suppress the poor man's corpse." With that he straightened and walked down the hallway.

I watched him go. I was filled with a mixture of sympathy for the dead man who may have tried to communicate with me, and an insane pride that I could be of help.

The bell rang to change classes and I turned to get my things from the office. I had no idea what my amulet would do to the body. I had no idea what would happen next.

Chapter end