IBGSW Chapter 136
Strange Happenings at Night
By now the villagers of Kuailiang Village had reached the riverbank.
The woman in the pig cage had a face like ash and no longer tried to struggle.
Sixth Uncle directed the crowd:
"Put stones in the cage and sink it in the river."
The crowd shouted work chants and did as he ordered, putting stones into the cage.
The bamboo cage with the woman in it was pushed into the water.
The stones in the cage dragged the woman slowly under, and at the brink of death she began to struggle by instinct.
Ripples spread across the surface. The water around turned murky as the cage sank.
Glug, glug. Bubbles rose, and everyone around felt an extraordinary thrill. As one, they roared:
"Purge the family! Enforce the family rules!"
"Restore its honor! Drown her in the pig cage!"
The men grew more excited with each shout. The women, as they shouted, felt a creeping fear.
On the surface the ritual was putting Fifth Madam Kuai to death, but in truth it was also meant to intimidate all the women of the village.
After about seven or eight minutes, with everyone watching, the bubbles in the water gradually stopped, and the cage sank. The woman inside must have drowned.
Sixth Uncle nodded in satisfaction, savoring the respectful and fearful faces around him.
"This river is a branch of the Shangjia River. Surely it will wash away the filth from Madam Zhuang1—"
He was about to say a few more words when something suddenly went wrong.
"Sixth Uncle—"
Someone cried out in fright, as if they'd seen something.
Glug, glug, glug—
The sound of bubbling came from the river. Sixth Uncle turned toward the middle of the river with a strange look.
The surface that had gone calm had started bubbling again, and the bubbles grew thicker and thicker, as if someone under the water were thrashing wildly. The water slapped and roared, and fierce waves sounded.
At some point, a faint mist had come out of the small woods by the Kuailiang riverbank.
The crowd, who'd been sweating with excitement over the punishment they'd watched, now, as the mist appeared, felt a mountain wind blow along the woods by the river with a whoosh.
The torches in their hands were pressed low by the wind, the flames flattened. A chill that went straight to the bottom of their hearts rose in everyone's backs.
"Sixth Uncle, what's that in the river—"
"Could there be a big fish down there?"
They all started talking at once:
"That Zhuang woman is a rotten fish, and the moment she went in the water she drew a big fish to gnaw at her—"
They still hadn't grasped how serious it was, and were making jokes.
When this man finished, the others laughed along.
"Something's not right."
Someone with sharper eyes had already sensed it.
"What's not right? Don't tell me the Zhuang woman is going to haunt us out of resentment!"
A woman said dismissively:
"She did wrong, so how could she have the face? If I'd done something so shameless, I wouldn't have the face to see anyone even after I died—"
"Hahahaha—"
As the laughter went on, someone said:
"Something really is wrong."
When two people in a row said the situation looked bad, the rest who'd been laughing felt, without knowing why, that their throats had tightened.
Sixth Uncle's expression also gradually sobered.
The gurgling from the water grew louder, the bubbles churned in the river, and the whole river looked like a pot of boiling water.
Under the surface, a dark shadow seemed to be growing and rising.
Gulp.
The villagers, who'd been shouting slogans and laughing a moment ago, had fallen silent without noticing. In the extreme quiet, all that could be heard was the boiling river.
Someone swallowed, which sounded especially harsh.
Thump, thump, thump—
Hearts began to beat faster, and the timid started to back away.
"What is that—"
Suddenly someone, unable to bear the uncanny silence any longer, pointed to the river and asked.
"I-is it a fish?"
"Is it a fish, Sixth Uncle?"
Sixth Uncle was the most respected in the village, and everyone deferred to his opinion. Now that something like this had happened, everyone's attention turned instinctively to him, waiting for him to speak.
The old man also saw the shadow spreading in the river.
He had lived long, and was already half buried in the yellow earth. His sense of danger was far sharper than that of the young, who didn't know any better.
He already realized that tonight's action had probably gone wrong.
But although Sixth Uncle had some experience, he was only an old mountain villager with limited knowledge.
And he felt he hadn't done anything wrong, so he wasn't afraid. Seeing the women and children around him a little scared, he barked:
"Ignorant women and children, stop wailing. Whatever it is, go into the water and look and you'll know."
At this, normally someone would have volunteered.
But tonight the village was carrying out an execution. A woman had just been pushed into the river and a life drowned there.
Someone had just died in that water, and everyone thought it unlucky and didn't want to go in.
Seeing no one answer after he spoke, Sixth Uncle was irritated and flared up:
"A bunch of useless cowards."
After cursing them, he called:
"Kuai Laowu, Kuai Pengju, Kuai Pengcheng—"
He called several names. Kuai Laowu, one of those called, began backing away in tears:
"Sixth Uncle, I don't dare—"
"Kuai Laowu, you worthless dog!"
Sixth Uncle suddenly raged:
"You couldn't keep your woman in line at home, and when things went wrong, we all helped you clean up, and now when I ask you to go in and look you have no guts. What are you good for, you dog?"
At this scolding, the broad-faced Kuai Laosan couldn't stand still any longer. He stepped out of the crowd and shot a hateful glare at his useless younger brother:
"Sixth Uncle, I'll go."
He thrust the torch in his hand into Kuai Laowu's, rolled up his sleeves, and was the first to stride into the water.
Splash, splash.
The water splashed under his feet.
Tonight the water was bone-chillingly cold. Kuai Laosan was in his prime, full of vigor, but the water still made him shiver, and his feet began to cramp.
Hiss!
He sucked in a breath and wrenched at his foot several times, until the heart-piercing pain slowly faded.
In that short time, seeing that he'd gone in without trouble, the two men Sixth Uncle had called followed him into the water.
The shadow on the water had risen higher and higher. The men joined hands and waded toward the shadow in the middle of the river.
On the bank, people held their breath. One woman, her face full of worry, shouted to Kuai Laosan:
"Husband, be careful."
"Don't worry, nothing's wrong."
Kuai Laosan answered.
When they reached the edge of the shadow, the three of them, from the instinct living things have to sense danger, stood still for a moment without meaning to.
The shadow in the river, once they were near, no longer rose. It simply drifted in the water, like algae floating at the bottom of the river, swaying slightly with the lingering ripples.
And the bubbles that had been rising like boiling water had stopped at some point.
Only ring after ring of ripples remained on the surface, spreading slowly toward the bank in the torchlight.
They waited a moment. Nothing happened.
Nothing happening was the best thing that could happen.
Sixth Uncle's tight mouth relaxed, and a faint smile appeared on his face.
Kuai Laosan let out a breath too.
Tonight's business was after all his family's affair, and with such an accident, it was bound to be unlucky.
A matter that had been going so well had reached this point and frightened the villagers. If it dragged on any longer, the others would probably be dissatisfied.
Thinking this, he gathered his nerve and reached out to touch the shadow.
The other two who'd gone into the water were bold enough, but for some reason both shrank from the shadow.
They hadn't expected Kuai Laosan to be so bold as to reach into the water and touch it. As they were marveling, they heard Kuai Laosan breathe out and spit:
"Tch, it's just the pig cage floating up."
The moment he said this, the crowd on the bank, who'd been holding their breath, let out a great sigh without meaning to:
"Phew, scared me!"
"So it was just the pig cage floating up."
"I thought it was some fish turned monster, or a river demon—"
The villagers chattered, one voice after another.
Whoo— A mountain wind came, the treetops swayed, and countless leaves were plucked from the branches by the wind and fell to the ground with a rustle.
Sixth Uncle, though, began to feel something uncanny.
He didn't feel relieved like the villagers. The moment he heard "the pig cage floated up," his heart tightened, and he asked quickly:
"Laosan, how did the pig cage float up? Could the cage have opened, and the Zhuang woman got away?"
The cage had held a living person, and fearing she wouldn't die, the villagers had stuffed two big stones in.
The stones had been lifted by several strong men from the village, each weighing several hundred pounds. They should have carried the woman straight to the bottom of the river. How could it float back up in no time?
Thinking of this, Sixth Uncle's face darkened and he demanded:
"Who tied the cage door?"
He meant, who had gone soft and secretly let the Zhuang woman go.
"It was Kuai Baichuan!" someone shouted.
"That boy's always staring at the Zhuang woman. Could he have felt some wicked urge to spare the slut's life—" As soon as the speaker finished, Sixth Uncle glared viciously at one man.
The man was small, unremarkable, and walked with a limp, as if he had some disability. Called out like this, he backed away several steps and waved his hands frantically:
"Sixth Uncle, I've been wronged! I know the Zhuang woman cheated, and I'm disgusted by her, so why would I help her?"
He was so worked up that he sprayed spit:
"Kuailiang Village got into this scandal and I wish she'd die. I tied the knot very tight, there's no way it came loose!"
"Who knows—" a woman muttered awkwardly.
"I see all of you with your eyes glued to her like cats seeing fish—"
Kuai Baichuan, accused like that, couldn't bear it:
"You can't control your own man, so you're jealous that your Kuai Pengju is always sneaking looks at her, aren't you?"
"I'll rip your mouth open—"
As the two quarreled, the night wind came again with a whoosh.
At the gust, many torches were pressed out and the surroundings plunged into darkness.
"Aaaaah!!!"
The sudden change terrified the people of Kuailiang Village, who screamed.
Luckily, these were specially made torches. After the wind passed, the suppressed flames lit up again.
When light returned, every face was livid.
"Sixth Uncle—"
"Enough, stop arguing."
Even Sixth Uncle's hands began to shake.
Tonight was truly uncanny. He spat on the ground and called:
"Laosan, drag that pig cage up. I want to see whether the Zhuang woman found a way to escape from it."
"Yes."
Kuai Laosan answered.
He reached out to drag it, but the bamboo cage was heavy to begin with and even heavier after soaking. He grabbed the gaps in the weave and hauled hard a couple of times.
The water swirled into an eddy that held the cage fast.
It was as if, deep in the dim water, another force were contending with him, trying to stop him from dragging the pig cage away.
Kuai Laosan refused to be spooked and called:
"Pengju, Pengcheng, give me a hand."
The two men, fearful in their faces, answered hurriedly.
The three took hold of the cage together and, shouting work chants, hauled hard toward the bank.
With three strong men pulling together and the water helping to carry it, the three slowly dragged the cage toward the crowd.
At about two zhang from the bank2, the cage broke the surface.
Through the stirred-up water, the people on the bank could see clearly what was inside.
The door of the pig cage had not come undone as everyone expected.
Inside the cage, a woman's figure lay curled up, bound hand and foot.
The woman was naked now. Her long hair was tangled about her like seaweed, wrapped around her white body, which was so pale it seemed to hold no trace of blood, and which was frightening to see.
The two stones, each of several hundred pounds, were also pressed in the cage. That was why Kuai Laosan alone hadn't been able to pull it earlier.
By rights, such a cage should have sunk to the bottom. How had it suddenly floated?
"What a strange thing."
Sixth Uncle murmured.
Then his face darkened, and he asked Kuai Pengju:
"Pengju, is she dead?"
Kuai Pengju stood at the left end of the cage, near where the woman's head was.
When Sixth Uncle called his name, the man shuddered all over.
In his idle farm seasons, he liked to crack dirty jokes with the village women. When Madam Zhuang was alive, he had often watched her and had thought of getting her into bed.
After her scandal had come out and people had proposed stripping her clothes off to leave her no face to go on living with, he had been very keen, and had even taken the chance to cop a feel.
Now that Madam Zhuang was stripped bare, for some reason he found he had lost the nerve to look straight at her body.
"Sixth Uncle, I don't know—"
He answered.
Sixth Uncle scolded without sympathy: "You good-for-nothing dog. If you don't know, go and check her breath with your hand."
Madam Zhuang's head wasn't far from him. He could touch her face if he reached out.
But Kuai Pengju turned to look at the woman in the bamboo cage. Her pitch-black hair fanned out seductively under the water like waterweed run wild at the bottom of the river, as if it meant to coil around his body and drag him into a bottomless abyss.
A strange terror suddenly rose from the bottom of his heart, and he shook his head repeatedly:
"Sixth Uncle, I don't dare."
"Well, Kuai Pengju! You run all over the village, squat here and there, and try to cop a feel of every woman you see. You've thought about Madam Zhuang plenty too. Now you say you don't dare?"
Though tonight had gone strangely, the ritual had gotten this far with nothing serious happening again.
The villagers were ignorant and therefore fearless, and now even joked and teased Kuai Pengju:
"Now she's stripped bare. In the past you couldn't have begged for this. What are you afraid of?"
"What? Pengju, you actually dared to—"
Beside them, Kuai Laosan flew into a rage at these words. In the crowd, Kuai Laowu stood with his hands tucked in his sleeves, head and neck shrunk down, not daring to say a word about the jeers.
"Don't talk nonsense, when did I ever—"
Kuai Pengju answered awkwardly:
"I didn't—"
His eyes shifted, his guilt plain. A middle-aged woman on the bank, seeing his expression, flew into a rage:
"You actually had such thoughts about a slut like that? You're not disgusted by the filth—"
"Enough, stop arguing!"
The racket left Sixth Uncle frazzled.
He felt that tonight's business was too strange and that it was now too calm, which wasn't right.
But he was only an old mountain villager with little learning, and even sensing the danger he couldn't say what it was.
Seeing everyone still bickering at such a critical moment, he shouted impatiently:
"Everyone shut up! Pengju, push aside Madam Zhuang's hair and look at her face. Check her breath and her pulse, and see if she's dead."
He was restless and uneasy:
"Hurry up and finish, then we can clean up and go home."
"It's late—"
