Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I remembered the disgusting owner of the auto repair shop.

I remembered the way Dr. Wang’s eyes narrowed.

I remembered the neighbors’ whispers about my aunt.

I remembered her hands, red from the cold, carrying the cake home.

I remembered the big, bright white house I’d seen on TV, where no one had to light a stove for warmth.

And I remembered my aunt’s smile.

That radiant smile.

The hammer was still in my hand.

“I know where they are. I’ll get them for you.”

He let go of my hair.

“Good. You’re finally learning.”

He turned around, grinning, and casually scooped up a broken piece of cake and stuffed it into his mouth.

In that instant…

I swung the hammer into the head of the man who called himself my father.

The hammer had never felt so light.

No matter how many times I brought it down, it never felt like enough.

Blood spattered across my face.

Across my old, tattered padded coat.

Across the bedding.

Across the glowing stove.

Across the plastic sheet I’d picked up.

He stopped breathing.

My hands began to shake.

I copied what I’d seen on TV at the repair shop and wiped the blood from the floor with a rag.

Then I dipped a nearly worn-out brush into cold water and detergent I’d salvaged, and scrubbed the blood from our clothes and bedding.

The blood on the charcoal stove had burned black.

When I smelled it again, it was oddly sweet.

I glanced at the battered old clock on the wall. My aunt would be home soon.

I wrapped my father’s body in layer after layer of plastic, sealed it with tape, shoved it beneath the bed, and pulled the bedspread over it.

I planned to get rid of the body that night, while my aunt was working the night shift.

I’d already figured out where to take it.

The dump behind the waste-processing plant.

I often saw the loaders there.

They scooped up everything and dumped it into the machines.

Then the machines pressed it into neat blocks.

People said those blocks were taken straight to the thermal power plant and burned.

That night, I slept better than I ever had.

In my dream, my aunt and I lived in a big, bright house, warm and clean.

For breakfast, we had hamburgers just like the ones in TV commercials, with beef and lettuce.

My aunt wore a spotless white padded coat.

I stood at the school gate with my books, while the neighbors smiled at me.

The dream was so beautiful I didn’t want to wake up.

When I opened my eyes, it was already broad daylight.

That was all right. My aunt worked during the day too.

I hummed as I slowly got dressed.

Soon, my aunt and I would live the way we did in my dream.

The person who wanted to ruin our lives was dead.

Right beneath the bed.

I lowered my head and reached underneath.

There was nothing there.

I yanked off the bedspread.

Still nothing.

Cold sweat broke out all over me.

I didn’t believe in ghosts.

But the first thought that came to me was…

What if he wasn’t dead?

If he were alive, he’d come after my aunt and me with everything he had.

I forgot the sharp pain in my head and ran like a madman to her workplace.

The cold air filled my lungs like shards of ice cutting through my flesh.

Nothing could happen to my aunt!

During the day, she worked at a steamed bun shop.

The kitchen in the back was tiny. One glance was enough to see all of it.

Panicking, I pulled aside the greasy curtain.

She wasn’t there.

I was so frantic I nearly burst into tears.

If I lost her, I didn’t want the compensation money, the big house, or new clothes anymore!

“Xiaoning, here to see your aunt again?”

The woman washing dishes wasn’t very friendly.

Whenever I came to see my aunt, she secretly gave me a bowl of egg and seaweed soup.

If I was lucky, I might get a few buns customers had left uneaten.

“Auntie, did my aunt come to work today?”

“She came, then left. Heard she went to the community office to look at some plans.”

Thank heaven!

“Thank you!”

Strength rushed back into my arms and legs.

“Comes here to eat and drink for free every day, and still doesn’t know how to be grateful…” I was too distracted to hear the rest of her muttering.

Growing up hungry, I had learned one thing early: self-respect was only for people who had enough to eat.

From a distance, I saw my aunt standing among a group of people, discussing something with a woman from the community office.

The official looked annoyed, but my aunt wasn’t angry at all. She kept smiling.

I didn’t go over. I turned around and went home.

I tried to remember whether what happened yesterday had really been a dream.

The room had been cleaned from top to bottom. My bedding and my tattered padded coat had been washed and hung outside to dry. They were so old and dark that you couldn’t tell what color they’d once been.

There wasn’t a trace of blood anywhere in the room.

My head was throbbing again. Dr. Wang had once told my aunt that head injuries could leave aftereffects, even little problems.

Maybe it really had been a dream.

I sat on the bed, holding my head, a little disappointed.

If he wasn’t dead, sooner or later he’d beat my aunt and me to death.

I looked at my hands, then felt a little relieved. They’d been soaked while I did the laundry yesterday. They were pale and clean, without a trace of blood.

I lay down and tried to think of another way to make him disappear from our lives for good, as if he were dead.

Looking around this cramped, battered room, could my aunt and I ever have the life I imagined?

Could we live in a big house, eat meat, and have fresh cream cake that wasn’t discounted or sour?

The more I thought about it, the more something felt wrong.

Wrong. Something was very wrong.

I’d missed something huge!

I turned toward the table in alarm.

The cake!

The cake my aunt had bought for me was gone!

I sprang up. The room was so small that my aunt and I barely had a single decent piece of furniture.

I searched everywhere.

There was no cake.

My aunt’s stomach was weak. Fresh cream gave her a stomachache. She couldn’t have eaten it.

That meant there was only one possibility: yesterday, he had smashed the cake and eaten it!

I stood up and searched the room carefully.

Sure enough, I found a dab of pink cream caught in the screw hole of the table.

I clutched the table, my thoughts churning.

I really had killed him yesterday.

After the shock came a deep confusion.

Then where was his body?

I sank onto the bed and forced myself to think calmly.

First possibility: he hadn’t quite died. He woke up in the middle of the night and escaped.

Impossible.

Knowing him, if he’d woken up alive, the first thing he would have done was kill my aunt and me.

Besides, his body had been wrapped in plastic. If he’d struggled free, it would have made noise. I might have slept through it, but my aunt slept lightly. She would have heard.

Second possibility: my aunt found him and disposed of the body?

She was five-foot-six and weighed less than eighty pounds.

He was five-foot-nine and weighed close to 190.

There was no way she could have moved him by herself.

Third possibility… Had Heaven finally opened its eyes and made him disappear?

If Heaven had really opened its eyes, it wouldn’t have let him come back now.

It should have let him die somewhere far away!

The more I thought, the worse my head hurt. I decided to crawl beneath the bed and look for myself.

I lay down in the same position I’d been in yesterday when I pushed the body underneath, trying to find the secret behind its strange disappearance.

As soon as I looked up, I saw blood splattered on the underside of the bed boards too.

I was relieved I’d noticed it.

I didn’t dare think about it. I quickly wet my finger with saliva and rubbed at the blood. There were tiny specks everywhere—more than I’d expected.

I had no idea how long it took to clean them all.

I took a deep breath and tried to shift my aching shoulder so I could crawl back out.

The moment I turned my head, goose bumps raced from my spine to my scalp.

A pair of feet stood silently outside the bed!

I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound.

The person outside didn’t move. I couldn’t even hear them breathing.

Cold sweat ran from my scalp into my eyes. My heart was about to leap out of my chest.

Who was standing there… a person or a ghost?

The toe of his shoe was less than two inches from my face.

A foul, fishy stink, cold as ice, rushed from it and straight into my head.

I stared at those feet, trying to calm myself by studying them.

He wore a brand-new pair of ankle boots, around size thirteen. Gravel, sand, and dark red mud clung to the soles.

I’d never seen anyone I knew wear those boots.

Who was standing outside?

A person or a ghost?

And what was he doing at the foot of my bed?

Just then, the door creaked open.

No!

My aunt was home!

Survival instinct overcame my fear. I grabbed the bedsheet, ready to lunge outside.

Whoever it was, a living person would have a better chance if we were together!

“Finally, you’re home.”

It was the owner of the auto repair shop.

My back was soaked with sweat. When I recognized his voice, I collapsed like a deflated balloon.

“What are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you we shouldn’t see each other for a few days?”

“I missed you, heh. I helped you with something big last night. Can’t I come by today to collect a little interest?”

His lewd tone made me clench my fists again.

“It’s broad daylight. Can’t you wait?” My aunt sounded resistant.

“I can’t wait. Not even a minute. Besides, what’s wrong with daylight? We’ll be family soon, so don’t put up such a fight…”

I heard clothes rustling as they came off.

I covered my ears, trying to shut out the shop owner’s filthy words and my aunt’s desperate moans.

It didn’t work.

By the time they left, my face was wet with tears.

“So you’re saying you killed the man, and your aunt and Qian, the owner of the auto repair shop, helped you get rid of the body?”

The interrogation-room light had been shining in my eyes for so long that I could barely make out the officer across from me.

“Yes. I killed him.”

My hands clenched as I said it again.

“On the night of April 14, 2003, in the little room where my aunt and I lived, I smashed his head with a hammer. Then I wrapped his body in plastic, taped it shut, and shoved it under the bed. I don’t know what happened after that. I only know the body was there, then it disappeared.”

“Why did you wait a month to turn yourself in?”

My aunt said we should wait until the relocation compensation came through.

It was paid a few days ago.

“Where’s the murder weapon, the hammer you used?”

“It was gone when I woke up. I don’t know. Maybe my aunt got rid of it too.”

“Fine. If there are no more questions, sign here and give us your fingerprint.”

The young officer handed me the statement, a pen, and an ink pad.

Before signing, I hesitated and asked in a panic, “Officer, if I was under fourteen at the time, I won’t be put to death, right? People say if I confess and cooperate, I might not even have to go to prison. Is that true?”

The young officer looked down at my statement.

“You were under fourteen then?”

“I was. My birthday was the next day. I may look big, but I’m only fifteen now.”

“I won’t die, right?”

I was desperate for an answer.

The older officer stared thoughtfully at the switch for the interrogation-room light. He didn’t turn it off for a long time.

“Captain Lin, the case is clear enough. The kid confessed. If he cooperates and helps us find evidence, we can close it and report back to the department.”

“Clear?”

Captain Lin had a strange feeling about the case.

It wasn’t that simple.

“Maybe it’ll just be hard to find evidence. The kid’s place was demolished last month,” the young officer, Xiao Hu, added.

Captain Lin said nothing.

Xiao Hu kept talking.

“I’m sure the department will understand.”

The day after Liu Ning turned himself in, the city’s biggest newspaper ran a front-page story:

“Old Home Demolished—Son Bludgeons Father to Death for 500,000 Yuan in Compensation!”

It was only a few short lines, but the sensational headline sold out the entire print run.

At first, the department’s leaders reprimanded the officers for leaking information.

Then the city official in charge of the relocation project called directly to pressure them to investigate.

The case was attracting too much attention. Headquarters demanded that it be solved within a week.

But Liu Ning’s confession left a lot of questions unanswered.

I held his ID card. It showed that on April 14, he really had been under fourteen. I thought of how he stood nearly five-foot-eight.

A deep doubt rose in me.

Was Liu Ning really under fourteen?

“Xiao Hu, verify Liu Ning’s date of birth. Then question his aunt, Liu Xiaofang.”

I raised Xiaoning myself.

I was young then and had no idea how to care for a child. We were poor, too. It was my fault he grew up like this.

I failed him.

If I’d had more time to look after him, if I’d earned enough to send him to school, he might not have ended up killing someone.

Officer, could I see him once and bring him a few things?

Since he turned himself in, I haven’t even had the chance to celebrate his fourteenth birthday.

My eyes were dry; I couldn’t cry anymore. I could only cover my face with my hands.

At the mention of “his fourteenth birthday,” the older officer stubbed out his cigarette.

“Tell me what happened that day.”

“On the night of April 14, I came home from work.”

“The room smelled strongly of blood and mildew. The clothes and bedding had all been washed and hung outside.”

I thought Xiaoning’s head still hadn’t healed, so I didn’t pay it much attention.

We cleaned up, ate, and went to bed.

In the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom. I hadn’t put on my slippers. As soon as I reached the doorway, I felt something sticky underfoot.

I turned on my flashlight. It was a large pool of dark red blood.

I thought it was Xiaoning’s, so I rushed over and shook him.

He was burning with fever. There was no blood on his head, but he was delirious, mumbling,

“Auntie… our good days are here… something about… Liu Cheng won’t bother us anymore… he’s under the bed…”

I worked up the courage to follow the blood with my flashlight and look beneath the bed.

Then I saw the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen.

A bleeding body wrapped in plastic!

I was so frightened I jumped straight onto Xiaoning’s bed.

The bed boards creaked. It sounded as though the thing underneath was talking!

I shook Xiaoning frantically.

“Wake up, Xiaoning! Xiaoning! Wake up!”

But he had a high fever and seemed unconscious. He kept mumbling:

“I killed Liu Cheng… I killed Liu Cheng…”

I hugged myself and forced myself to calm down.

The flashlight beam fell on the table.