I came back to take care of the eternal lamp in the ancestral hall, but just as I arrived home, I spent the whole day dealing with Lin Er Dan's situation. After we got home, I originally wanted to thank my second uncle. If it weren't for his timely reminder, I might not have handled Lin Er Dan's situation well. But he didn't even look at me, and after dinner, he just locked himself in his room. After dinner, my father gave me a pipe of tobacco, saying, "Xiaofan, you're a grown-up now, come and try it. When your grandfather was still around, he loved to smoke Northeastern toad tobacco. When you take a puff, it'll feel like it's burning all the way from your throat to the soles of your feet, it's so refreshing."
As my father handed me the cigarette, I looked at his calm smile, and I felt like I was in a daze, hesitating whether to take the cigarette or not.
From childhood to adulthood, my father had given me a lot of freedom. In his words, if you understand something, you naturally won't do it; if you don't understand, even if I say it, you will still do it. I'm just annoying you if I say too much, so I might as well not say it.
I remember most clearly the time in middle school when I was caught smoking in the restroom with a few other brats and had to be brought back by my father. While the other students in the principal's office were getting beaten by their parents, my father brought me back quietly and said to me, "You want to smoke, you can. You're curious, thinking smoking makes you seem like a man. But when you take the cigarette from me, that's when you'll be a true man, capable of bearing responsibility."
So, although I grew up in such a family, I never felt any kind of internal pressure. My father, who didn't have much education, had turned all his life's insights into my education.
I took the cigarette pipe, and suddenly tears welled in my eyes.
My father's hair had turned white.
"Xiaofan, you really have grown up. There are some things your old man can't handle, but you can, to see you like this, I'm very satisfied," my father said.
I took a puff of the cigarette, but the heavy soil tobacco made me cough. My father poured me a glass of water and said, "Lin Er Dan's family matters, no one discusses them publicly, but you and I should both be well aware of them. There is certainly a deep connection to your grandfather. For the villagers, I won't say anything else, but if you can handle it, do your best. Even if you feel that this matter has nothing to do with you, after all, this murky and mysterious affair began with your grandfather, you have to bear it."
I nodded and said, "Okay."
"Go to bed, it's late. Three days from now is your grandfather's death anniversary, and at that time, the lights in the ancestral hall will go out," my father said.
I froze on the spot. I understood what my father meant.
After my grandfather's death anniversary, would his spirit return again?
My father went back to his room, and I sat in the living room for a while. I went to help my grandmother straighten out the mosquito net and then went back to my room, falling into a deep sleep. In the middle of the night, I was suddenly awakened by several slaps, and as I opened my eyes, drowsy, I saw someone urgently pulling my arm.
I took out my phone and took a picture, only to discover that the person was none other than my mother, who had never entered my room before.
"Mom? What's wrong, why aren't you asleep at this late hour?" I asked.
She didn't say anything, but instead grabbed my arm with surprising strength, causing me to startle. Could it be that my mom had also been possessed by a ghost? Otherwise, how could this seemingly delicate woman pull me off balance like that?
"Mom? Are you really yourself?" I asked.
She still didn't speak, and when I turned on the light, I saw that she was wearing a neatly arranged outfit she had never worn before - the clothes my father had bought for her when he brought her home more than 20 years ago. Father often boasted about his good taste, recalling how more than a dozen women had been brought by the human traffickers in the city at the time, and my mom, covered in dirt and looking utterly disheveled, had appeared like a crazy person. Despite this, my father had immediately spotted her, calmly sitting in a corner. He said it was the most discerning choice he had made in his life.
Whenever he said this, the neighbors would expose him, saying, "Lin Yutang, you only had 300 bucks in your pocket at the time, so you could only afford to buy such a silly woman, right?"
Each time this happened, my father would not get angry, but simply smile.
Also, my father's name is Lin Yutang, the same name as a great literary figure, a name given to him by a cultured comrade of my grandfather at the time.
When I was young, my father told me one thing: "Xiaofan, your mom is actually not at all foolish. She understands things more than anyone else." However, he only told me this once.
How could my mother, in the middle of the night, put on an outfit she had never worn before and cry with tears on her face? I jumped out of bed in just my underwear, realizing that my mother wasn't possessed, but that she wanted to pull me outside!
So I ran out, kicking open my father's door, only to find the room completely empty. My father was gone!!
"Mom, where did dad go?!" My whole body was instantly drenched in cold sweat. I grabbed my mother's shoulder and asked.
My mother pointed to the open door, indicating that my father had gone out.
"Uncle Er!" I called out in the courtyard. To me, Uncle Er was a peculiar person; he must have had exceptionally sharp senses like an expert you'd see in a martial arts TV show. He must know when my father left and where he went.
After calling out, Uncle Er came out of the room. He was also wearing just shorts. When he saw my mother beside me, he quickly dodged back into the room to put on his clothes before coming out and asking me, "What's wrong Xiaofan?"
I said to my mother, "Mom, stay at home and don't go anywhere, I'll be back and I'll definitely bring dad back home for you."
But as soon as I turned to leave, my mother followed me out, making it impossible for me to go. So I scooped her up and put her back on the bed, then locked the room door. She was banging on the door like a madwoman inside.
We ignored her and went out. Uncle Er asked me, "What's going on in the end?"
I glared at him and huffed, "Don't pretend in front of me. How can you not know where he went?"
After I finished speaking, I saw Uncle Er pause for a moment and then say, "Xiaofan, I'm not a deity."
"I didn't say you were a deity!" Now I was truly starting to feel annoyed with Uncle Er. It was okay for him to be indifferent to others, but why could he ignore his own family's life and death? Xu Lin had once said that my grandfather's grave was on top of someone else's coffin; if that continued for long, it would bring about the Feng Shui taboo of the entire family's extinction. Yet Uncle Er had never tried to change any of this. I had a strong intuition that he must have been well aware of everything, that he was a man with a story.
If I knew for sure that he had an ability that I didn't know about, it wasn't from when we dealt with Uncle San's sham corpse in the ancestral hall that night, nor from his calm handling of all the supernatural events. It was when Xu Lin arrived.
The time Xu Lin dug up the red coffin, he was about to panic and leave, but at that moment, Uncle Er pulled Xu Lin to the side of the grave and said a few words to him in secret. After that, Xu Lin, who was originally helpless, had a way to deal with the red ghostly coffin.
In the eyes of outsiders, it was possible that Uncle Er gave Xu Lin some money at that grave, or even more likely, he spoke to him about something rationally and kindly.
But only I knew that the most likely scenario was that Uncle Er taught Xu Lin the method to deal with that ghastly being behind the graveyard!
So that's why we had the peach wood under the pillow, and the lantern above.
Uncle Er definitely had the confidence and ability to stop all of this from happening, but he didn't.
Today, I believed he could have definitely prevented my father from going to his death, but he didn't. That's the reason I was angry with him today.
Yes, when I saw my mother wearing that outfit, I knew my father's plan. I wished I could slap myself twice. Why didn't I understand what he meant when he handed me the tobacco pipe today?
Grandpa's tobacco pipe had been given to him.
He gave it to me.
This was a kind of inheritance.
He told me that our family's responsibilities had to be taken, and that I must bear them.
He passed the burden to me.
He had to face something he needed to face.
He went to the ancestral hall!