Chapter 19: Digging Up the Corpse
The moonless night was windy and the tree shadows swayed.
The cetery had been eerie and terrifying, and the strange chirring of insects and the cries of birds had made people’s skin crawl.
Fatty carried a shovel and held a flashlight, and he walked trembling between the rows of tombstones.
He had felt unnerved coming here in daylight; after so many bizarre events, coming to a place like this in the dead of night was even worse.
What frightened him more was that he had to look at the portrait on every tombstone to confirm whether it was one of his colleagues.
Those two colleagues who had died gruesoly had been buried here. Fatty had co twice before, but each ti he had been in a hurry and had not noted the exact burial spots.
He was unlikely to co back to pay respects in the future, so he had not paid much attention.
There were so many graves here, and it was the middle of the night — pitch black so the terrain was hard to make out. He dared not shine the flashlight randomly and risk being noticed by soone with ill intent. Fatty had no idea where the graves he was looking for were.
But he rembered the approximate directions where the two had been buried. Searching tomb by tomb, he would eventually find them.
After so effort, Fatty finally saw the tombstone of the first colleague who had died horribly.
In the morial photo, the man had looked like he was in his thirties, with thick black hair covering his ears, prominent cheekbones, a low nose, and a protruding mouth that made it look especially large. His expression was a half-smile, half-smirk.
Seeing that photograph now, Fatty could not help recalling the bizarre scene of that colleague choking on a dog bone, and he felt even colder.
The morial photo seed to have turned eerie as well.
With his hands clasped, he murmured a few words at the tombstone. Then he turned to Li Zhen and whispered, “Do we really have to dig? Isn’t there another way? This is illegal — if we get found out we’re done for.”
“They’ve been buried for so many days. Who knew what they’d beco — digging them up is bound to be terrifying…”
Li Zhen, who followed behind Fatty with a bag, said, “We don’t have to dig. You could go ho, buy burial clothes, buy a coffin, find soone to watch a spot with good feng shui, and wait for the evil ghost to co for you.”
“It only retreated temporarily tonight — it would definitely co for you tomorrow if it had the chance.”
“I think this place is fine. There’s another spot over there — burying them there ans you could visit your colleague’s family often.”
He had already been to Fatty’s house to pack once. He was wearing Fatty’s T-shirt and shorts now — they were very baggy — and his own casual shoes. The blood on his face had been washed off, and a bandage covered the recent cut on his right cheek.
The Crimson Bat had been tucked into the small pocket on his chest, its two red eyes exposed, like two rubies that could glow in the night.
“Dig them up — could they actually fight the unclean things inside the building?” Fatty asked.
“If those evil ghosts had killed them out of nowhere, their resentnt would be huge. If they beca ghosts, they wouldn’t be ordinary.” Li Zhen replied.
“Ah, I’m worried about disturbing their rest.”
“If you were killed by evil ghosts, could you rest?”
“Uh… if those two turned into evil ghosts, wouldn’t they kill us first?”
“Whoever killed them would be the ones they most wanted to slit — even if they lost control, we wouldn’t be the first to die. If you dig them up, you’d give them a chance for revenge. Do you think they’d care that you dug up their bodies? That’s a small thing to them.”
Fatty was silent for a mont, then reassured himself, “If it were , I’d want soone to give that chance. I’d see that person as a benefactor. I’d repay them — I’d make them rich, make them win the lottery!”
“Dig. If we get found out, we’ll all go to jail and just wait to die.”
Fatty stopped hesitating.
He hoisted the shovel and went behind the tombstone.
“Big Mouth, although we normally rubbed each other the wrong way — you tricked that black dog into eating it and I hated you for it — I still didn’t want you to die.”
“Now I’ve decided to dig you up. If you beco a ghost, go take your revenge. Don’t co looking for . If you want to thank , let get rich — don’t co after .”
After he finished speaking, he clenched the flashlight between his teeth and began digging.
Fatty had thought about going to find Master Danyang right away.
But Master Danyang had clearly said that the evil ghost would not co for him, yet the evil ghost had co for him at night — which had greatly shaken Fatty’s confidence in the Master.
And that evil ghost could co back at any ti to cause trouble.
Fatty knew he had no choice.
If he did not want to die, he had to cling to the Master who had saved him from utter desperation. Otherwise he would already be a corpse.
Thinking of the hopeless mont when the car’s brakes had failed, Fatty hardened his heart and dug faster.
He had nearly died — what was he afraid of now, a corpse?
The soil above the grave was shallow. After a few digs, Fatty hit the coffin.
Li Zhen put down the bag and took out a one-piece surgical gown of the kind used in dical settings.
They put on the gowns, gloves, and masks, and then they worked together to open the coffin.
The man had been dead four or five days.
It was hot at that ti of year.
One could imagine how the body had decayed.
Even with masks on they could not stop the dreadful stench that hit them in the face.
Overco by the sensory assault, Fatty ripped off his mask and puked loudly.
The repulsive, physiological stench was not sothing an ordinary person could endure.
Li Zhen slled the omnipresent stench too, but he had no gag reflex — it only made him uncomfortable.
Even seeing the rotting corpse, he felt only the normal human disgust toward death, not much fear or revulsion.
Only then did Li Zhen truly feel that he had changed from before…
The Crimson Bat flew out from Li Zhen’s chest, circled a few tis in the dark, then returned to his pocket.
The aura of death excited it greatly.
Li Zhen walked along the graves toward the coffin without looking back and said, “I’ll take care of this one here. You go and dig up the other body.”
Pale-faced and gagging occasionally, Fatty ran off to the other side.
Li Zhen tied the corpse with the rope he had prepared and dragged it from the coffin onto a mat outside.
Pulling the mat, he dragged the body into the dense woods on a low slope nearby.
When Fatty, looking ill and dry-heaving from ti to ti, also dug up the second corpse, Li Zhen dragged that body back into the thicket the sa way.
Fatty did not dare go near the thicket. After leaving the flashlight with Li Zhen, he said he would go fetch more tools.
He brought over the prepared pile of things and then said he would stand guard for Li Zhen.
“Write their nas down here.” Li Zhen produced a sheet of white paper.
Fatty bit the flashlight back into his mouth and wrote two nas on the paper.
“The young one in front was — ugh… was Huang Zhiguang. The one in back was Gao Han.” Fatty dropped the note, covered his nose, and walked away. “If soone cos I’ll… I’ll… ugh… imitate a pigeon call.”
When he stepped out of the thicket and glanced back, Fatty could not help shivering.
This whole affair felt creepier and creepier…
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