Chapter 189. [Case 22] The old man in the old house
The woman still only stuck out her head, and the door blocked most of her body. But judging from the position of her head on the door, she was actually not tall. Her eyes were still as suspicious as before, but because of Hu Zongren's words
Totally free, I think that's the main reason she opened the door.
The woman looked past me with some hesitation, and then asked Hu Zongren, how did you know about our family? Hu Zongren spread his hands and said, didn't my brother tell you just now? Someone told us, as for this person
I really don’t know how I know about your family’s affairs. Originally, we didn’t have to interfere with your family’s affairs, but we are also in trouble. If we don’t help you deal with your family’s affairs, we will also suffer.
, the situation is no easier than yours. Hu Zongren still looked carefree. When I stood with him, I seemed harmless.
The woman asked Hu Zongren, "Really?" Then tell me what happened to our family. If you are right, I will ask you to help me. If you are wrong, you will go back where you came from.
Well. When I heard this, I couldn't help but feel a little angry and a little petty. To put it more seriously, Hu Zongren and I were here to help. We were voluntary helpers and didn't pay a penny. How could there be any reason to ask others for help?
To put it mildly, it was bad enough because there was no money to be made. It made us apply for jobs door-to-door. Our profession is not very high-end, but it is not as low-level as this. So I interrupted and said to the woman
He said, it depends on your own choice. By the way, I forgot to introduce myself to you. My name is Li Yifan, and the guy over there is Hu Zongren. We have been working in this industry for a long time.
I must advise you that if we leave today, there may be no one to take care of your family's affairs, or even if you find someone, they will offer you a high price. Please think about it carefully.
The woman looked at me, still unable to completely believe me. She asked me, why do you prove that this is what you do? I rolled my eyes, opened my pocket bag at once, revealing various tools inside, including
Commonly used things such as red rope compass, rice bag charms, etc., and some random things used to pretend to be gods and ghosts. I said to the woman, sister, don’t worry, we are not liars. If we ask you for a penny during this whole process, you should call the police immediately.
Catch us.
After I repeatedly promised that I was not a bad person, the woman opened the door and let us in. However, I felt very depressed. She was obviously here to help, but she made us feel hot and cold. Before entering the house,
For the sake of caution, I let Hu Zongren go into the house first, and I stood at the door and looked around. There was a small road outside the door of this woman's house, and on the other side of the road were some short buildings built side by side that were similar to this woman's house.
Houses, and behind this row of houses is the base of another section of the old city wall. The base of the wall here is not high, only about four or five meters. If my direction is not wrong in calculation, the base of this wall should be
The direction of the path we walked when we came here before, that is to say, if I am standing at a higher altitude, I can see the Science and Technology Museum and the Grand Theater in this direction.
After looking around, I found that no one was following me, except for the person who was doing laundry before, who was still looking at me curiously. I smiled casually at that person, with a sinister look in my smile, meaning that I had never seen anything before.
Handsome guy, isn't he?
After entering the house, I felt that the scene suddenly flashed back to the outdoor movies I watched in the factory courtyard in the 1980s, black and white, with flashing snowflakes, because the poverty of this family has basically surpassed what I first saw.
I have actually been to many old houses, but at least the house just looks old and has everything that should be inside. But this family seems to be extremely poor. When you enter the house, you will see a four-year-old man.
There is a window on the side of the small square room where I stand. In front of the window is a square table with a few stools underneath. Opposite me are two rows of small stools joined together to serve as tables.
On the countertop, there are still leftovers from yesterday's meal, which are covered with a cover to prevent flies and mosquitoes. On the right side is a tiled cupboard, but there are some sparse white porcelain inside.
Many of the bowls are missing a hole. On the left is a very old-fashioned single-door Haier refrigerator. I bet this refrigerator is a few years younger than me. There is an incense burner and candlestick on top.
Behind him is a portrait on the wall.
I know the person in this portrait because he is the Kitchen God. Usually when we buy portraits of the Kitchen God outside, there is often a man and a woman on the picture, called the Kitchen God and the Kitchen God. In fact, the Kitchen God is grandmother.
It was added by future generations. According to the formal inheritance, strictly speaking, there should be only one person responsible for the Kitchen God. And the Chinese people have realized very early in ancient times that the most important things in life are
Things include food, clothing, housing, and transportation, and among them, "food" is the most important. After all, if you starve to death, then the other things will be nonsense. As one of the earliest five gods worshiped by the common people, the Kitchen God has
The status is considered to be the highest. The so-called five gods refer to the door god, kitchen god, well god, toilet god, and house god. The southeast, northwest, and middle of each bureau are the five gods that the common people believe protect their homes. Needless to say, the door god.
It is the most common one among everyone, but the positioning of door gods is relatively complicated. In addition to the four heavenly kings, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhong Kui were once painted as door gods and posted on the door by the common people in order to prevent those monsters and ghosts from entering.
Inside the house, in fact, if they really want to enter, the door is by no means their only choice. The Well God is in charge of a water source, because in ancient times there were no such advanced things as tap water, so everyone dug wells to get water. The House God refers to the Lord of the Land,
For example, if this house occupies an area of any number of acres, Baojia's Landlord will help you take care of the peace of this square inch of land. But now there are very few people who provide land to the Landlord, because the land has become the country's, when will developers
On a whim, you can dig when you want, and push when you want. What really has the final say is the money in someone's hand. The landowner is actually useless in front of these people. Then there is the toilet god, who is also called the toilet girl. This
If people want to eat, they will poop. In my opinion, the toilet god is the most important god in the whole house after the kitchen god. For example, when we go out to stay in a hotel, the hotel room usually does not have a kitchen, so there is no place to eat.
Problem, then the hotel must have a toilet, which is why every time I go out to stay in a hotel, the first thing I do after I check out the room and enter the door is to go to the toilet to say goodbye.
The Kitchen God blesses the family to have enough to eat. When it comes to food and clothing, the stomach is the first to be solved. After looking at the furnishings of this small house that this family just entered, I think they really need a Kitchen God, but the incense burner
There was already a thick layer of ashes on the candle holder, not incense ashes. There was a burned out incense candle stick still stuck in the stove. It was not difficult to judge that this family had not offered incense to the Stove Lord for a long time.
So I continued to walk in, and next to the leftovers, there was a small door. The small door was a wooden door that was not even painted. There was a small window in the shape of an inverted "sun" on the door.
There was a hole in the glass on one of the small windows. There was a wire connected from this room, and it happened to go through the hole. I thought to myself that this family is really real. In this way, there is not much left.
It took less time to hammer nails. It started to get dark after entering the house. Since there was no window open, the door at the back of the house was tightly closed. I could only see the light outside through the crack in the door.
This bright outline showed that there was a door there. The woman walked to the bedside in the dark and gently turned on a desk lamp. This desk lamp was not a switch type, but a twist type. It could be rotated according to the size and angle of rotation.
to control the intensity of the light. When the light came on, I could clearly see the situation in this small room. What I have to say is that I even felt that this desk lamp was actually a relatively high-end item in this room.
I saw a cabinet with three drawers behind me. I didn’t know what it contained. The cabinet was quite high, and there was an old-fashioned, nearly square spherical small color TV set on it. I only had such a TV.
You can only see it at those San Xiangxiang appreciation parties or flea markets. Next to the TV is a memorial tablet and a portrait. On the portrait, there is an old woman wearing black clothes with a wrinkled face.
Since I had just returned from Zhang’s mother’s house in Hutouyan a few days ago, this scene seemed a bit familiar. Soon I couldn’t help but wonder, is this family a ghost, and is it related to the old lady in the photo? Of course, since
The other party didn't say anything, so we didn't ask directly. When I looked at Hu Zongren, he nodded slightly to me, indicating that he had noticed this, but we didn't say anything. After a few months,
I actually spent more than half of my time with Hu Zongren, and it was fine that I was often regarded as gay. After all, we both knew in our hearts that we were not. However, over the past few days, Hu Zongren and I have formed a very close relationship unconsciously.
With a high degree of tacit understanding, we often don't need to speak, just use some simple eyes or expressions, and we can roughly understand what the other person wants to express. Two people with completely different personalities think of these trivial matters and become close comrades-in-arms.
Already.
To the right of the desk lamp is a wardrobe. There is an oval mirror on the wardrobe. The whole cabinet is red, that red and black color. On the other side of the desk lamp, there is a wooden board with the same color as the cabinet.
The bed, on the wooden bed, is covered with a cup made of red silk fabric. It is probably the kind of festive flower quilt that people gave when they got married in the 1980s. There is a person sleeping under the quilt. That person is an old man. He has his eyes closed.
His eyes and cheeks were sunken, but he tried his best to open his mouth into an O shape and breathed slowly.
If I hadn't been the first to know that this was a ghost thing, I would have thought that this old man was probably on his way out.