That year, I turned sixteen and entered high school. It was equivalent to entering a completely new environment, where only a few people knew about my past, and no one knew about my ghost daughter-in-law.
Starting from the first year of high school, due to having a few very close friends, my introverted personality also transformed into an outgoing one.
Like many other schools, my school also had a ghost story going around.
The school only had a history of just over forty years. When it was first built, a female student was impregnated by a teacher. At that time, it was even more conservative, and not only unmarried pregnancy, but even holding hands between boys and girls could lead to being criticized for days.
The girl was aware of the gravity of the situation and told her family. It was a very embarrassing situation those days for any family, and if a family had such a matter, it would be a subject of ridicule in the village for the rest of their lives.
The girl's family directly drove her away. With nowhere to go, the girl cried and tried to find the male teacher, but he gave various excuses to avoid her, and even mentioned that the baby she carried was not his.
It's been more than eight months, the girl no longer has the face to live in this world. One night, she came to the top floor of the dormitory and jumped directly from there.
There are many versions of the ending of this story. Some say the girl didn't die immediately after the jump, but instead convulsed on the ground for a long time, eventually dying from excessive blood loss.
Others say the girl's head hit the ground, smashing like a watermelon. The fetus inside her belly was also squeezed out, fully formed and writhing in agony in a pool of blood, finally strangled to death by the umbilical cord.
While there are many versions, the ultimate conclusion is one: every year on the night of the girl's death, the resident students will hear a faint and mournful crying echoing on the top floor. And as soon as the crying begins, a baby covered in blood will crawl through each teacher's dormitory, calling out 'Daddy'.
This version is a bit funny and a bit absurd, because from the first year of high school to the second half of the second year, I never heard such crying.
During that time, I asked many students a year ahead of me, and not a single person had heard the crying, let alone seen the baby.
The incident happened after the mid-term exams, and before I returned to school, some family matters delayed me, and by the time I arrived, it was already late at night.
The security guard was a man in his sixties, wearing a pair of glasses and looking very scholarly. Seeing me anxiously standing at the door, he dragged his weary body to open the gate and let me in.
Arriving at the dormitory, my roommates were all sound asleep. I carefully made the bed, and as soon as I lay down, I heard a faint and intermittent crying coming from somewhere.
It was the cry of a woman, not as loud and urgent as a cat in heat, but I had heard this sound many times before.
Although romantic relationships were forbidden in high school, some still happened secretly. I guessed it must be some innocent girl who had been dumped, squatting downstairs crying her heart out.
Without giving much thought to it, I closed my eyes. I fell asleep without knowing for how long. Feeling a sudden chill, I opened my eyes in a hurry and saw Li Mao on the top bunk shaking the iron railing.
Li Mao was a year older than me, very daring, and we all called him "Li Dabian".
I asked him what was wrong with him, playing this prank in the middle of the night. Li Mao's face became incredibly ugly, and he asked me in a low voice what today's date was.
Today is November 5th, just after the midterm exams at the beginning of the month. I finished speaking and was about to close my eyes when, for some reason, a chill swept over me. Looking again at Li Mao on the top bunk, his expression became more mysterious.
The girl who jumped off the building while pregnant supposedly died on this day, and if you listened carefully to the crying, it didn't come from downstairs at all, but from the rooftop.
In an instant, I panicked. Li Mao was very brave, and he jumped down from the upper bunk and asked me to go with him to the rooftop. I used to be brave, but since the incident with Luo Changsheng, I was scared out of my wits and didn't want to go.
But unable to resist his urging, I reluctantly got up.
The moment we opened the dorm room door, the cry of a baby came from outside the dormitory building. I started to feel unsure, but Li Mao reassured me, saying that it was the history teacher's wife who was sitting for her postpartum period at the school, and that the sound should be the baby crying at night.
I realized, before the midterm exams, the history teacher had accompanied his wife for childbirth, and by now, they should have been discharged. I didn't think much about it and followed Li Mao down the corridor.
There were two floors in the student dormitory, with the male and female dormitories in the same building, but separated by a wall. The male dormitory was to the east, and the female dormitory to the west.
My dormitory was on the second floor, and around the corner of the corridor was the staircase leading to the rooftop, which had a metal door. I didn't know if the incident of the pregnant girl jumping off the building had actually happened, but the metal door was always locked, and if we wanted to dry our clothes, we had to go to the playground.
Li Mao spent a long time knocking on the rusty iron lock with a ear pick, with a 'creak,' the iron lock opened. He turned to me with a triumphant smile and motioned for me to go up with him.
The rooftop was spacious, and with winter setting in, it was pitch black. The faint crying came from the rooftop of the female dormitory building to the west.
The weeping was very mournful, faint murmurs could be heard. However, the voice was very low, so I couldn't make out what was being said at all.
The crying of the baby downstairs continued, making me feel uneasy. I grabbed Li Mao's sleeve and planned to go downstairs, but he said since we were already upstairs, we should find out exactly what was going on.
Following him nervously, we walked towards the west. When we were a few meters away from the crying, I faintly saw a figure standing on the edge of the rooftop. The crying was coming from her.
For a moment, I was stunned and unwilling to take another step forward. Li Mao didn't force me, he asked me to stay put and watch as his figure disappeared into the darkness. I anxiously leaned on the handrail and took a breath.
As I looked down, following the sound of the baby's crying, in the dim light of the street lamp, I saw a bloody and thin figure crawling on the ground from the entrance of the teachers' dormitory.
At that moment, I felt as if the air had frozen, this fear had surpassed the scene of Luo Changsheng that I had seen in the old family toilet. My heart seemed to leap out. Before I could react, I heard a heart-wrenching scream from Li Mao.
My mind went blank, my eyes went dark, and I fainted without even a scream.
When I woke up again, it was already the third day. During this time, my classmates who visited me said they had not heard any crying that night. It was just the sound of the wind resonating in the windows that was similar to the crying. There was no trace of a baby crying, and the history teacher did not leave the hospital that day.
Li Mao went crazy after waking up, curled up in the hospital bed, saying he saw a ghost covered in blood with brain matter flowing out. Those who heard about it all got goosebumps.