Azure Heart Horror Short Story

Chapter 8

I knelt down to arrange the incense and candles, and lit the paper money.

Tears fell slowly along with the rising flames.

“I remember that time, it was supposed to be my turn to be the dad. But Bai Ge acted like a scoundrel, holding onto Tian Tian and refusing to hand her over. I got impatient and started fighting with him. He grabbed Tian Tian's hair and twisted her head off. All you could do then was cry…”

I don't remember much of what he said.

"Then Xue Hui and Bai Ge were best buddies back then, and he came over to snatch Tian Tian away, twisting her arm off in one go. I was heartbroken. Tian Tian is my and your daughter! So I fought with them..."

Gradually, I felt something inside me being peeled away layer by layer, and my memories seemed eager to burst forth.

"Later, they pinned me to the ground and beat me... But when Bai Ge pushed me down, my head hit this sharp rock... This one!" He said, pointing to the rock with his foot.

I gradually sensed something was wrong, so I slowly stood up and looked at him. He ignored me and continued talking.

“My head was throbbing so badly back then. You guys don’t even know, my skull was cracked open. Bai Ge kept hitting me, and Xue Hui kicked me in the stomach. You were just standing there crying. When I died, I was still clutching Tian Tian in my hand…”

My mind exploded like a muffled thunderclap...

I finally remembered why I had so many nightmares as a child, to the point that a part of my memory was sealed away under hypnosis by a psychologist. Yes, I did have such a playmate when I was little. Bai Ge and Xue Hui killed him. He was buried in the back hill. And there was my favorite doll—Sweetie. But that person's name didn't seem to be Feng Li…right, it was Li Feng!

Feng Li, reversed, is Li Feng... So he was...

I pointed at him in horror: "You're Li Feng!"

"You finally remembered, my little princess..." Feng Li, or rather Li Feng, turned to look at me. His skin had rapidly shriveled, turning yellow and black, and rats and centipedes were emerging from his eye sockets. As his mouth opened and closed, teeth fell out along with cockroaches and maggots.

"Hehehe... You finally remembered your old friend."

I turned to run away, but I tripped over something and fell to the ground.

A doll's hand emerged from the soil, groping around. Then, a headless doll, missing its left arm and wearing a dirty black dress, crawled out of the soil, half its body exposed. A moment later, it groped its way out of the soil and pulled out a head and a severed arm, then attached them to the soil itself.

Sweetie! It's my Sweetie who's been missing for over a decade.

I need to get back in the car right away.

But when I looked towards where the car had been, I was horrified once again. The Audi had turned to ashes before my eyes, leaving only the burnt remains of a paper car.

Li Feng's body gradually shrank, turning into his appearance from over a decade ago, and his voice became childish: "Lele, Tian Tian and I have been waiting for you for so long."

"No! You can't do this to me. I didn't hurt you! You killed Bai Ge and Xue Hui, isn't that enough?" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

“Yes, they both deserve to die. After Bai Ge died, Xue Hui came here and burned some incense and candles hoping I would forgive him. He was clever enough to immediately suspect me. However, since Heaven has given me the power of revenge, it means that justice will prevail and retribution will not be missed! He cannot escape.”

"And what about me? Why are you still holding onto me like this!"

"You didn't kill me, but you watched me get killed. And for over a decade, you knew about it but didn't report it!"

It turns out that children's voices can be so fierce, even more terrifying than adults' when they're being aggressive.

I was truly speechless.

Li Feng continued, "Do you remember that crazy beggar woman on the street? That's my mom!"

Those words pierced my eardrums like a sharp awl. So that's why I've been so uneasy all this time. I knew who that woman was all along, but I never told her that her son had died more than a decade ago. Nor did I try to do more to help her.

My tears flowed uncontrollably, filled with sadness, fear, and regret.

Sweetie's body trembled as she slowly climbed upwards. Only when she was completely uprooted did I see a skeletal hand tightly gripping her legs.

Needless to say, I knew these were Li Feng's remains.

The skeleton suddenly released Tian Tian, letting her walk towards me step by step.

Just as Tian Tian lunged at me, I fainted and knew nothing more.

When I woke up, I looked up at the sky. I saw police officers, my parents, classmates, and medical staff.

I heard the doctor say, "The injured person is in a deep coma. They need to be taken back to the hospital for further observation and treatment."

Then they lifted me... no! another me, onto a stretcher and put me in an ambulance.

If that's me, then what am I?

I tried to turn my head, feeling very uncomfortable. But in just a glance, I could see my arm clearly—it was a doll's arm.

I'm already trapped inside Sweetie's body.

Moreover, I felt a hand beneath me slowly pulling me closer to the ground at an invisible speed.

Sugar Granny

When I was seven years old, a family moved into our small town. To be precise, it was an elderly woman who was partially paralyzed and an aunt who took care of her daily needs—Aunt Xu.

No one knew where they had moved from. They only heard that the old woman's surname was Feng, that her husband had died during the Cultural Revolution, and she had lost her children during the famine. It was said that the family they bought from moved to the city, so they hurriedly sold the old house. It changed hands almost overnight.

I was very envious of the family that moved away, and I really wanted to see what city people ate and what they wore. But before this wish could turn into a longing, my attention was completely drawn to this old woman.

Because she would lean against the window every day, with a straw stick next to her, covered with all sorts of lollipops.

She and her mother made a living by selling candy.

Back then, snacks were scarce, especially in a remote town like ours. A lollipop vendor naturally attracted all the children in town. Plus, Grandma Feng's lollipops tasted exceptionally good, unlike the sugar figurines sold on the street that were always cloyingly sweet and only had a caramel flavor. These lollipops came in a variety of colors and flavors: some were cherry, some orange, and some osmanthus…

Over the course of three years, people stopped calling her by her real surname and started calling her Granny Sugar.

Grandma Sugar was a kind and easy-going person. Some children who wanted candy but didn't have any money could get a candy stick in exchange for helping her fetch a few buckets of well water or helping Aunt Xu water the vegetable garden.

Even so, there were still a few children in town who had never tasted her candy sticks. I was one of them.

My father was hired as a worker in a steel factory in the city, and my mother went with him to find odd jobs. So, only my elderly grandmother and I remained in town. My grandmother was a sorceress; in her younger days, she earned a living by performing rituals for the local residents. But now, due to her age, she has developed cataracts, and everything is blurry. Since our parents send money to cover our living expenses, she stays home to cook for me and take care of me. She only occasionally goes out to perform rituals or spirit mediumship when invited.

Because there was a shaman in my family, I was instilled with all sorts of taboos from a young age. For example, don't pick up money you see lying on the road, because picking it up means picking up someone else's bad luck; don't greet women washing their hair by the river at night, because they are haunted by water ghosts; and if you hear footsteps following you at night, they will follow you when you walk and stop when you stop, but never turn around. Instead, pick up a pebble at your feet, spit on it, and throw it over your head. Then take off your shoes and leave barefoot.

Such as these.

I used to be terrified, but after I went to primary school and received a formal education, I gradually became skeptical of what my grandmother said.

But in the past two years, several children have died in the town, causing widespread panic. Suddenly, ghost stories have become popular again.

Two of the dead children were people I knew. One of them was playing with me the day before, and the next day at noon, someone saw him climb a large banyan tree by the river and jump into the water. Strangely enough, he disappeared without a trace. The rescuers searched the river for a long time but couldn't find him, so they had to go downstream to search for him.

Three days passed, and nothing was gained.

On the fourth day, the child's body floated to the surface where he had fallen into the water. His body was deathly pale, his hands, feet, and body were swollen as if inflated, and one leg had been eaten away by fish, leaving only the skeleton. It was impossible to tell that he was a human.

His parents were naturally devastated. But what puzzled everyone was why the body hadn't been washed away after so many days, and why black mud was flowing from the body's eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

My grandmother also went to the ceremony. She asked about the child's birth date and time, and her expression grew increasingly solemn. But she didn't say anything.

The child's uncle worked for the town's public security bureau. Upon hearing that mud was flowing from the body's facial features, he became suspicious. So he had the forensic doctor perform an autopsy.

Unexpectedly, upon opening the skull, they found no external injuries to the corpse's head, but the brain was missing. Inside the cranial cavity, there was only some black soil.

There wasn't a single drop of blood in the child's body.

After that, a child would die mysteriously every few months in the town. Most of them would jump into the water and commit suicide in full view of others.

For a long time, no one in town went to the river to fish.

I don't know why, but I always felt that the sugar grandma who leaned against the window every day was a bit strange. For example, I never saw her buy white sugar into the house, nor did I ever see her buy fruit. How did she manage to make so many fruit-flavored lollipops? So I never bought any from her.

Once, when I accompanied Xiaobao to buy candy sticks, I saw her legs covered by a blanket. Only her tiny feet were sticking out of the blanket; I wondered how many years she had been paralyzed. Watching her give Xiaobao change made me feel inexplicably awkward. It wasn't until we got home and into bed that I understood. The angle at which she twisted her body didn't seem like that of someone who had lost control of their legs.

From then on, I avoided her shop at all costs.

One day, a boy named Zhong Kai in our class received some pocket money from some relative and bought a lot of sugar candy sticks from Sugar Grandma to distribute in class. Every student got one. I got a strawberry flavored one, which was red and wrapped in glutinous rice paper, and looked very tempting.

I held it, looked at it again and again, and smelled it again and again. I still couldn't bear to eat it. I decided to take it home for my grandma to try.

"Pah...! What is this thing?!" Grandma threw it hard on the ground before she could even take a bite. It smashed to pieces.

I never expected that Grandma would have such a big reaction just from sniffing it.

Grandma grabbed my hand and stared at me with her gray eyes: "Is this what that crippled old woman on West Street sells?"

"Yes. How come..."

Grandma tightened her grip: "Remember, don't eat her candy. It's unclean! And whatever you do, don't have anything to do with her."

Although I didn't know the reason, I still listened to my grandmother to some extent.

That day, the commune sent people to show an open-air movie. Almost everyone in town went. Even Grandma, who couldn't see clearly, unusually went to join in the fun.

However, I just couldn't sit still that night, and before the movie was even halfway through, I told my grandma I wanted to go home.

Everyone had gone to see a movie, and the town streets were deserted, with only the moonlight filling the alleyways. When I got to Zhong Kai's house, I saw a dark figure standing at his door, rustling something. Listening closely, I realized it was the sound of a bell.

My gut feeling told me something was amiss, so I hid to the side and watched quietly.

Soon after, Zhong Kai came out and followed the dark figure ringing the bell, walking closely along the street.

When they came into the open, I realized that the person ringing the bell was—Aunt Xu.

My curiosity grew stronger. I followed them at a distance, and even took off my shoes to walk barefoot.

As I expected, Zhong Kai followed Xu Ma into Grandma Tang's house.

I peeked through the crack in the window. I saw Zhong Kai looking like he was out of his mind, blindly following orders. He stood when told to stand, and stood still when told to stand still.

Could it be because of the bell? But why am I not affected?

What happened next, I probably would have screamed out long ago if I hadn't been biting my hand tightly.

I saw Granny Sugar yank off the blanket, then move aside the fake legs—yes, the fake legs under the blanket. Then she pulled out her lower body from under the bed—the lower body of a python.

So, she was a snake demon!

Seeing her difficulty moving, I noticed a festering scar on her snake body. The scar didn't seem to have scabbed over; it was covered with a sticky, paste-like substance. I watched as Granny Xu rolled a bamboo skewer over the scar, magically creating a candy stick, which she then stuck onto a straw stalk. In no time, the sticky substance had completely transformed into a candy stick. Granny Xu's scar revealed its greenish flesh.

At this moment, Xu Ma grabbed Zhong Kai's ankle, lifted him upside down, and suspended him above Grandma Tang's wound.

Before I could even react to what she was about to do, she pulled out a sickle and swiftly slashed Zhong Kai's neck. Zhong Kai's blood gushed onto Granny Tang's wound like a waterfall. Zhong Kai's face grew paler and paler, soon resembling a zombie covered in titanium dioxide from a TV show. Then, looking at the blood again, it was clear that not a single drop had been left; it had all been absorbed by the wound.

I don't know if it's just my imagination, but I feel that the wound has become a little smaller than before.

I stood there completely frozen, enjoying the second half of the tragedy.

The witch, seemingly unsatisfied with the blood she had sucked, opened her mouth and flicked out a long, scarlet snake tongue, which slithered into Zhong Kai's ear canal, as if rummaging through his brain. I suddenly realized—she was eating Zhong Kai's brain!

I was so scared that my legs started trembling uncontrollably. I wanted to run away, but my legs were weak. I wanted to call for help, but my throat felt like it was stuffed with seaweed.

At this moment, Xu Ma placed Zhong Kai's body on the floor. The witch grabbed a handful of black mud and smeared it on the severed area of Zhong Kai's neck, as well as his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The witch muttered incantations I couldn't understand, but the mud seemed to come alive and burrow into Zhong Kai's body. Before long, the wound on Zhong Kai's neck healed, and the mud on his face disappeared completely.

"Get up, go home and sleep," Granny Sugar said to the corpse with a smile.

Zhong Kai's corpse actually got up on its own, just like a living person, and slowly walked towards the door.