S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 5 Chapter 169

Special Files – Witches 16 – Interview

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On a scorching summer day, everyone found themselves feeling a chill from an old newspaper article.

As Zhao Jue was reading the report, he felt someone nudging him slightly.

Zhao Jue looked up.

He saw Mia, holding a teddy bear, squeezing herself between him and Bai Ye, nestled into the sofa.

On the other side of Bai Ye, Issel and Eleven had also squeezed onto the sofa.

So, there they were, five people plus an XL-sized teddy bear squeezed onto a three-seater sofa, with the newcomers all trying to snuggle closer to Bai Ye.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang glanced at each other, confirming their suspicions – It was true that if there was any danger, it was right to look for Uncle Ye.

Bai Ye looked at Eleven and Issel somewhat speechlessly – What are you two pretending to be little white rabbits for?

"Could this news be fabricated?" Zhan Zhao took the photocopy of the newspaper article that Zhao Jue had finished reading and said, "During that era, there were many sensational news stories, mostly because science was not developed enough for the Ministry of Education to popularise it and the widespread superstition among the public."

"Or perhaps the real culprit was the Shen family's great-grandmother." Bai Yutang's thinking was evidently more police-like, "She had the strongest motive for murder. Maybe she secretly killed those youths who had harmed her daughter, and to avoid retaliation or investigation, she fabricated the witchcraft story?"

Everyone thought this idea was quite reasonable and feasible; after all, it was more believable than murder by witchcraft.

"Did she later take revenge on the families of those teenagers?" Hu Zi felt that the Shen family's great-grandmother was a ruthless person.

"If it really was just a revenge killing case, I would have made it a special feature, and it wouldn't have gotten to the point where I needed psychological counselling and almost lost my life!" Hou Yingqi sighed.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang looked at her with some surprise.

Mia also widened her eyes upon hearing this – Did she really almost lose her life?

Bai Yutang also asked, "Did you encounter danger?"

Hou Yingqi nodded and continued, "At first, I didn't believe in such things, so I started to investigate deeper. First, I went to find the ancestral grave of the Shen family... Although people are cremated now, in the past, the ancestral graves of the villagers were mostly on a mountain to the south. This mountain is still there today, planted with many trees, and the ancestral graves are still preserved. I found the Shen family's ancestral grave, the graves of the Shen family's great-grandparents are there, but there are only three graves for their descendants, and they are all sons. This means that the youngest daughter of the Shen family wasn't buried in the ancestral grave."

Everyone frowned – Was it really this evil?

"According to the Shen family genealogy and the inscriptions on the ancestral graves, the Shen family's great-grandmother was named Shen Jinmei, her birth year is unknown, but it's estimated to be around 1920. It's said she was a child bride and took the Shen family's surname. She died in 1966, living to around fifty years old. The exact cause of death is not recorded. But based on the year she died, the villagers over seventy should have seen her, so I went door to door to visit the local elderly. Indeed, some people knew about the Shen family's great-grandmother's situation."

Everyone admired Hou Yingqi a little after hearing this – her investigative attitude was very serious and responsible. No wonder the quality of her programmes was always high; it was really not easy.

"The things about Shen Jinmei were generally not told to younger generations by the village elders, so most of the young people in this area had no idea about what happened to the Shen family before. However, some of the elders who knew about the Shen family's situation carried a kind of fear towards them. It took me a lot of effort to interview three informed elders."

Hou Yingqi not only had notes but also video and audio recordings, which she showed to everyone, featuring interviews with three elderly people.

One of them, Old Chen, who was eighty-eight years old, could be considered the most crucial witness in the case.

Old Chen was not originally from the village; he came from the northwest, fleeing famine, and ended up here, becoming the son-in-law in a family with the surname Chen. When he was younger, he helped the villagers by drawing water and chopping wood, doing physical labour. He not only knew Shen Jinmei but also, by chance, personally experienced the events of the case back then.

When the incident happened, Old Chen was only eighteen. He remembered Shen Jinmei frantically searching everywhere for her daughter's murderer, but the villagers did not help her.

Old Chen felt sorry for her and knew the boys who killed Shen's little girl were local bullies. Being an outsider, he had also been bullied by these boys, who often threw sticks and stones at him, calling him a refugee. However, these boys' families had some influence locally, so most people didn't dare to provoke them.

Old Chen sympathized with Shen Jinmei, so he brought her some food and wanted to ask if she needed any help.

But Old Chen said he still remembered what he saw when he entered the Shen household that day.

He knocked and entered the Shen house; the three boys were out working in the fields, and Shen Jinmei wasn't in the outer room, so he went to look in the inner room.

At the kitchen door, he saw a girl sitting on a small stool. The girl was dressed in burial clothes, sitting on the stool with a greyish-white complexion, her eyes wide open, and her pupils almost pure black.

Old Chen was stunned; he recognised the girl as the one from the Shen family who had drowned.

The girl's legs were straight, her arms were straight too, her head tilted, sitting on the small stool, her body leaning against the wall.

Old Chen's first thought was that Shen Jinmei might have gone mad... Not burying her daughter but instead placing the body at home... But the problem was, in such hot weather, how had the body not started to smell after so many days?

While Old Chen was puzzled, the body suddenly moved. The little girl lifted her head and glanced at him.

That one look frightened Old Chen so much that he fell to the ground.

When he looked again from the ground, he noticed that above the spot where the little girl was sitting hung a triangular iron frame with candles burning on it. The wax dripped down, forming a red triangle on the ground around the girl.

Old Chen swallowed hard and steadied himself. Just as he was about to get up, out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone standing in the doorway of the inner room, nearly scaring him into shouting.

When he looked carefully, he saw Shen Jinmei standing in the dark doorway with a gloomy expression.

He said that Shen Jinmei looked pale, wearing a coarse linen dress, her eyes almost entirely black. Beneath her eyes, two streaks of blood-like tears ran down her cheeks. He couldn't tell if they were painted on or if she had cried so hard that her tears were tinged with blood.

Shen Jinmei stared at him eerily, and just then, a clap of thunder boomed in the sky.

Old Chen said he was so terrified that he couldn't even scream. He scrambled to his feet and fled, half running, half crawling. On his way home, the sky erupted with lightning and thunder, and it began to pour rain. He got soaked to the skin, and when he returned home, he came down with a high fever... It took him several days to recover. In his feverish state, he wondered if he had been dreaming, thinking how could it be possible for the dead to come back to life...

After recovering from his illness, Old Chen was still in a daze every day, as if he had lost his soul.

A few days later, one night, his wife suddenly told him, "Something happened in the village. Those wretched kids got what they deserved!"

Old Chen didn't quite understand, so his wife explained that the six boys who used to bully people and were responsible for the death of the Shen family's little girl had all died in accidents. It was said that before their deaths, many people saw the ghost of Shen's little girl following them.

Hearing this, Old Chen's head buzzed with fear once again.

His wife, on the other hand, said it was karma.

Old Chen said that after the incident, the families of those six boys gathered a group of people to settle accounts with the Shen family, saying they wanted to drag out and burn the little girl who had come back to life.

But that day, despite searching every corner of the Shen house, they couldn't find the resurrected little girl.

While this group was searching her empty house, Shen Jinmei drew some strange symbols at the doorway with a bowl of red blood.

It was said that when these people left the Shen house, every one of them stepped in the blood on the sandy soil at the entrance. Afterwards, all those whose shoes were stained with blood fell into misfortune, severe illness or bad luck, without exception.

Old Chen never dared to talk about this incident with his family, nor did he dare to pass by the Shen house.

In fact, it wasn't just him, many villagers avoided the Shen house from then on.

Two years later, one winter, when Old Chen's family welcomed a new baby, he went door to door handing out red eggs and eventually reached the Shen house again.

Because he had dawdled, it was already evening when he arrived at the Shen house.

It was snowing heavily outside, and the lights were on inside. Standing at the door, Old Chen saw through the window what seemed to be five figures sitting around a table having a meal, and he even heard the laughter of a little girl.

After watching for a while, Old Chen knocked on the door.

Shen Jinmei came out.

Old Chen handed over five portions of red eggs and told her, "We have a new baby at home."

Shen Jinmei took the red eggs, looked at him, and said, "This child will be successful."

Old Chen said that later, his son indeed turned out to be very successful and very filial.

After this incident, no one in the village ever bullied Shen Jinmei and her family again. Although people didn't interact with them much openly, it was said that many secretly sought Shen Jinmei's help, treating her like a shaman. Life in the village returned to normal, though occasionally someone would claim to see a little girl at the Shen house.

Over a decade later, one day, Old Chen heard that Shen Jinmei had died of an illness.

Her funeral was very simple, with hardly anyone attending. It was organised by the sons of the Shen family. After that, no one saw the little girl from the Shen family again, and the matter gradually faded from memory.

Old Chen's interview lasted over two hours. Everyone was quite moved after watching it... It sounded like a folk tale with a touch of superstition.

The other two interviews were relatively short. These elderly men, also around eighty years old, were witnesses to the deaths of two of the six boys. Both said they had definitely seen the Shen family's little girl following the deceased boys, and the sight was terrifying.

After watching all the interviews, everyone fell into deep thought.

How credible were these interviews? The elderly interviewees were all over eighty, and the events took place half a century ago, so memory distortions were inevitable. But leaving aside the testimonies of the two witnesses who saw the girl, Old Chen's account was hard to dismiss as mere memory error since he was a direct participant in the events.

Nevertheless, the credibility of these testimonies was still debatable. Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang absolutely did not believe in the idea that Shen Jinmei had resurrected her daughter through witchcraft.

Everyone set the interviews aside for the moment and asked Hou Yingqi, "So what happened later that scared you and almost cost you your life?"

Hou Yingqi said, "I don't know if it was because I made too much noise with my investigation, but at the time, I visited almost the entire village, asking everyone I met. A week later, I received an email."

Hou Yingqi took out a printed copy of the email and handed it to everyone.

Zhan Zhao reached out and took it. The email read – The method to summon the witch.

After carefully reading the so-called "method", everyone looked up at Hou Yingqi as if to ask, "You didn't actually..."

"As Xiao Gui would say, I'm the kind of person who gets into trouble because I can't leave things alone." Hou Yingqi sighed, "I tried the method described in the email, and... it almost got me killed."

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: June 4, 2024 by Angel

Edited: December 18, 2024 by Soojin