devil's son

1998, winter

Tongcheng, an ordinary small county, lives deep inland, closed and backward.

Tongcheng No.1 Civilian Hospital, the best public hospital in Tongcheng, many people come and go in and out of the hospital every day, and the shrieking sound of ambulances can be heard almost every day.

Old Li, a skinny, wrinkled old man with a hunchback, came from the countryside with no culture, let alone a background. Logically speaking, it is impossible for him to work in such a good hospital, even if he is not in the establishment, even if his monthly salary Only 400 yuan.

The salary of 98 yuan in 400 is definitely not high in a small inland county, but the advantage is that it can barely be regarded as a public job, and you can receive wages at a fixed time every month, three meals a day It can also be solved in the canteen of the hospital, which can save a lot of expenses. For many people, this is already considered a good job.

It stands to reason that such a job cannot be done by someone like Lao Li, but it happens that no one is willing to do this job except Lao Li.

The guards clean the morgue, bad luck.

Not only is it unlucky, the mortuary of the People's Hospital is in the basement of an old inpatient building that has been in disrepair for a long time. According to the older generation, this old inpatient building was built during the invasion of China by R nationals. They did a lot of work in it It was a terrible thing, after the defeat, some people from R country still committed suicide in that building. I heard that the blood flowed, it dyed the whole building red and black, and the blood flowed to the road outside, the smell of blood It's been a long time.

It is said that how much moisture there is remains to be verified, but the old hospital building is indeed quite eerie. The old building with only three floors on the ground is covered with creepers. Chill.After the reconstruction and expansion of the People's Hospital, the old inpatient building was abandoned immediately. With the construction of the new inpatient building, the old inpatient building was squeezed to the most remote corner of the hospital, where some sundries were placed, and the basement was sorted out to serve as a hospital. The mortuary where the dead bodies are kept.

The county is not big, and the outside is traditionally closed. Unless there is a sudden death or an emergency, many people, especially the elderly, prefer to wait at home for the last moment of life.Even if some people unfortunately passed away in the hospital, according to the local customs, the family members will transport the body of the deceased back home in the shortest possible time to stop the coffin. Therefore, the hospital mortuary is not often used.

Old Li Tou's main job is to guard and clean this almost abandoned old hospital building, manage the sundries in the whole building, including the mortuary in the basement, and the sanitation of the surrounding park.

The work itself is not too hard. Before Lao Li, there were several people who did his job due to various relationships, but the shortest of these people only worked for three days, and the longest only lasted for half a year. , quit their jobs for various reasons.Gradually, rumors spread in the hospital that were speculative and had a bad influence.

90. In the [-]s, information was underdeveloped, and there was a little trouble in a small county, and it would be treated as a talking point.

In just a few years, the people who took care of the old inpatient building died one after another due to various reasons, so all kinds of stories about the old inpatient building became more and more mysterious, and gradually, there were no more stories. People are willing to do the job.

Old Li found it by mistake and took over the job. He has been doing it for several years. There is nothing wrong with him. The rumors are self-defeating, but still no one wants to take his job.

Old Li is happy to hold a solid porcelain rice bowl, and he does his work very hard on weekdays. After he felt that he had gained a firm foothold in the hospital, he even brought his wife from the countryside to the county town, both as gifts and to find connections , I finally found her a job washing sheets and quilts in the hospital. The salary was very low, but it was more than what she could earn from farming alone in the countryside.

The old hospital was used as a warehouse, and there were a lot of sundries in the building, both valuable and worthless. According to the hospital's regulations, Old Li had to keep vigil.

There were a lot of vacant rooms in the old hospital building, so the old Litou and his wife picked a sunny room on the ground floor and tidied it up as a bedroom.

The couple has been married for more than 20 years and has no children, and their relationship with relatives in their hometown is not close. They are both afraid that they will not be taken care of when they grow old. They are reluctant to spend their wages. They spend three meals a day in the hospital cafeteria and pick up their clothes. Others don't want to wear them. After a few years, the couple have saved [-] to [-] yuan.

This amount of money is nothing in the county, but in their hometown, it is really an enviable wealth.

The couple are used to being stingy, and their lives are stingy, and the clothes they picked up are not neat. No one knows that they have saved so much money.

The two of them calculated that they could not do anything in a few years, so they would take the money and go back to the countryside, renovate the old houses in the countryside, spend their old age with peace of mind, and go as they please.

However, plans can never keep up with changes.

In the middle of winter and the lunar new year, the Spring Festival is about to be celebrated. As long as the patients in the hospital are not too seriously ill, they are all discharged early and ready to go home for the New Year. It is rare for the hospital to be deserted.

Old Litou and his wife have been living in the county town for the past few years. The house in the country has long been rotten, and there are no close relatives in their hometown. They haven't been back to their hometown for three or four years.

On New Year's Eve, there were only a few patients in the hospital who really couldn't get out of the hospital, and all the doctors left when they could go home. Old Litou and his wife had been busy for a whole year, so it was a rare luxury to buy some meat and When the dishes came back, they borrowed a stove from the hospital cafeteria and cooked a pot randomly. The old couple were full and slept until midnight.

Old man Li was dreaming sweet dreams, and he babbled, when his old lady's suspicious voice suddenly sounded in his ears: "Old man, wake up, wake up, do you hear any noise?"

Old Li was sleeping soundly, but he was still a little dazed when he was woken up. He only felt that his body was very cold, so he wrapped the quilt around his body and said angrily, "What are the ghosts screaming in the middle of the night? They don't let people sleep."

"Hush, listen, there's really a sound, it seems to be coming from... from below." Grandma Sun's voice trembled, and just as she finished speaking, it seemed that there was really a high-pitched voice, faintly like a baby's. Crying, intermittent, inaudible, but creepy.

The dim yellow light bulb in the room flickered for a moment and then went out suddenly. The cold wind gushed into the house through the cracks in the windows.

bang.

Without warning, there was a loud thunder, as if it exploded on the top of the head.

This time, Old Li woke up completely. He listened for a long time with his ears upright. Apart from the sudden thunder and the rustling of bamboo leaves outside, he seemed to have heard what Grandma Sun said.

Old Litou has worked in this old inpatient building for several years. Occasionally, he would hear some strange noises. He usually pretended not to hear them, covered his head with a quilt, and nothing happened until dawn.

However, tonight, he was a little unsteady.

Amid the intensifying thunder, the intermittent crying of the baby, like a curse, continued to amplify in the minds of the old Litou and his wife. After a few minutes or maybe half an hour, Grandma Sun couldn't lie down anymore. Now, she poked Lao Li's skinny arm and said, "Could it be that pregnant woman... gave birth today."

"Don't be silly, she died when she was sent to the hospital, how could she give birth in the middle of the night?" Old Li denied, but a young woman's face and her high belly flashed in his mind .

It was an unforgettable face, very beautiful, more beautiful than any star on TV.

Even when it was Old Li's turn to take over her, she was already stiff, her face was gray and her eyes were closed, which still surprised Old Li.

After being amazed, I sighed. This woman was sent to the hospital by a passer-by. She was very young and had no identity information on her body. After the woman did die of dystocia, the police simply made a record and asked people to send her to the morgue first, and then conduct related investigations after the year passed.

The biggest regret of Old Li's life is that he has no children. When he was young, Grandma Sun had several pregnancies, but she had a miscarriage and died before the child was born. Many people in the village murmured about the two of them behind their backs. As a last resort, Old Li Only then went to the county to make a living.

Seeing this woman's towering belly, Old Li thought of his unfavorable children and was filled with emotion.

"But I really heard crying. What if someone else gave birth to a child and didn't want to throw it away? In such a cold day, what should I do if it freezes up?" As she said, Grandma Sun's heart became more active. Who doesn't want to have a child, they can pick it up and raise it themselves, even if it's a little girl, it's fine to raise it up.

Children are the biggest heart disease in Grandma Sun's life.

After the terrible thunder, the baby's cry came again, Grandma Sun jumped off the bed immediately, without even caring about getting dressed, picked up her slippers, picked up the flashlight next to the pillow, and ran outside.

By the time Old Li realized it, Mrs. Sun had already opened the door of the room and plunged into the darkness.

Old Li cursed in a low voice, quickly got up, picked up their coats and chased them out.

When he caught up, there was already a baby in Grandma Sun's arms. She coaxed the baby carefully, and gently wiped the bodily fluids on it with her sleeve, as if all the wrinkles on her dry face had been stretched out.

The woman covered by the white cloth had her stomach deflated at some point, and there was a puddle of pitch-black liquid on the ground beside her, which was extremely stinky.

Old Li's mind went blank for a moment. A cold wind from nowhere swirled into the morgue, making hair stand on end. The dim yellow flashlight flashed twice, then went out suddenly, and the whole morgue was completely dark. I can't see my fingers.

"Old, old woman..."

"what--"

A shrill scream spread out in the darkness accompanied by a faint smell of blood...