Taboo in the Middle of the Night

Those evil things that the old people are not allowed to ask, but are passed down from generation to generation... "Don't look in the mirror at night, the person in the mirror will be one second slower than you." "Don't touch the collar of the extra black shirt on the clothesline." "When a child cries, first look to see if there are any teeth marks on the back of the neck..." In every village there is an old man who cannot tell secrets, and my grandma is the old man who sits under the old locust tree and tells the rules. She said these things were true— In 1992, a daughter-in-law in Majiagou gave birth to a baby who could not cry. Until the midwife discovered that every cry of the baby was exactly the same as last night... In 2001, barber shops in the county always closed on the second day of February, but people passing by in the middle of the night could hear the sound of scissors cutting hair... Last summer, I saw with my own eyes a dripping blue shirt hanging on the clothesline, and my grandma struck a match tremblingly: "That is a borrowed shroud. The person wearing it will not live more than three days." Now, I write down these stories wrapped in red cloth. ——Remember, after reading the first chapter, don't listen to the owl hooting after nine o'clock. ---