In the first three days of July and a half, the sycamore leaves in the old city began to fall out of season, and the back of each leaf was printed with tiny patterns that looked like carvings on human fingernails. Lao Wangtou, the shoe repairman downstairs in my house, suddenly stood guard in front of the newspaper box every day, handing out an old yellowed newspaper to everyone with only one line of wet ink on it: "They are counting the windows."
At first, no one took it seriously, until strange things happened one after another in the community: the children in Room 302 always said that there was an "aunt in blue shirt" singing lullabies in the closet, but when he opened the closet, there were only neatly folded old clothes; when Mrs. Zhang next door took it back, there were several rows of dark fingerprints on the bed sheet that she had dried on the balcony, as if someone had scratched it through the fabric; even when I came home from overtime every night, I could see a black figure without feet behind me on the surveillance camera at the door of the unit building, but when I turned around, there was nothing.
Until yesterday, Lao Wangtou suddenly disappeared, leaving only a note with "it's time to pay it back" written on it posted on the newspaper box. From that day on, all the clocks in the old city began to run backwards. I finally understood that those disappearing people and strange shadows were never hallucinations—but the strangeness that had been dormant for decades and was slowly waking up.
