On my first day back in my hometown, everyone in the village warned me with their eyes: Keep quiet. They cut out the tongues of those who spoke out of turn and turned them into “mute puppets” that wandered the mountains and forests. My father was driven mad with fear and spent his days curled up in a house covered in talismans. My uncle, who had been missing for years, left a blood-written message behind an old photograph: “It’s inside my body, listening to you.” Now the village secretary and several others are blocking my doorway, asking how much I really know. Should I tell him that the thing they call the “Mountain Ghost”... just spoke to me?
