Water Ghost Haunted

After the Yangtze River flood peak passed through the border in 1998, strange bubbles began to appear in the mud of Linjiang Town. Ten-year-old Shen Yiliang discovered a figure squatting at the bottom of the well in Jianjun's house, with a red rope tied to his ankle—the characteristics of a drowned child described in the town's corpse identification notice. Then Jianjun disappeared, but his neatly arranged slippers appeared at the well. Children are missing one after another in town, always near the water. Indelible water stains began to appear on Shen Yiliang's neck. At night, someone always called his name in the voice of his deceased playmate. My father spread salt in the yard, pressed scissors, and sealed the well mouth, but the thing still followed my grandmother's house thirty miles away. Grandma said that the "guests" who drowned in the floods during the Xianfeng period had to find replacements every year when the floods receded. Under Linjiang Town, there is an underwater road that leads to every well. And those children whose ankles were tied with red ropes would always squat under the water, waiting for the next person to come down and play with them. When Shen Yiliang found that the red cotton thread that could not be untied was also tied around his ankle, he knew - it was coming.