Phantom Skeleton Painting

Lin Banxia spent the night peacefully in the bedroom. It was a peaceful night, nothing happened.

The next day, he got up energetically. After washing and getting ready to go to work, he called Ji Leshui.

The phone rang for a long time, but no one answered it. Lin Banxia was worried when he heard a soft “hello” from the other end. It was Ji Leshui’s voice.

When Ji Leshui answered the phone, Lin Banxia breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Good morning, how did you sleep last night?”

“Not bad.” I don’t know if the signal is bad, but Ji Leshui’s voice sounded vague.

Lin Banxia said: “Then I will go to work today and then send your luggage over tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Ji Leshui said.

Lin Banxia said: “Why does your voice sound a little lackluster?”

“No.” Ji Leshui said vaguely, “I’m fine. You can go ahead. There’s no need to bring my luggage to me for the time being.”

Lin Banxia wanted to say something else, but the call had been hung up.

This is the sad thing about adults. No matter how bad things are you still have to go to work. The nature of Lin Banxia’s work was a bit special, as he dealt with funeral parlors, but he was not affiliated with a funeral home, and spent most of his time dealing with seriously damaged bodies in accidents. Broken corpses are commonplace after falling off buildings. The worst cases are corpses that were severely injured in traffic accidents. They were unlucky and had to be scooped up in lumps with a shovel. Don’t expect to see the whole corpse intact.

Because of the special nature of his work, Lin Banxia’s work intensity was not high. He did things when he had time to work, but he was very leisurely when he was not working. However, there are really not many people who can do this job. Most people can’t stand it after two or three months. Lin Banxia was an outlier among them. He had been working in this industry for two years and had not changed jobs since graduating from college. After all, this job is a bit scary, and the benefits are very good.

Lin Banxia was lucky today. He had not encountered anything bad since going to work. He was thinking about Ji Leshui, and couldn’t relax.

Ji Leshui had disappeared since he answered his phone call in the morning. He didn’t reply to WeChat messages, didn’t answer the phone calls, and Lin Banxia couldn’t get through in subsequent calls.

Lin Banxia was sitting in the office feeling very sad, thinking that he must go and take a look after get off work.

Lin Banxia’s colleague Liu Xi is a warm-hearted person. Seeing his rare frown, he asked curiously: “Hey, Banxia, ​​what’s wrong today? Why are you so worried?”

Lin Banxia said: “It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like everything is fine.” Liu Xi said, “Look at your brow, it’s almost wrinkled.” He came over and said with a smile, “Besides, I have nothing to do today~”

Before he finished speaking, he was slapped by a colleague behind him. The man said angrily: “Liu Xi, shut up now. Don’t you know what you can’t say?”

Liu Xi muttered: “How can it be so clever?”

There was a taboo in this industry, that is, you can’t say you are idle. If you say you are idle, something will happen. Tried and tested, it always worked. This Liu Xi was new here and had only been working for less than three months, so he had never paid much attention to these things.

Less than half an hour after Liu Xi finished speaking the office phone rang.

After another colleague answered the phone, he glared at Liu Xi and said angrily: “Look, here comes the work.”

Liu Xi groaned and scratched his head in distress: “This is so effective!!!”

Lin Banxia patted him on the shoulder to express his comfort.

Half an hour ago, there was a large traffic accident on the highway near their city. A large truck filled with steel suddenly braked and lost control and ran rampant on the highway. The situation was extremely tragic. Several small vehicles near the large truck were damaged, and the most serious one was directly crushed by the overturned large truck.

The car flattened, and the people inside were probably in danger. They called them over now, just to deal with the accident scene quickly to avoid a chain reaction on the highway.

Lin Banxia and his group put on their work clothes and sat in the car heading to the accident scene.

The atmosphere in the car was very quiet, and everyone was in a bad mood. To be honest, even though they were in this business, no one would feel good when encountering such an accident and seeing the people who lost their lives due to the accident.

Lin Banxia checked his phone for the last time. It was 6:30 in the evening, and Ji Leshui still hadn’t messaged him back. He sighed deeply and stuffed his phone deep into his pocket.

An hour later, Lin Banxia and several colleagues arrived at the scene of the accident.

At this time, the police team had arrived and began to organize cranes to pull up the large truck, and then the firefighters began to cut up the flat car that had been crushed.

Lin Banxia and the others were waiting nearby with tools. Several emergency vehicles had rescued the injured who were still breathing. They did not wait for the injured in this car, because everyone knew in their hearts that in such a serious accident…there was absolutely no possibility of survival.

The car in front of him had been almost flattened, and when the roof was cut off, the hidden passengers inside were revealed.

He couldn’t see clearly how many people there were, he could only barely identify them from their clothes, there were at least three or four.

Liu Xi chanted Amitabha and carefully began to clean up the bodies. Lin Banxia put on a mask and started working with lowered eyes.

The strong smell of blood soaked into their nostrils through the masks. Lin Banxia heard a sad cry in his ears. He turned his head and saw a woman lying limp behind him, she seemed to be related to a dead person in the car. The family members, who were being reluctantly supported by several people, were already crying.

“How pitiful.” Liu Xi muttered in a low voice, “They are all like this, I guess they can’t be separated…”

Lin Banxia said: “Stop talking.”

Liu Xi said: “Oh, it’s really uncomfortable to watch.”

Lin Banxia hissed again, and Liu Xi sighed and then stopped angrily.

At this time, it is best not to speak, because no matter what you say, the grieving family members will not want to hear it, and it will make them even more sad.

While Lin Banxia was putting the body into a body bag, he heard the police next to her discussing the case in a low voice.

It turned out that a family of several people went on a trip and drove two cars. The wife was in the front and escaped the accident, while the man, child and old man were in the back and did not survive. After the car accident, the wife hurriedly stopped the car and came back, but when she came back, she saw the crushed car.

No one could bear to see their family disappear like this.

In view of the condition of the body, Lin Banxia and the others did not dare to let the victim see more, but quickly loaded it into a car and planned to transport it to the funeral home for processing.

As soon as the corpse was loaded into the car, he was stopped by the crying woman. She lay on the car and refused to let it go. She desperately howled that she wanted to see them.

The police originally wanted to persuade her, but seeing her firm attitude, they had no choice but to agree.

Lin Banxia and Liu Xi were sitting in the car. They looked at each other and felt that it might not be good for her to look at them. However, the woman refused to compromise, so they had to open the car door.

The woman cried and lay almost on her hands and knees on the car. Shaking her hands, she opened the body bags one by one and saw the inhuman bodies inside. Due to excessive squeezing, the original appearance of the corpse was completely lost. An ordinary person would have vomited on the spot after seeing this. Probably because she was too sad, the woman reached out and picked up one of the corpses, crying. She was crying something.

Lin Banxia stood relatively close and vaguely heard the woman crying: “It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault. It was me who killed you.” He felt a little bit in his heart. I wonder why the woman is yelling like this. Could it be that the woman insisted on coming out to play? Was there an accident?

“She’s the only one left, so miserable.” Liu Xi began to sigh again.

Lin Banxia looked at the woman, feeling a little strange: “She is the only one left? Then who is that person?”

Liu Xi said: “What? Who?”

Lin Banxia looked behind the woman with some sensitivity, pursed his lips heavily, and said vaguely: “It’s okay, it seems I saw it wrong.”

How could he be wrong? About one meter behind the woman, with her back to them, stood a woman in a black dress. The woman was about the same height as the woman, short and fat. She stood quietly behind her, like a shadow. At this time, the highway was closed, and only the police and staff were allowed in. The presence of this woman in black suddenly became strange. However, the people around the woman seemed not to realize that this person existed and were all minding their own work.

After the woman finished crying, she was helped out of the car by the police and limped into the police car. The woman in black standing behind her followed their actions and got into the police car. When she got into the police car, Lin Banxia saw the woman’s face and was slightly shocked. This woman in black looks exactly like the woman whose family member was involved in the accident, except that her face is as pale as paper and her pupils are also extremely white. She was like a puppet. If the woman took one step, she would also take a step. He wondered if it is an illusion. He always felt that the distance between the two was getting closer…

“Banxia, ​​what are you looking at?” Liu Xi looked at Lin Banxia strangely.

“It’s nothing.” Lin Banxia withdrew his eyes and looked at his phone nonchalantly, “Let’s go first.” The remaining colleagues need to clean up the traces of the scene and help the police restore traffic as soon as possible.

“Let’s go.” Liu Xi started the car.

The two carried the body and headed towards the funeral home.

Sitting in the car, Lin Banxia was a little absent-minded.

Liu Xi next to him was not in a good mood. He took out a cigarette from his arms and handed it to Lin Banxia. Lin Banxia shook his head and declined.

Liu Xi lit one, took a deep breath, and said, “What are you thinking about?”

 

Translator’s Notes:

Hey guys, I’m the translator for this novel. If you have any questions or thoughts feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to answer everything. If you notice any inconsistencies or errors, drop a comment and I will fix it. I am new to this, but I want to learn and give the best translation that I can to the readers. Thanks so much for reading Phantom Skeleton Painting, I hope that everyone enjoys the novel.