The taxi driver was quite talkative. The moment he opened his mouth, he launched into a lively tale—one about himself.
His name was Chen Zi'an. He was born in Huixiang, grew up in Huixiang, and had never left the city.
"...When I was three months old, my mom noticed I stared at the corner of the room every day and giggled at it. She burned incense there for two days, and then I stopped looking over. When I was four, I was playing marbles outside my house with a bunch of older kids. They kept shoving me away and stealing my marbles. They were playing on the ground, and one marble got knocked way off, rolling right past my feet. I turned around and watched it roll over to the corner of the wall. A hand reached out from the other side and picked it up. The whole group ran over there, but they couldn't find a thing. So they grabbed me and beat me, demanding I hand over the marble. Those little brats!" Chen Zi'an spat, then continued, "While they were beating me, I saw a hand reach out from the other side of the wall again. It was the same hand as before, holding the marble, and it tossed it back out."
Chen Zi'an even let go of the steering wheel to gesture at us. "It came rolling over like this, right to one kid's feet. He stepped on it and landed flat on his backside."
Watching Chen Zi'an drive made my heart pound.
Compared to that, his ghost stories sounded like nothing more than stories.
Chen Zi'an continued rambling and pointed ahead. "I haven't seen much on Grasshead Road, where you're headed. But if you keep going this way, there's a place called Crying Tomb Ridge. That