This part is all about free writing; the public account will choose articles from students contribution. I hope you like them.
——Xiao Lei
The Hand
My name is Jesse Ryder, and I'm a policeman.
I work in a very small village in the north of Scotland, very small, you can't find it on any map, I was sent here two years ago and I'm the only policeman here. The villagers here are honest, I only occasionally deal with the problem of littering or throwing sheep and cattle, spending most of the rest of my time in the house drinking tea or going for a walk outside.
There is an old manor house in the village, the owner before removed , and the house has been listed for sale ,lately everyone has almost forgotten him , but one morning , a stranger suddenly appeared in our village , he quietly and quickly bought house to move in, even no one notice him at first. To tell you the truth, I was startled the first time wan I saw him, he is a middle-age man, very strong and tall, With a wide shoulder, not a local, maybe from Southeast Asia, he has a long, deep scar on his face, from his forehead to his left cheek, cut through his left eye, there is a sunglasses used to cover his blind eyes. his leg is broken, a large iron frame used to fix his damaged bones, when he walks, the frame makes a loud and deep noise.
It was a strange man who was always alone, had no family or friends, never even took the initiative to talk to others, and when he moved in, he didn't clean his house or yard, everything looked as cold and old as before he came, and all day his house was surrounded by silence and darkness, and even at night he never turned on the lights of the house. He had a treasure, an old-fashioned shotgun, which he always held and used to hunt wild animals, and sometimes he even spoke to the gun in a strange language.
The villagers were surprised and frightened, they had been honest in their farming and grazing, sensitive to such strange things, they found me and asked me to watch him. I was curious, too, so I agreed. One day, I hunted a bird and it fell into that man』 yard. I went to knock on his door, and he opened it, "Good morning, sir, " I said, "My bird is in your yard, can I go and take it?」 "Come in." He said. I followed him, got the bird, and I pretended to ask him, "You live alone?" "No," he said, "just no human beings, but the soul always takes it right, and so does the 「contract". He has a strong accent, and I almost didn't understand, "Wow, well, cool, but I don't quite understand, can you speak more clearly?" Or the details? Well, I'm just interested in mystery things, working here is so boring, everyone is the same." He seems slightly happy and surprised, perhaps no one has ever noticed or ignored his strange words and behavior before." You're a cop, right? He asked me, "Yes, I'm Jesse. Ryder" "Okay, Officer Ryder, my name is Modiaco.Paladin, come with me, and I'll show you something.
The house is very big. Through the long corridor, I found all the windows covered by curtains, no lights on the roof, only a few candles burning weakly in the corner, and I could hardly see the way. On the wall, hangs there, is his hunting achievements, the bear's head, the tiger's paws, and many roughs, as well as strange tools made of bones, and Mr. Paladin touches them with his hand, whispering strange words. We went to the hall, there were four tables, full of strange metal utensils, four huge bookshelves on the wall completely covered the windows, so the room was still dark. There's something like an altar or a podium in the middle. I asked what it is, and Mr. Paladin said, "It's just a daily routine, looking for epiphanies, and right away I'm going to tell you something really empty and evil." Then he took me on, the iron frame on his lap, hitting the stone floor when he works, making loud noise, besides that, there is complete silence in here.
He led me into a room with a bed in the middle, and I guess it was his bedroom, and he pointed to the wall, and I saw an item on the wall, in it, fixed a hand, a real human hand! It was violently removed from the arm, the cutting part was severely destroyed, the broken bone and torn flesh were revealed in horror, in my experience as a policeman, the tool to cut it off was not very sharp, but the person who cut it was quite strong, and crazy to the extreme. The hand has obviously been dropped for a long time, it has been dry, old and shrunken, the color is already turn brown, that make me feel a bit gross .the hand is very thin, fingers twisted hard, dry muscles are still tight, seems like it want to grasp something. But the strangest thing is that the hand is wrapped in a thick chain, very tight, as if Mr. Paladin is afraid that the hand will run away.
"Well, what is this?" I asked him, trying to control my tone. Mr. Paladin stared at the hand and answered slowly in a cold voice, "This hand belongs to the person I hate the most in my life, and my hatred of him is probably something you can't understand, finally I defeated him, destroyed him, I cut off this hand, full of sin! Every night I watch this hand fall asleep, that make me reminds me how much I hate him, how much I hate every drop of blood on him, and it always reminds me that I have to stick to it. But I'm not a bad person, remember! In love and hate, good and bad have long been forgotten! Suddenly, he turned his head sharply at me, and my heart almost stopped. "I'm not sure am I right to telling you these Officer Ryder, Maybe he's still haunting, that's not good, it's dangerous, please don't tell anyone what you're seeing, come with me now.」
He quickly took me to the door. "I'm glad to see you, Officer Ryder.」 He said. "Nice to meet you.」 Mr. Paladin. I smiled back. Then he ran away quickly. I told the other villagers, stay away from him, he has some strange ideas. but I don't know why, I don't have the courage to talk to anyone about that hand, maybe I just don't want to let anyone be afraid, or, in fact, there are some strange forces, Mr. Paladin's last words have been lingering in my mind, I always feel that if I say something about it, there will be an extreme mistake, I don't know why I believe it , but I just can't break it. Maybe. That's what Mr. Paladin is talking about as a "contract."
The speed of time is hard to detect. Three years passed quickly, although Mr. Paladin's personal behavior had been strange, but he never did anything out of character and was polite in dealing with people, so we were all used to him, and one day I got a call from my leader: "Hey Rhett, you've been in this little village for five years, in such a cold and dirty place, you're doing a really good job!" Now I recommend you to your superiors, who are considering promoting you and getting you back to work in town! I was glad to hear the news, and I asked him when he would be able to go, and he said, "Oh, soon, but you know, this time you're going to be sent to a key department, so there's an exchange activity, you're going to go abroad to study more advanced forensic techniques, and then you're going to work."
So, I went to Canada to study, after a few boring weeks, when the activity finally came to an end, there is an old, famous detective have a speech, I was attracted to him, he told a lot of useful experience and interesting knowledge, I learn a lot from him, After the speech, I found him politely, I talked to him, we talked about empirical methods, cases, and some of the daily routines of police life, we became good friends, and finally, we talked about faith, and I told him I was a firm atheist and would only believe in science until I died. He told me, "Young man, there's one thing I want to tell you, science is definitely the best way to know the world, but it's possible that there's another world outside of science that we don't understand, something strange and terrible that I've experienced first-hand." You know, I've broken thousands of big cases in my life, and no matter how hard it is, I can break it. Except for one, it's not actually a case, it's more like a supernatural event, it happened three years ago, a cloudy morning, someone called the police, there was a dead man in the forest, we went to the scene, the victim was a man, facing the sky, before he died he and someone, should be the killer, has a fierce fight, there were a lot of injuries, even three gunshot wound, after two shots, he still insisted to let opponent shed a lot of blood until he was shot in the forehead. But strangely , the murderer cut off victim's hand and took it away , it happened like this: the murderer picked up a stone on the ground , frantically cut , chisel ,and saw , finally the hand dropped , and was taken away by the murderer , which was a point , and I thought it was likely that the deceased's hand had something that would identify the deceased , or something that would directly identify the killer, or, the victim's has diamonds in his wrist, and then we put the body in the mortuary, but at night, something terrible happened that I would never forget, the security guard of the mortuary was killed, the lock of the gate was destroyed, that body was gone, but we checked the lock, and found that the lock was broken from the inside, not from the outside, Footprints show that only people go out, no one came in, we invited the best experts in the country, they give the same result, in fact, the scene is very simple, even outsiders can understand what happen, but just no one wants to believe that, the body was resurrected, and then fled.」
My mind twisted into a ball, but I said nothing. He continued: "We posted a notice and checked the list of missing persons, and we checked the surveillance on the road outside the forest, and there was no clue at all, we didn't even know who the victim was, Then, things became even scarier, and the next day, residents near the forest heard a voice in the night, a trembling, dead voice, shouting: "Where's my hand? Where's my hand?」 Two days later, the voice turned to: "I'll find you!" I'll find you! Not only that, but footprints and blood droplets were found nearby. Just as the residents were about to move away collective, the sound disappeared completely and the strange things stopped. The conclusion of the whole incident was obvious, but no policeman or scientist wanted to admit it, In the eyes of the locals, the evil spirit went somewhere else to find the man who had stolen his hand after a fruitless search in the local area.」