Corpse Jumps off the Beam

Ghosts say nothing, curtains flutter in the breeze. A dim lamp burns in the dead of night, a cat meows in hunger. Corpses leap from their graves, the vernal equinox has passed. Qingming Festival under the moonlight, Qingming Festival under the moonlight. This is a short verse-part poem, part nursery rhyme-that I used to hear my great-grandmother recite in my ear when I was a child. From childhood onward, I never understood what this little verse meant. But as time went on, I began to forget most of its content. It wasn't until my freshman year of college, when a series of eerie events occurred one after another, I finally realized that this short verse referred to a local legend with a terrifying meaning. Especially the lines "The cat howls with hunger, the corpse leaps and leaps"-they signaled a calamity so rare it might not occur in a thousand years. After that experience, when I revisited and carefully re-read the verse, I finally realized that between the lines, there was indeed a faint, eerie, and terrifying aura of doom.