Chapter 12 Demon husband's devotion!

It occurred to me that he was invisible to most people, so I decided to leave him be. "Well, then...Just follow."
Then I pushed open the gate.

Someone recognized me immediately and shouted out : "Aunt Lucy, isn’t this your granddaughter, Rae?"

Aunt Lucy was how younger generations in my villages called my grandma; my grandmother thrust through the crowd neatly toward me: "Why did you come back?"

My parents approached too, especially my mother, whose angry face scared me a little.
I faltered and said, "I...My grandpa has gone, can't I come back to see him on last time?"

My mom grabbed my wrist and started yelling, "What are you doing here? Why can you just listen to me once?! Are you trying to kill yourself? Do you know what time is it now. It is so dark outside and god knows what is out there, what if you run into some filthy things? A lot of mysterious events happen recently, do you know? Why would I have such a useless daughter!”

I ignored her and looked to the direction where my grandpa’s coffin was placed. The coffin was still lying there so peacefully and normally. But inside it..

What my father did was trying his best to calm my mother down; but my mother kept tugging at me and scolding harshly. Dressed in priest robes, my younger granduncle, who arranged the funeral, walked out from the mourning hall and started scolding my mother: “ Becky! Stop yelling at Rae! She is here now, you can’t send her back in the middle of the night, can you?”

With contempt for my granduncle, my mother threw out a rude remark: "I would rather send her back now than let her die in here! With the things your Fan family have done, are you still afraid of being laughed at?"

With so many villagers attending the funeral, granduncle had to held back his anger; he knew perfectly well of my mother’s grudge over the marriage he hosted four years ago.

Grandma could not stand it anymore: "Becky, I told you not to make trouble here, I didn't ask you to come back! If you wanna go now, no one would stop you. Stop making a scene here, stop disgracing our family here!"

My mother’s piled-up anger and grievance erupted at the rebukes of grandma and granduncle: "if it weren't for the fact that old master was a good guy, I would never set food in this house; I can’t bear even to look at you all; I am not here to quarrel with you either; if anything happen to my daughter, I will kill you all!"

The people in the village knew little about our family affairs, and when they saw confusing quarrel, they jumped to mediated between them; after all, we were in the mourning hall of my grandpa.

I turned my red eyes to look at the demon who stood beside me silently; what was he thinking? Was he laughing at me... Everything happened here now traced back to that day four years ago, when we were married.

My granduncle suddenly dragged me over violently: "Rae, did you encounter anything unusual on your way here?"

He was whispering but in a serious way, in consideration of so many people here.

I was trying to talk while my mother dragged me back by saying to my granduncle: "Master Third, you stay away from my Rae!"

My mother's overreaction aroused the suspicion of the other villagers; embarrassed, granduncle snapped back angrily at her: "I am doing all this for the good of her? What do you think you are doing!”

My mother sneered: " Save it! We are coming back for the old master, after this, we would never set foot at this home again; I swear on my name!”

I had enough, my mother was going too far on this; from my view, in the past four years, her strictness and cautions had gone too far; I shook off her hands and said: “ Mom, enough is enough! Do you find it interesting? There are so many people watching us; why don’t you all go check where my grandpa is!”

Everyone was confused by me, shouldn’t my grandpa be in the coffin?
I walked to the hall on my tiptoe to look into the coffin and as expected, it was empty: "Look, someone has stolen the body, you still wanna continue the quarrel?"

I didn't know why the coffin was placed so high that I had to stand on tiptoe to peek inside. That explained why no one notice the body missing.
I decided to make up a lame excuse, after all, no one would believe that grandpa walked out on him own! And also, to prevent granduncle from performing any religious rite on grandpa’s body; he had suffer enough.

Granduncle came over and his face changed at the sight of the empty coffin.
To dispel his doubts, I added hastily: "When I walked on the mountain road, I saw someone carrying the body of grandpa, I yelled at him; that thief ran away leaving the grandpa’s body out there. We should go now and get him back...”

People in the courtyard hurried to say, "Hurry before it is stolen again! It was said that newly-died corpse could be sold for money. But what kind of savage does that?!"

Followed by my grandma and a group of people, granduncle stormed out of the hall; at such incident, my mom calmed down as well.

The demon was still sticking with me. In fact, I was very grateful to him. Although I was afraid of him before, but not now, not any more. If it hadn't been for him, I would have died.

"Thank you..." I whispered to him without others’ noticing.

He glanced sideways at me and said, "Didn't you say that ‘a day together as husband and wife means endless devotion the rest of your life’? That’s my devotion, right?"

I suddenly feel a little embarrassed; well, I had not actually meant it ...

When we arrived at where the corpse my grandpa was place, I was frozen. The body of grandpa was gone! I looked to the demon, who was as puzzled as me, while granduncle asked : “Rae, where is your grandpa?”

I began to weep. "It was here before! This is where I left him before!"

The grandmother, too, began to cry: "Was it taken away by someone?! What kind of psycho would have done that; they would burn in the hell!"

Demon came forward and knelt down; he picked up some soil on the ground and sniffed at it before turning back to me saying: “It was not human, some ghost much fiercer than that old woman.”

My hair on my neck all stood up, what would be fiercer than my grandaunt? What should we do?

Granduncle seemed to discovered something suspicious as well; he went to kneel on the spot where the demon stood earlier and did the same things by picking up a handful of soil and smelled. With the moon light, I could see his solemn face as if he had smell something so unpleasant; he clapped his hands and fanned away the bad smell of the soil lingering around his nose, saying: “ something bad is happening! No wonder those Taoist priests in the nearby temples all packed up and left; they must have known.”