Chapter 3

Ever since that night, Grandma had been completely bedridden.

It wasn't a fever, and it wasn't a cough. She was simply weak. She lay in bed all day, refusing food and water, and wasted away so fast you could see it happening. Her eyes sank deep into their sockets and her cheekbones jutted out. In just a few days, she had grown so thin she was barely recognizable.

The village country doctor came by. He took her temperature and listened to her heart, but he couldn't find anything wrong. In the end, all he could do was shake his head and say it was old age, that her blood and energy were depleted. He left a few packets of herbal medicine, but they didn't help at all.

The most frightening part was that Grandma started talking out of her head.

Drifting in and out of sleep, she kept mumbling, "Get off me... so heavy... so cold..."

Once, when Susan was giving her water, Grandma suddenly grabbed her hand. Her eyes were stretched wide, full of terror.

"Black... a black shadow... it's sitting on my chest... I can't breathe... it's sucking the breath out of me..."

Susan was scared out of her wits, and the bowl of water fell to the floor.

Frank was frantic with worry. He went out to work during the day with his mind somewhere else, and when he came home at night he sat by the bed smoking one cigarette after another until the room was thick with smoke. He was a hardheaded man who believed only in what he could see, yet now he was at a total loss, forced to watch helplessly as his mother grew weaker by the day.

Matt saw it all, and it ate at him.

He knew no doctor could save Grandma. This was beyond anything ordinary.

The Blind Man's words, the gruesome death of the hens, the scratching at the door in the night, the "black shadow" on Grandma's chest... every clue pointed to the same thing: that eerie old black cat.

It wasn't just harassing them. It was coming for her life!

They couldn't wait any longer. If they kept waiting, Grandma really would die!

That night, looking at Grandma barely clinging to her last breaths, Matt made a decision.

He stood up and said to his parents, who were out of ideas, "Pa, Ma, we can't go on like this. I'm going to find that blind man."

Frank's head jerked up, and he stared at his son with bloodshot eyes. "Find him? What for? That jinx!"

"If he could see it coming, he has to have a way to stop it!" Matt's voice was unusually firm. "He's the only hope we've got!"

Susan hesitated. "But... where would you even look? He could be anywhere..."

"I know where." Matt clenched his fists. "I remember what he looked like that day. He came from the villages to the east, so I'll follow the road and ask in one village after another. As long as he's still around here, I'll find him!"

Seeing the resolve in his son's eyes, Frank fell silent. All his life he had been proud and stubborn, and he had never believed in any of this. But now, looking at his mother hanging by a thread on the bed, his convictions wavered. Harsh reality was forcing him to bow to that unknown power.

He squeezed the words out through his teeth. "...Go. Get there fast and come back fast."

Matt nodded without another word. He went to his room and put on a heavy coat, tucked away what little food the family had left, and asked his mother for some pocket change. Then he took one last look at Grandma, sleeping fitfully on the bed.

"Grandma, wait for me to come back."

With that, he pulled open the door and walked resolutely into the endless dark of the night.