Chapter 3: Frankenstein Corpse A Surrogate Burial (1/2)

Just as I was beginning to grasp exactly what was wrong with this skeleton, Grandpa interrupted my thoughts with a question.

“Tell me, my boy,” he said, “what do you think this person’s life was like before death, and what was the cause of death? Was this person a male or female? If female, did she bore any children? And how old was this person at the time of death? Did they have any illnesses? Tell me everything you know.”

“Is this a test, Grandpa?” I asked.

“You can put it that way,” answered Grandpa plainly, blowing a puff of smoke.

What a strange method of testing, I thought. Did he have to wake me up late at night and drag me here to this old graveyard just to test me? I couldn’t think of any other grandfather in this world who would do such a thing!

“Hurry up,” said Grandpa, tapping his foot with impatience. “This place has a lot of yin energy. If we stay here too long my bones will get chilled.”

I calmed myself down and focused my attention on the bones. Once in a while, some mysterious sounds would come out from the woods, and I could feel how heavy and oppressive the yin energy in this place was. Either way, I really had a hard time! However, my nerves slowly calmed down, and all of these distractions in the surrounding environment were gradually pushed to the back of my mind.

The bones I had just connected into a body had a height from head to toe of about 180 centimeters, which meant that the person used to be tall. Yet their thigh bones were small, which made that scientifically impossible. The proportion between the length of the foot to the height would always be about one to seven in human beings. So the taller the person was, the bigger their feet. A notable exception, of course, was the case of foot-binding practiced by Chinese women in the past.

I temporarily pushed the fact to the back of my mind and started to analyze the person’s sex. From the size of the joints, this was definitely a male, but when I turned my attention to the diastolic pelvis bone, it was obvious that there were scars left by childbirth!

I lifted up the skull to determine the age at the time of death. Judging from the degree of wear on the teeth, this should be an adult in their thirties. But when I lifted up the thigh bone, it was so noticeably light — a sign of calcium loss due to old age. In fact, because of the bending, it was obvious that the person had experienced a hard life and did a lot of physical labor, which must’ve put a lot of pressure on his thigh bones. These characteristics matched that of a body belonging to a very old person, so how could that be?

What’s even more puzzling was that the joints of the arms were coarse and big, characteristic of the joints of the legs — did it mean that this person used to walk on four legs then?

This skeleton, from head to toe, just made no sense at all. The more I analyzed it, the less I was sure of what to make out of it. But I suddenly realized that it must have been Grandpa’s intention all along! It was just like him to test me with something completely out of the ordinary! Knowing that, I finally had an answer in my mind!

I had been squatting for a long time, so when I finally got back up on my feet, I felt a little dizzy and I couldn’t see anything for a moment. My feet went numb. They felt as heavy as boulders. Grandpa tossed his cigarette butt onto the ground. I checked the time and realized that I had been at it for half an hour.

“How is it then, my boy?” asked Grandpa.

“This person was about thirty years old at the time of death,” I answered. “This body was both male and female, and lived in a harsh environment all its life. It walked on four legs, and ate crude food. It even gave birth to seven or eight children. The cause of death is both drowning and decapitation.”

“Is that your final conclusion?” asked Grandpa, cackling.

“Yes,” I answered, “because this isn’t a body of one person!”

“Oh, is that so?” Grandpa was intrigued. “Then tell me why it couldn’t be just one person.”

Apart from the skull, there was not a part of this skeleton that was human. Everything was all ‘borrowed’ from some animals. The legs were from a goat, the arms were from a pig, while the pelvis was from another sow. The bones that formed the hands and feet were made up of conjoined bone fragments, probably from cats and dogs.

As for the cause of death, judging from the fracture on the neck bone, this person was decapitated with a sharp weapon.

As I was explaining, Grandpa nodded along silently with a content smile on his face.

“You’re a worthy student, my boy,” he said. “There is an old saying — better not teach someone at all than to teach them to follow the books blindly. If you couldn’t even differentiate animal bones from human bones, then it’s pointless for me to teach you anything about being a Traditional Coroner. Excellent, now the Song family will have a worthy successor!”