请多多给出建议。（支持提供灵感，后续也许会写）

听

译者序：以下手稿于1923年在爱尔兰戈尔韦郡一座废弃庄园的地下室中被发现，连同手稿一同被发现的还有十一具形态各异的骸骨，法医鉴定后确认其中数具骸骨的死亡时间跨越了至少两个世纪。手稿以英语写就，字迹潦草且多处被涂抹，纸张上残留有褐色斑渍。现将其中可辨识的部分整理翻译如下，以供研究者参考。请注意，为保证原意，个别基于拉丁语系的文字均采用原文。

——孔姓译者，1931年冬

      我叫埃德温·阿什伯恩，若你正在阅读这些文字，那么请你——以你所信仰的任何事物的名义——继续读下去。我写这些不是为了记录，不是为了缅怀，而是为了警告。我不知道自己还剩下多少时间，我的左手已经开始出现那些纹路了，和父亲临终前一样，和祖父留下的肖像画上一样。我要在它蔓延之前把一切写下来。若你与阿什伯恩家族有任何血缘上的关联，若你的血管里流淌着哪怕一丝来自这个家族的血，那么你必须读完这些文字，然后永远离开，去一个阳光充足的地方，去一个人口稠密的地方，去一个永远没有“那些东西”的地方，不要回头。

      我应当从有记录的最早的那个祖先说起。阿什伯恩家族的正式记录始于1694年，但家族内部口耳相传的说法要久远得多。我的祖父塞缪尔——一名曾居于德国的绅士，在世时曾不止一次对我说，阿什伯恩这个姓氏的起源不属于任何一个已知的语言系统，他说这名字是从更古老的东西那里继承来的，不是被创造的，而是被赋予的。年幼的我当时以为这只是老人的故弄玄虚，但现在我知道他说的每一个字都是真的。

       1694年，一个名叫奥古斯特·阿什伯恩的男人在爱尔兰西海岸的戈尔韦郡购置了一片土地，并在那里建造了一座庄园。当地的记录显示这片土地此前无人居住，并非因为贫瘠——恰恰相反，那里的土壤异常肥沃，牧草浓密得不正常——而是因为当地盖尔人世代相传的禁忌。没有人愿意告诉我那个禁忌的具体内容，我曾在都柏林的国家档案馆查阅过相关的民俗资料，只找到一句含糊的记录："那片土地会听。"

      奥古斯特来自何处，没有人知道。他不是英格兰人，不是苏格兰人，不是爱尔兰本地人，他操着一口流利的英语，但偶尔会夹杂一些没有人能辨认的音节。当地的牧师曾私下记录说奥古斯特在做祷告时的发音与任何已知教派的仪轨都不相符，但这位牧师很快就在一场莫名的火灾中丧生了，记录因此被搁置。

      奥古斯特建造庄园时发生了一件被家族反复提及的事。工人们在挖掘地基时，在地下约八英尺处发现了一块石板。石板的材质不属于爱尔兰任何已知的地质构造，呈深灰色，表面有一种油脂般的光泽，触感温热，仿佛有微弱的脉动。石板上刻有浮雕，但那些图案不是任何工匠能够辨识的纹样——它们看起来像是某种文字，也像是某种器官的剖面图，又像是两者之间的某种东西。奥古斯特没有让工人毁掉它，而是命人将其原封不动地埋回原处，并将庄园的地基直接建于其上。

      后来我在祖父的笔记中找到了一条关于这块石板的注释，他写道："Das ist nicht der Eckpfeiler, das ist der Eingang.”祖父知道它通向何处，他也知道那下面有什么在等着。

      我之所以告诉你这些，不是为了让你对一个陌生家族的历史产生兴趣，而是为了让你理解血统这件事的可怕之处。阿什伯恩家族的每一代人都与那块石板下方的某种东西保持着联系，这种联系不是通过仪式，不是通过梦境——至少在最初不是——而是通过血液本身。你无法逃离你的血液，正如你无法逃离你自己的骨骼。

       我的父亲威廉·阿什伯恩生于1851年，是一个沉默而内向的人。他终身致力于研究家族历史，书房里堆满了各种语言的古籍和手抄本，其中大部分我至今无法辨识。他极少谈及他的研究，只是偶尔在晚餐后用一种近乎歉疚的语气对我和母亲说，他所做的一切都是为了保护这个家。我母亲伊丽莎白——一个来自伦敦的理性而坚强的女人——对此不以为然，她认为父亲不过是一个沉迷于家谱学的古怪绅士。

      变化始于1897年的冬天。那一年我十二岁，我记得那个冬天异常漫长，从十月到次年三月，天空始终是一种铅灰色的调子，太阳像一枚被腐蚀的铜币，即使正午时分也几乎不能在地面上投出影子。父亲开始把自己关在书房里，有时一待就是三四天。仆人们说能听到他在书房里自言自语，但那声音不像是一个人在说话，更像是两个人在用一种极其缓慢的速度交替发声，一问一答，节奏均匀得令人不安。

       我第一次亲眼见到异常是在1898年1月的一个夜晚。我因为噩梦醒来——那个梦的内容我已经记不全了，只记得一片无边的黑色水面和水面下方某种巨大的、缓慢移动的轮廓——起身去厨房取水。经过父亲的书房时，我发现门虚掩着，里面透出一种不属于任何灯烛的光。那光是无色的，或者说它包含了所有颜色但同时又不是任何一种颜色，它不照亮任何东西，只是让书房的墙壁看起来更远、更深，仿佛房间在那一刻延伸到了某个维度——某个不该存在的维度。

      我从门缝中看到父亲跪在那块石板前——我不知道他何时将石板重新挖出并安放在书房地下——他的双手按在石板表面，嘴唇翕动。石板上的纹路在发光，不，不是发光，是在呼吸，那些纹路在以某种有机的方式起伏，像是一个活物的皮肤下面的血管在搏动。父亲的手——我至今记得那幅画面——他的手与石板接触的部分呈现出一种半透明的状态，我可以看到他皮肤下面有什么东西在流动，不是血，颜色不对，那种颜色我在后来的生活中再也没有见过，但如果一定要描述的话，它是一种介于深紫和暗绿之间的、会自行变化的色泽。

      我发出了一声惊叫。父亲转过头来看我，他的眼睛——他的眼睛在那一刻不是亲切蓝色的了，也不是任何人类的眼睛应有的样子。我不想详细描述那个样子，因为每当我试图回忆那个画面时，我的左手就会开始发痒，那些纹路就会更清晰一些。你只需要知道，在那一瞬间，我意识到看着我的人——或者说看着我那个东西——不是我的父亲，或者说不仅仅是我的父亲。

      母亲在1903年离开了我们。不是去世，是离开。她在一个清晨收拾了行李，留下了一封信。信的内容很短，我只记得最后一句："埃德温，不要试图理解你父亲在做什么，有些理解本身就是一种感染。"我后来试图寻找她的下落，但所有线索都在伦敦中断了。一个港口工人告诉我，他记得有一个符合母亲描述的女人登上了一艘开往南美洲的船，但他记得那个女人走路的方式很奇怪——"像是在数自己的步子，每一步都精确得像是被什么东西丈量过。"

      父亲在1908年去世，或者更准确地说，他在1908年消失了。仆人们在某个早晨发现书房的门敞开着，父亲不见了，石板也不见了。地板上只留下一个完美的圆形凹陷，凹陷的底部——据那个最有胆量的仆人说——不是泥土，不是岩石，而是一种看起来像液态但实际上是固态的黑色物质，它不反射光线，却给人一种它正在向上看的印象。我赶到书房时，凹陷已经自行愈合了，地板恢复了原样，仿佛什么都没有发生过。

      后来我在父亲的书桌上找到了他的日记。日记的最后几页写满了反复涂抹的文字，只有最后一段是清晰的："它不是来自地下的。它一直在我们的血液里。石板只是一个耳朵，我们以为我们在聆听它，其实是它在聆听我们——通过我们的血管、通过我们的心跳、通过每一代阿什伯恩的出生。它已经听了三百年了。它快听够了。"

      我在那之后的十五年里试图远离家族的一切。我卖掉了庄园——没有人愿意买，最后以极低的价格租给了一个愿意接手的当地人——搬到了伦敦，过着一种刻意平庸的生活。我从事银行业，加入了一个普通的俱乐部，与普通人交往，阅读普通的报纸。我以为距离可以稀释血液中的某种东西，我错了。

      1915年，第一次世界大战期间，我在一次体检中被军医注意到了一个异常。我的血液在常规检测中呈现出一种令军医困惑的状态——他说我的红细胞数量正常，但在显微镜下，一部分细胞呈现出一种他从未见过的几何形态，"像是被某种力量重新排列过。"他把这记录在案但没有深究，战时没有人在意一个银行职员的异常血象。

      但我开始理解了。母亲说得对，理解本身就是一种感染。因为从那天起，我开始能听到——不，不是听到——是一种更底层的感知，仿佛我的血管本身变成了某种接收器。在夜深人静时，在心跳的间隙里，我能感知到一种来自远方的、极其缓慢的振动，它不是声音，不是光线，不是任何可以被五官捕捉的东西，它直接作用于血液本身。它有节奏，那个节奏——我现在写下这些字时手在发抖——那个节奏和阿什伯恩家族每一代人的心跳频率完全一致。

      我做了一件我不该做的事。1920年，我回到了戈尔韦郡。我不知道是什么驱使我回去的——好奇、宿命、还是血液中那个振动的引导——但我回去了。庄园已经废弃了，屋顶塌了一半，墙壁上长满了某种深色的苔藓，那种苔藓的生长方式——从远处看——构成了一种我宁愿认为是巧合的图案。但我知道那不是巧合。

      我在废墟中找到了地下室入口。我不知道庄园有地下室，父亲从未提起过，祖父的笔记中也从未标注。但那个入口就在那里，仿佛一直在等待我知道它的存在。石阶向下延伸，我没有数具体有多少级，但那段路走起来远比从地面到地下一层应有的距离要长得多。

      我在下面看到了什么，我不打算完整地写下来。不是因为我不想，而是因为我不确定人类的语言是否能够承载那些信息。我只能告诉你以下这些：那个空间不是人工建造的，它是生长出来的，墙壁的材质与石板相同，温热、脉动、有一种心跳般的起伏；空间的中央有一个凹陷，凹陷中盛着一种液体，那种液体的颜色和我在父亲手上看到的一模一样；凹陷的周围排列着十二个位置，其中十一个有人——或者说曾经是人——的痕迹，那些痕迹的形态各异，但都保持着一种跪拜的姿势，仿佛在最后一刻仍在进行某种仪式。

      第十一个位置是空的。那是留给我的。它好像在召唤我。

      我在那一刻做了一件也许是正确也许是错误的事——我跑了。我不记得自己是如何回到地面的，不记得是如何离开庄园的，不记得是如何回到伦敦的。我只记得当我重新意识到自己的存在时，我已经坐在伦敦寓所的浴室里，左手浸在冷水中，手背上那些纹路——那些与石板上的纹路完全一致的纹路——正在缓慢地但确定无疑地向手腕蔓延。

      这就是我写下这些文字的原因。我不知道那个振动是什么，我不知道阿什伯恩的血液里携带着什么，我不知道地下的那个空间属于什么——但我确切地知道一件事：它还在生长。每一代阿什伯恩的血液都在为它提供某种养分，每一个听到那个振动的人都在无意识中成为它的一部分。第十一位置在等我，但也许不只是我。如果你与这个家族有任何联系，如果你曾在深夜的脉搏中感知到某种不属于你自己的节奏——离开。去有阳光的地方，去有人的地方，不要独处，不要倾听自己的心跳。因为如果你足够安静，足够专注，你终将听到——那下面有什么东西，也在听着你。

      它一直在听，总有一天它会听够，然后醒来。

埃德温·阿什伯恩 1923年11月 伦敦

      后记：手稿被发现后，爱尔兰方面曾试图联系埃德温·阿什伯恩的亲属以确认其身份和后续下落。调查结果显示，埃德温·阿什伯恩于1924年1月被伦敦警方登记为失踪人员。其寓所内一切物品完好，唯独浴室的镜子被砸碎，碎片上残留有大量褐色斑渍，经检测为人类血液，但其血型与任何已知血型均不匹配。浴室的墙壁上用碎玻璃刻有一行字，由于刻痕极深且笔迹混乱，辨认可疑，据警方报告大意约为："不是耳朵，是嘴。"

      编者在整理此手稿期间，曾三次在夜间感知到左手手背出现不明瘙痒，经医学检查未见异常。但编者仍决定在完成翻译后移居至赤道附近一个人口密集的沿海城市，并建议此后任何接触此手稿原件者采取类似措施。为方便纠错，以下为原文。

——孔姓译者，1932年春

My name is Edwin Ashburn. If you are reading these words, please continue reading in the name of anything you believe in. I am not writing this to record or remember, but to warn. I don't know how much time I have left. Those lines have begun to appear in my left hand, just like before my father's death and in the portrait left by my grandfather. I'm going to write everything down before it spreads. If you have any blood relationship with the Ashburn family, if even a trace of blood from this family flows in your veins, then you must read these words and leave forever, go to a sunny place, to a densely populated place, to a place where there will never be "those things", no To turn around.

I should start with the earliest recorded ancestor. The official record of the Ashburn family began in 1694, but the word of mouth within the family was much older. My grandfather Samuel, a gentleman who once lived in Germany, told me more than once when he was alive that the origin of the surname Ashburn did not belong to any known language system. He said that the name was inherited from older things, not created, but given. When I was young, I thought it was just an old man's trick, but now I know that every word he said is true.

In 1694, a man named August Ashburn bought a piece of land in County Galway on the west coast of Ireland and built a manor there. Local records show that the land was previously uninhabited, not because it was barren - on the contrary, the soil there was unusually fertile and the pasture was abnormally dense - but because of the taboo passed down from generation to generation by the local Gaelic. No one wants to tell me the specific content of the taboo. I have consulted the relevant folk materials in the National Archives of Dublin and only found a vague record: "That land will listen."

No one knows where Auguste comes from. He is not an Englishman, not a Scottish, or a native Irishman. He speaks fluent English, but occasionally mixes some syllables that no one can recognise. The local priest had privately recorded that August's pronunciation when praying did not match the rituals of any known sect, but the priest soon died in an inexplicable fire, so the record was put on hold.

When August built the manor, something happened, and the family repeatedly mentioned it. While the workers were digging the foundation, they found a stone slab about eight feet underground. The material of the slate does not belong to any known geological structure in Ireland. It is dark gray, with a greasy lustre on the surface, and warm to the touch, as if there is a faint pulsation. Floating carved on the slate, but these patterns are not recognisable by any craftsman - they look like some kind of text, like a part of an organ, like something between the two. In August, instead of letting the workers destroy it, people were ordered to bury it back in its original place and build the foundation of the manor directly on it.

Later, I found a note about the slate in my grandfather's notes, and he wrote："Das ist nicht der Eckpfeiler, das ist der Eingang.”Grandfather knew where it was going, and he also knew what was waiting below.

The reason why I tell you this is not to make you interested in the history of a strange family, but to make you understand the horror of bloodline. Every generation of the Ashburn family maintains a connection with something under the slate, not through rituals, not through dreams - at least not at the beginning - but through the blood itself. You can't escape your blood, just as you can't escape your own bones.

My father, William Ashburn, was born in 1851. He was a silent and introvert. He devoted his life to the study of family history. The study is full of ancient books and manuscripts in various languages, most of which I still can't recognise. He rarely talked about his research, but occasionally told me and my mother in an almost apologetic tone after dinner that everything he did was to protect the family. My mother, Elizabeth, a rational and strong woman from London, doesn't think so. She thinks her father is just an eccentric gentleman who is addicted to genealogy.

The change began in the winter of 1897. I was twelve years old that year. I remember that winter was unusually long. From October to March of the following year, the sky was always a lead-gray tone, and the sun was like a corroded copper coin. Even at noon, it could hardly cast a shadow on the ground. My father began to rest himself in the study, sometimes staying for three or four days. The servants said that they could hear him talking to himself in the study, but the voice was not like one person talking, but more like two people alternately speaking at an extremely slow speed, asking questions and answering, with a uniform rhythm that was disturbing.

The first time I saw the abnormality with my own eyes was on a night in January 1898. I woke up because of a nightmare - I can't remember all the content of the dream. I only remember a boundless black water surface and a huge, slowly moving outline under the water surface - get up and go to the kitchen to get water. When I passed my father's study, I found that the door was closed, and there was a light that did not belong to any candle. The light is colourless, or it contains all colours but not any colour at the same time. It does not illuminate anything, but makes the walls of the study look farther and deeper, as if the room extends to a certain dimension at that moment - a dimension that should not exist.

I saw my father kneeling in front of the slate through the crack of the door - I don't know when he dug out the slab and placed it under the study - his hands were pressed on the surface of the slate, and his lips moved. The lines on the slate are glowing, no, not glowing, but breathing. Those lines are undulating in some organic way, like the blood vessels under the skin of a living thing pulsating. Father's hand - I still remember that picture - the part of his hand in contact with the slate showed a translucent state. I could see something flowing under his skin, not blood, the colour was wrong, and I never saw that colour in my later life, but if I had to describe it, it was A colour that changes by itself between dark purple and dark green.

I let out a scream. My father turned his head to look at me. His eyes - his eyes were not kind blue at that moment, and they were not what any human eye should have. I don't want to describe it in detail, because whenever I try to recall that picture, my left hand will start to itch, and the lines will be clearer. You just need to know that at that moment, I realised that the person looking at me - or the thing looking at me - was not my father, or not just my father.

Mother left us in 1903. It's not death, it's leaving. She packed her luggage one morning and left a letter. The content of the letter is very short, and I only remember the last sentence: "Edwin, don't try to understand what your father is doing. Some understanding is an infection in itself." I later tried to find her whereabouts, but all the clues were interrupted in London. A port worker told me that he remembered that a woman who matched his mother's description boarded a ship to South America, but he remembered that the woman walked in a strange way - "It was like counting her own steps, and every step was accurate as if it had been measured by something."

My father died in 1908, or more precisely, he disappeared in 1908. One morning, the servants found that the door of the study was open, the father was gone, and so was the slate. Only a perfect circular depression is left on the floor. The bottom of the depression - according to the most courageous servant - is not dirt or rock, but a black substance that looks like a liquid but is actually solid. It does not reflect light, but gives people the impression that it is looking up. When I arrived at the study, the depression had healed by itself, and the floor had returned to its original state, as if nothing had happened.

Later, I found my father's diary on his desk. The last few pages of the diary are full of repeatedly smeared words, and only the last paragraph is clear: "It's not from the ground. It has always been in our blood. The slate is just an ear. We thought we were listening to it. In fact, it was listening to us - through our blood vessels, through our heartbeats, through the birth of each generation of Ashburn. It has been listening to it for three hundred years. It's almost enough to hear."

For fifteen years after that, I tried to stay away from everything in my family. I sold the manor - no one wanted to buy it, and finally rented it to a local who was willing to take over at a very low price - and moved to London, living a deliberately mediocre life. I worked in the banking industry, joined an ordinary club, interacted with ordinary people, and read ordinary newspapers. I thought distance could dilute something in the blood. I was wrong.

In 1915, during the First World War, I was noticed by a military doctor in a medical examination. My blood showed a state of confusion for the military doctor in the routine test - he said that my number of red blood cells was normal, but under the microscope, some cells showed a geometric form that he had never seen before, "as if it had been rearranged by some force." He recorded this but did not investigate deeply. During the war, no one cared about the abnormal blood of a bank employee.

But I'm beginning to understand. Mother is right. Understanding itself is an infection. Because from that day on, I began to hear - no, not hear - a kind of lower perception, as if my blood vessels themselves had become some kind of receiver. In the middle of the night, in the gap between the heartbeats, I can perceive an extremely slow vibration from afar. It is not sound, not light, or anything that can be captured by the five senses. It directly acts on the blood itself. It has a rhythm, that rhythm - my hands are shaking when I write these words now - that rhythm is exactly the same as the heartbeat of every generation of the Ashburn family.

I did something I shouldn't have done. In 1920, I returned to County Galway. I don't know what drove me to go back - curiosity, fate, or the vibration guidance in my blood - but I went back. The manor has been abandoned, half of the roof has collapsed, and the walls are covered with some dark moss. The way the moss grows - from a distance - constitutes a pattern that I would rather think it is a coincidence. But I know it's not a coincidence.

I found the entrance to the basement in the ruins. I didn't know that there was a basement in the manor. My father never mentioned it, and it was never marked in my grandfather's notes. But the entrance was there, as if it had been waiting for me to realise its existence. The stone steps extend down. I don't count how many steps there are, but the road is much longer than the distance from the ground to the underground floor.

What I saw below, I don't intend to write it down completely. It's not because I don't want to, but because I'm not sure whether human language can carry those messages. I can only tell you the following: that space is not built artificially, it is grown. The material of the wall is the same as the slate, warm, pulsating, and there is a heartbeat-like ups and downs; there is a depression in the centre of the space, in which there is a liquid, and the colour of the liquid is exactly the same as what I saw in my father's hand. ; Twelve positions are arranged around the depression, of which eleven are traces of people - or used to be people. Those traces have different forms, but they all maintain a kneeling posture, as if they are still conducting some kind of ceremony at the last moment.

The eleventh position is empty. That's for me. It seems to be calling me.

I did something that might be right or wrong at that moment - I ran away. I don't remember how I got back to the ground, how I left the manor, and how I got back to London. I only remember that when I realised my existence again, I was already sitting in the bathroom of a London apartment, my left hand soaked in cold water, and the lines on the back of my hand - those lines that were exactly the same as the lines on the slate - were spreading slowly but definitely to the wrist.

That's why I wrote these words. I don't know what that vibration is, I don't know what Ashburn carries in his blood, I don't know what the underground space belongs to - but I know exactly one thing: it is still growing. Every generation of Ashburn's blood is providing some nutrients for it, and everyone who hears the vibration unconsciously becomes a part of it. The eleventh position is waiting for me, but maybe it's not just me. If you have any connection with this family, if you have sensed a rhythm that does not belong to you in the pulse of late at night - leave. Go to a sunny place, go to a place where there are people, don't be alone, don't listen to your own heartbeat. Because if you are quiet enough and focussed enough, you will eventually hear - something below is also listening to you.

It has been listening all the time. One day it will listen enough and wake up.