The Grave Bell

I can see the dead.

That is, until the night headless iron cavalry burst out of the thick fog, green flames burning in their horses’ eye sockets as they roared at me: “A life for a life!”

Everyone in Kaoshantun says I’m crazy.

They don’t know

There’s a class photo from a mine disaster thirty years ago hidden in my schoolbag. Red crosses have been drawn over every victim, leaving only one person, grinning wickedly.

Late at night, my mother kneels before our ancestral grave, weeping and begging: “Leave Lingzi alone! The Ma family has no one else to carry on the line!”

And my brother charges into the restricted zone with explosives, where he discovers 108 skulls imprisoned underground, each with a copper nail stamped with the word “debt” driven into its crown…

Then I bury that sinister bronze bell with my own hands.

A tender shoot bursts through the grave and grows wildly overnight. Its leaves slice the villagers’ skin as bloodthirsty bronze roots bore into them.

A chorus of chanting rises from the depths of the old well. It’s the dialect of those who died unjustly thirty years ago: “Your head falls to the underworld… A wrongful debt can never be repaid…”

My mother’s hands tremble as she splits open the ancestral bronze bell. Half of a bloodstained marriage contract falls out

Groom: Ma Shoushan, my great-grandfather

Bride: Liu Qing’e, the enemy who slaughtered his family

“Every generation of Ma family women serves as a matchmaker for the bell…”

As the vengeful spirit of a woman from the Republican era awakens inside me, a colossal bronze gate beneath the earth swings open with a roar.

Monsters with scales and iron claws pour out, while the Liu family grin and shove my mother into the abyss:

“Only the blood from her heart is the final key!”, Use the bell to suppress resentment, and feed nightmares with resentment.

Let grudges return to dust. Can the new shoot in your palm break through the heavens? Open to the first page and witness the Bell-Burying Girl put an end to a century of blood debts!