The Strange Boar in the Deep Mountains

To fulfill his father’s lifelong obsession, atheist Chen Xi persuades his childhood friend Zhou Lei, who knows folk customs, to drive an off-road vehicle into the remote mountains of western Jiangxi. After their navigation system fails, an invisible force draws them onward. Human-shaped shadows flicker through the trees, fresh tire tracks appear on an abandoned mountain road, and the tires pick up strange black-and-red muddy marks. At last, an ancient village huddled in the shadow of the mountains comes into view. Crooked mud houses, the mountain wind’s mournful cries, and a rusted pig trough buried in weeds all speak of taboos buried by time.

The village’s only guardian, Grandpa Zhao, stoops in front of a tiled house. Beneath his blue shirt, his hand grips a pig’s-trotter-shaped cane. His cloudy eyes suddenly light up when he sees the old photograph. “Hong Shouyi? He passed away three years ago, and he didn’t go peacefully.” The old man adds firewood to the stove. In the firelight, his wrinkles deepen into ravines as he slowly recounts the long-buried horror: decades ago, Hong Shouyi’s old sow gave birth to a “five-fingered pig.” Its hoof was split into five toes like a human hand, making it the “human-headed piglet,” a creature folk custom forbids anyone to touch...