Beneath the ancestral courtyard house of the Lin family lies a cellar that no one is ever allowed to open. Then, on the night Lin Yan’s parents disappeared, a knock came from inside the cellar. I carried a kerosene lamp downstairs and found that the cellar walls had vanished, replaced by an ancient neighborhood shrouded in fog, where day and night were reversed. The “neighbors” here eagerly wave me over, but my grandfather’s farewell letter bears a message written in blood:
“Remember, they aren’t human. Whatever you do, don’t go outside after dark.”
