The Bride in the White Coffin

Our village has a rule: no traveling at night for weddings, and no funerals after noon.

But tonight, someone has broken that rule.

Just after midnight, a suona horn sounds outside my window. It's not the festive “A Hundred Birds Pay Homage to the Phoenix,” but the funeral tune “Weeping for Heaven.” It comes in broken bursts, as if a wronged soul is gasping for breath with nowhere to turn.

I lift one corner of the curtain. Blood-red moonlight turns the village road a ghastly white.

A procession is coming from the western end of the village. Eight men in red jackets carry a coffin painted snowy white. A huge red double-happiness character is pasted squarely on its head.

Red jackets carrying a white coffin, a double-happiness character on its head.

Every hair on my body stands on end. I've seen this only in Grandpa's battered handwritten copy of Folk Taboos: the clash of red and white omens.

“A Qi, don't look!”