My name is Lin Mo. Twelve years after leaving, I am forced to hurry back to Laohuai Village, deep in the mountains, to attend my late grandmother’s funeral. But the moment I enter the village, I can tell that something is wrong. My grandmother’s coffin is made from the wood of the century-old pagoda tree at the village entrance, and the funeral is no ordinary burial. It is a ghost marriage arranged for the dead. The village elders force me to guard the coffin for the ceremony and lay down seven rules for the wake that I must never break.
I think it is just an old village’s backward superstition, until the first night of the wake, when the eternal lamp goes out for no reason, scratching sounds come from inside the coffin, and my grandmother’s voice calls my name from the courtyard. One by one, the villagers who break the taboos die before my eyes in gruesome, uncanny ways. Only then do I realize that this wake is a deadly gamble with my life as the stake. The secrets of Laohuai Village, the cause of my grandmother’s death, and the thing that has attached itself to me are all hidden inside this pagoda-wood coffin. I have to survive the seven days of the wake.
