Before my grandfather died, he passed me the bronze bell used to drive away corpses, leaving behind three ancestral precepts.
First, chase the dead without looking back. Second, when the gongs sound, the living people give way.
In the third article, he opened his mouth and left before finishing.
The first trip, three corpses, forty miles of mountain road. Halfway through, the footsteps behind me felt strange.
I stopped and counted the shadows on the ground in the moonlight.
One, two, three, four.
Four shadows, lined up. The one on the far side is empty.
It tilted its head and looked at me quietly.
