The wooden attic stairs creaked three times before Shen Zhao stopped. Dust drifted through the slanting light like a swarm of startled insects. Her mother’s old belongings were piled in a corner, beneath three faded qipaos, a copy of Obstetric and Gynecological Nursing, and a tin cookie box. Its lid was rusted black, and the clasp had long since been bent out of shape, as if someone had forced it open and then carelessly welded it back together.
She had brought no tools. She dug her fingernails into the gap. Blood welled beneath them, but she ignored it. At last, the tin box came loose with a click. Inside, a scrap of paper was wrapped in waxed paper.
A blood type card.
O negative. Number: F-13-07. A steel stamp marked the lower-right corner, blurred as if it had been soaked in water and left to dry. Her fingertip trembled as she turned it over.
There were words on the back.
They were not written in ink, but scratched with a fingernail. Faint and broken, as if carved in a state of utter terror. She leaned closer and held her breath.
“Page thirteen. Written by someone still alive.”
She didn’t move. The scar on her left hand suddenly burned, as if someone had pressed a red-hot nail beneath her skin. She looked down. The gray-white, twisted scar ran from her wrist to her elbow, a mark left by the fire five years ago. Now it throbbed, again and again, in time with her heartbeat.
A muffled thud came from downstairs, as if the wind had blown a door shut.
She didn’t look back. She slipped the blood type card into her inner coat pocket. As she turned, the sole of her shoe caught on a loose floorboard, and wood dust stuck to her sock. It was yellow-gray and smelled of mildew.
She went downstairs, walking softly without turning on the lights. Every light in the building was out. Only the streetlamp outside shone through a gap in the curtains, illuminating the shoe cabinet in the entryway. Her mother’s old leather shoes were still there, toes pointing outward as if waiting for someone to come home.
She went to the window and drew back the curtains.
