On the Day Grandpa Was Buried, a Woman Lay in His Coffin

The day my grandfather was buried, the person lying in the coffin wasn't him. It was a woman wearing his burial clothes.

She held a copper coin in her mouth, engraved with the character "Chen," my family's surname.

My grandfather left me a handwritten copy of The Nightmare Woman's Ledger. It records more than a hundred "unsettled wishes" from the past century in western Hunan. He said, "Keep writing them down, and keep repaying them. Only when they're all paid can I leave in peace."

After that, I heard the sound of bare feet walking at night. In the mountains, I encountered something that borrowed a weasel's body to come and see me. On the night the dead return, dozens of women crowded outside my door, weeping, while copper coins and embroidered shoes covered the ground beyond the threshold.

Lao Men says I'm the Chen family's new "bookkeeper." Everyone within thirty li who's ever had anything to do with the Chen family's "repaying wishes" is now my responsibility.

I don't believe in ghosts or gods. But that night, the woman in the coffin opened her eyes.

Her eyes were completely black, with no whites. Exactly like the drawing in the margin of the ledger.