My grandma is the last person in the village to look after things.
On the day she died, no dogs barked in the village, and no birds flew out of the old forest.
I rushed back to my hometown in Northeast China overnight to keep vigil. At twelve o'clock in the middle of the night, my dead grandma suddenly opened her eyes in the coffin and grabbed my hand:
"Before dawn, don't let the things in the mountains know that I'm dead."
But there were only eighteen pairs of shoes on display in the mourning hall. I looked up and counted them, only to find nineteen people sitting in the room.
What's even weirder is that all the names on the list that my grandma has enshrined for more than 40 years have disappeared, and only my name remains...
