On the ninety-seventh day after my grandfather vanished, I lost my job, returned to my hometown, and took over the paper effigy shop on Funeral Street. On the back of the door were seven rules painted in black. The last one read: If someone comes with a red invitation, have them sit in the back room, serve them tea, and make them wait. That night, the first customer arrived. A red wedding dress, wet hair. She pushed a photograph across the counter. “Make me a groom. Make him look like this.” The person in the photo was me. That was when I learned that the people who came to buy paper effigies in the middle of the night weren’t human, and the truth behind my grandfather’s disappearance lay at the bottom of the overturned lantern boat from thirty years ago.
