I was born on the night of the great flood in 1998. The fortune-teller left us with one sentence: "This child won't live to see eighteen."
My grandfather was the last River Guardian. By the banks of the Cang River, he lit three lamps for me and said that no one could die before they went out. That night, water ghosts carried a coffin across the river. He followed it down into the depths. He said he wasn't dead, that he'd gone to guard the gate. Before he left, he hung an old bronze lock, passed down through three generations, around my neck. "As long as the lock remains, I'll be here."
This year's Ghost Festival, there was one extra red lantern on the river. A small boat drifted out of the fog, with a girl in a soaking-wet white dress standing at the bow. "I'm A Li. Your grandfather sent me to find you." But something was wrong with that fog. It was as if something was crawling along the water, making its way toward the shore.
(This story is entirely fictional. Please don't take its folk tales and ghost stories as fact.)
