On the night of the Ghost Festival’s blood moon, our daughter crawled into the Corpse-Quelling Coffin while playing. The spirit inside demanded that my husband, whose family had run a coffin shop for generations, make a straw effigy with his own hands in exchange for her. Panic crossed his face. He immediately picked up his cleaver and began gathering materials, but vanished after taking a phone call. I listened to our daughter’s faint pounding and crying inside the coffin, my heart tearing apart. “Mommy, it’s so dark in here… I’m scared! When is Daddy coming to save me?” Desperate, I called my husband, begging him to come rescue our daughter. He answered, his voice full of reproach. “You shouldn’t have let her run around the shop in the first place!” “Wanwan used the old ritual paper you gave her for a design, and now a spirit’s attached itself to her. If we don’t make a ‘bride’ effigy and send it away in time, she’ll die!” “When our daughter wakes up, she’ll know she’s scared. Stay there with her. I’ll come back tomorrow morning and open the coffin.” He didn’t know that today was the blood moon of the Twin Snakes, when yellow earth could break evil spirits. At this place of utmost yin, no one could possibly remain alive inside that coffin until dawn. When he came to open it in the morning, all he would find was the tiny, dried-up corpse of a child, drained of her life force.
