Feeding the Weird

My name is Yang Tao, an unlucky graduate student whose folklore studies advisor talked him into doing fieldwork in western Hunan.

That is, until I found a starving "ghost" in an abandoned Nuo temple.

It was about the size of my palm, pitch-black all over, shaped like a water monkey, but with a human face wearing a half-smile.

The first thing it said was, "Feed me."

I fed it a mouthful of my own shadow.

Then it grew an eye.

Rule One: To feed a ghost, you must use something you "wouldn't regret losing."

Rule Two: Every mouthful you feed it becomes part of it.

Rule Three: What it eventually becomes depends on what you feed it.

I opened the Hundred Ghosts' Taboo Manual my advisor had left behind and discovered that every folk taboo could become its food...

I fed it the taboo against looking in a mirror at midnight, and it learned to travel through reflections.

I fed it the taboo against looking back on a night road, and it grew a second face.

I fed it the taboo against tying a red string around the ring finger, and it began to weave the threads of karma.

I thought I was raising a ghostly pet.

Until one day, it opened its seventh eye and smiled at me.

"Master, tell me: am I your ghost, or... are you mine?"