I Make Paper Offerings for the Dead

On the seventh night after his grandfather's death, a drenched old woman knocked on the door in the middle of the night. She wanted to order a set of paper offerings for her son, who had been dead for three years. The deposit was charred spirit money. In the recipient field, she had written the name of Zhou Zheng's elementary school deskmate.

Zhou Zheng took the order.

The Zhou family's rules numbered three: dot a paper figure's eyes, and you can hear the dead person's lingering thoughts from their final three days; do not paint more than three faces in one day; never dot your own face. The first page of the notebook had four more words: Do not paint the face.

He did it anyway.

On the first night, the lingering thoughts held black rain, iron chains, and the sound of his grandfather coughing.

Later, the old principal was buried with his shroud on backward. Fresh pencil marks were mixed in with the spirit money burned for the dead. Someone was recording birthdays for the living. Anyone whose name was marked would soon be claimed.

And all these accounts were recorded in the ledger his grandfather had left behind. Tucked into the last page was a draft: twelve golden boys, deposit of three gold bars, customer left blank.

The old folks on Funeral Street said the gentleman who kept the books had not set foot on the street corner's steps in twenty years.