Chapter 4

The next morning, a hand hauled me off the temple floor.

Father.

His face was white as paper. His eyes bulged.

“Why did you run here?

“Didn't I tell you to stay in the mourning hall?”

He dragged me stumbling. I nearly fell.

Haltingly, I told him what had happened.

But I said nothing about Mother coming to save me.

Regret flashed across his eyes. Only for an instant, but I saw it.

Without another word, he dragged me home.

In the courtyard, I saw a great pool of blood.

It stretched from the main room to the middle of the yard, dried almost black, as if someone had emptied a bucket of paint.

Third Uncle's body lay in its center.

A large hole gaped in his chest. His heart and lungs were gone. Only a black cavity remained, its edges ragged as though torn by claws.

My knees nearly gave way.

Youngest Uncle crouched beside him, shaking all over.

The Daoist turned. His cold gaze pinned me like two nails.

“Your Third Uncle heard a noise and came out to see if you were dead. Instead, he found your grandmother. When she couldn't find you, her fury grew. She tore out his heart and lungs.”

Youngest Uncle sprang up and kicked me.

“It's all your fault, you little bitch! If you hadn't run—”

The Daoist circled me and sneered.

“Something really is wrong with this girl's birth chart. I had you replace the threshold with pagoda-tree wood and use a talisman to lure the old woman to her substitute. She still got away.

“At this rate, you two brothers will die as well.”

My head rang.

Not peachwood.

Pagoda-tree wood?

I had known since childhood that pagoda trees attracted yin spirits. The threshold wasn't meant to keep ghosts out.

It was meant to invite them in.

The talisman hadn't been protection either.

They had never intended to save me.

They locked me in the hall so I could die in Grandmother's place. Once she took my body, her resentment would be resolved.

My soul would be forced out.

Like my three older sisters.

My body would be thrown into the wilderness, without even a grave.

Father pinned me to the ground with one hand. Youngest Uncle fetched rope and quickly bound me tight.

“Dad!” I struggled wildly. The rope cut into my flesh. Tears poured down my face. “What are you doing?”

No one answered.

The Daoist brought several soft-shelled turtles from the kitchen and cut off their heads, blood spraying everywhere. The severed heads still moved on the ground, mouths opening and closing.

He carried over a bowl of blood and, without a word, poured it over my head.

It was icy. My skin prickled. The stench filled my nose and nearly made me vomit.

“These turtles live in ponds and marshes. They are creatures of extreme yin,” he said. “Their blood will suppress the killing force in you. Your fate is too strong for the old woman to approach. Once your yang energy is subdued, she'll be able to find you.”

His mouth curled.

“When she takes your body, this family's troubles will finally end.”

I remained bound in the courtyard all day, watching the sun travel from east to west, sink, and give way to the moon.

Outside was the silence of death. Not an insect. Not a frog.

Only an occasional crow cried mournfully, like someone weeping.

Days of torment had left me unable to eat a grain of rice. Today, I hadn't even had water. I was exhausted. My eyelids felt heavy as lead. My head drooped, and I nearly fainted several times.

Then a figure slowly emerged from the darkness beyond the open gate.

For the first time, I saw Grandmother's whole face clearly.

Blue-gray and shriveled like dried salt meat. Cheekbones jutting, eye sockets sunken, pupils glowing green deep within.

Several turtles still lay on the ground.

She picked one up and put its head in her mouth.

She bit it off.

Without chewing, she tilted back her head and sucked, as if drinking jelly, until the turtle's body collapsed and even its shell sagged.

Blood ran from her mouth, down her chin, onto the ground.

Terror made me fully awake. I shook uncontrollably.

I wanted to scream, but my throat seemed gripped shut.

She turned, smiled maliciously, rose on her toes, and approached.

Warmth spread between my legs. Liquid ran down my thighs.

She stopped before me and bent until her blue-gray face nearly touched mine.

Rotten breath mingled with turtle blood, so foul I could hardly keep my eyes open.

She raised that shriveled, clawlike hand. The long black nails approached my face.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

But there was no pain.

Instead, the ropes suddenly fell away. The ends were clean and level, as though sliced by a sharp blade.

Grandmother withdrew her hand and pointed toward the door beside us.

“Zhaodi.”

Her voice rasped like a rusty gong on concrete.

“Break it.”

I didn't understand, but my body moved before my mind.

I grabbed the small hoe in the corner and brought it down on the threshold.

The peachwood split.

The second blow sent chips flying. The sill broke in two, and I knocked it aside.

I turned.

Grandmother stood in the courtyard. Her smile slowly vanished, replaced by ferocity.

Still on tiptoe, she approached the doorway.

Her dragon-and-phoenix shoes made no sound on the bricks. Only her paper clothes rustled.

She pushed the door open and entered.

It closed behind her.

A man gave a short scream.

Then another.

The second was worse than the first.

Shriller and shriller.

I stood motionless in the courtyard, covered in blood.

Above me, the moon was huge and white.

The next morning, I called the police.

Three cars stopped at the village entrance, red and blue lights flashing through the dawn mist.

The officer in charge was surnamed Zhou. He paused as he entered the yard. The house was in chaos. Dead turtles covered the ground.

Father and Youngest Uncle still lay inside.

Several young officers took one look, turned, and ran out to vomit.

I huddled in a corner, stiff with dried blood. A policewoman wrapped me in a blanket and asked my name and age.

Zhaodi. Twelve.

As she carried me to the police car, I looked back.

The door stood wide open.

It was dark inside.

Scraps of flesh and shattered bone covered the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. It looked as if someone had torn two living people apart and wrung them like a towel.

Officer Zhou first suspected dismemberment and destruction of the bodies. The forensic examiner disagreed.

These weren't knife wounds. A knife would leave clean cuts. Father and my uncle had been ripped apart, like someone snapping a chicken leg.

A twelve-year-old girl couldn't have done it.

The police found a third person's fingerprints.

The Daoist's.

After three days of searching, they caught him at a coach station on the border between two provinces.

He had a suitcase and was about to board.

When they handcuffed him, he turned white with terror and kept repeating:

“A ghost killed them… It wasn't me!”

Naturally, the police didn't believe him. Neither could a court.

He was sentenced to death.

After the case closed, Officer Zhou came to ask me:

“Zhaodi, where is your mother?”

I was silent for a long time.

There wasn't a single photograph of her in the house. Few villagers had seen her. My father's household records listed him as unmarried.

“In the temple,” I said.

His expression changed. He glanced at the policewoman.

“In the temple?”

“On the mountain behind the village.”

They went there immediately.

Inside stood only the dusty statues, eyes lowered, mouths curved in faint smiles.

The police removed the back of one.

Mother was inside.

She wore her old flowered blouse. Her hair was neatly combed, eyes closed, hands folded over her stomach.

She looked asleep.

The temple was dry and cool, slowing decomposition.

The examiner concluded she had been dead for more than half a month.

The police established her real identity.

She wasn't Cuihua. Nor was she merely “Zhaodi's mother.”

Her name was Su Min.

At nineteen, traffickers had sold her to my father in this village.

She died before she was thirty-five.

Repeated childbirth without any postpartum care had badly separated and stretched her pelvic joints.

No one knew where she came from.

No one had ever looked for her.

The examiner also found evidence of repeated rape, countless old bruises, and marks of strangulation.

Officer Zhou crouched and asked gently:

“Tell me what happened to your mother. What happened that day?”

I began to cry.

“My uncles came home. They drank and went into the woodshed.

“I heard Mother calling for help. But she wouldn't let me come in. She wouldn't let me look.

“Only after they came out did I dare go in.

“She was on the floor. However much I called, she wouldn't wake up.

“I remembered Grandmother saying there were immortals in the temple who could grant wishes.

“So I dragged Mother up there.

“I asked if they could save her.

“The immortal said if I put her inside the statue, she would get better.

“So I did.

“Seven days later… she really came back.

“She said the underworld bailiffs had gone. She would never leave me again.”

The night Grandmother came looking for me, she saw Mother too.

She clutched her chest and drew a sharp breath, muttering:

“Sin… Such terrible sin…”

She returned to her room.

The next morning, she was dead.

The doctor said an abnormally rapid heartbeat had caused sudden death.

Father and my uncles believed Mother's ghost had come for her and frightened her to death.

After Mother died, the Daoist had told them to replace Grandmother's threshold with pagoda-tree wood, supposedly to prevent Mother returning for revenge.

Officer Zhou glanced at the silver bracelet on Mother's wrist.

He rubbed it and discovered gold beneath the silver coating.

“Your father would never buy a bracelet this valuable for a woman he'd bought.

“Where did it come from?”

He frowned.

“And why did your uncles go into the woodshed that day?”

I answered in a tiny voice.

“Grandmother had given it to Mother not long before.

“It's hard to leave the village. Only on holidays do delivery trucks come in.

“Grandmother told Mother to take me to catch a truck. She stayed home and poured drinks for Father and my uncles.

“But Father got drunk.

“Whenever he's drunk, he goes looking for Mother.

“He couldn't find her in the woodshed. He got angry and caught us at the village entrance.

“Then he called my uncles into the woodshed.

“He said they had to teach her a lesson… make her submit… make her give up trying to escape…”

That night, Grandmother sat in the courtyard, listening to the screams from the woodshed.

She sat there crying.

She was usually gloomy and spoke or smiled little.

The last time I had seen her cry, I was eight.

I was bathing in the courtyard.

I turned and caught Grandfather staring at me without restraint.

I screamed. The water scoop fell from my hand.

Grandmother rushed out, dragged me inside, and pinched me hard as she cursed.

“You little whore! Just like your mother! Who said you could bathe in the courtyard? From now on, wash in the toilet and shut the door!”

Before then, Grandfather hadn't let me use the water heater.

After her outburst, wary of the “immortal” possessing her, he reluctantly agreed.

Later…