The final minute of the tenth day of the seventh lunar month, in the year 2008—23:59.

　　Night descended like a vast, roofless shroud of black, pressing heavily between heaven and earth. Beyond the car window, scraps of burnt paper drifted like restless spirits, flickering in and out of sight under the faint gleam of the moon. At this hour, households should have been gathered in ancestral halls, sealing the Ghost Gate with solemn rites. Instead, I was met with the one message I had most dreaded in my life—my father was dead.

　　The wind outside wailed like fate in mourning. The ashes that whirled in its currents seemed the fragile remnants of my father’s passing, dissolving into the boundless night, and in that instant, my own world collapsed into darkness and confusion.

　　By the following dusk, I arrived at the old family home.

　　Dragging heavy steps across a floor strewn with funeral paper, I entered just as the last trace of light drained from the sky. The ancestral house lay wrapped in a suffocating pall, like some monstrous beast lurking in silence, its menace coiled in the gloom.

　　Twelve carpenters labored around a coffin, their axes rising and falling in uncanny unison. The rhythm of their strikes was too precise, too hollow—each blow seemed to echo against my chest. It was as though an unseen hand guided them, pounding a grim, unnatural cadence into the coffin’s frame.

　　Suddenly, the eldest of them turned and bared his teeth in a grin. Bits of joss paper clung between them, and blood seeped from his gums, staining the printed words—“Bank of Heaven and Earth”—a deep, rusted red. In the dim light the scene became grotesque, like a portrait of horror conjured from some infernal brush. His smile, twisted and unreal, was no longer human at all, but the leer of a specter risen from the abyss.

　　“The coffin of a corpse-herder must be left with three inches unsealed.”

　　The voice burst out behind me, harsh and grating, like a cracked gong. I started violently. My second uncle’s smoke-worn throat carried the words. Before I could turn, he had seized my left hand and pressed it firmly upon the coffin lid.

　　At once the peachwood seemed to quicken with a dreadful life. From its grain seeped black blood, writhing like a serpent. It slithered up the lid, curling against my wrist until it lay precisely upon the scar left by shackles when I was sixteen.

　　A blade of lightning split the sky, flooding the ancestral house with a white, merciless brilliance. For an instant there were no shadows, no concealment; every secret, every terror buried in the dark was bared to the eye.

　　My uncle’s gaze fixed upon my wrist, his eyes troubled, reflecting a depth of meaning he would not voice. At last he spoke in the tongue of our Miao people:

　　“The coffin has acknowledged its master… You must tread carefully.”

　　I could only stare, bewildered, without grasping what he meant. I would learn only later that the coffin was calling me to lie within it.

　　Just then, a shaving of wood, borne by some unseen current, drifted down and fastened itself upon the pulse of my left wrist. It clung there like a leech that had scented blood, sending a cold shudder through my body.

　　My uncle drew a long breath.

　　“Child,” he said slowly, “your father was ensnared by a force most sinister. It is too dark, too malevolent. We must find a way—before it consumes us as well.”

　　With that, he pulled me toward the ancestral hall.

　　Within the Ancestral Hall

　　Father lay still upon a wooden door laid flat, as though he had already merged with the surrounding darkness. At his rigid feet rested a single oil lamp. Its small flame, orange and wavering, flickered in the silence of the hall, so fragile it seemed a mere breath might snuff it out. It carried not hope, but the frail, faltering pulse of life itself. The unsteady glow cast distorted shadows against the walls, which writhed and twisted with each tremor of the flame.

　　I never understood why no one turned on the lights.

　　In that dimness I could make out Father’s attire: the brand-new indigo burial garb of our Miao people. Around his waist was bound a traditional sash, embroidered with motifs meant to guide the soul’s return; upon his head, a black headcloth measured precisely three chi and six cun in length. Every detail of these garments proclaimed his departure with merciless finality, adding to the atmosphere of solemn mystery that filled the hall.

　　Without noticing, sweat began to bead upon my forehead, sliding down my cheeks one drop after another. The scene before me felt like a nightmare from which I could not wake. Father’s face was covered by a square of spirit money, pressed tight against his features as though it were a veil sealing him from the living world. I had seen Miao funerals before, but never once had I witnessed spirit money laid across the face. For this, Father was the only one.

　　I turned to my second uncle.

　　“Why must Father’s face be covered with paper money?”

　　For a moment he did not answer. He bowed solemnly toward my father, and then said quietly, “Your father… he still clung to something when he passed. He would not close his mouth. Lin, you are his only son. If there was something he wished for in these final days, you are the one who would know.”

　　“This…” I faltered, lost in thought. I seemed to recall one day, over the phone, he had said he would take me to meet my mother-in-law. Could that be it? But I was twenty-seven, and had never even had a girlfriend. He had never once spoken of introducing me to someone. How could a mother-in-law suddenly appear out of nowhere? Was that truly his final wish?

　　So I burned several slips of spirit paper beside him and murmured under my breath, “Father, I promise you—I will go with you to my mother-in-law’s house.” The words felt uneasy, so I corrected myself: “No—I will go with you while I am still alive.” Having said this, my heart grew lighter, as though anchored again.

　　Then I turned to Aunt Lin.

　　“Will that do?”

　　Aunt Lin crouched at Father’s feet, slipping onto him a pair of cloth shoes embroidered with reversed swastikas. From the soles sprouted tufts of white fuzz, like clouds gathered beneath them, white to the point of piercing the eyes. According to our Miao custom, these were “A Thousand Miles in a Day” shoes, a sign that Father’s journey from this world would be swift and unreturning—like water flowing eastward to the sea.

　　Stifling my grief, I asked softly, “Aunt Lin… may I lift the spirit money and look at my father one last time? I believe his mouth must have closed by now. His last wish was probably just… what I said earlier.” My voice trembled, thin as the buzzing of a mosquito.

　　But Aunt Lin seemed to hear me. She set aside her work and raised her head slowly.

　　“Boy,” she said, “our family has long been corpse-herders of the Hua Miao. We deal with both the living and the dead, and such dealings inevitably breed enemies, or invite unclean spirits. Your father’s death is not as simple as it seems. Since last night a foul stench has lingered around the old house. Your second uncle and I both sensed it, yet we could find no source. And since your father passed, the flame of the ever-burning lamp has flickered constantly, as if disturbed by some unseen presence. I fear that lifting the spirit money may stir up something worse.”

　　“Aunt, say no more,” I cut her off, my tone firm. “No matter what, I must see my father’s face.”

　　Even if Heaven itself opposed me, I would not relent. Father was a man of stubborn will. If the promise I made just now was not the one he had desired, then I was certain he would return to demand it of me himself. Better to know sooner than to wait.

　　Seizing the moment, I stretched out my hand in the dim light and slowly began to peel the paper away from Father’s face. The air within the hall grew thick, congealed, as if time itself had stopped. The silence was suffocating.

　　“Follow the meridians,” my second uncle’s hoarse voice rumbled from the shadows.

　　“Yes…” I whispered back, and continued.

　　A draft stirred. Suddenly, the funerary paper shrieked as if alive, a piercing wail of torment. With a tearing sound, it came away—bringing with it a strip of skin from my father’s forehead, exposing the ash-grey bone beneath.

　　“This cannot be.” That was my first thought. Father had only just died. However fragile flesh may grow, it should not have yielded so easily. Yet there it was, undeniable.

　　More dreadful still were his eyes. The familiar irises had drained to corpse-white, and his pupils had become vertical slits of crimson. They were exactly like the eyes I remembered from childhood, staring out of the clay idol of the Wutong God in our clan’s ancestral shrine.

　　A cry tore from my throat as I staggered back, colliding with Aunt Lin. She too shuddered, her hand slipping. The shoe she had been fitting tumbled free and struck the oil lamp on the floor.

　　The lamp was nothing more than a clay bowl filled with vegetable oil, a wick rising from its center. Yet it shattered at once. Oil spilled across the ground. On its darkened surface ripples spread in the likeness of human faces—countless distorted visages writhing and straining as though drowning. Cold, accusing eyes glared upward through the liquid.

　　On the wall, Aunt Lin’s shadow twisted and stretched. Horns jutted from her head; three rope-like coils encircled her throat. It was an omen, a vision of fate, dark and inexorable.

　　All in the room knew: the extinguishing of the “Journey Lamp” meant the departed could no longer find the path through the underworld. The soul would wander, lost, bound to this world. A terror unlike any other seized the hall.

　　And in that silence, I thought I heard Father sigh.

　　“Father…” My voice shook as I called to him.

　　Suddenly, a cold hand clamped around my arm and yanked. A chill ran through me from head to toe. In the dark I could not see the face, yet the breath, the presence—I knew it was him.

　　“Father, it’s me!” I cried, struggling, but his grip was iron.

　　Then my second uncle struck a flame to a candle. Its feeble glow revealed Father’s visage—ghastly beyond bearing. His eyes bulged, the whites veined with blood. His lips were cracked, baring teeth sharpened into points, and from his mouth issued a reek of decay.

　　Before I could move, he lunged and sank his teeth into the palm of my left hand.

　　A scream tore from me, pain ripping through every nerve. Yet no blood welled from the wound. Instead, black smoke seeped from it, curling upward with the stench of rot.

　　The agony was like a knife twisting in my bowels, far worse than the torments of any mortal sickness.

　　At last, despair overcame me, and I collapsed before the family shrine.