Summer, 1964. Nanbu County, Sichuan Province.
China was just emerging from the tumult of Mao's Great Leap Forward.
Society was underdeveloped, and the small villages nestled deep within the mountains remained largely isolated from the outside world.
That day, the rain fell as if the heavens had torn open a colossal wound.
Torrents of water, heavy with the scent of wet earth, pounded the ground, drowning the entire village in an endless curtain of grey-black water.
The sky was terrifyingly dark, like an immense black iron wok overturned above them, pressing down until it was hard to breathe.
Li Erwa waited until the sky dissolved into ink and lamps flickered on one by one throughout the village, but his father, who had gone to loosen the soil on the terraced fields behind the mountain, had still not returned.
An inexpressible chill, colder than the rain itself, coiled around his heart.
The village loudspeaker buzzed to life during a brief lull in the downpour.
Soon after, the village chief arrived, leading a group of men draped in straw rain capes and wide bamboo hats, plunging into the wet, suffocating darkness.
The weak, yellow beams of their flashlights swept erratically across the rain-lashed mountainside.
"Found him! Over here... down here!" Hoarse, panicked shouts, trembling with fear, rose from the base of a steep ravine.
The men stumbled and scrambled towards the sound.
A nauseating stench – raw blood mixed with the smell of rain-soaked fresh earth – hung thick in the air.
Several flashlight beams instantly converged on a slick depression at the bottom of the gully, filled with rotting leaves.
The body lay twisted in an unnatural posture.
The bones on one side of the skull appeared crushed by immense force and then brutally pried apart.
A gruesome paste of dark red blood and milky-white brain matter was splattered across the mud-caked wooden handle of the hoe lying beneath him, smearing the rotten leaves and muck.
Every face in the circle turned a sickly shade of pale. Only the dead man's eyes remained fixed, whites glaring upward in furious defiance, staring into the storm-lashed, pitch-black depths of the sky.
It was as if that gaze pierced time itself, pinning itself onto the face of every person looking down.
...
The funeral bower was hastily erected in the main room of Li Erwa's house, emptied for the purpose. A hastily constructed coffin of cypress wood, painted a dull, pitch black, rested heavily on planks supported by old benches.
A few stark white candles guttered in the gloom, casting the hanging lengths of coarse white cloth and a large, distorted character for "Mourning" (奠) into dancing, ghostly shadows.
Wails of grief tore through the damp, oppressive air.
Li Erwa lay prostrate at the head of the coffin, his cries dry and ragged, tears burning his throat: "Dad... my poor, poor dad..." The sobs came in ragged bursts, raw and animalistic, like a wounded beast nearing its end. "You were a good man your whole life... mended roofs and harvested crops for others in the rain... Heaven has no eyes... why did it take you like this!"
Villagers helping with the funeral bustled inside and out. The clatter of moving tables and benches was constant, punctuated by the clink of bowls and cups, and the low hum of voices discussing funeral arrangements.
This frantic activity was a thin layer of warmth laid over the icy pall of death, a desperate attempt to smother the bone-chilling grief.
After the three-day vigil, that black coffin would be taken to the ancestral graves on the back mountain. Everyone just wanted this unsettling, ill-omened scene to be over, for the disturbing specter of misfortune to leave quickly.
...
On the evening of the third day, the last feeble glimmer of light from the parting clouds vanished.
A thick, heavy darkness swallowed the village whole. Inside the funeral bower, the lamplight was dim and murky.
The pungent smoke of incense drifted, choking the air and rendering everything hazy, like the confused aftermath of a nightmare.
A figure stumbled through the crowd murmuring at the entrance and lurched inside.
It was Wang the Limper, the old bachelor from the end of the village who spent his days with compasses and talismanic papers.
His tunic hung askew, his trouser legs uneven, his feet clad in tattered straw sandals. Beads of cold sweat dotted his forehead; his lips were ashen, tinged with purple, as if he'd just crawled out of an icehouse. His eyes locked onto Li Erwa. His voice was a ruined rasp:
"Erwa! Burn... burn your father's body! Now!" The words hissed from between his teeth, each one sharp and cold as an icicle.
The funeral bower erupted! All noise ceased instantly, frozen. Dozens of eyes, filled with shock or contempt, snapped towards the old man.
Wang the Limper's eyes bulged, threatening to burst from their sockets. His bony fingers, like iron claws, gripped the edge of the coffin lid, nails blanching white with the strain.
"A good man dies a violent death! Rage pierces the heavens! This coffin... the resentment is too deep!" His whole body shook violently, as if sieving grain.
"I cast the hexagrams for three days and nights! Every sign was destruction! Utter calamity! He cannot be buried... absolutely cannot be buried!"
The veins in his neck pulsed wildly.
"Otherwise! Once that rage takes root in the earth veins... it... it will rise!" His voice cracked into a shriek.
"Then... this whole village... old and young... none will survive!"
The silence lasted only a heartbeat. Then, an explosion of deafening curses and shouts erupted, loud enough to shake dust from the low rafters.
"Bullshit! You damned cripple!" Heiniu, a young man from the village, stepped forward, jabbing a finger inches from Wang the Limper's trembling nose.
"Uncle Li lived his whole life here! Never even struck a stray dog! Known by everyone for miles as a kind soul! A good man dies young, that's Heaven blind! Burn him? Has a dog eaten your conscience?"
"Exactly!" a thin, elderly woman chimed in sharply. "Look at Erwa, heartbroken! You're just twisting the knife! Trying to trick him into paying you to find another 'auspicious' burial site, aren't you? Trying to swindle money!"
"Get out! Get out now!" Li Erwa surged to his feet, eyes bloodshot, tears and fury streaming down his face. He shoved Wang the Limper's hand off the coffin with such force the old man nearly spun around.
"One more cursed word about my father, and I'll smash your fortune-telling stall!" The usually quiet, gentle man now resembled an enraged wild bull.
"Erwa!" Wang the Limper staggered back from the push, his frail body hitting a bench with a heavy thud. Pain galvanized him. He lunged back towards the coffin, his voice a raw, blood-curdling shriek like a night owl's death cry.
"Heaven and Earth bear witness! Have I ever earned a single dishonest copper in all my years here?" He flailed his arms wildly, trying to push past Li Erwa's blocking form, straining towards the heavy coffin lid.
"Open it! Open the coffin and see! Then you'll know! His body... on his body... white death-hair must be growing already! The fangs... the fangs are probably pushing through his lips! Hurry! Any later... and it will be too late!"
"Restrain him!" Several voices roared simultaneously. Four or five strong young men pounced, grabbing his arms, locking him around the waist.
Wang the Limper, usually quiet and odd but harmless, now displayed shocking, bestial strength. He thrashed and fought like a wild thing in their grasp, a guttural, inhuman growl rumbling in his throat, desperate to reach the coffin.
In the chaos, someone landed a solid punch squarely on Wang the Limper's face!
His old, grimy spectacles flew off, lenses shattering with a crack on the ground.
The frame, one arm broken, dangled pathetically from one ear, swinging wildly with his struggles. Blood mixed with snot gushed from his nose, smearing half his face.
"Erwa... listen to me! Just this once!" Wang the Limper was dragged bodily from the funeral bower, his feet carving futile trenches in the wet mud.
His broken, despairing scream echoed in the black, silent courtyard – the final lament of a dying night bird. "Tonight! Only tonight... After the Hour of the Rat tonight... this village... faces a great calamity..."
A shattered silence descended on the funeral bower. The feeble candle flames flickered in the stagnant air, casting uneasy halos on every yellowed, ashen face.
The previous clamor and condemnation seemed wiped away by an invisible hand.
The air hung thick with the acrid smell of incense and burnt spirit money, and beneath it, a faint, cloying sweetness, seeping up as if from deep within the earth itself.