Zhang Xiaofan's son was found dangling from a rafter, a thick hemp rope wrapped around his neck. His mouth opened in a soundless cry—no breath, no tear that could break free.
Panic surged through Zhang Xiaofan. She scrambled up, cut the rope, and cradled the child in her arms, fingers fumbling to check for a pulse. When she undid the swaddling cloth, a scream tore from her throat. She flung the baby away as if burned, collapsing against the wall, her legs folding under her. She rocked there, trembling, whispering over and over, “A cat… a dead cat…”
Her mother and Xu Shuai came running at the commotion. Inside the bedroom everything looked normal—the baby asleep in his crib, nothing amiss. Xu Shuai searched the room but found no sign of a cat. Zhang Xiaofan’s mother tried to soothe her, telling her not to jump at shadows, that grief and stress could make anyone see things after the old woman had died.
Zhang Xiaofan buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, breathing hard until she calmed a little. Then, without warning, the terror returned and swept her face raw.
“Grandma… ah… Grandma, it wasn’t me who killed you—don’t come after me, please don’t…”
Her words froze both her mother and Xu Shuai. There was nothing in the room, yet her panic was absolute, inexplicable.
Zhang Xiaofan’s mother, frantic now, grabbed at Xu Shuai. “Maybe your wife bumped into your mother’s spirit! Ever since this happened, she’s been acting strange—maybe someone’s been tormenting her—this is too much…”
Xu Shuai knew his own mother better than anyone. He didn’t understand what she was getting at.
Then his mother’s name hit Zhang Xiaofan’s mother like a phantom. She screamed, which woke the baby—and the child began to wail too.
Outside, the funeral home men had arrived to collect the body. The man who led them in flinched the moment he crossed the threshold, his face tightening into a grimace. He was mute and could only gesture—impatient, urging Xu Shuai to hurry.
There was nothing for it. Xu Shuai wanted his mother laid to rest properly; perhaps the disturbance of anger hanging around her could be dispersed by a formal burial. They dressed the elder in the finest burial clothes Xu Shuai could afford. The coffin was brought out and the attendants placed Mrs. Xu’s body inside, preparing to carry it to the hearse.
A black cat materialized in front of the coffin as they carried it out. Sleek as ink, without a single fleck of another color, its eyes were an eerie green. It mewed—low, pleading, almost human.
Zhang Xiaofan shuddered, clutching at Xu Shuai. “That black cat—our mother’s cat… wasn’t it dead?”
The cat’s pupils slit to narrow emerald knives. It crouched like a hunter and then lunged straight at the coffin.
“Don’t let the cat strike the coffin!” someone shouted, but it was too late. The cat’s skull hit the wood with a sick crack. Blood burst forth across the lid as the animal collapsed to the snow.
No one had expected such force. The impact rocked the coffin so violently that one of the pallbearers’ shoulders slipped free and the corner of the coffin dropped to the ground. The other three couldn’t hold it; with a thunderous thud the coffin hit the frozen earth.
From inside came an animal sound that was neither wholly feline nor human—a keening, a desperate, terrible wail. Against the white of the snow the blood spread in a shocking red bloom.
The man who had warned about the cat—the one who’d been holding the chalk line used for ceremonial marking—hurried. He snapped chalk lines around the coffin in a precise square, front and back, like a quick ritual. Then the pallbearers were ordered to lift the coffin again. The man marked the underside with his line as if to anchor something.
Xu Shuai fell to his knees in front of the coffin, hands clasped, begging his mother to stop tormenting them. If she was truly gone, let her be gone—leave the living in peace.
When he looked up, a figure in a yellow robe stood above him, looking down with an expression of quiet authority. The Taoist priest’s eyes had the cool, practiced calm of someone who dealt in the world of spirits.
“The cat striking the coffin, blood splattering the deceased, the coffin falling—three dire omens that pierce the heart,” the priest said, shaking his head. “This old woman is not at rest. You cannot speak reason to whatever she has become.”
Tears streaked down Xu Shuai’s face. “Please… can you help us?” he begged, voice ragged.
The priest studied the family, then spoke plainly. “Her resentment is strong. The black cat has returned and merged its hatred with hers. My arts can only do so much. I can shield your household for at most two years. Use that time to find someone with greater ability to lift this curse. If you fail, then you will have to accept whatever comes.”
Two years, Xu Shuai thought. It was something—hope enough to breathe on. He accepted the priest’s terms. The Taoist escorted them to the crematorium and, after the rites, took the ashes away with him. He left strict instructions: build a symbolic tomb and set up an ancestral tablet at home; burn incense and bow every day to lessen her malice, and if in two years they find someone powerful, come to Qingxu Temple to reclaim the ashes.
They promised. Life resumed—on the surface at least. But old wounds festered.
Months later, arguments resumed. Zhang Xiaofan, furious and suspicious, believed Xu Shuai had been staging things to frighten her—perhaps to justify keeping an ancestral tablet in their house after her mother-in-law’s death. In a fit of anger six months earlier she had smashed the tablet and dragged it off, an act that led to a bitter quarrel between them.
She accused him of being away too often, of having other women. Hungering for space, she stormed back to her parents’ home and stayed for half a year. At year’s end, Xu Shuai missed the child and begged her to return. She did—only recently, and tensions were still raw.
They had hoped for a calm New Year. Instead, the nightmare began.
Not long after we got off the bus that day, the vehicle seemed to be swallowed by a patch of fog. The road turned into rows of graves—an area Xu Shuai had never driven through before. The boy started screaming as if pinned by terror.
At first Zhang Xiaofan and her mother thought the child was hungry or wet. Then both women began to behave as if seized by a madness: shrill, incoherent cries filled the bus. Zhang Xiaofan’s mother pounded on the door until her head bled, as if trying to break out. And Zhang Xiaofan—hanging suspended a foot above the aisle—had her throat gripped by an unseen hand. She swung her legs wildly, desperately trying to find purchase, but there was nothing beneath her to grab.
We watched the scene and felt the air thicken with something dangerous and wrong—an anger that had not been buried, and a small, dark presence that would not be left alone.