The Blood Rice

Midnight Record, Vol. II — No. 2

The day before the Dragon-Boat Festival, the river rose. At Zhou Family Landing the water ran yellow and foul, rolling down dead pigs and rotten timber from upstream until it lapped the willows at the dike's foot. Before dawn Old Zhou was up—rinsing glutinous rice, touching it with cinnabar, mixing in realgar wine, dyeing the grain a dull, dark scarlet, and spreading it by the winnowing basket to dry in the shade. This was the rule her mother-in-law had handed down: as the festival neared and the yang breath peaked, this blood-rice, soaked in realgar and cinnabar, best sealed the dirty things that had crept into the house over the year.

Her hands steeped in the grain, the creases dyed scarlet; up close it gave off a sweet-bitter stink, like rust mixed with old blood. Her daughter-in-law Yun, heavy with child, was not to touch such things; she only burned mugwort nearby. The smoke stung the eyes shut, but Old Zhou said the mugwort smoke drove the evil out of the rice, and not a step could be skipped.

In past years this blood-rice was sewn into little cloth pouches and hung on the lintel, pressed into the stove, tucked into the cracks at the bed's foot—never a mishap. But this year was different. For several nights running a gulp came from the well at midnight, as if someone were spitting into it. Old Zhou suspected something in the well, and so, hiding it from Yun, she poured half a basket of blood-rice down the shaft one night and set a blue slab over the mouth, muttering, "I seal you. Do not come out to harm."

She thought she was sealing a dirty thing.

But what lived in that well was no dirty thing.

Three years before, in a great flood, a girl called Xi Mei from the next village was swept into the river; her body was never found, and the villagers said she had become the drowning ghost of the well. While alive Xi Mei had often come to help the Zhous, sensible and willing, and Old Zhou had treated her like a second daughter. Once Xi Mei came bearing fresh water-chestnuts, shoes and socks soaked through, and Old Zhou warmed her by the fire; she hunched at the hearth laughing, eyes creased, saying that when the water fell she would make the little grandson a pair of tiger-head shoes. The water fell. The girl did not come back.

Xi Mei had been good to the Zhous from the heart. One winter night a spark jumped the hearth and lit the firewood under the eaves; half dreaming, she turned at the sound, ran out barefoot, and doused it, sparing the main house. Old Zhou called the girl the family's benefactor—little guessing the day would come when she sealed her as a dirty thing.

After Xi Mei was gone, the well water grew sweeter; even the fiercest summer sun could not sour it. Once Old Zhou's little grandson fell in and was borne up by a hidden current without a scratch. The old folk whispered that Xi Mei, mindful of the family's kindness, kept the well for them.

Those years the whole landing drank from that well. In summer the children, spent from play, leaned over the rim and drank from cupped hands; the water was cold enough to sting the teeth yet never turned a belly. Old Fisher Fu said the well's water had saved the whole port's life—in a year of plague, when every other well in the region stank, only this one stayed sweet, and the village lived on it. No one thought of Xi Mei; they put it down to good feng shui.

The night Old Zhou poured in the blood-rice, the gulp from the well stopped.

For three days after, strangeness piled on strangeness. First the well water turned bitter, and the rice it cooked tasted of rust; the chickens would not drink it. Then three young men went down to the river for fish and none came back; when dragged up, their nails were packed with mud, as if they had clawed for a bank they could not reach, while their mothers fainted weeping on the bank. After that, every midnight, from beneath the slab over the well came the sound of fingernails scraping stone—shhick, shhick—slow, patient, as if someone trapped below were trying with all his might to scratch out a seam.

Yun's belly also turned troublesome; the child kicked wildly, and the midwife felt a breach and feared a hard labor. Only then did Old Zhou panic, remembering her mother-in-law's dying words: "Blood-rice seals evil, not grievance. A wronged soul that is sealed turns threefold fiercer than a demon."

That night she sent for the old Daoist from town. He looked at the well mouth and went pale. "You sealed the girl who kept your well as if she were a demon. She was guarding your house; you seal her in, and her grievance presses upward. This well is now a closed jar."

Setting it right was troublesome: lift the slab, rinse the blood-rice clean from the shaft with clear water, burn three sticks of incense and a packet of spirit money, beg Xi Mei's pardon, and ask her to keep the well again. As he left the Daoist said, "Before you seal anything, see first whom you seal. Seal the good by mistake, and the good turns vengeful too."

The night the slab came up, a layer of dark-red grain floated on the well's surface, like blood curdled in cold water, refusing to disperse. Old Zhou knelt by the well burning paper, the smoke rising straight and not scattering. Yun's labor eased. But from then on, whoever at Zhou Family Landing drank the well water found on the tip of the tongue a faint, indefinable salt—as if Xi Mei were still down there, breathing out a slow breath, neither angry nor willing to leave.

After that, each year on Xi Mei's death-day Old Zhou burned a packet of paper at the well, yet the faint salt in the water grew fainter year by year, as if Xi Mei had slowly made her peace and slowly forgotten the Zhous. Until a year of great drought, when the water sank to the bottom and Old Zhou looked down to find a layer of dark-red grain resting there, as if someone had kept the memory of that night's wrong for her—still, and never dissolving.

The Midnight Record notes: Exorcising rice can seal a demon, not a grievance. Mistake your guardian for a curse, and she becomes the curse you cannot seal away.