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The autumn nights at Yellow-Mud Hollow carry the reek of river silt, mixed with the smell of straw stacks cured through the dog days. Lame Six's shadow-puppet troupe slipped into the village at dusk, two camphor-wood cases fore and aft, their locks pasted with faded yellow talismans whose corners still bore dark-red seal paste, like dried blood.

The village head passed word: the troupe had been sent from above to "subdue evil," performing only one play—The Capture—and every man, woman, and child must attend, or misfortune would fall on the house that year. So at nightfall the young and old crowded toward the old locust at the village mouth, each carrying a stool; even the coroner-hut's old yellow dog tucked its tail and fled.

The stage stood beneath the locust: a surface of three plank doors, a length of white cloth for a screen, and behind it a lamp with a green flame. Its oil was pressed from wild tung nuts gathered at grave mounds; the flame burned green and lit the puppets' faces a sickly blue. Lame Six was a limping old man with his left eye covered by black cloth; beside him stood a mute youth who fetched and passed the leather figures. I had glimpsed inside the cases—the puppets stacked neat, yet every face seemed carved after a living person, down to the mole between the brows.

I came with Chunzhi on my arm, squeezed into the third row. She was a bride of last spring, fond of any excitement; hearing of a roving troupe, she had dragged me here. In front sat the bachelor Ermazi, a half-jug of corn liquor at his feet, boasting of how he had once seduced the widow across the river, spittle flying.

At the first drumbeat the crowd fell silent. The tempo quickened; onto the screen stepped a lady in red, who flicked a water-sleeve to bare a pale stretch of neck—it was Yan Xijiao come to capture Zhang Sanlang. A puppet's hands should be stiff cuts of donkey hide, yet these had gone soft, the fingertips groping downward beneath the cloth, as if feeling for the faces in the audience. From behind the screen came the faint smell of tung oil, mixed with the old musk of cured hide.

Ermazi was grinning—then stopped. His neck stiffened; his whole body pressed toward the screen, his silhouette seized by a hand at the collar from behind, drawn flat, drawn thin, until he was a black shadow on the cloth. A red sleeve reached down and rolled his shadow in. Ermazi still sat upright in his seat, but his face was gone—a flat sheet of skin against the cloth, still wearing his grin, the jug still at his feet.

No one dared speak; only the green lamp sputtered, like someone gulping for breath. The mute youth passed another figure, and on the screen appeared an empty seat, exactly where Ermazi had been, lit clear by the green flame.

The second taken was Old Sun of the tofu shop. He had sat far back, yet somehow his feet were drawn by an invisible thread to that empty seat. Sun tried to rise and leave, but his straw sandals seemed nailed to the mud; he toppled straight toward the cloth and was rolled in by the red sleeve, without so much as a grunt.

Chunzhi gripped my hand, her nails in my flesh. Only then did I understand: the troupe had not come to perform but to make up a tally—The Capture would not end until it had taken enough heads from the village. Each dragged in left an empty seat on the screen, as if a hand behind the cloth were calling names from a roster. The drumbeat pressed faster, like a summons to death.

I pulled Chunzhi back through the crowd. But with every step we retreated, another row of empty seats opened in front, row upon row lit by the green flame. The seventh from the front was a woman with a child; the child cried out in fright, and the moment the wail fell, mother and child both flattened onto the cloth, two shadows side by side, the smaller one still flung an arm upward.

In panic I grabbed the green lamp from the stage edge and hurled it at the screen. The cloth caught at once; green fire licked the figures, and from behind the screen came one long sigh, like bubbles rising from deep water, or like many people sighing at once.

When the fire died, the stage was empty. The camphor cases stood wide open, stuffed full of puppets—and every face was familiar: Ermazi, Old Sun, the woman and child… and the half-profile I had glimpsed and dared not name: Chunzhi's.

I lifted Chunzhi onto my back and ran home. Dawn was near; she breathed against my back, a whole living person. Inside the yard she stood and turned suddenly, saying, "In your shadow—why is one arm missing?"

I looked down. In the moonlight my shadow on the rammed-earth wall had a gap where the right arm should be, as if someone had peeled it from a puppet.

After that, Lame Six's troupe was never seen at Yellow-Mud Hollow again. Yet on windy autumn nights the white cloth still raises itself beneath the old locust, and the green lamp lights itself. I have never dared go back—for fear an eighth empty seat appears on the screen, facing my own door.

The Midnight Record: shadow-play borrows light to make shadows, yet some troupes borrow the light of the living.