The Beam-Charm

The rain at Misty Ridge town fell for a fortnight without cease. The hills soaked soft, and a layer of dark-green moss crept over the blue-stone steps, slick beneath the foot like someone's eye. I am Shen Yan, a physician in the provincial city, and I had come home to collect my grandfather Shen Shouzhuo's belongings. The old man had died childless, leaving only an old wooden tower on the half-hill beyond the town, called the Listening-Rain House. When he passed, the townsfolk saw to his funeral, yet not one of them would set foot inside that tower.

I hired a small boat and went up the Misty Creek against the current. The mute boatman would not steer too near the bank; with a single dip of his scull he let me wade ashore through knee-high weeds. The woods on the half-hill were heavy with damp: rotting leaves, pine resin, and a sweetness hard to name, like old blood seeped into wood. The Listening-Rain House stood at the edge of the forest, its three courts still framed, though one eave had caved in, and a faded strip of red cloth hung beneath it, put up some year no one remembered.

The townsfolk held the tower in deep dread. When I went to the street to ask after it and said I meant to lodge there, the blind tofu-seller's ladle clattered into her pot, and the barber's boy at the next stall let his hands fall, and both stared at me as at a man walking into a blind alley. No one would speak of what was inside; they only said, "Come out and lodge in town," and turned away. The more they shrank, the surer I grew that what was pressed into this tower was more than an old story.

It was Granny Seven who opened the door for me. A distant kinswoman past eighty, her back bowed like a bow, she leaned on a peach-wood staff and would not cross the threshold. She only pointed with a gnarled finger at the black beam overhead and said in a hoarse voice, "This tower was raised by Xun Jiu. You know him? The head carpenter of these parts in his day. He had a rule when he built: something must be pressed into the central beam. Press the right thing, and the house stands steady. Press the wrong thing, and whoever lives inside hears the beam sound every night."

I asked, what sound.

"A wooden-fish tapping," said Granny Seven. "The third watch, knock, knock, knock—as if someone were chanting sutras up in the beam, or knocking at a door that never opens. Your grandfather, in his later years, would move to the inn in town whenever it rained. He would not spend a night here for his life. Do not be stubborn like him. If you cannot bear to hear it, leave."

I laughed at her superstition. An old tower shrinks and groans as its fibers swell with the damp; that is only nature. Yet that night, I heard it after all.

The first night passed in peace; I was spent and slept in my clothes. The second night the rain turned fierce, the tiles chiming like shattered jade. I lay in the eastern wing, half awake, when from overhead came a very faint knocking—knock, knock, knock. Not the gnaw of rats, but like knuckles rapping rotten wood, steady, until the heart began to flutter. I took up a lamp, climbed the wooden stair to the loft. The beam was empty; only dust-threads hung, and cobwebs knotted in the mortise joints, black and bitter. I knocked on the central beam; it rang solid, the echo dull, like knocking on a sleeping heart.

So it was on every rainy night thereafter. By day the tower lay quiet as a tomb; at the third watch the knocking rose from the heart of the beam, unhurried, as though waiting for someone to answer. I had never believed in ghosts, but a man in such a wet, black tower cannot help but doubt. So I went to town to ask Granny Seven the whole of it.

Granny Seven brewed a pot of old-leaf tea and spoke half a day of old matters.

Xun Jiu was born at the end of the Guangxu reign, orphaned by plague, and taken as a sworn son by Shen Chongli, my family's ancestor, who set him to learn the trade under the town's old carpenter. He was supremely gifted; his Lu Ban craft was near magic, and he was master above all of the art called "pressing the victory"—when raising a house or beam, he would hide within the central beam some object: a wooden figure, a charmed slip, or a single iron nail, to settle the dwelling and protect its people, or else to curse and take a life. The Shen family had grown rich on mountain goods and river shipping, and meant to raise a three-court wooden tower on the half-hill as a wedding hall for Chongli's only son. Xun Jiu took the commission; for three years every timber and tenon was cut by his own hand, and even the beasts at the eaves he carved night after night.

It was said Xun Jiu hid his heart in each of those eave-beasts: the western qilin was missing a horn—his private mark of the year he lost a finger; the eastern mythical beast held a pearl in its mouth, and on the pearl was not cloud-pattern but the small-seal script of the character "Mian." The old folk of the town said Xun Jiu had planed his whole heart into the wood of that tower.

The bride was named Su Mian, a maid the Shen family had bought, grown up alongside Xun Jiu. They had gathered firewood together, beaten clothes together at the creek, and their bond ran deep—most in town knew it, all but Chongli. Yet as the wedding drew near, Chongli took Su Mian as his own concubine—not for his son, but for himself—meaning to chain Xun Jiu, that "useful blade," to the Shen house forever. When Xun Jiu learned it, his face went bloodless, but his plane did not stop; he only bowed his head and planed the wood into long curly shavings, stroke after stroke.

On the day the wedding hall was finished, the beam-joining rite was to be performed. Before the central beam was joined, while the craftsmen were busy sacrificing to Lu Ban, Xun Jiu hid within it a small figure carved of peach wood. Its eyes were dotted in ink, its body wound round with red thread, and across its chest lay an iron nail, the nail's tail tied with a strand of Su Mian's black hair. This was the most venomous road of the pressing-art, called the "soul-locking nail"—it did not bind a house, but a person who wished to leave. From that day Su Mian coughed blood each night and died before ever crossing the threshold. Chongli suspected foulness, probed in secret, learned of the thing in the beam, but dared not speak of it or tear the beam down—fearing to disturb the town's fortune, and fearing worse if he opened it—so he plied Xun Jiu with wine, and at night sunk him in the black pond behind the hill.

"The night Xun Jiu was sunk, the pond ran red for a day and a night, and the fish floated belly-up," Granny Seven's voice went raw. "Yet strange to tell, from then on the tower held a wooden-fish sound. Townsfolk said Su Mian's soul was nailed to the beam and could not get out, tapping inside night after night; others said it was Xun Jiu's grievance, borrowing that peach wood to knock inside the tower, demanding his love back. But the Shen family fared no better—Chongli took Su Mian, and within three years was stricken, palsy-bound to his bed, muttering day and night that someone in the beam was watching him. The year his only son wed, the new bridal chamber barely warmed before the bride went mad and threw herself in the well. The town said Xun Jiu's enchantment crawled the whole tower along the wood-grain, and not one of the Shen blood could escape it. Your grandfather was Chongli's great-grandson; by your generation the karma should have been three removes distant—yet here you are, back, and you have moved that beam."

A cold crawled my spine, yet still I half doubted. Returning home, I found in the bottom of an old cabinet in the eastern wing a marking-line reel, its body carved with the character "Xun," and beside it a Lu Ban ruler, its surface soaked dark red, impossible to tell whether lacquer or blood. I took it in hand; the wood grew faintly warm, as if a pulse came from its heart, beating against my palm. I slipped reel and ruler into my sleeve; the doubt in me at last outweighed the fear.

That night at the third watch the knocking came again. I lit a lamp and climbed to the loft, following the sound to beneath the central beam. The beam was a whole old fir; where it joined sat a hidden niche sealed with pine resin and overlaid with years-old paper. With Xun Jiu's Lu Ban ruler I pried it gently open; the resin flaked away, and there indeed lay the peach-wood figure—scarcely an inch, a woman's shape, ink eyes sorrowful, red thread bitten into the grain, the iron nail rusted brown-red, the hair at its tail long gone to grey ash.

As if bewitched, I took the figure out. The instant my thumb touched the wood, a warmth ran up my wrist into my heart, as though I held a dying hand—cool and stubborn, refusing to let go. From the beam came a very faint sigh, like a woman's, or like the dull crack of wood giving way. I thrust the figure into my breast, sealed the niche, and fled down the stairs.

The next day, as Granny Seven had told me, I went to the black pond behind the hill. Weeds had swallowed most of it; the water was black as ink, a layer of white froth on top, rank with fish-stink. Granny Seven said Xun Jiu's body was never fished up; the Shen family only told the town he had run off with the wages. I stood by the pond a long while, and suddenly felt something in the deep watching me—not eyes, but the grain of wood, square by square, like the marks on a Lu Ban ruler. I stepped back; my foot snapped a dry branch and started a flock of grey birds, and the froth on the water arranged itself into the corner of the character "Shen." I turned and walked away; behind me the pond went glunk, as if someone below had rolled over.

Back in the tower, the living of it grew worse. First came weeping from beneath the floorboards, fine as an infant's cry, wandering at my heels; I lit a lamp to look, and found nothing below, only a damp seeping from the wood's seam. Then the stair sounded without wind, step by step, as if someone in stockinged feet crept up at night, paused at my door, and went down again. The smell of the tower changed, too: where before there had been only the damp of old wood, now at the third watch a scent of pine resin mixed with sweetness spread thick and choking, as if the pot of resin Xun Jiu had used to seal the beam were boiling again. By day I found on the floor beneath the beam a few wood shavings, curled neat—plainly made by a plane in the night—though no second person lived in the tower; and when I bent to smell them, they carried that same sweet rankness.

I looked up and saw, at the parting of the central beam, a red shadow, faintly a woman's shape, bowing its head to watch me.

On the sixth night, at the third watch, I saw that red shadow descend. She stepped down from the tie-beam, barefoot on empty air, her red robe soaked through, dragging a wet mark behind her. She stood at my bed, bowed to look at me; her ink eyes were the very same as the peach-wood figure in my breast. She opened her mouth without a sound, yet her lips plainly formed the words: "Thank you for setting me free." I was frozen with terror and could only watch her reach out and brush my brow; her fingertips were cold to the bone. As the first light came she melted into a wisp of red smoke and withdrew into the beam.

I knew matters were ill. Granny Seven had said Xun Jiu's pressing was twofold: the nail had locked Su Mian's soul and also suppressed three generations of Shen family karma. Now that I had taken the figure, Su Mian was loosed, but together with her had been sealed in the beam Xun Jiu's un-dispersed grievance from the year he was sunk. Once freed, the grievance woke the house.

I saw the waking with my own eyes. Wood shavings in the corner gathered themselves into tiny human shapes, no bigger than a joint of the finger, kneeling in a row toward the beam. Dark red seeped from the grain of the door-pivot, like blood, like moss; close, it smelled of old sweetness. The old fir of the central beam even put forth tender green shoots out of season, crawling over the beam in a single night. The whole Listening-Rain House was like an old beast asleep seventy years, slowly opening its eyes, its bones creaking.

On the seventh night the rain fell in a waterfall, thunder grinding over the peak. I took Xun Jiu's marking-line reel and Lu Ban ruler, stood beneath the central beam, and resolved to lay a new pressing, to nail that freed grievance back down. From old wood of the tower I carved a new figure—not a woman's shape, but Xun Jiu's: square face, one finger gone, just as Granny Seven had described him before the pond. I wound red thread through its seven apertures, drove the rusted iron nail once more into its chest, and spoke the old soul-settling words my grandmother had taught me, then set the new figure back in the niche, sealed it with pine resin, and pasted paper over, exactly as before.

The red shadow above the beam broke apart at once. The tower gave a great shudder; the beasts at the eaves cracked all at once; then all fell silent. When the rain stopped and the first light came, I lay beneath the beam, my fingertips full of resin and wood-splinters, and fell into a sleep.

I never heard the wooden-fish again. The tower was quiet as an empty coffin.

I sold the Listening-Rain House cheaply to another, and took with me only an old dowry chest of the Shen house—Su Mian's relic, which my grandfather had wiped every day, and which I kept for old times' sake. The day I left, Granny Seven stood at the Misty Creek ferry, watching me from afar; her lips moved as if to speak, but in the end she did not stop me, only tapped her peach-wood staff once on the blue stone.

Years passed; I practised medicine in the provincial city, and slowly came to take the affair of Misty Ridge town for a dream soaked through with rain. Until last deep autumn, when I returned from tending a patient elsewhere and sat alone at my lamp past midnight, and suddenly heard from overhead a very faint sound—knock.

I thought it the floorboards swelling with the heat. The next night, another knock. The third night, knock, knock, knock, exact to the mark, at the third watch, the same as those first nights in the Listening-Rain House.

Cold ran my whole body. I fetched the dowry chest I kept by me. It was nanmu wood, dark-lacquered, its brass lock long rusted shut. I prized it open with pincers; inside were no powders or jewels, only a square of old red cloth, and on it lay a peach-wood figure—scarcely an inch, a man's shape, ink eyes sorrowful, body wound with red thread, an iron nail across its chest, and at the nail's tail, tied, a strand of my own hair.

Only then did I understand Xun Jiu's craft. The pressing never bound a single person. The pressing bound the one who took it away. Before he was sunk, he had carved the last enchantment into every inch of that tower's wood: whoever moved the figure in the beam became the next pressing. Su Mian was his first; I was his second; and this inch of "me" in the chest was the ageless substitute he left for me—he had carved me into the wood as well.

I looked up at the ceiling. The concrete ceiling of my provincial apartment had no beam, no loft. Yet at the very moment I looked up, a sound fell straight from above—

knock.

From that night on, the knocking came from my apartment ceiling every few nights. I had men break open the ceiling; it was empty inside, only concrete and steel, not a splinter of wood. Yet the knock still came on time, as if someone in another tower I could not see were driving something down, knock after knock. When I take up the brush to write these words, my fingertips still feel warm, as if I held a marking-line reel—only I dare not look down to see whether, in that wood's heart, there is also a me.

(From the Midnight Records: In the south, when raising a house, the carpenter presses an object into the central beam; this is called pressing the victory, also the cursing victory. To press is to settle the dwelling, and also to curse a man. Few know the craft now, yet in an old tower listening to the rain, a beam that sounds at midnight need not be merely wood swelling with the damp.)