The Dry Well

Old Qin rented a ground-floor room in the village-in-the-city. Beneath his window sat a well, its stone rim thick with moss, long since empty. The landlord said the well had been dry for twenty years—once the whole alley drew water from it, until tap water came and it was abandoned.

The first nights were quiet. After autumn winds began, he heard a soft rustling below the window at night, like someone rinsing rice by the well—a wooden basin tapping the stone, water lightly splashing. He leaned out; moonlight showed the empty shaft, bone dry, even the moss gone brown.

He asked Old Zhou next door, who collected scrap. Zhou lowered his voice: "The family before you—a woman and her girl. That year of drought the well ran low; the girl went down for water and never came up. The woman lost her mind for half a year, then moved away."

Qin did not believe it. Yet the sound came more often, sometimes waking him at midnight—clearly two hands rubbing something at the bottom, a fine water noise, as if afraid to disturb anyone.

He bought a lock and locked the well rim. That night was silent. The second night the lock was untouched, yet the sound rose muffled from below, as if through a layer of earth.

On the third night he could stand it no more and knocked on the landlord's door before dawn. The landlord came, listened by the well, and suddenly reddened his eyes: "That is exactly how she rinsed rice. The morning the girl fell in, she was rinsing, heard the child cry, leaned to pull—and down went mother and basin together."

Qin moved out soon after. Leaving, he looked back at the well; on the moss lay a few damp spots, as if someone had just rinsed rice, or as if it were dew.

He did not dare reach out to touch.