The Corpse-Lamp

The coroner's hut lay three li outside town in a stand of old locusts—three broken-tile rooms, two ancient trees at the door whose branches knotted together so that even by day it stayed dim. What rested inside were the unclaimed dead: those who dropped by the road, the drowned, strangers died far from home, waiting for the magistrate's examination or for kin to claim them. A layer of year-old straw covered the floor, rustling underfoot, mixed with a smell of mugwort and damp earth that would not lift.

A-Chou was the hut's corpse-keeper. Born with a harelip, he spoke with a whistle through his teeth, and the townsfolk, finding him ugly, called him simply A-Chou. His father died early; the old hut-master took him in to split wood and sweep, and now the old master was gone and A-Chou kept the place alone. He spoke little but was dutiful to a fault, and his chief charge was this: the corpse-lamp must not go out, not for a single night.

The corpse-lamp was a bronze oil-light set at the head of the plank where the dead lay; its oil was specially pressed tung-oil from the town mill, mixed with cinnabar, a deep red. The old master had said: a body resting in yin ground easily loses its soul, and easily "turns its thoughts" to the living; this lamp keeps a light for the dead and keeps the living's courage. Let it go out, and the corpse opens its eyes—a common thing.

That sixth month it rained half a month running and the river swelled. Upstream came a woman's corpse, fished out white and bloated, twenty-some years, a red cord about her wrist with half a copper coin tied at its end. No one claimed her; the coroner examined her and called it a river-jump, her belly swollen high with murky water. A-Chou laid her on the straw mat against the wall, lit the corpse-lamp, and, fearing she might catch the cold air, half-draped an old reed screen over her.

The first nights were calm. The rain stopped; the nights were close and hot, the hut carrying a smell of river-stink mixed with years of mugwort. A-Chou set a bamboo bed by the plank and dozed half-aware to the pop of the lamp's flower, a cricket in the corner calling now and then.

On the seventh night trouble came. The mill-hand fell ill and the tung-oil did not arrive on time. A-Chou turned over every oil-gourd; only a little remained in the bottom, enough to last past midnight. He thought to fetch oil at first light and thought nothing of it, lying down clothed on the bamboo bed, and drifted into a doze.

About the hour of the tiger the wick went out with a puff.

For an instant the room was dead still, even the insects silent. A-Chou started awake and groped for his fire-steel, his hands slick with cold sweat. He dared not light another lamp, fearing to startle the dead, and only felt his way toward the straw mat in the dark—

Moonlight leaked through the window-crack and fell exactly on the drowned woman's face. Her eyes were open.

Not the closed eyes of sleep but truly open, the whites gone grey, the pupils two black points, fixed on the beam, yet seeming on him. A-Chou's blood ran cold to his feet. He tried to cry out, but his throat was too dry for sound; he heard only his own teeth chattering, click, click, unnaturally clear in the dead-quiet room.

His hands shaking, he found the fire-steel at last and struck it—the last of the oil caught, the red light jumped, and lit back that face—the eyes were closed again. Quiet, as if they had never opened.

A-Chou collapsed on the bamboo bed and did not dare close his eyes the rest of the night. At dawn he ran to town; the mill-hand had mended, and he filled a gourd full of tung-oil and came back, topping the lamp to the brim. After that he never let the oil run low again.

But from that night something changed. As the lamp burned it would now and then sound a soft gulp, as if someone beneath were swallowing breath. The woman's face, when he stole a glance, always seemed to show a thread of grey at the eye-slit—as if her eyes were closed but not truly shut. Most chilling: whenever he blinked, or turned to tend the lamp and looked back, the corpse's neck had shifted a little, toward him, as if she had quietly turned her head in the night.

A-Chou posted notices for her kin; none answered. His heart softened in the end, and with his own money he dug a pit behind the hut under the locust, set a wooden board reading "Tomb of the Unnamed Woman," and fetched a peace tally from the River God's temple to press before it. Each night he still kept the lamp, but no longer treated her as "a dead nobody"; now and then as he topped the oil he would murmur, "Rest easy. I've lit your lamp and given you a name."

After that the lamp made no sound on its own, and the woman's eyes opened no more.

Only on rainy days, when A-Chou tended the lamp, the wick always trembled harder than usual, as if someone, very softly, breathed once against that red light.

The Midnight Record: The corpse-lamp lights the dead and lights the living's courage too. When it goes out, it is never the corpse that opens its eyes first—it is the living who panic.