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The Handprint in the Tunnel
Lao Wu patrols the subway tunnel and finds a fresh handprint on the wall each night, reaching upward as if someone pushed out of the dark. It was a worker buried in an old cave-in, who scraped the wall to his last moment.
The Eight Wilds Bestiary: The Stone Beak
A stone beak juts from the southern cliff, silencing those who gossip; pass beneath it and your tongue stiffens for three days.
The Eight Wilds Bestiary: The Ferryan
On foggy nights a hooded ferryman waits at the shoreless marsh, carrying not the living but the drowned who never reached the far bank.
The Maple Letter
A merchant's wife whose son died among strangers finds each deep autumn maple leaves falling at her eaves, bearing in blood the words your son is well. She keeps them till her box is full; when she dies the leaves turn to ash, save one at the bottom reading I have come for mother.
The Fox Inkstone
The poor scholar Liu Ming copies books by moonlight; an old man surnamed Hu comes by night to help, the inkstone fills itself and he corrects the youth's errors. When Liu passes the exam and goes to thank him, only a scroll of red-ink corrections is left on the desk; as an official he lights a lamp each night, but the old man never returns.
The Old Well
An old well east of the village never runs dry. A woman whose son was sent to the frontier and silent for ten years drowned herself in it; thereafter the water grew sweet each night and her shadow was seen washing by the well. When her white-haired son returned, the well boiled like weeping and her shadow was seen no more.
The Hilltop Transmitter
Lao Tian keeps the mountain-top broadcast tower on the night shift. Every few nights the backup frequency comes alive on its own, a woman's voice reading recipes. An old man says it is the tower-keeper who died in a landslide the snowed-in year, who spoke into the mic, the food is on the stove.
The All-Night Laundromat
Lao Lin took over the round-the-clock laundromat by the university town. Every night at 3:07, machine three starts on its own, empty, while a thin shadow passes the door. A neighbor says it is the night-shift worker who died of gas two winters back, his blue jacket still soaking in the drum.