Chapter Seven: The Terrifying Object

“Damn, Old Yuan, your house really does have secret mechanisms.” Staring at what I’d just been leaning against, I was at a loss for words. Before us wasn’t the stone wall of a cellar, but a towering bookshelf crammed with books—at a glance, there must have been several hundred. Dust lay thick on the volumes, yet they’d been well preserved. Most curious of all, in this environment, neither the shelf nor the books showed any sign of rot or nibbling by mice and insects. As I drew closer, a faint fragrance greeted my nose.

Old Tan was already poring over a book with fascination. After leafing through a few pages, he called out, “It’s still ‘The Bibliotheca,’ isn’t this the kind of thing your grandfather’s generation would read?”

I didn’t reply and picked up a book myself, flipping through it under my phone’s light. But after we’d opened a dozen or so books in a row, neither of us spoke again.

Some of the books were ancient tomes, some more modern publications, but without exception, all were about the structure, culture, and geography of ancient Chinese tombs. Many pages had been marked or annotated, clear evidence of someone’s deep and meticulous study.

Old Tan swallowed hard, “Old Yuan, um... you used to say you didn’t know what your father did for a living, right?”

I’m not stupid; I knew what he was getting at. Over the years, the scattered clues about my father flashed through my mind. To read and research books like these, you had to be either an archaeologist, an enthusiast, or—most likely, considering my father—a... The three words surfaced in my mind and I shivered. “Travelling far and wide, whereabouts unpredictable... studying these things, and rich to boot—could my father have been... a grave robber?”

My face must have looked awful, for Old Tan patted my shoulder. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. There could be all sorts of explanations. Besides, I wouldn’t care about that anyway—we’re brothers for life. Whatever happened in the previous generation...”

The more Old Tan rambled, the more lost he seemed, until he finally fell silent. I knew he was afraid I’d think he looked down on me for being the son of a grave robber. But really, I was just struggling to process it; after all, I’d once imagined my father was a pimp, so this wasn’t even the worst possibility. In fact, once the initial shock passed, what rose up inside me was an intense curiosity.

Old Tan was in the same state. Normally too lazy to read even a dirty magazine, now he was engrossed in a book from who knew what era. After a while, I noticed that the bookshelf was actually two shelves joined together, with a gap in the center just wide enough for a hand.

I reached into the gap and found there was space behind the shelves. “There’s something back here,” I said.

“Yeah,” Old Tan nodded after checking for himself. “Hey, do you think these two big shelves could actually be double doors?”

“If they are, there must be a groove at the bottom—shine your light down there.”

We squatted down and aimed our phones into the gap. Sure enough, there was a groove in the stone at the base. Old Tan and I exchanged a glance, then wordlessly pushed the shelves apart. Whether it was the weight of the books or the shelves themselves, it took all our strength to open them just enough for a person to squeeze through.

Before we could even catch our breath, a sudden flash of fire lit up behind the shelves, illuminating the entire space beyond. We froze, then saw that behind the bookshelf lay a stone chamber with a vaulted roof, spacious—at least seventy square meters. On three walls were black carved stone beast heads; doglike, perhaps, or something else. Each beast’s mouth gaped wide, holding what seemed to be an oil lamp—the flames flickered there.

“Incredible,” Old Tan exclaimed, all fear forgotten, and eagerly darted inside.

I followed him. The room was almost bare; aside from the illuminated beast heads on the walls, there was only something covered with a red cloth at the far end. It stood two or three meters high, and wide enough to take up two-thirds of the chamber.

Old Tan came over to me with a strange look. “Old Yuan, if, uh—if your father really was, you know, working underground, could whatever’s under that cloth be some kind of treasure?”

I managed a wry smile. “It’s not impossible.”

“Well, since we’re here, why not take a look?” After all, this was my house, so Old Tan still felt obliged to feign politeness.

Truth be told, curiosity was burning inside me, too. At worst, I’d see loot my father had taken from the dead—nothing I couldn’t handle. So I walked up to the covered object, ready to lift the red cloth.

When the thought of treasure enters a man’s head, caution tends to fly out the window. Both Old Tan and I wanted nothing more than to see a golden gleam before our eyes; we were utterly unprepared for anything else. So when I pulled back the red cloth and the thing beneath it was finally revealed, we both stopped breathing.

What met our eyes could not be described as terrifying or ghastly—it was simply evil. I couldn’t believe that, in the place where I’d lived for over a decade, something like this had been hidden.

Before us stood three rows of coffins, side by side. These were unlike any coffins I’d ever seen: some were ancient, carved with patterns and strange script; some were oddly shaped, resembling enormous black fish; others were made of stone or metal, bound with thick chains whose purpose was a mystery. If that were all, Old Tan and I might have been merely startled. But what truly horrified us was that, atop the coffins, lay a multitude of small children.

The children, no more than infants, were sprawled motionless on the coffins. Their bodies were the ashen gray of corpses, instantly recalling the baby girl we’d seen floating in water earlier that day. More horrifying still, each child bore one or more deep, gaping wounds—raw flesh and white bone exposed in the torn skin, enough to make one’s scalp crawl. And each one, without exception, wore a broad, cheerful grin—but it was not “joy.” Their eyes were black pits, their mouths lined with sharp, predatory teeth—nothing about that smile spoke of happiness. It was evil, nothing but evil.

Old Tan must have been scared senseless. He stood rooted to the spot, mumbling, “One, two, three…” Who knew whether he was counting the coffins or the children.

“Stop it… stop counting!”

Suddenly I screamed. At that moment, shouting was the only way I could force any sound from my throat.

Old Tan’s eyes were glazed. Even after I yelled, he kept counting, as though he couldn’t hear me. I wasn’t much better myself. Acting on impulse, I slapped him across the face.

Old Tan toppled to the floor, but at least he stopped counting. For a long while, the only sounds in the stone chamber were our ragged breaths.

At last, I helped Old Tan to his feet. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head, then nodded, and suddenly looked up at me. “Yuan Jie, what… what are these? They can’t really be children, can they?”

I forced myself to look again. “I don’t know. But I think they might be the corpses of children.”

“Why would corpses be lying on top of coffins?”

“Who knows. I think we’d better get out of here.” I couldn’t think straight; the only clear thought in my mind was that we shouldn’t linger.

No sooner had I spoken than the three rows of coffins suddenly shook. Instinctively, Old Tan and I grabbed each other’s arms. The vibration was brief but deeply uncanny, as if something inside the coffins was moving. As the shaking subsided, two of the children slid off the coffins.

With a crash, the sound of shattering porcelain rang out. Old Tan and I glanced at each other, startled.

“Hell, scared the life out of me! Turns out they’re just clay figurines,” Old Tan exhaled in relief, then cursed loudly.

I looked more closely and saw it was true. Relief washed over me. Old Tan pointed to the leftmost coffin on the bottom row. “Look, that one’s collapsed—that’s why it shook.”

I glanced over and saw the same thing. The jolt still felt odd, but I didn’t dwell on it. With our fear fading, curiosity returned, and we moved closer to examine the objects.

Clearly, the grinning “children” were, for all their realism, porcelain dolls. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder: how were they balanced atop the coffins without any sign of adhesive? And if my father had made this place, what on earth was the point?

As I pondered, I reached out to touch one of the porcelain children. The instant my finger brushed it, I recoiled from the icy chill. I looked over to see Old Tan crouched by the broken coffin, shining his phone’s light inside.

“Are you crazy?” I yanked him back. “You can’t just stick your head in there.”

“No big deal,” he shrugged. “In the end, it’s all dead stuff. Scared me half to death a moment ago—now I want to see what’s really in here.”

He had a point. We’d both been terrified, but now it felt like we’d crossed some psychological threshold. The oppressive atmosphere had lost much of its power.

Knowing I couldn’t stop him, I prepared to kneel down beside him. But just as Old Tan moved toward the broken coffin again, I saw something gray shoot out from the crack and seize his left ankle.