Chapter 7: The Knock That Followed Me for Nine Years

I was born in a small village in Henan, near a coal mine, and for as long as I can remember, strange things have had a way of finding me.

My mother used to say it might have begun before I was even born. She was pregnant with twins then—my brother and me—and one day, while carrying lunch to my father at the mine, she stumbled over a loose stone and fell. My brother never made it into the world. I survived by chance, but I had swallowed amniotic fluid and was frail from the start. Perhaps that was why, even as a little child, I could see things other people could not.

When I was three, there were two persimmon trees in our yard. The farther one stood only seven or eight meters from the living-room door. In the countryside, the outhouse was a long walk away, and there were no streetlights, so my parents quietly let me use the ground beneath that tree when I needed to go at night. After a while, I stopped being afraid. Even when the yard was sunk in pitch-black darkness, I would still toddle out there by myself.

One evening, a little after eight, my parents were sitting on the bed watching television. I was between them, playing alone, when I suddenly needed to go. I climbed over my father, who was lying on the outside, slipped down from the bed, put on my little shoes, and went to the bedroom door.

Because years of mining had warped the ground beneath the village, our bedroom door no longer sat properly in its frame. Opening it took all the strength my small body had.

I wrapped both hands around the handle and pulled. My face grew hot with effort. Then, with a sharp bang, the door flew open.

I froze.

Pressed against the other side of the door was a woman in red.

The instant it opened, we were almost face to face. I was so small I barely came up to her thigh, and there could not have been more than two fists of space between us. Terror went through me like a blade. I dropped onto the floor and began to wail, shaking so hard I could hardly breathe.

My parents rushed over and gathered me into their arms. They soothed me for a long time before I could finally choke out the words.

“There’s… there’s a woman stuck to the door.”

When I was six, I did not go to kindergarten. I stayed home every day with my younger brother, who had only just learned to crawl. My father felt sorry for me, so almost every night around eight, he would put me on his motorcycle and take me riding through the village lanes.

Behind the village ran a north-south road. Beside it lay the cemetery of my grandmother’s maternal village, a whole stretch of raised graves under the open sky.

One night, as we passed the cemetery, I suddenly pointed to the back of my father’s motorcycle and cried, “Dad, an old woman just got on!”

My father glanced back and laughed, telling me my eyes were playing tricks on me.

But I had seen her clearly. She was sitting between us, dressed in dusty gray clothes, her eyes gentle and kind.

When we got home, I came down with a fever. My whole body burned as I lay in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. In that haze, I saw the head of an old woman pressed against the window, staring straight in at me.

I screamed.

My parents and grandmother crowded around me. They stood by the window, muttering prayers and coaxing words for a long time, but every time I raised my head, that face was still there. For two days, I could not swallow even a mouthful of water. At last my grandmother, frightened out of her wits, went to a neighboring village to find a spirit medium.

The moment he heard what had happened, he said, “That’s your mother. She wants to see the two children.”

Only then did we understand.

It was my great-grandmother—my grandmother’s own mother. When she was alive, she had loved children more than anything. Years earlier, while carrying baskets of vegetables to sell, she had been struck by a vehicle. Her head was severed on the spot. That was why, at the window, all I had seen was a head.

My grandmother burned paper money and stood by the window speaking to her for a long time, telling her not to worry, telling her to go back in peace.

After that, the head never appeared again.

But the dark patch in the lower right corner of that window became a shadow I have never managed to shake.

In 2013, when I was eleven, my father changed jobs and began driving long-haul freight trucks. I still remember the license plate: 2825.

Because my grandmother favored boys over girls and had never cared much for us, my third uncle rented us an empty apartment in his residential compound, so my father would have a convenient place to rest between trips.

The first winter after we moved in, wind and snow battered the world outside. I slept alone in the living room, while my parents and younger brother slept in the bedroom.

Sometime in the middle of the night, a sound came from the door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The rhythm was flat and lifeless, each blow landing on the metal security door with the same dull force.

I had always been bold. I pulled on my thin pajamas and ran to open it.

But there was no one outside. Only the dark corridor, and the hollow, eerie sound of wind moving through the stairwell.

I shut the door and went back to bed.

Less than ten minutes later, the knocking began again.

This time I was angry. I put on my padded coat, grabbed the key, opened the door, and sat down on the stairwell steps, determined to catch whoever was playing tricks on us.

Then the knocking came from inside the apartment.

That broken, intermittent knocking continued for a month. Later, because my older cousin needed the apartment for school, we moved to the fifth floor of Building Two in Lotus Garden.

I thought that would be the end of it.

But on the very first night, the familiar knocking arrived exactly on time.

My parents told me not to pay attention. They said it would stop once it had knocked enough. Sure enough, after a month, it disappeared again.

Not long after that, we moved once more, this time to the first floor of Building Eighteen in Lotus Garden. On the day we moved in, the neighbor across the hall secretly told us that an elderly couple had died in the apartment three years before. They had no children. They had hanged themselves together.

And sure enough, on the first night, it came again.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

That was how the knocking stayed with us for nine years.

We moved three times, and each time it appeared right on schedule. It would go on for a month, then vanish without warning, as quietly as it had come. My family were all atheists. They never believed in these things, and after that first incident with my great-grandmother, they never looked for another spirit medium.

Now I am grown, but the things I saw as a child—the woman in red, the severed head at the window, the knocking that followed us for nine years—remain as clear to me as if they happened yesterday.

Sometimes I wonder what truly brought them into my life.

Perhaps it was my brother’s regret at never being born. Perhaps it was my great-grandmother’s longing for the children she had loved. Perhaps it was the unfinished wish of that childless old couple.

Whatever the truth was, those things left marks on me that time has never erased.

They taught me that there are always things in this world beyond the reach of science, things we may never be able to explain. And before such things, perhaps the only wisdom is to stand in awe.