Chapter 7: The Knocking That Followed Me for Nine Years

The Knocking That Followed Me for Nine Years

My old home was in a small village in Henan, near a coal mine. Ever since I can remember, I was always being troubled by strange and unusual things.

My mother said it might have had something to do with the accident that happened when I was born. She was pregnant with me and my twin elder brother, and one day, while taking lunch to my father, who worked at the coal mine, she tripped over loose stones on the road and fell. My brother did not survive. I was lucky enough to be born, but I had choked on amniotic fluid, and my body had always been frail. Perhaps because of that, I could always see things ordinary people could not.

When I was three, there were two persimmon trees in our yard. The farther one was only seven or eight meters from the living-room door. In the countryside, the pit toilet was far away, and there were no streetlights, so my parents tacitly allowed me to go under that farther persimmon tree when I needed to use the toilet at night. After doing it many times, I stopped being afraid. Even on pitch-black nights, I still dared to stagger out there by myself.

That night, a little after eight, my parents were sitting on the bed watching television. I sat between them, playing by myself, when I suddenly needed to use the toilet. I climbed over my father, who was lying on the outside, slowly got off the bed, put on my little shoes, and walked to the bedroom door.

Because there had been so much coal mining in the village, the ground had become uneven, and the bedroom door had long since stopped fitting properly. It took all the strength I had to pull it open.

I gripped the door handle and pulled with all my might, my face turning red from the effort. Suddenly, with a loud clang, I yanked the door open.

The next second, I froze.

A woman in red was pressed right against the back of the door. The moment the door opened, the two of us were almost face to face. I was so small that I barely reached her thigh, and there was no more than the width of two fists between us.

In that instant, I was so frightened that my soul nearly left my body. I dropped onto the floor with a loud wail and burst into tears, trembling all over.

My parents rushed over and held me. They coaxed me for a long time before I finally sobbed out, “On the door… 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 a little after eight, he would take me on his motorcycle and ride through the village lanes.

Behind the village there was a road running north to south. Beside the road was the cemetery of the village my grandmother came from on her mother’s side. The whole area was covered with grave mounds.

That night, when we passed the cemetery, I suddenly pointed at the back seat of my father’s motorcycle and shouted, “Dad, an old woman just got on!”

My father looked back and laughed, saying my eyes must be playing tricks on me.

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

When we got home, I came down with a high fever. My whole body burned as I lay in bed. In my dazed state, I saw an old woman’s head pressed against the window, staring straight at me.

I was so frightened that I screamed.

My parents and grandmother all gathered around me. They stood by the window, muttering and coaxing for a long time. But as long as I lifted my head, I could still see that head.

For two days in a row, I did not take even a drop of water. My grandmother was frantic with worry and ran to a neighboring village to find a folk ritual master.

As soon as the master heard what had happened, he said, “That is 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 loved children most of all. Years earlier, while carrying shoulder baskets to sell vegetables, she had been hit by a vehicle, and her head had been knocked off on the spot. That was why what I saw was only a head.

My grandmother burned paper money and said many words to the window, telling my great-grandmother not to worry and to go back in peace.

From then on, the head at the window never appeared again. But the black shadow in the lower right corner of that window became a shadow I could never shake for the rest of my life.

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

Because my grandmother favored boys over girls and did not like us, my third maternal uncle rented an empty apartment in his residential compound to us, so my father would have a convenient place to rest between freight trips.

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

In the middle of the night, there was suddenly a knocking sound.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The rhythm was dull and stiff, each knock landing on the security door.

I had been bold ever since I was little, so I put on my thin pajamas and ran to open the door.

But outside the door, everything was pitch-black. There was only the eerie sound of wind in the stairwell.

I closed the door and lay back down on the bed.

Less than ten minutes later, the knocking sounded again.

This time, I got angry. I put on my padded coat, took the key, opened the door, and sat down on the stair steps, wanting to see who was playing a prank.

But just then, the knocking actually came from inside the apartment.

That knocking continued on and off for a month.

Later, because my older female cousin on my mother’s side needed to live there for school, we moved to the fifth floor of Building Two in Lotus Garden.

Unexpectedly, on the very first night, that familiar knocking came again, right on schedule.

My parents told me to ignore it. They said that once it had knocked enough, it would naturally stop. Sure enough, after a month, it disappeared again.

Not long after that, we moved again, 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 that apartment three years earlier. They had no sons or daughters, and the two of them had hanged themselves together.

Sure enough, on the very first night, the knocking came again.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Just like that, the knocking stayed with us for nine years.

We moved three times, and every time it appeared right on time. It would last for one month, then disappear silently without warning.

Everyone in my family was atheist. They never believed in these things, and they never went looking for another folk ritual master.

Now I am grown, but the things I encountered as a child—the female ghost in red, the head at the window, and the knocking that never stopped for nine years—are still as clear as if they happened yesterday.

I often think that perhaps it was my elder brother’s regret at never being able to come into this world, or perhaps it was my great-grandmother’s attachment to the children, or perhaps it was the unfinished wish of that elderly couple, that caused these strange things to happen.

But no matter what it was, those things became marks in my life that can never be erased.

They also made me understand that in this world, there are always some things that lie beyond scientific explanation, and toward them, we need to keep a sense of awe.