Chapter 9: The Cousin in the White Dress

The Cousin in the White Dress

The night my cousin died was one of those stifling summer nights when the heat seems to press against the skin and refuse to lift.

Even now, ten years later, the memory of it still turns my stomach—the charred, oily smell of gasoline, so thick it felt as if it had burned itself into my bones. She died in a rented room that night. Her lover poured gasoline over her and set her on fire. By the time the flames were put out, there was hardly enough of her left to gather.

In the end, it was my father and I who rushed to the funeral home in the middle of the night. Under the cold white glare of the lights, holding back nausea from the bitter stink in the air, we collected her ashes piece by piece.

I will never forget that scene for as long as I live.

My cousin’s life had never been easy.

When her father was young, my grandfather had given him to relatives in the neighboring village to be raised as their adopted son. Because of that, my cousin grew up there, just across the fields from us. She was gentle by nature, the kind of woman who spoke softly and swallowed her pain rather than troubling anyone with it. But she had terrible luck with the people she trusted.

Her first marriage was unhappy. Later, she met the man who became her lover. Perhaps she believed she had finally found someone she could lean on. Instead, he became the person who took her life.

What happened after her death chilled us even more.

Her husband refused to go to the funeral home to claim her ashes. He also refused to let her be buried in his family’s ancestral graveyard, saying she had disgraced his household.

Her own birth family would not take her back either. They said she had already married out. Her name had long since been moved from the family register. According to the old village custom, a married daughter was like water poured from a basin—once gone, she no longer belonged to the home that had raised her. The door gods, they said, might not stop every wandering ghost, but they would stop an outsider from entering.

And so, even after death, my cousin had nowhere to return.

In the end, it was her grandfather—my great-uncle, the one who had been adopted into that neighboring village—who secretly built her a small cenotaph on the barren slope behind the village. There was no headstone, no proper name, no rightful place for her among the dead. Only a low, lonely mound hidden among the weeds.

We all thought the matter had ended there.

Ten years is a long time. Long enough, we thought, for grief to harden over. Long enough for the dead to rest.

None of us imagined that after ten years, she would come back.

That evening, my family was sitting around the dinner table. It was an ordinary meal, warm and noisy in the way family dinners are, when my father suddenly set down his chopsticks. His face had turned grave.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “Your cousin has come back.”

The bowl in my hand struck the table with a sharp clatter, and soup spilled over the rim.

“Dad, what did you say?”

For a moment, I thought I must have misheard him. My cousin had been dead for ten years. How could she possibly come back?

“She’s returned to the neighboring village,” my father said. Beneath his voice, I heard the faintest tremor. “She’s been there for several nights. Every night, she goes to see her grandfather. Your great-uncle says she comes in wearing a white dress, and the moment she enters, she starts crying. She says the fire still hurts. She says her whole body is burning. She can’t be reborn. She has become a wandering ghost with no one to claim her.”

My mother’s face drained of color.

“How could that be?” she asked. “Could your great-uncle be imagining it? He’s old. Maybe he misses her too much.”

“That’s what I thought at first,” my father said with a sigh. “But he came to me himself. He said your cousin told him she can’t enter the ancestral hall because the City God won’t allow it—her name isn’t in the family register. She can’t return to her mother’s home because the door gods stop her. Her husband’s family won’t accept her either. So she can only drift outside, suffering the pain of being burned over and over.”

He paused, his mouth tightening.

“Your great-uncle said she had been haunting him for days. He couldn’t bear it anymore, so he came to me and asked me to think of a way. At first, I thought the old man had lost his senses. But he came every day, and he described everything so clearly, so convincingly, that I couldn’t simply dismiss it.”

To find out whether any of it was true, my father drove to the neighboring village early the next morning.

The moment he entered the village, he sensed something was wrong. The entrance, usually full of voices and movement, was empty. A few elderly villagers sat in the sun at the base of a wall, but even in broad daylight, there was fear on their faces.

My father went over and asked what had happened.

What they told him made his whole body go cold.

“What your great-uncle said is true,” Granny Wang said, clutching his hand. Her voice was shaking. “Your cousin really has come back. These past few nights, the dogs have been gathering around your great-uncle’s house and barking until no one can sleep. I saw her once myself. It was the middle of the night, and I had gone out to use the toilet. There was a young woman in a white dress standing outside his door, crying. Her hair was long, and I couldn’t see her face clearly, but her figure—her figure was exactly like your cousin when she was young.”

Another old villager nodded quickly.

“She isn’t the only one who saw her. Several families have. One night, my grandson got up to pee and saw her standing under the old locust tree at the village entrance, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe. The child was terrified. He came down with a high fever that very night. Now, as soon as it gets dark, every household shuts its doors. No one dares go outside.”

My father said that as he listened, his scalp prickled.

On the drive back, his hands shook on the steering wheel.

He had never imagined that a tragedy from ten years before could return in such a strange and terrifying form.

To understand what was happening, and to comfort my great-uncle, my father went to the temple in town the next day.

After hearing the whole story, the monk shook his head.

“The girl’s resentment is too deep,” he said. “And she has nowhere to belong. She has become a wandering spirit. We cannot contain something like this here. This is a matter for your clan. Her own family must come forward. The clan elder must open an altar and ask the City God and the Earth God of her village. Only then can you find a way to settle her.”

My father had no choice. He drove back to the neighboring village and found the elder of my cousin’s ancestral clan.

The clan elder was a man in his seventies who had believed in ghosts and gods all his life. After my father told him what had happened, even he was startled. He immediately called several of the village elders together to discuss it.

They all agreed that my cousin’s fate had been pitiful.

She had nowhere to go after death. That was why she had returned to cling to the people still connected to her. According to village custom, a daughter who had married out could not enter the ancestral hall. But she had died unjustly, and her husband’s family had refused her. Her case, they decided, was different.

In the end, the clan elder agreed to follow the monk’s advice. They would open an altar and make offerings to the village’s City God and Earth God, asking the deities to show mercy and give my cousin a path.

On the day of the ritual, I went with them.

Nearly everyone in the village came. They stood in solemn silence outside the ancestral hall. The clan elder wore ceremonial robes and held a peach-wood sword, chanting before the offering table.

On the table stood my cousin’s spirit tablet. Although she had not been admitted into the ancestral hall, the elder had made one specially for the ritual. Around it were incense, candles, paper money, fruit, and other offerings.

The ceremony lasted the entire afternoon.

By the end, the clan elder’s voice had gone hoarse, and sweat covered his forehead. Then, as dusk settled, a breeze suddenly rose.

Inside the ancestral hall, the candle flames flickered violently several times. Then, little by little, they steadied.

The clan elder opened his eyes and let out a long breath.

“The City God and the Earth God have spoken,” he told us. “The girl died unjustly. Her suffering is understandable. In recognition of her grandfather’s devotion, and because the clan has come forward to plead for her, she will be allowed, for the time being, to remain beside the cenotaph on the barren slope behind the village. On the first and fifteenth days of every lunar month, offerings and paper money must be burned for her. When her resentment has faded, underworld messengers will come to guide her toward rebirth.”

At those words, everyone seemed to release the breath they had been holding.

My great-uncle burst into tears. He knelt facing the ancestral hall and kowtowed again and again, murmuring, “Thank you, City God. Thank you, Earth God. Thank you, Elder. My granddaughter finally has somewhere to go.”

After that, the weeping woman in the white dress never appeared in the neighboring village again.

The dogs no longer barked madly in the middle of the night.

On the first and fifteenth days of every lunar month, my great-uncle would go to the barren slope behind the village to burn paper money and light incense for my cousin. He would sit there for a while and talk to her. My father often took me with him, and we would bring a few offerings of our own, standing for a moment before that small, lonely grave.

Whenever I stood there, watching the paper streamers flutter in the wind, my heart filled with feelings I could not quite name.

My cousin’s life had been bitter. Her death had been horrific. Even after death, she had suffered the pain of having nowhere to belong. She was too pitiful.

All she wanted was a place to rest.

All she wanted was to be freed from the agony of the fire.

Such a simple wish—and yet it had taken so many turns, so much pleading, before it could be granted.

Sometimes I wonder whether ghosts and gods truly exist.

If they do, why must someone who died unjustly endure so much suffering even after death?

And if they do not, how should we explain what the old villagers saw? How should we explain the dogs barking through the night, or the peace that came after the altar was opened?

Perhaps ghosts and gods are real only to those who believe, and nothing at all to those who do not.

But I would rather believe it was my cousin’s wronged spirit calling to us for help. I would rather believe it was her attachment to this world, her grief, and her unwillingness to vanish without a trace.

What we could give her was very little.

A small comfort. A place to belong. A way for her to know that someone still remembered her, and that someone still cared.

Ten years have passed since then.

My cousin’s cenotaph still stands alone on the barren slope behind the village. But it is no longer an abandoned mound that no one visits. It has become a place that holds the longing and remembrance of her family.

With that, I think perhaps she is not so lonely in the other world anymore.

This incident taught me something I have never forgotten.

A person should keep kindness in the heart. We should revere life, and we should respect every soul. Whether living or dead, everyone longs for somewhere to return to. Everyone hopes to be remembered.

Perhaps all those stories of ghosts and gods are not as hollow or distant as they seem. Perhaps they are simply the form people give to their awe of the unknown, their longing for the dead, and their hope that justice and fairness may exist somewhere beyond this world.

Now, whenever I pass the neighboring village, I always look instinctively toward the slope behind it.

I know that somewhere there is a woman in a white dress who endured too much pain and too much injustice.

But now, at last, she has found a temporary resting place.

And we will remember her.

We will remember her until the day she finally lets go of her sorrow, releases her last attachment, and begins the long journey toward another life.