The Seventh Night
My cousin told me about his great-grandfather, a man who practiced forbidden arts. He told me about the night his grandfather died and something came for him. He says he is only alive because the dead made a choice.
I have always considered myself a skeptic. Rational. Grounded. I need evidence before I believe anything, and I have spent my entire adult life avoiding situations that would challenge that worldview. But my cousin Derek called me last night, and after two hours of talking over beers about things I would never have believed possible, I am no longer sure where I stand.
The story starts with his great-grandfather. A man named Huang, known in their village as the Layman. He was not a monk or a temple priest. He was something else entirely—an ordinary farmer who happened to know things. Old things. Things written in texts that most people never saw, passed down through families who kept them secret. Talismans. Curses. The ability to see what should not be seen.
Huang was not kind. The village elders told him to use his abilities wisely, to help those in need, to stay on the side of the living. He ignored them. Instead, he played games. Cruel ones. There is a story still told in Derek's family about the night Huang drew a symbol on a man's palm and sent him walking through the old cemetery on the hill. The man was a skeptic. He did not believe in anything beyond what he could touch and see. He walked through the graves, and when he opened his hand as Huang had instructed, he saw something that broke his mind completely. They found him the next morning, curled in a fetal position near the eastern wall, screaming at things no one else could perceive. He never recovered. He lived out his remaining years in an institution in the city, permanently gone.
Huang died before fifty. The village people said he brought it on himself. The Layman had traded his integrity for power, and the cost was exacted in full. The skills he possessed died with him. His own son, Derek's grandfather, wanted nothing to do with the practice. He was young, wild, more interested in drinking and running with bad company than sitting at an old man's feet learning secrets. So Huang took his knowledge into the grave.
But that was not the end of the story. Because when you practice darkness, even secondhand, even tangentially, the consequences have a way of echoing through generations. The Huang family was prosperous once, before the Layman. After his death, they struggled. Generations lived in poverty, in illness, in misfortune that seemed to follow them like a shadow. Some people in the village said it was punishment. Retribution that continued long after Huang himself was buried.
There is a small statue on Emei Mountain. A carving of a young acolyte standing beside a bodhisattva. Derek's family claims it was modeled after Huang, placed there by a grateful pilgrim who knew him in his youth. A reminder of what he might have been if he had chosen a different path.
The second story is about the Chicken-Foot God. I do not fully understand this one. Derek explained it as a collector. A low-ranking official of the afterlife who gathers souls at the moment of death. The legend says that on the seventh night after someone dies, if you scatter white powder near the door of the house, you will find footprints by morning. Chicken footprints. Small, three-toed marks pressed into the ash or lime. The sign that death has visited and taken what it came for.
Derek's sister was four years old when their grandfather passed. The night he died, she looked out the window at nothing and said, very clearly: "Grandfather is going to die." Their aunt scolded her for speaking about something so serious, especially a child. But an hour later, the old man was gone. No one could explain how she knew. No one wanted to talk about it.
The seventh night came. Derek was sixteen, a sophomore in high school, sleeping in the room next to his grandparents. He was not fully asleep. He was in that space between waking and dreaming, where the world becomes soft at the edges. And he heard voices. Multiple voices, speaking in low tones, moving through the house.
One of the voices was his grandfather's.
Derek lay frozen as the conversation continued. His grandfather was speaking to three others—something not quite human, something that had come to collect him. The others were discussing Derek. They said he was the favorite grandson. They said they should take him along, so the old man would have company on his journey. Derek felt pressure on his throat, a sensation of hands closing around his neck. He tried to scream but nothing came out.
Then his grandfather's voice spoke again, quieter now. "No. He stays. He is not ready."
The pressure on Derek's throat vanished. He woke up gasping, clawing at his own neck. There were marks on his skin. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. He went straight to his grandfather and told him what happened. The old man, still weak from his illness, just looked at him for a long moment and then said: "You will be alright. I told them no."
Derek is forty-one now. He has never told this story to anyone outside the family until last night. He says the reason he is still alive is because his grandfather, even in death, made a choice to protect him.
I am a skeptic. I need evidence. But the look in his eyes when he described waking up with those marks on his throat was not the look of a man telling a lie. It was the look of someone who came close to something he cannot explain, and who has spent decades trying to find a rational answer that simply does not exist.
He told me other stories last night. Older ones. Stranger ones. All from people in his village, all from his family, all supposedly true. I do not know what to believe. But I know I will not sleep the same way for a while.
Some doors, once opened, do not close again.
The story starts with his great-grandfather. A man named Huang, known in their village as the Layman. He was not a monk or a temple priest. He was something else entirely—an ordinary farmer who happened to know things. Old things. Things written in texts that most people never saw, passed down through families who kept them secret. Talismans. Curses. The ability to see what should not be seen.
Huang was not kind. The village elders told him to use his abilities wisely, to help those in need, to stay on the side of the living. He ignored them. Instead, he played games. Cruel ones. There is a story still told in Derek's family about the night Huang drew a symbol on a man's palm and sent him walking through the old cemetery on the hill. The man was a skeptic. He did not believe in anything beyond what he could touch and see. He walked through the graves, and when he opened his hand as Huang had instructed, he saw something that broke his mind completely. They found him the next morning, curled in a fetal position near the eastern wall, screaming at things no one else could perceive. He never recovered. He lived out his remaining years in an institution in the city, permanently gone.
Huang died before fifty. The village people said he brought it on himself. The Layman had traded his integrity for power, and the cost was exacted in full. The skills he possessed died with him. His own son, Derek's grandfather, wanted nothing to do with the practice. He was young, wild, more interested in drinking and running with bad company than sitting at an old man's feet learning secrets. So Huang took his knowledge into the grave.
But that was not the end of the story. Because when you practice darkness, even secondhand, even tangentially, the consequences have a way of echoing through generations. The Huang family was prosperous once, before the Layman. After his death, they struggled. Generations lived in poverty, in illness, in misfortune that seemed to follow them like a shadow. Some people in the village said it was punishment. Retribution that continued long after Huang himself was buried.
There is a small statue on Emei Mountain. A carving of a young acolyte standing beside a bodhisattva. Derek's family claims it was modeled after Huang, placed there by a grateful pilgrim who knew him in his youth. A reminder of what he might have been if he had chosen a different path.
The second story is about the Chicken-Foot God. I do not fully understand this one. Derek explained it as a collector. A low-ranking official of the afterlife who gathers souls at the moment of death. The legend says that on the seventh night after someone dies, if you scatter white powder near the door of the house, you will find footprints by morning. Chicken footprints. Small, three-toed marks pressed into the ash or lime. The sign that death has visited and taken what it came for.
Derek's sister was four years old when their grandfather passed. The night he died, she looked out the window at nothing and said, very clearly: "Grandfather is going to die." Their aunt scolded her for speaking about something so serious, especially a child. But an hour later, the old man was gone. No one could explain how she knew. No one wanted to talk about it.
The seventh night came. Derek was sixteen, a sophomore in high school, sleeping in the room next to his grandparents. He was not fully asleep. He was in that space between waking and dreaming, where the world becomes soft at the edges. And he heard voices. Multiple voices, speaking in low tones, moving through the house.
One of the voices was his grandfather's.
Derek lay frozen as the conversation continued. His grandfather was speaking to three others—something not quite human, something that had come to collect him. The others were discussing Derek. They said he was the favorite grandson. They said they should take him along, so the old man would have company on his journey. Derek felt pressure on his throat, a sensation of hands closing around his neck. He tried to scream but nothing came out.
Then his grandfather's voice spoke again, quieter now. "No. He stays. He is not ready."
The pressure on Derek's throat vanished. He woke up gasping, clawing at his own neck. There were marks on his skin. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. He went straight to his grandfather and told him what happened. The old man, still weak from his illness, just looked at him for a long moment and then said: "You will be alright. I told them no."
Derek is forty-one now. He has never told this story to anyone outside the family until last night. He says the reason he is still alive is because his grandfather, even in death, made a choice to protect him.
I am a skeptic. I need evidence. But the look in his eyes when he described waking up with those marks on his throat was not the look of a man telling a lie. It was the look of someone who came close to something he cannot explain, and who has spent decades trying to find a rational answer that simply does not exist.
He told me other stories last night. Older ones. Stranger ones. All from people in his village, all from his family, all supposedly true. I do not know what to believe. But I know I will not sleep the same way for a while.
Some doors, once opened, do not close again.