The daughter of Zhu Shi of Taizhou was married, and her husband was away trading. One evening, by lamplight, she saw a barefoot man in a red cloth gown, hideous to look at, who came and lay with her, and said: “I take you as my wife.”
She could not fight him off. She became befuddled, and grew yellower and thinner by the day. When the thing was not there she talked and laughed as usual; when it came there was a cold wind. Nobody else could see it. Only she could.
Her sister’s husband, Yuan Chengdong, was a man of some strength, so her parents hid the woman in Yuan’s house. For some days the thing did not come. After a month it tracked her down.
“So you are hiding here! I have worn myself out hunting for you. And now I have found where you are, there is still a bridge in the way — the bridge god beats me with a stick and I cannot cross it. Yesterday I got over by sitting in the bucket of Zhou the Fourth, who carries nightsoil. After this, though you hide in a stone chest, I will have you out.”
Yuan and the woman planned to cut it down with a sword: she would point — west, east — and he would strike where she said. One day the woman clapped her hands with pleasure: “You have hit it on the forehead!” And indeed it did not come for several days. Then it came again with cloth bound round its head.
Yuan fired a bird-gun at it, but the thing was good at dodging and he never hit it. One day the woman said happily: “You have hit its arm!” And again it stayed away for days. Then it came back with its arm bandaged, stood in the doorway, and cursed.
“You are without feeling. I will have your life.” It beat the woman until she was bruised all over and screaming.
The woman’s father and Yuan burned a joint petition at the City God’s temple.
That night the woman dreamed that two men in blue came with a warrant to take her to a hearing — and asked for a fee. “This case, I guarantee you will win. Burn two thousand tin ingots to thank me. Do not think it much: in the underworld that is only twenty taels at ninety-seven per cent. It is not for me alone; it will be spread through the court on your behalf, and your uncle Shaoxian will help distribute it. You will see it plainly enough another day.” Shaoxian was a dead uncle of the Zhu family. They burned what was asked.
At the fifth watch the woman woke. “It is settled. The thing is a sedan-chair bearer from the east landing, named Ma Da. The City God was angry that he did evil in life and still does it dead, and gave him forty heavy strokes and a long cangue, to stand in front of the temple as an example.” After that the woman was well, and the whole family was happy.
Within three days she was befuddled again, and said in a new voice:
“I am Zhang, the bearer’s wife. Your father and your sister’s husband denounced my husband to the City God and had him cangued, and left me hungry and sleeping alone. I have come to avenge my husband.”
She clawed at the woman’s eyes and nearly blinded her.
Her father and Yuan could do nothing but burn another petition. That night the woman dreamed the officers summoned her again, and the thing was there too. The City God laid the burned petition on the bench in front of him and said, glaring:
“Husband and wife equally vicious. Truly they say one bed does not produce two kinds of person. Nothing short of cutting them in half at the waist.”
He ordered the two officers to bind the ghost and cut it in two with a knife. Black vapour came out. There were no guts. There was no blood.
One of the officers asked: “May we have him sent to the Country of Crowing Crows to become a jian?”
The City God refused.
“This slave harms people as a ghost. As a jian he would only start harming ghosts. Scatter the foul vapour and cut off the root.”
The officers called two long-bearded men, who took great fans and fanned the remains, and in a moment it turned to black smoke and dispersed and was gone.
The wife they imprisoned, in irons on hands and feet, and transported to the Black Cloud Mountain to do hard labour for the raksasa gods. The original officer escorted the woman back to the light. She woke in fright.
After that Zhu’s wife was well and went back to her husband’s house and bore two sons and a daughter, and was still living when this was written.
As for the nightsoil man the ghost had named — Zhou the Fourth, a neighbour — they asked him, and he said: “Now you mention it, that is strange. I came home with empty buckets one day, and they were very heavy on my shoulder.”