6 The Living Dead Work Together

On a dark, cloudy evening four travelers arrived at an inn seeking a room to shelter for the night. One of the men asked the innkeeper if there were any available rooms for the travelers to stay for the night as they still had a long way to travel and needed to rest. The innkeeper told him that every room was occupied and he could do nothing for them. The traveler begged and claimed that it was too unsafe to continue traveling in the dark, fearing that they would be robbed or get caught in the oncoming storm. Finally, after much hesitation, the innkeeper told the traveler that he and his friends could stay, but there were no beds available. The innkeeper led the travelers to a cramped, windowless room that contained nothing except for a few puddles on the floor and dense cobwebs that filled the otherwise empty space. The traveler laid out four spare mats that the innkeeper offered them to sleep on and soon went to bed.

Sometime in the middle of the night, the traveler was startled awake by a strong current of icy wind, yet when he looked around there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary and the room remained undisturbed. He motioned to go back to sleep, but then quickly realized the mats next to him were all empty and his three friends were nowhere to be found. The traveler stood up cautiously and began to roam the inn in search of his friends. When he was close to giving up hope, he saw a human figure at the end of a hallway and ran toward it to see if it happened to be one of his friends. When he had come closer to the figure he soon recognized the shape and composure to be that of a woman. The woman, almost expectantly, turned towards him with her hand outstretched as he approached. Her skin seemed to be glowing in the moonlight, a seemingly soft and pale hue. The man reached out to take her hand in his, asking her if she had seen three men anywhere around the inn. When he did so, however, he was startled, feeling the same sensation that had woken him up earlier—her touch was as cold as ice. He slowly looked up to meet her gaze and was met with a worried expression.

She opened her mouth to speak to him. Her voice only a faint whisper as she spoke, “I am the daughter of the innkeeper. I died recently and now that I have come back, I ask that you help your friends enact their revenge on the man who was supposed to deliver their bodies safely to their burial sites. This man took their bodies, and in an act of purposeful cruelty, left them elsewhere to rot. He is not a corpse driver, but rather a smuggler using the occupation to disguise his actions.”

The traveler stepped back startled and angry in protest, exclaiming that he had just traveled here with his friends and they were fine. He pondered for a second and upon this contemplation realized that during this whole trip his friends had all remained silent. Struggling to comprehend the possibility of his closest friends having died without his knowledge, the traveler thought back to the tales of the dead coming back to life and replied simply, “The dead cannot travel in the light. If my friends were truly what you say then they would have been swept away as ash in the wind.”

The ghost clutched the traveler’s hand tightly in her grasp pleading, “Oh traveler, but there was no sun on your journey here. You may have traveled during the day, but this day was a cloudy one and you traveled down through the dense forests of the mountain, no ray of sunshine could penetrate such darkness.”

He looked up to the woman once more and questioned how she knew this. The ghost told him that the same man had harmed her when she was still alive and is the reason for her death. It was only a week ago when he stopped by the inn on his journey up the mountain, and fixated upon her beauty. In the middle of the night he stole her away and she was never seen by her father again. That is until she came back as a ghost for the purpose of fulfilling her duties as a daughter, caring for her father while his allotted time still remained. The traveler became convinced that this was true, and moved by her display of filial piety, asked what he could do to help. The woman gave him the address of the criminal and he hastily made his way to find him.

As he arrived at the man’s house he heard yelling. He ran into the courtyard and saw his three friends chasing a man that fit the description of the criminal. As he approached the scene, a black cloud suddenly appeared from thin air with a strange, unfamiliar figure standing tall upon it. The figure spoke to the criminal in a deep, husk voice, “I am a Judge from the afterlife and was summoned here by those you have wronged. What do you say to those who have sued you?” The man stayed silent, too stunned to speak and not having any excuse for his actions. “It has been decided. If you have nothing to say then you shall pay for those you have hurt.”

The figure disappeared with a sound like the crack of thunder and immediately after the criminal man dropped to the ground where he stood. The traveler crouched down beside the man and saw that he was dead. He then swiftly ran over to where his friends had been standing and saw that they had frozen in place. He called for a Taoist priest to come and bring their bodies back to their hometown, whom he accompanied the journey with and when they arrived home he gave his friends their proper burials. That night as he went to bed, he was visited by the ghost from the inn. The ghost thanked him for helping get revenge and for giving his friends the burial they deserved before returning back to her father’s inn.