The call came on a Tuesday afternoon, while I was lying on my couch watching a documentary about deep-sea fish.
"Master Chen? My name is Fang — Fang Jianguo. A friend gave me your number. He said you're the best in the business."
I muted the TV. Deep-sea fish could wait.
"Mr. Fang," I said, dropping my voice half an octave into what I privately called my "Master Register." "Tell me what's been happening."
What followed was a ten-minute monologue that I can summarize as follows: Fang Jianguo, fifty-two, owner of a mid-sized hardware distribution company, had recently purchased a second-hand villa in the western suburbs. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, small garden, good bones. The previous owners had emigrated, or so the agent said. The price was reasonable. Fang Jianguo had been pleased with himself.
That was three weeks ago.
Since then: food had been disappearing from the kitchen. Not all of it — just small amounts. Half a bag of crackers. Two apples. A chunk of cheese. Fang Jianguo had initially blamed his wife. His wife had initially blamed him. They had argued about it for four days before agreeing that neither of them was secretly eating crackers at two in the morning.
Then came the sounds from the basement. Low, irregular thumping. Sometimes a kind of shuffling. Always at night.
Then the smell of cigarette smoke, drifting through the ground floor hallway, even though neither Fang Jianguo nor his wife smoked.
And then — the incident that had sent the entire family to a hotel — his wife had gotten up at midnight to use the bathroom, glanced down the hallway, and seen a dark shape standing near the basement door. She had screamed. Fang Jianguo had come running. The shape was gone. His wife had fainted. Their cat, which had been sleeping on the couch, had bolted under the bed and refused to come out for six hours.
The family had been living at the Marriott ever since. Even the cat.
"How long ago was this?" I asked.
"Five days," Fang Jianguo said. "Master Chen, I need this resolved. My wife won't go back until it's fixed. My mother-in-law is saying we should sell the house. Do you know how much I paid for that house?"
I did not know, but I had a feeling I was about to find out.
"Four point eight million," he said. "I am not selling a four point eight million yuan villa because of a ghost."
Reasonable position.
"Mr. Fang," I said, "I've handled situations like this many times. Don't worry. Send me the address, and I'll come take a look tomorrow morning."
"What's your fee?"
I thought about it. Villa in the western suburbs. Four point eight million purchase price. Man who says "four point eight million" the way other people say "a lot." Wife who fainted. Cat traumatized.
"Eighty thousand," I said. "That includes the assessment, the ritual, and a follow-up visit."
There was a pause.
"Fine," he said.
I unmuted the TV. The deep-sea fish were doing something extraordinary with bioluminescence. I watched for a moment, then turned it off and started planning.
Food disappearing: rats, almost certainly. A villa that had been sitting empty for a while would be an attractive proposition for local wildlife. Rats are bold, rats are sneaky, and rats absolutely will eat your crackers.
Basement sounds: resonance in the ventilation ducts, most likely. Old buildings develop all kinds of acoustic quirks. Wind moving through pipes at certain angles produces thumping, shuffling, even what sounds like breathing if you're already scared enough.
Cigarette smell: harder to pin down without being there. Could be a neighbor. Could be residual smell from a previous owner. Could be the ventilation system pulling air from somewhere unexpected.
The shadow: Fang Jianguo's wife, half-asleep, midnight, already primed to be frightened. The human brain is extraordinarily good at assembling shadows into human shapes. It's called pareidolia, and it's the reason people see faces in clouds and ghosts in dark hallways.
All perfectly explicable.
I went to bed feeling good about this one.
---
The villa was a forty-minute drive from the city center, tucked into a development of similar properties behind a set of iron gates. It was a handsome building — white exterior, terracotta roof tiles, a small garden that had gone slightly wild from neglect. The kind of place that looked cheerful in daylight and probably looked considerably less cheerful at two in the morning.
Fang Jianguo met me at the gate. He was a compact, energetic man with the slightly harried look of someone who had been sleeping badly. He was wearing a polo shirt and carrying a thermos of tea, which he offered to me immediately.
"Master Chen," he said, pumping my hand. "Thank you for coming. I've heard so much about you."
"Whatever you've heard, I'm sure it's exaggerated," I said, which is the kind of thing that sounds modest but actually makes people more impressed. I've found it works well.
I was wearing my full kit: the dark blue Taoist robe, the wooden beads around my wrist, the feng shui compass in my left hand. I'd had the robe dry-cleaned last week and it looked excellent. Professional. Authoritative.
Fang Jianguo led me inside.
The villa was well-furnished but had the slightly stale quality of a place that hadn't been properly aired out in weeks. The kitchen was to the left of the entrance, the living room straight ahead, a staircase leading up to the bedrooms, and — at the end of a short hallway — a door that presumably led to the basement.
I started in the kitchen.
I walked slowly around the perimeter, holding my compass at chest height and watching the needle with an expression of deep concentration. In reality, I was looking at the baseboards, the corners, the gap between the refrigerator and the wall.
There. A small dark smear along the baseboard near the back corner. And if I looked carefully — yes. A gap in the wall where the plaster had cracked, just wide enough for a determined rat.
"Mm," I said, in a tone that suggested I was receiving important metaphysical information.
"What is it?" Fang Jianguo asked, leaning forward.
"The energy flow in this room is disrupted," I said. "Something has been disturbing the natural balance." I moved the compass in a slow arc. "I'm sensing... interference. From below, and from the periphery."
Fang Jianguo nodded seriously. "That's exactly where the food keeps disappearing from. The corner by the refrigerator."
"Yes," I said. "That would be consistent with what I'm detecting."
I moved on to the living room, then the hallway, then paused at the basement door. I placed my hand flat against it and closed my eyes.
I was actually listening for sounds from below. There were none — it was midday, and whatever was causing the nighttime noises would presumably be quiet now. But the gesture looked good.
"The basement," I said. "Has anyone been down there recently?"
"Not since we moved in," Fang Jianguo said. "We looked at it when we first bought the place — it's just storage. Empty shelves, some old furniture the previous owners left behind. We haven't had any reason to go down."
"I'll need to examine it," I said.
Fang Jianguo unlocked the door and flicked on the light switch. A single bare bulb illuminated a wooden staircase leading down. The smell that drifted up was the usual basement smell: damp concrete, old wood, dust.
And something else. Very faint. Stale cigarette smoke.
I filed that away and descended the stairs.
The basement was roughly the same footprint as the ground floor — a large open space with concrete walls, a low ceiling, and the promised empty shelving units along one wall. A few pieces of old furniture were stacked in one corner: a broken chair, a rolled-up rug, a wooden wardrobe with one door hanging open.
I walked the perimeter slowly, compass in hand, examining everything.
The ventilation duct ran along the ceiling — a metal pipe about thirty centimeters in diameter, with a grille at one end. I could see immediately that the mounting bracket had come slightly loose, allowing the pipe to vibrate when air moved through it. That would produce exactly the kind of low, irregular thumping Fang Jianguo had described.
I noted the location and moved on.
The cigarette smell was stronger down here, but diffuse — it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Old smell, I decided. Residual. The previous owners, or someone who'd been in here before the sale.
I completed my circuit and climbed back upstairs.
"Well?" Fang Jianguo asked.
"As I suspected," I said. "There are several points of energetic disturbance. The kitchen, the basement, and the hallway between them. This is a classic pattern." I paused for effect. "The previous occupants left behind some residual energy. It's been accumulating."
Fang Jianguo looked alarmed. "Is it dangerous?"
"Not if we address it promptly," I said. "I'll need to perform a cleansing ritual tonight. I'll stay through the night to ensure the process is complete."
"Of course, of course," he said. "Whatever you need."
I spent another hour walking through the rest of the house, making notes on my phone, and identifying the practical fixes I'd need to make after dark: seal the rat entry point in the kitchen, tighten the ventilation duct bracket in the basement, check the hallway for any other sources of the cigarette smell.
Straightforward. I'd be done by midnight.
---
Fang Jianguo left at six, after showing me where the spare key was and making me promise to call if anything happened. I assured him I had everything under control. He drove away looking slightly less haunted than when I'd arrived.
I changed out of the robe — no point wearing it when there was no audience — and put on a comfortable jacket. Then I made myself a cup of tea from the supplies I'd brought, settled onto the living room couch, and opened my phone.
I had a system for these overnight jobs. First hour: check the practical issues I'd identified during the day. Second hour: eat dinner. Third through sixth hours: watch something on my phone, nap if possible, and wait for morning. Collect payment. Go home.
Simple. Reliable. Profitable.
I started with the kitchen.
The rat entry point was easy enough to deal with — I'd brought steel wool and expanding foam, the standard solution. I packed the gap thoroughly, smoothed it over, and stepped back to admire my work. No rat was getting through that. I placed a "protective talisman" (folded red paper) on the counter nearby, for the client's peace of mind.
Then I went down to the basement.
The ventilation duct bracket took about ten minutes to tighten with the screwdriver I'd brought. I tested it by pressing on the pipe — solid. No more vibration, no more thumping.
I was about to head back upstairs when I noticed something.
On the floor near the old wardrobe, there was a small dark rectangle. I crouched down and shone my flashlight at it.
A chocolate bar wrapper. The cheap kind, the ones that cost two yuan at convenience stores. It was slightly crumpled, as if it had been folded and unfolded a few times.
I picked it up. It was clean — no dust on it, no discoloration.
Recent.
I looked at the wardrobe. The door that had been hanging open was now closed.
I was fairly certain it had been open when I'd come down here this afternoon.
I stood very still for a moment, listening.
Nothing.
I walked over to the wardrobe and opened the door.
Empty. Just the smell of old wood and — there it was again — cigarette smoke.
I closed the wardrobe, went back upstairs, and sat down on the couch.
I picked up my tea. Put it down again.
Rats don't eat chocolate bars. They eat crackers and apples and cheese, yes — but they don't unwrap things. They chew through packaging. They don't fold wrappers.
I picked up my tea again and took a long sip, staring at the basement door.
Then I took out my phone and opened the notes app. I typed: *chocolate wrapper. wardrobe door. cigarette smell.*
I looked at what I'd written.
Then I typed: *rats don't smoke.*
I put my phone down, picked up my tea, and sat very quietly in the living room of Fang Jianguo's four-point-eight-million-yuan villa, thinking about what kind of "ghost" unwraps chocolate bars and closes wardrobe doors behind itself.
---
At around nine o'clock, I decided to do another sweep of the ground floor. Partly to check for anything I'd missed, and partly because sitting still was making me anxious.
I was in the hallway, moving slowly toward the kitchen with my flashlight, when Fang Jianguo's voice came from behind me.
"Master Chen! What are you sensing?"
I spun around. Fang Jianguo was standing in the doorway, still in his polo shirt, thermos in hand.
"Mr. Fang," I said, once my heart had restarted. "I thought you'd gone back to the hotel."
"I came back to check on you," he said, looking slightly guilty. "My wife said I was being rude leaving you here alone. She made me bring you some soup." He held up a container. "It's pork rib. She made too much."
I accepted the soup. It smelled excellent.
"Come in," I said. "I was just doing an assessment of the hallway energy."
Fang Jianguo followed me into the hallway, watching with great attention as I moved the compass slowly through the air. I was actually thinking about the chocolate wrapper, running through possible explanations, when I became aware that I was muttering to myself.
This was a habit I had. When I was thinking hard, I sometimes narrated my thoughts under my breath. Usually it wasn't a problem, because I was alone.
I was not alone.
"...braised pork would be good, or maybe that noodle place on Renmin Road, they do that thing with the crispy shallots, or I could just get dumplings, dumplings are always fine, maybe soup dumplings, it's getting cold enough for soup dumplings..."
I became aware of Fang Jianguo staring at me.
I stopped.
There was a silence.
"Master Chen," Fang Jianguo said carefully, "are you... communicating with something?"
I looked at him. He looked at me. His expression was one of intense, slightly nervous curiosity — the expression of a man who has just heard a Taoist master apparently negotiate with spirits about soup dumplings.
"The ritual requires me to... identify what the entity desires," I said, after a pause that was perhaps one second too long. "In order to facilitate its departure."
Fang Jianguo's eyes went wide. "So the ghost wants... food?"
"Entities often do," I said, with great authority. "It's more common than people realize. The attachment to the physical world frequently manifests as hunger."
"Should I — should I leave out an offering?" Fang Jianguo asked. "I could go get some soup dumplings. There's a place not far from here."
"That won't be necessary," I said quickly. "I'll handle it through the ritual. The important thing is that I've identified the nature of the attachment." I made a note on my phone. "This is very helpful information."
Fang Jianguo nodded, looking relieved to have contributed something useful.
I suggested, gently but firmly, that he go back to the hotel and let me work. He agreed, pressed the soup container into my hands again, and left.
I stood in the hallway for a moment after his car pulled away.
Then I went and sat on the couch, opened the soup container, and ate the pork rib soup, which was genuinely excellent.
The basement door was at the end of the hallway, twelve meters away.
I ate my soup and watched it.
---
At eleven-fifteen, I heard it.
A soft sound from below. Not the ventilation duct — I'd fixed that. This was different. A kind of careful, deliberate movement. The sound of someone trying very hard not to make noise.
I set down my soup container.
The sound stopped.
I waited.
After about two minutes, it started again. Slow. Careful. And then — unmistakably — the creak of the basement stairs.
I looked at the basement door.
The handle moved.
Very slowly. As if whoever was on the other side was testing it, checking whether it was locked.
It wasn't locked. I hadn't locked it after my last trip down.
I sat on the couch, in the dark living room, watching the door handle move, and thought: *eighty thousand yuan is a lot of money.*
Then I thought: *but it is not enough money to die for.*
The handle stopped moving.
Silence.
I exhaled very slowly.
Then I picked up my phone and typed a message to Fang Jianguo: *Situation is more complex than initially assessed. Will need one additional night to complete the process.*
I hit send, put my phone in my pocket, and sat very still, staring at the basement door, until morning.
---
(End of Chapter 2)