The little girl in the photograph

In the first-floor living room.

Meng Yifan was groveling in Seventh Master Zhao's house, pouring him tea.

"Seventh Master, I ran my big mouth earlier. Please be the bigger man and let me off. I'm not worth your trouble."

"Heh heh."

After all, our lives were on the line. What was pride worth?

This expert had a strange temper, too. A moment ago, he had told us to get lost, and now he had invited us inside.

He glanced at Meng Yifan and snorted. "Who sent you here?"

I quickly gave him Brother Liu's name and said we were close buddies of his.

"Oh, that kid."

Seventh Master Zhao nodded, sipping his tea as he looked Meng Yifan and me up and down.

There was something strange about the way he looked at us. I couldn't quite explain it, but I felt as though he had already figured something out.

"This is going to be tricky."

He finally spoke after a long silence, only to send our hearts plummeting. "Let me make this clear first: I might not be able to save you."

Meng Yifan and I immediately panicked. "Seventh Master, we haven't even told you anything yet. How can you already know it's tricky?"

Seventh Master Zhao explained, "Most spirits-what you call ghosts-aren't actually all that frightening. Sometimes, they're even afraid of people. But if one isn't afraid of people, then people had better be afraid of it, because it'll cause trouble, and it'll be vicious."

"And you two have crossed more than one spirit. One of them has been dead for at least a decade."

We were stunned, utterly speechless.

We hadn't revealed anything before this, yet Seventh Master Zhao had already told us so much, and every detail matched.

"Seventh Master, please find a way to save us!"

"We're still young. We really don't want to die!"

Meng Yifan abandoned his pride completely. After all, nothing mattered more than staying alive.

Seventh Master Zhao sighed. "Tell me what happened first. Let me see what we're dealing with."

I quickly explained everything, including the family massacre fifteen years ago and the hidden body, giving him all the details.

"Dead for fifteen years, and sealed inside a wall. That's a lot of resentment."

Seventh Master Zhao's expression grew grave. "This woman was evil in life, so she certainly wouldn't be any better in death. With all that resentment on top of it, this ghost is extremely dangerous."

"But who is the other spirit? Haven't you looked into that?"

I shook my head and said we had racked our brains but still couldn't work out who the other ghost was. At first, we had even suspected that the ghost who knocked on our door might have been Li Xiumei.

"That definitely wasn't Li Xiumei."

Seventh Master Zhao shook his head as well. "Li Xiumei had been sealed inside that wall all along. Before her remains were dug out, her spirit could only wander around inside that apartment. She couldn't leave, so she wasn't the one knocking."

"The other ghost was actually guiding you toward Li Xiumei's remains all along. When you opened the door that night, she was already showing you outright."

Meng Yifan and I exchanged a look, instantly recalling what the girl had done.

When Meng Yifan tried to close the door, the girl had stopped him, then raised her hand and pointed toward the master bedroom.

Thinking back on it now, she really had been showing us outright.

"Didn't you say you received a photograph? Let me see it." Seventh Master Zhao looked at me.

I quickly took the photograph out of my pocket and handed it to him. Then Meng Yifan and I leaned in beside him.

Seventh Master Zhao studied it and frowned. "This photograph is too old. You can barely make out the faces."

I told him I had even asked someone to restore it on a computer, but it was so badly blurred that the faces remained indistinct even after restoration.

"Could the woman be Li Xiumei, and the man Lü Zhengxian? Is this little girl their daughter?" Meng Yifan speculated.

"Judging by the woman's clothes in the photograph, she's very likely Li Xiumei," I said.

When Li Xiumei's body was dug out, she had been wearing that same outfit.

"But the little girl in the photograph probably isn't Li Xiumei and Lü Zhengxian's daughter. Brother Liu never mentioned one, and Li Xiumei was only twenty-three fifteen years ago. Judging by the girl's height, she was already five or six. If she were Li Xiumei's daughter, that would mean Li Xiumei had given birth at seventeen or eighteen."

"At that point, she and Lü Zhengxian hadn't committed the family massacre yet. The hospital would definitely have had a record of the birth, and the little girl would have been entered in a household register, either Li Xiumei's family's or Lü Zhengxian's."

So this little girl couldn't have been their daughter.

Seventh Master Zhao looked thoughtful. "I heard about that family massacre fifteen years ago, too. There were four people in the family. Three died, but a five-year-old girl couldn't be found. No one knew whether she was alive or dead. Wouldn't you call that a coincidence?"

I was startled. "You mean the little girl in the photograph was the only survivor of that massacre? That family's daughter?"

Seventh Master Zhao nodded. "This looks like a family portrait. Since Li Xiumei and Lü Zhengxian had no children, but took a five- or six-year-old girl along to pose for one, their relationship with her must have been close."

"Maybe they adopted the only survivor of that massacre."

"Fuck, those two animals," Meng Yifan said. "How was that little girl supposed to face her own life when she grew up?"

Seventh Master Zhao looked at us and asked pointedly, "How old would you say the girl who knocked on your door was?"

I paused. "Just over twenty, I'd say. She was very young."

Seventh Master Zhao said, "Fifteen years ago, the little girl in the photograph was five or six. How old would she be fifteen years later?"

"Just over twenty..." I blurted out.

Before I could finish, Meng Yifan and I both drew a sharp breath.

"The other ghost is the little girl in the photograph!"

"She's dead!"

How could this have happened?

If Li Xiumei and Lü Zhengxian had adopted her, and Li Xiumei had died fifteen years ago, then the girl must have been living with Lü Zhengxian all this time.

Had Lü Zhengxian killed her?

Was Lü Zhengxian some kind of murder maniac?

Like a master detective, Seventh Master Zhao continued, "Li Xiumei's death wasn't discovered until now, so her killer could only have been Lü Zhengxian. Only someone living under the same roof could have killed her without a sound, then sealed her inside a wall without anyone noticing."

"If that's the case, how did the girl who knocked on your door know Li Xiumei had died in that apartment, and in the master bedroom, no less? Unless that girl had lived in the apartment back then, too, and witnessed Li Xiumei's murder from beginning to end."

"But why would she have lived with Li Xiumei and Lü Zhengxian? There's no doubt about it. The girl who knocked on your door is the little girl in the photograph. That settles it."

Meng Yifan was having trouble wrapping his head around it.

But I quickly pieced together the logic behind Seventh Master Zhao's words.

I marveled at this expert's wisdom, but it also raised even more questions.

Why had this girl survived fifteen years ago, only to die fifteen years later?

Was the ghost trying to hurt us Li Xiumei, or this girl?

Or did both women want to hurt us?