Bribing Ghosts

By Leah R Cutter

Life sucks for Fu Ran right now. Her father, dead of cancer, her brother, killed in a car accident. Her mother, sick. Without the Communist Party affiliations from her father's friends, she cannot pursue the advanced degree in chemistry that she's worked so hard to obtain.

 

Obviously, Fu Ran and her family have angered some ghost (or ghosts). Maybe bribing the ghost of Fu Ran's father to intervene on their behalf can save her.

 

Which means a trip to the cemetery where he is buried. During Ghost Month. Risking evil spirits or other bad luck.

 

The charming man she meets there, very much alive, and with secrets all his own changes things.

 

Could she help him, despite her own bad luck? Bribe him as well, so that he continues to "haunt" her, staying with her like an old ghost?

 

A romantic suspense mystery by Leah R Cutter, part of the Year of Mystery!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Jul 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201894559

Book preview

Bribing Ghosts

Bribing Ghosts

Leah R Cutter

Knotted Road Press

Contents

Bribing Ghosts

About the Author

Also by Leah R Cutter

About Knotted Road Press

Bribing Ghosts

Fu Ran knelt in front of her father’s grave. At least she’d remembered to bring a rough, red-and-black checked blanket so her jeans wouldn’t get too dirty kneeling on the ground. The August sun beat down on the back of her head from the clear blue sky, making her wish she’d wrapped her long black hair up in a bun, getting it off her shoulders and neck. She wore a short-sleeved white blouse that her father would have considered scandalous as it didn’t cover her up to her neck, but it was far too warm to go around completely swaddled.

She also didn’t wear any makeup—something else her father had always associated with the corrupting Western influence creeping into the mainland.

On the ground in front of Fu Ran sat a paper boat, about the size of her two hands held together. It had been cleverly folded out of bright red-and-gold Hell money—joss paper to be burned as an offering for the dead. Between the boat and the unassuming gray tombstone a few feet away, Fu Ran had stuck nine rows of incense into the ground, three sticks per row, twenty-seven total: the same as her age, hopefully a lucky number that day. Sweet smoke curled up from the lit ends, hazing the clear air.

Earlier, that spring, during the qingming festival, her entire family had gathered to clean the front area of the grave: her mother, her two older brothers, her grandfather, as well as one of her aunts and three of her cousins. No weeds remained, and the grass in front of the grave marker stayed short.

Now, Fu Ran knelt all alone. No one had dared come with her to visit a graveyard during gui yue—Ghost Month.

According to tradition, Judge Yama opened the gates of Hell on the first day of the seventh Lunar month, setting all the wild ghosts free to roam the earth. On the fifteenth of the month, there would be many celebrations and events to feed and entertain the ghosts, who would all (hopefully) leave by the end of the month.

Though Fu Ran’s family had made offerings on the first day of Ghost Month to appease any hungry ancestors who came to visit, bad luck had struck them hard. Fu Ran’s mother remained in the hospital after the car accident that had claimed the life of her middle brother. Her eldest brother had lost his job. And her youngest aunt had come down with the flu and was still bedridden, the doctors worried and ordering more tests.

Obviously, some ghost (or ghosts) were angry with Fu Ran and her family. She’d decided that making an offering in a temple