Winter, 1976.
After breakfast, a bunch of old women had gathered by the village entrance, sitting in the sun and chattering away without a pause.
That spot was the village’s news post. Any little stir, any scrap of gossip, always spread from there first.
Nobody knew who started it.
"Hey, have you heard? Walter Harrington’s second girl lost her mind this morning. First thing after dawn, she flipped the breakfast table, grabbed a rolling pin, and smashed the whole house to bits."
"Molly isn’t the eldest girl now. The eldest is the one that stepmother brought in, Evelyn Harrington. Just look at the way Walter treats Evelyn—warmer than he’s ever treated Molly. Anybody who didn’t know better would think Evelyn was his own flesh and blood, and Molly was the one raised by a stepmother."
"I say she did right. Good for her, flipping that table. Good for her, smashing things too. That family’s getting what’s coming to them. We’re not blind, are we? Just look at that poor girl. A perfectly fine daughter, and they’ve worn her down into this. Didn’t the old folks always say it? Once there’s a stepmother, there’s a stepfather too. It’s only been two years, and that fair, clean little girl’s turned skinny as firewood. I’m just an outsider, and even I can’t bear to look at it."
"That child Molly’s always been a good one. Pretty face, hardworking hands, never lazy a day in her life. Just born under a hard star. Her own mother died too early to protect her, her real father’s a fool, and that stepmother’s got a vicious heart."
"That’s true enough. But after making this kind of scene, life for that girl at home’s only going to get worse. Won’t they torment her even harder now? Ah... she used to smile all day long. Now you don’t see a trace of a smile on her face."
"Come on now, Auntie Mercer, keep your voice down. If that poisonous woman hears you, she’ll come looking for trouble."
At that, Auntie Mercer slapped the shoe sole she was stitching with a sharp smack, her face full of defiance. "Let her hear. You think I’m scared of her? If she’s got the nerve to do it, why shouldn’t people talk? I’d say the same thing right in front of her face."
For a while, everybody talked over everybody else, each one speaking up for Molly Harrington.
That was a rare thing in the village.
Usually when the old women got together to chat, they’d end up arguing sooner or later. They always had to outtalk one another, had to settle who was right and who was wrong, till their faces turned red and nobody would back down.
The side that won would carry her little stool home grinning from ear to ear, so pleased she could eat an extra bowl at supper. The one that lost would stew over it all evening, saving up her strength and waiting to win back face the next day.
But this time it was different. Every last one of them stood on Molly Harrington’s side.
That alone showed how much the people in the village pitied the girl.
Molly Harrington, Walter Harrington’s second daughter.
Everything those old women at the village entrance were talking about today was about her.
At that very moment, she was sitting on the edge of the bed in her own room, her face so dark it made people shiver. She looked like some vengeful ghost clawing its way back from the underworld, with a savage chill coming off her from head to toe.
That morning at breakfast, she had turned the house upside down and finally torn things apart with her father and stepmother.
There was no going back now.
Then again, she had never planned to go back in the first place.
Outside, her father and her stepmother were still cursing and carrying on. Listening to their voices, Molly Harrington felt a sorrow rise in her chest so heavy it was hard to put into words.
That was right—Molly Harrington had been reborn.
How had she died in her last life? She had been tortured until she barely looked human, then died in a winter so bitter it felt like it could freeze the marrow out of your bones.
After she died, she did not even get a proper burial. They wrapped her in a torn straw mat and tossed her straight into the wasteland behind the mountain. They did not even bother digging her a grave.
She was only thirty-five when she died. At five foot eight, she had wasted away to barely eighty or ninety pounds, nothing left but skin stretched over bones. More than a dozen bones in her body were broken. Her whole body was covered in bruises, purple and blue, not one patch of skin unhurt. She had been beaten to death.
After she died, Walter Harrington came to the door saying he wanted justice for her. But what did he really want? Money. The other side handed him a few hundred yuan, and he took it and left, saying he would not pursue the matter anymore.
And her soul drifted back and forth between her corpse and that room where they had locked her up for three whole days. Even after death, her spirit could still feel that bone-deep pain.
She watched her own father stand there talking to the people who had ruined her life. Hatred burned inside her so fiercely she wanted to claw her way back from the underworld, drag every one of them down with her, and make them taste that same living hell.
But she could do nothing. Again and again, she could only watch helplessly as she passed right through their bodies. Three days later, she saw with her own eyes as a pack of wolves tore her corpse apart bite by bite, until only a few bones were left behind... and only then was it truly over.
Her consciousness slowly blurred. She had no idea how much time passed. Then, by her ear, she heard broken, faint sounds of prayer. She snapped her eyes open—and found herself back at this morning.
It took Molly Harrington nearly a full hour before she could finally believe that she had truly been reborn.