On the first wedding night, my father-in-law insisted on lying between the two of us because of custom — at exactly 3am, I felt something continuously rubbing against my back, and when I turned around, I was stunned to see…
Wedding Night
It should have been the happiest moment of my life. But as soon as we retreated to our private room, my father-in-law — a man in his 60s, thin but with an unreadable gaze — pushed the door open and entered with a pillow and blanket in his hands. “I’ll lie between you two tonight. This family has a custom that on the first night, the spirit of the person who gave birth to a son must lie between us to be effective, to soon have a grandchild to continue the family line. In the past, your grandfather also lay between us like that.” I stared at my husband, thinking he was joking. But no. My husband laughed easily: “I’ll only lie between you for one night, honey. Everyone in my family is like that…” I wanted to refuse, but if I made a big deal out of it tonight, I would definitely be called a “rude new daughter-in-law,” “disobeying her husband’s family.” So I kept quiet, swallowing my anger. Three people, one bed. I lay on the outside, my husband was pushed to the edge, and my father-in-law lay in the middle, covered with a blanket. I couldn’t sleep. It felt stuffy, uncomfortable, and… strangely itchy, like something was constantly rubbing against my back. But at 3am, the itching spread down to my thighs, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I sat up with a start, turned around and… oh my god… Thoi I ​​jumped up, my heart felt like it was falling to the bottom. That feeling — something caressing, cold, light as silk — continued to brush against my back a few more times before stopping completely. I held my breath, turned around slowly to look straight at the place I had just felt. Moonlight filtered through the crack in the door, a weak light drawing lines on the blanket. Beside me, my husband lay facing in, breathing evenly as if he was in a deep sleep. My father-in-law curled up in the middle, his baseball cap covering half his face, his shadow cast on the blanket like a lifeless shadow. Everything in the room was eerily quiet—except the steady ticking of the clock on the wall. And then I saw it—not a human, not a fleshy hand—but a tiny, pale, vaporous thing moving between my back and the blanket. A hand—but not complete, as if made of mist—flickered, withdrew, then reappeared as if checking to see if I was awake. The fingers were long and thin, the tips of which seemed to be attached to a piece of silver cloth. A chill crept up the back of my neck. My heart seemed to stop. I stepped back, but my left foot caught in the hem of my skirt, and I almost fell. My breathing seemed louder than the hour. My father-in-law still lay there, breathing evenly, but the shadow on the blanket seemed… to be twitching, as if being dragged piece by piece by piece. In that moment when the world seemed to stop spinning, I suddenly remembered the story of my husband’s youngest aunt — who had gone missing decades ago — that my grandmother had told me in a mumbled voice when she was drunk: “On the first night, if the other person is not at peace, the other person will come back to find me.” The story suddenly became vivid, so terrifying that it was unbelievable. I whispered to my husband: “Brother… Minh… wake up…” My voice was dry as if someone had just sucked it all out. He turned over, his eyes opened but not completely awake: “What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?” He caressed me as if comforting a child. His arm touched the blanket, touched the area where I had just seen the blurry thing — and suddenly, under his hand, the blanket twitched as if a small thing was crawling. He turned around, his face pale, then backed away from the bed, his eyes looking at his father for the first time with something not reverence but… fear. My father-in-law woke up as if awakened by an old memory, his eyes wide open, his mouth stammering out a name I had never heard before: “…Le? Le?” The call echoed faintly in the room, then stopped. The next morning, while the whole family was still half asleep, I managed to sneak down to the backyard — where there was an old well that my grandmother often complained about: “There’s something wrong with that well…” I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. But under the dim sunlight, next to the well, I discovered a piece of rotten, muddy white cloth — the same cloth my mother-in-law used to wrap her old clothes. A series of fragmented memories suddenly appeared in my head: whispers, a covered-up argument, a name erased from the family tree. I understood that that night was neither an accident nor a figment of my imagination. Something had been buried in this house — an old mistake, a swallowed life — and it had just found its way back, by gently touching the back of a new bride.