A review of a six year old Zitao's room would have revealed all the essentials of an age appropriate boy. His cartoon sheets were habitually unmade, the floor was littered with toys, and his clothes were tossed in haphazard piles in all corners of the room. However, one thing that set his room apart from those of other six year old boys was the presence of a small, cloth bag of graveyard dirt sitting on his nightstand, courtesy of his favorite aunt.

"For protection," she had explained.

Zitao's aunt had always been an odd soul, or at least that was what his parents had told him when he was younger. Thinking back to his childhood, Zitao couldn't really help but agree. However, she had absolutely adored him and he was a child who hadn't known any better so Zitao hadn't thought too much into her decidedly kooky antics.

Kisses, the occasional present, and cute nicknames that made Zitao both squeal with delight and flush with color tended to offset the weird and down-right bizarre. Yet, there were still the things that couldn't be ignored as easily.  

For instance, his aunt was superstitious, very superstitious.

She wasn't so much a believer in old-wives tales than she was in something much broader, and potentially darker. It was an interesting combination between religion, spirits, and energy that kept her watchful and actively pursuing the blessings of luck and protection through unconventional practices. 

Zitao hadn't seen these practices in person but could recall times when he would catch glimpses of the amulet hanging around her neck, fitted with cowrie shells, iron, and the medal of Saint Benedict. Or when he could smell the smoky scent of singed herbs lingering around her. His mother was slightly uneased by the path her older sister had chosen to take and tried to minimize its exposure to her son; she called it bad luck. Yet even though his aunt acquiesced to these requests her abnormalities still slipped through the cracks.

These were the pieces of his aunt that he had grown used to during his childhood and did not know to question. However she did offer some insight into her superstitions to Zitao. 

"We ain't the only things in this world, Zitao, there're things that share the same space with us. Most times they live beyond our sight and our understandin' but, sometimes they make themselves known."

"Like ghosts?" He'd asked, nervousness playing on his soft features. 

"Somethin' like ghosts, yes. Most are good, some bad, and it's the bad ones we got to watch out for. When they make themselves known bad things happen, and that's why I gotta do those things that your mother don't like me to talk about, it keeps us safe. Understand?"

"..Yes," Zitao spoke quietly, almost unsurely. "Auntie, what kind of bad things do they do?"

"I won't tell you that right now," she sighed, "You're still too young and innocent to be thinkin' 'bout things like that. Your mother wouldn't like it."

"Oh."

It wasn't until he had grown older and became aware of social norms and expectations that Zitao had realized just how out of the ordinary these answers and actions were. Or rather just how unusual his aunt was in general. It made him think of her in a different light.

She was a weathered woman who seemed to have lost most of her femininity a long time ago, and what remained were callused hands, sharp lines, and a bluntness that only served to ruin conversations. As a result of living so many years alone in the swamplands she had lost much of her social tact and had become unfamiliar with the average luxuries. The muck, as she called it, had turned her into to a plain woman of faded beauty and hard labor.

Zitao had never seen her home in person but his aunt helped to fill in the gaps of what he expected it to be like.

Thick vegetation, trees so tall and condensed that it could block out most of the light in some places , flowing waters of the bayou, stagnant waters of the swamp, alligators -which had been a particularly entertaining subject for the six-year old-, dirt roads, miles between her house and the nearest store, and plenty of mosquitoes. She said she liked it there but he was skeptical.

It wasn't often that she would visit from the muck despite its lack of appeal and Zitao would meekly voice his displeasure to her about this when she finally did return to civilization.

"There's too many things to do down there," she'd respond. "I leave for too long and that place takes what it wants."

He wasn't really sure what to make of that.

Zitao was twenty when his aunt died.

There was nothing abnormal about it, she was just an old woman who had worked herself like a mule down in the muck for too long. 

When his mother told him about his aunt, eyes red and glistening, it had been the first time in a while that he had thought about her. The older that she had gotten the harder it had been for her to leave the swamplands; it took to much energy out of her to travel. The last time he had seen her in person was when he was sixteen. It made him feel guilty that he didn't find a way to see her before the end.

He had sent her birthday and Christmas cards that he wasn't completely sure had reached her -she had made her home seem like a land too treacherous to be paid a visit by the postal service- to which he would get similar ones on the respective days as well and they called each other maybe once or twice a year. Yet each communication between the two of them ended with the same sentiment that they hoped to see each other soon, the other should take a trip down and see them one day, and similar requests that went unfulfilled, but they were still filled with love nonetheless.

Zitao tried to reason that he had been in high school and then college and that his aunt had been doing ... whatever it was that she did, and that they had been too busy to take time out of their schedules but he couldn't deceive himself.

The funeral had been as nice as a funeral could have been, it was respectful and somber, but its lack of participants left Zitao painfully aware of his own existence and fighting an existential crisis. Besides himself and his parents only a handful of other people had appeared, it was funerals like those that were the most upsetting in Zitao's eyes. 

She was buried near his grandparents on his mother's side underneath a southern magnolia tree. When he placed his flowers on the grave he kneeled before the headstone and let up a silent prayer to aunt. The wind ruffled his hair like she would have and he smiled, heart a little lighter.

A few days following the funeral a reading of his aunt's will was held. Zitao's aunt had left him her home in the southern bayous.

Sometime after the will reading his mother had pulled him aside and opened a conversation about his aunt's house.

"You can keep it, if you want." She said, eyes glistening again, she hadn't really stopped crying yet. "I think she would have really liked that."

Zitao smiled lightly at his mother. "I never even  seen the house before, I don't think I'm in a position to decide whether or not I want to keep it. Besides it really is out of the way from anything." He had not meant to sound so flippant about it but he did have to face the facts, the house could easily become a burden if he didn't handle the situation correctly.

He was in college and student loans were a particular nuisance in his life; the presence of a house that he had to pay utilities for and keep from falling apart had a significant chance of becoming a financial strain. It was enough stress having to pay for his apartment.

"Then why don't you take a trip down to see it? Look at the house and see what it has to offer, you might like it, your aunt saw something in the place maybe you will too." His mother's eyes had dried and now they looked at him with leveled emotion. "When you go just keep an open mind, and if you don't want to keep it you could always sell it."

"Alright," Zitao said," I have some time to spare, I'll take a trip down, decide what to do with the place."

Two weeks later Zitao was sitting in the driver's seat of his car headed south.

On the passenger seat was a set of handwritten directions from his mother which, in theory, would keep him from getting lost in the boonies. In the backseat were deconstructed cardboard boxes, a duffel bag stuffed with clothes, toiletries, and other essentials, and paper bags with hopefully enough food to last him his stay. Zitao just prayed that he didn't forget anything important.

Gradually, as he distanced himself from the city he began to notices subtle changes. Buildings were becoming fewer and farther apart, the roads steadily decreased in smoothness, and radio stations quickly turned to static the further south he traveled.

The biggest change he saw was in the environment, especially as he neared his destination. The maple trees which had stood tall and grown full had been replaced by an abundance of gangly imposters growing on top of one another and fighting for light. They had developed queerly, twisting towards patches of light that broke through the canopy of trees much taller and older than themselves. When the road turned to dirt it became clear that the wild held more power than man out here.

It was upon meeting the swamp that the air became close and the light had almost been completely blocked, just barely filtering out. The swamps were low-lying land saturated with water that had no place to run and it was a sanctuary for all kinds of creatures that made Zitao's skin crawl. The only pleasant thing he could find in the swamps were the the cypress trees, haunted looking beauties that had endured the centuries; they cried spanish moss and sung with the breeze.

Yet still, there was an etheral beauty in the swamps that Zitao was reluctant to admit he enjoyed. Emotions spun through him as he drove. Some positive, others weary. 

He hadn't even seen the bayou yet.

Reading the last few cursive words of his mother's handwriting, Zitao turned right at the end of the road and bounced onto the next stretch of dirt.

The road was rocky and Zitao constantly swayed from the juddering of the car but he was happy to enjoy the view. Cypress trees arched over the path and the taupe chains of moss which hung from them grazed the top of his car. Somehow, between the moss and the branches the most amount of light he had seen in a while shown down onto the gravel and bounced off on the hood. A smile worked its way to his face.

He had been paying less attention to the road than he had been the scenery and almost passed the next path branching out from it. Turning down the driveway he peered out his windshield expectantly. The drive was one long curve and when he finally did reach the end of it he was met with a break in the trees and a house that looked appropriate considering its  surroundings. It was a plain brown wood building that had two stories, the second most likely being an attic or some form of loft, and had a porch that wrapped around the entirety of it.

Parking in the clearing, Zitao shut off his car and got out of the vehicle. He stood for a few moments staring at the house, assessing it. It looked different than it had been described to him but was pleasant enough, looked sturdy, and did not show any disrepair he could see. Zitao supposed it would do.

"Hey!"

Zitao jumped upon hearing the shout of someone he hadn't known was there.

Turning to face the source of the voice Zitao laid eyes on a man. The man's brows were narrowed and his expression was demanding and he was tall, taller than Zitao, with a mop of brown hair that was sticking to his face. He was sweating something fierce and Zitao assumed that he had been laboring in the afternoon heat. His jeans were stained with dirt along with his wife-beater that had soaked through and was now sticking to the planes of his chest and muscles that were obviously well used- Zitao fought to keep his eyes from wandering. He stalked over to Zitao with a shovel in his gloved hands, eyes hard.

"What are you doing here?" He spoke, voice deep and rough.

Zitao flinched slightly before speaking up. "I-I ... uh, my name is Huang Zitao, I've come to see my aunt's house."

The male before him didn't speak right away, his eyes flickered over Zitao who was trying to mask his discomfort with the situation.

"Well, it ain't this house."

Had he gotten lost somewhere?

"Oh, uh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you." Zitao looked down and tried to avoid his gaze.

He worried his lip between his teeth and tried to figure out where he went wrong. He was apparently lost in the muck, there was a man glaring at him with a little too much conviction, and he was incredibly nervous; Zitao was fumbling through his brain for a solution. Standing there completely vulnerable he just hoped that whatever offence he had committed could be righted quickly. 

The man didn't apologize but he must have took pity on Zitao because his eyes softened enough so that he didn't look entirely off-put. He wedged his shovel into the ground and then began to lean on it before speaking again. "You said you were looking for your aunt's house?"

Zitao met the man's eyes. "Y-yes. She just passed away recently." He flickered his gaze away from the intense stare of the other briefly. "She left me the house."

"Just passed away, huh? I knew her, she was nice woman. " The man straightened off of his shovel. "Her house is a driveway back down the road, you must've passed it."

He gestured with his head back to the direction Zitao had come from and Zitao caught a glimpse of the gold around the man's neck. Looking at it he realized that it was a religious pendant, the medal of Saint Benedict like his aunt had worn. It just the pendant though, no shells or iron or other questionable items. Zitao had never asked his aunt its purpose before and now wondered what it meant.

"Thank you." Zitao said and turned to go before stopping himself. "I never caught your name."

The man's expression changed and Zitao couldn't identify what it was. "Yifan", was all he said.

"Ah, well, thank you. Sorry for the misunderstanding." Yifan just grunted.

Getting into his car Zitao reversed out of the gravel driveway and back down the road from whence he came. Yifan followed the car with his eyes as it disappeared from sight behind the trees, working his jaw as he watched Zitao leave. He let out a huff of breath before turning to his shovel, yanking it out of the dirt and striding back around the house.

Comments, questions, concerns, criticism? I'd love to hear any feedback you might have or of any mistakes you caught. Also as a note if you haven't seen what a cypress tree with spanish moss looks like I suggest you look it up it is absolutely beautiful and I've fallen in love with their apperance. How do you like the format? Are the words to small? Next update should be faster, have a lovely day.