Our wedding night was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life. But as soon as my husband and I returned to our room, his father — a thin man in his sixties with an unreadable gaze — pushed the door open, carrying a pillow and a blanket.

“I’ll sleep between you two tonight,” he said calmly. “It’s our family tradition. On the first night, a man who has fathered sons must lie between the couple to bring good fortune and ensure male heirs. Your grandfather did the same thing back in the day.”

I froze, staring at my husband, thinking his father must be joking. But he wasn’t. My husband chuckled awkwardly, saying, “It’s just for one night, honey. Everyone in my family does it.”

I wanted to refuse, but if I made a scene, I’d be labeled the “disrespectful new daughter-in-law” — the kind who “can’t even follow family customs.” So I bit my tongue and stayed silent.

Three of us shared one bed. I lay on the outer edge, my husband was pushed to the far side, and his father lay in the middle, wrapped tightly in his blanket.

I couldn’t sleep. The air felt heavy and strange — and there was this odd sensation on my back, like something brushing lightly against it again and again.

Around 3 a.m., the feeling spread down to my thigh. I couldn’t take it anymore. My heart pounding, I sat up and turned around — and what I saw froze me in place.

Something cold, soft, almost silky brushed my back once more before disappearing. Holding my breath, I slowly turned to see clearly.

Moonlight filtered through the window, casting faint lines across the blanket. My husband lay facing the wall, breathing steadily, completely asleep.

His father was curled up in the middle, his baseball cap pulled low over his face, his shadow on the blanket motionless and eerie.

The room was so silent that even the ticking clock on the wall sounded unnervingly loud.

Then I saw it.

Not a person, not a real hand — but something small, pale, and almost transparent hovering between my back and the blanket.

A hand — thin, incomplete, like made of mist — flickered in and out of sight, as if testing whether I was awake. Its fingers were long and frail, with silvery threads clinging to the tips.

A freezing chill crawled up my neck.

My heartbeat stopped. I instinctively tried to move away but got tangled in my nightgown. My breathing sounded too loud in the stillness. My father-in-law still appeared to sleep — yet his shadow on the blanket seemed to twitch, as if something were pulling at it from below.

In that split second of horror, I remembered a story my husband’s grandmother once told after a few drinks — about her youngest sister, who had vanished decades ago. “On the first night,” she had whispered, “if the lost one isn’t at peace… she’ll come back.”

Her words suddenly came alive, chillingly real.

I whispered, trembling, “David… wake up…”

He stirred, blinking groggily. “What’s wrong, Emma? Bad dream?” he mumbled, stroking my shoulder gently.

His hand brushed over the blanket — the same spot where that misty thing had been — and suddenly, the blanket jerked violently, as if something small was trapped underneath.

David jumped out of bed, his face pale, staring at his father — not with respect, but with fear.

The old man sat up abruptly, as though yanked out of a nightmare. His eyes were wide open, and his lips trembled as he murmured a name I’d never heard before:

“…Lily? Lily, is that you?”

His voice echoed weakly through the room before fading into silence.

At dawn, while the house was still asleep, I quietly slipped out to the backyard — to the old well that my husband’s grandmother used to mutter about, saying, “That well holds secrets…”

I didn’t want to believe what I’d seen, but under the pale sunlight, by the edge of the well, I found a piece of tattered white fabric stuck in the mud — the same kind his mother once used for wrapping old belongings.

Fragments of memories flashed through my mind — hushed whispers, a family dispute covered up, a name erased from the family record.

That night wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t an accident.
Something buried in this house — a mistake, a lost soul — had reached out from the dark, brushing gently against the back of a new bride.