The Girl with Ghost Eyes (7 page)

7

I took it slow. Moving back into my body, the twelve pulses would grow quicker, the breath would grow deeper. I relaxed into myself again, feeling the cords of my spirit realign with muscles and sinews.

It was a wonderful feeling, a homecoming. My senses woke up and nearly overwhelmed me. The smell of plywood and straw came to me, the smell of fish oil burning in the lamps, and the aromas were so strong, so full.

I came back into my body. I felt heavy. The weight of my body felt insurmountable, like a mountain pressing me down. But then I felt stronger than I realized, strong enough to move my body’s weight. My pulses throbbed inside me, and I felt qi circulating along my meridians. The world came in through my closed eyelids like the slow warmth of sunlight. I hadn’t realized how much I loved being alive. It was wonderful to breathe air again, rather than echoes.

I opened my eyes, blinked a few times as I adjusted to the light of the lamps in the room. Dr. Wei’s infirmary was a series of square rooms full of cots. Everything was bright, everything stood out with a depth I had begun to forget. My eyes felt dry, and the smoke from the burning lamps made the sensation worse, but I was glad to be back. So glad.

Glad, and hungry. While I was unconscious at the infirmary, they probably poured medicinal broth down my throat, but now I was starving. I wanted food. A meal began to form in my mind. Pork and fish and spinach. Maybe fried in peanut oil, with a five-fragrance powder. The thought of food made my mouth begin to water, and I sat up in the cot.

Someone gasped. Mrs. Wei was standing in the doorway, covering her mouth with one hand. Before I could say anything, she turned and ran out, probably to get her husband, the doctor. Her large bamboo earrings shook beneath the tight knots of her hair as I watched her speed away from the room.

Mrs. Wei was a strange one. When I was a little girl, growing up without a mother in a town where just about everyone was a man, I had always wanted a chance to know Mrs. Wei better. Father had kept me apart from her, and I never knew why.

Dr. Wei came into the room, wearing a white jacket as if he were an American doctor, his spectacles high on his nose. He was a man of two worlds; his medical kit carried syringes, stethoscopes, and respirators alongside acupuncture needles, moxa sticks, and fire cups. “Li-lin,” he said, taking a seat on a stool at the edge of my cot, “are you all right?”

I nodded and spoke. “Yes,” I said. Or tried to say. My throat was so dry that the word came out as some kind of inhuman hiss. I cleared my throat before speaking again. “And Father? How is he?”

Dr. Wei pursed his lips. He took off his spectacles. He wiped the lenses clean on a piece of cloth, and said, “He’s lost an eye, Li-lin. He’ll be half-blind for the rest of his life.” The doctor gave me a moment to let that sink in. “He carried you here, then he went outside. One of my apprentices found him a few minutes later. He was sprawled out on my front step, holding a knife. Apparently he burned a paper talisman and then he cut out his eye.”

I listened to him and let the words register. Father burned a talisman first, I should have realized that. The talisman would have specific instructions written on it, commanding his eye’s spirit to follow those specific duties. I needed to ask Mr. Yanqiu what those duties were.

“Why would he do such a thing, Li-lin? Why would he cut out his eye?”

I shook my head. “He sent the spirit of his eye to help me,” I said.

Dr. Wei laughed, a dry chuckle I had heard often when he thought Father was making a silly argument. He saw my expression and went quiet. “You can’t be serious.”

I lifted my chin and said nothing. Dr. Wei stared at me. “But Zhengying wouldn’t do such a thing, Li-lin, not for you.”

“I know,” I said, looking down. Dr. Wei was one of a half dozen people who called my father by his personal name. He knew my father well.

“When he brought you to the infirmary,” Dr. Wei said, shifting on the stool, “someone had cut you. I applied phenol to your wounds. But those wounds were some sort of spell. Someone carved a spell into you. Who would do such a hideous thing? And why?”

“A man named Mr. Liu,” I said. “I think Tom Wong may have helped him.”

Dr. Wei gave a short, disbelieving chuckle. “Mr. Wong’s son is a sworn brother of the Ansheng tong, Li-lin. He would never lift a hand to strike at your father’s family. Who is this Mr. Liu?”

“I am not certain, Dr. Wei. I think he’s a Daoshi. Mr. Liu is about Father’s age, and he’s missing his right arm. Does he sound familiar to you?”

The doctor tsked. “Too many men in Chinatown missing an arm or a leg,” he said.

I sighed and looked away. He was right. Some men lost limbs working the gold mines during the rush, others building the railroads. I looked back at the doctor. “I think Mr. Liu is somebody new, Dr. Wei. I think he came to San Francisco recently.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “The American officials wouldn’t admit a laborer who was missing an arm, not after the Chinese Exclusion Act.”

I followed his line of thought. “So if Mr. Liu came here recently, he’d have to be classified as a merchant.”

Dr. Wei gave me a meaningful look over his spectacles. There could only be two ways a man with one arm had gotten classified as a merchant: either he already owned a successful business in San Francisco before he even arrived, or someone had bribed the immigration officials on his behalf.

That was how I got in, after all. The Exclusion Act made it so that Chinese females could only come to America if they were the family of a merchant. Mr. Wong had found American officials who were willing to classify my father as a merchant, in exchange for a large fee.

“But the only people in Chinatown who have that kind of influence,” I thought aloud, “are the Six Companies and the Ansheng tong.”

“You’re forgetting the Xie Liang tong, Li-lin.”

I blinked at him. “The Xie Liang tong? They’re nothing but a joke. They’re ruffians and clowns.”

Dr. Wei shook his head. “Is that what your father has been telling you? The Xie Liang tong has been gaining in power every week.”

This was news to me. Mr. Wong’s group, the Ansheng tong—Mr. Wong’s group, that Father and I worked for—was the only power worth reckoning with among the criminals. Father always told me that the Xie Liang tong was a group of arrogant upstarts. Their leader was a prancing fool who wore American clothes and chose a ridiculous name for himself.

I looked over at my father, asleep on the cot. He looked small, and weak, and alone. I thought about Mr. Wong and the Ansheng tong. Their power was old, and perhaps it was fading; perhaps the old ways, the ways of the Triads, could not thrive in this new world. Maybe it took a dangerous idiot in an American suit to prosper in a world where telegraphs send messages across the world and cable cars speed through town, propelled by steam so intense it was as powerful as hundreds of horses.

“Dr. Wei, did my father talk to you about anyone else? Was there anyone else he was frightened of, or suspicious about?”

He pursed his lips, in a moment of quiet thought. “I’m not sure he’d like me telling you this, Li-lin,” he said, pushing his spectacles higher on his nose, “but yes. It happened few months ago. At the Laba Festival, there was a man there. He was a Buddhist monk, but for some reason, Zhengying seemed horrified to see him. I have never seen him so afraid, Li-lin. He was shaking, and he wouldn’t tell me why.”

“A Buddhist monk? Why would Father be afraid of a baldie?”

He gave a half-laugh. “I really don’t know. What’s stranger is, I met this man later, on my own. He seemed almost dainty, the way he went out of his way not to hurt anything.”

“Do you know his name?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “He goes by the name Shuai Hu.”

“This man, Shuai Hu, he stays with the baldies at the monastery on Washington?”

“Most likely.”

That made me feel nervous as well as excited. The baldies at the monastery were practitioners of a different kind of kung fu. Father had trained me in the martial arts of Wudang Mountain, which emphasize the building of one’s internal energies, and round, smooth motions, but the baldies at the monastery trained in Shaolin, a warrior art focused on strict, rigid motions. I had always wanted a chance to test my skills against theirs. If any of them was involved in the attack on Father and me, I would soon get my chance.

“How much longer will Father be asleep, Dr. Wei?”

The doctor glanced over to the cot where my father lay sleeping. “It’s hard to say, really. He stirs every few hours. For all I know, he could wake up in the next few minutes, but he could also sleep another day.”

I brushed back the sheet on my cot and started to stand. “Li-lin,” the doctor said, “you can’t just rush out of here. You suffered an attack and a coma. It will take time for you to recuperate.”

I stuck out my arm. He gave me a skeptical look, then took my pulse. I waited while he counted the pulses, moving his grip to different points along my forearm. “All right,” he said, with some reluctance. “Your twelve pulses are healthy.” He took his stethoscope and checked my heartbeat. I waited once more, breathing as he instructed. Shaking his head, he said, “Your cuts were superficial and you’re strong as a horse. I’d still advise you to give yourself time to recuperate. Go home, drink plenty of liquids, make some herbal soup. Don’t go out and rush into something dangerous.”

“Of course not,” I lied.

I had bled on my Daoshi robes, so Dr. Wei had burned them. Now I wore the infirmary’s long linen nightshirt as I descended the stairs, trying not to scratch at the cuts on my stomach. I passed Dr. Wei’s wife on my way to the front door. She gave me a look that seemed to be both suspicious and hostile. I tried to ignore her glare. Maybe she thought I was making a play to be her husband’s concubine. I brushed past her and walked out the door.

It was late afternoon by now, and Chinatown was bustling. A vendor had set up his stall nearby and was shouting, “Cabbage bean pear potato! Cabbage bean pear potato!” There was the smell and sound of laundry being washed by hand. Water splashed, clothing splunked, and steam poured through the air, warm and fresh.

I had left the spirit of my father’s eye waiting in the street, promising I’d come back for him, but now he was nowhere in sight. “Mr. Yanqiu?” I called. “Where have you gone, Mr. Yanqiu?”

A few moments later he came stumbling out of a cloud of steam on the ground. “Marvelous,” he said. “Simply marvelous. What do they call that?”

“That’s steam,” I told him. “It comes out of hot water. There are people inside that basement, and they use the water to wash laundry. The water gives off steam, and the steam rises through that vent you found.”

“Steam,” said the eyeball spirit. “I’ll have to remember that. But what is this ‘hot water’ you mentioned?”

“Come on, Mr. Yanqiu,” I said with a smile. “Let’s go back to Father’s apartment, and I’ll heat you a cup of tea.”

8

The spirit of my father’s eye waited outside while I changed my clothes in the cellar room where Father and I lived. I took off the long infirmary gown and examined the cuts in my skin. They weren’t deep, but they were ugly, and they stung.

I studied the cuts. They were extensive, elaborate. And, I realized, it was more than just one spell.

At the center of my stomach, starting just below my ribcage and extending below my waist, there was a spell that would open me to spirit possession. As I deciphered the ghostscript, I realized how grotesque it was. It not only opened my body to Shi Jin but to any other unnatural thing that wanted to take me. It was an invitation. Spirits of disease could have taken up residence inside me. The spell wasn’t merely intended to use me as a weapon against my father; the spell was also intended to violate me, pollute my body and spirit. It was designed to cut me open and shit inside.

The first spell was signed, Liu Qiang, Maoshan Daoshi, Fifth Ordination.

“Fifth,” I said, and spat a string of curses. Even a Daoshi of the Third was out of my league. Liu Qiang’s spells could brush mine aside like cobwebs. I wanted to cry out in frustration.

Next to that pattern of cuts, on my side, was a different spell. My father had also cut a spell into my skin. It countered Liu Qiang’s, closed my body to invasion, sealed me up and protected me. Nothing could enter my body except for something with my name.

The air in the room felt suddenly tight. I stopped breathing. I hadn’t realized how close I’d come to failing. The power of my father’s spell was beyond my comprehension, the precision breathtaking,
but none of that would have mattered. His spell left a door open for my name.

My soul passport would have been enough. Father’s spell wouldn’t have protected my body from possession. The ghost could still have gotten into my skin and murdered my father.

The second spell was signed, Xian Zhengying, Maoshan Daoshi, Seventh Ordination.

I breathed deeply, taking it all in. “You idiot,” I sputtered.

Father and Liu Qiang had carved me up like a piece of meat. They took their knives and used my body as their magic battleground. Liu Qiang was far more powerful than me, but Father was far more powerful than Liu Qiang—and yet Father would have lost this battle for my body.

Liu Qiang was clever, I’d give him that. Apparently he’d been ordained into the Maoshan lineage. He must have known Father was stronger in the Dao. He made his spell so broad and monstrous so that Father wouldn’t know what he was really planning.

Father’s spell, the second series of cuts, wouldn’t have kept him safe. If I had lost the fight in the spirit world, Shi Jin would have robbed me of the soul passport. He would have risen up in my body. Father was probably so confident in the power of his magic that he wouldn’t have seen it coming when the ghost drove a knife into his heart.

My own father had cut a spell into my flesh, and it wasn’t even the right spell.

Every part of this deepened my sense of violation, of humiliation, and that drove my rage. I felt my face start to turn purple. My teeth clenched. I found my hands clutched into fists, and my fists were turning hard as iron. They say a good woman is a quiet woman, but I found myself shouting. No words came from my mouth, just incoherent sounds. I punched the air, knowing my fists swung with enough force to break boards if I struck them.