“Drink, little Lucky.”
The final sip passed her lips. Her mouth numb, her tongue thick, she swallowed. Her last breath stolen as the world stuttered and stopped and lurched lopsided.
“The day I died,” Lucky felt herself say again.
“No,” Evangelical said. Lucky could smell her skin and feel her breath. Could almost see her and feel her. Found comfort in that.
In the past, Madame Xuo the Now Living Corpse rose to crawl over the table, smelling of dust and death and shrunken skin clinging to crumbling bone. “You’re not dead,” her salvation was saying.
From the past, Madame smiled, a slow baring of smeared red lips and yellowed teeth, as Evangelical pulled closer, her words tickling Lucky’s cheek.
“Not yet.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Her teeth were missing, she heard someone silently say, a girl from a distant, remembered conversation.
Lucky’s tongue felt thick as it moved. Her teeth were safe and sound.
She stood in a hall. A narrow hall. One with many doorways and an end that didn’t end, the long space leading to an unavoidable dark.
The low table was gone. As was Yin Ying and the brazier. The dragon no longer whipped ‘round the baseboards and the wiggling of her flesh had quieted.
The red remained. A haze that snuck along the floor, and climbed the walls, and ducked into the shadows hugging the ceiling.
Lucky blinked, and then blinked again. Fingers flexed and her chest rose in a deep breath. Her mouth tasted of sick. And a sour burn stained her throat, stinging her nose when she swallowed.
She’d drunk the tea. She remembered. She closed her eyes, the heat of the red room returning.
A dragon chased its tail. Two clay pots waited. Madame Xuo sat silent and watching and dead. Then alive, bending forward, crawling near. The shrunken flesh stretching as her skeletal fingers gripped the edge of the warped wood and she pulled herself close, the kimono rustling while cobwebs snapped and dust fell and spit dangled from her smiling lips.
Then there’d been black.
And now red.
This red. The dark hall bathed in a dusty crimson glow, the low-ceilinged space like some ancient, forgotten tomb.
She wasn’t alone.
Something bumped against her calf. Too tired and too confused, she didn’t look. Not until four fat fingers wrapped around her ankle.
Below her, it crawled. A torso with a large head squatting awkwardly on slender shoulders, one arm reaching forward, the thick fist on her ankle, pulling forward, pulling near. The large mouth opening, the sharp stench of something spoiled and infected and threatening to burst rising from the nubs of yellow teeth.
Its nose was pushed flat, the lips pushed forward. Its hair heavy, greasy strands sticking to a flaking, grimy scalp. The legs two clubs jerking from the hip, each with a long, thick, yellowed nail jutting from the end that scraped the floor as it angled near.
Lucky wanted to scream. Wanted to run. But the hall was too red and the world moved too slow. And even as the legless thing with the four-fingered fist wrapped its mouth around her ankle to gnaw the flesh, the tongue sticky and wet as slobber slid down her heel, she stood quiet.
After another blink, the haze cleared and she could see clearly.
A moment later, she screamed.
Like a swarm of insects, they crawled, waddled and shuffled. Heavy skulls squatting on twisted necks. Crooked torsos without legs. Arms that curled and bent to grope in the dark. Five fingers stretching from where the shoulder ends and an arm should begin.
Anonymous souls, these with legs, their eyes blind under sheets of thick flesh, feeling their way as they crawled, the wet sound of bleeding, torn knees dragging against the wood. Others unable to move, or see, or speak, sitting trapped in an unforgiving stench of sweat, spoiled blood, weeping flesh and mangled muscle.
In the corners, they lingered, these unfortunates, the insistent beat of their hearts visible beneath their too-pale skin and shallow, sunken chests.
Sensing her near, they turned. Sightless eyes attempted to see. Squat noses pressed flat to slimy faces lifted to catch her scent. Thick lips smeared with sick stretched into torn, ripped and jagged grins. Half-finished forms dragged and turned and moved close.
“You still live.” Weathered with age and weary, the voice came from behind her. “I don’t believe that’s happened before. Not after seven sips of tea.”
Carefully turning, fearing she’d step on someone or something, Lucky discovered Madame Xuo the No Longer Silent.
Still small, still pale, her lips still cleaved with red and her brows still perfect strokes of unapologetic black, she stood, wrapped in gold silk, bathed in red, surrounded by the swarm.
“No one has had more than three sips,” Madame said, her eyes meeting Lucky’s. “Yet this was allowed. And now I know why.”
They scurried away from Lucky, these things. Their fingers no longer reached and their fists no longer grabbed. Their mouths no longer tried to gnaw her calves or ankles or feet. Desperate and afraid, they fled to the safety of open doors and thick shadow and smooth wall.
“Turn,” Madame said. “Look.”
She did.
Her shadow waited.
It was dark, as all shadows are. But this was different. It breathed. It lived. It had small eyes that opened and blinked. There was an awareness. A hunger.
“This has walked with me,” Madame was saying. “It has made me and my life safe. From sickness, from poverty. From hunger. Can you imagine a life without sickness or poverty or hunger, little Lucky?”
Lucky didn’t respond, her gaze on the dark standing in front of her.
“As Yin Ying said, this has felled armies and raised kings,” Madame said. “It is pure power and might. As strong as stone, it cannot falter.” The hem of her kimono rustled against the floor as she stepped forward. “It cannot fail. And should you embrace it and let it become you, neither will you.”
Lucky turned her head.
It turned with her.
“The rules of life will mean nothing,” Madame said. “You will live free from consequence. Climb as high or fall as low as you like. There is no limit. It will be your choice what you do with it.”
Lucky watched the dark. Beneath the surface, something waited. She could almost hear it, almost see it. She came oh so close to catching whatever was trying to speak to her or reach out to her. Even narrowing her eyes and looking closely, she still couldn’t catch it, the thing allowing her just the smallest glimpse of souls trapped and bodies broken and a writhing world of never ending anguish.
“But there is a price,” Madame said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “A price determined by what you choose. A price that must be paid when your life, this life, comes to its close.”
From the dark, a face came forward. A young girl with tearstained cheeks. Small and grieving, she pressed to the shadow like a hand to glass, the lipless mouth speaking words Lucky couldn’t hear. She moved close, and closer still, pressing her own face into the dark. It was cool and calm. Like the blissful shade of a giant tree on the hottest of summer’s days.
She liked it.
“Can you hear me, little Lucky?” Madame said.
Yes, she could hear the old woman. But the shade, the dark, it was calling her. It promised relief from pain, from work. It whispered of freedom and strength. Of power. Perhaps even of wealth and a life of smiles and laughter.
In the dark waited the end of being at the mercy of others.
“Whatever you choose cannot be undone. Once you agree, it is yours and it can never be lost. You can run and it will follow. And I promise you,” Madame said as she took another step closer, “there will come a time when you will pray for release. You will beg for it to be over. But it never ends. It is forever.”
She wanted to turn to Madame. Wanted to acknowledge the words being said. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. The dark brought her closer. She could almost feel its breath kissing
her lips and hear the beat of its lonely heart.
“Think,” Madame said, the word sharp. Sharp enough for Lucky to turn and peer through the red haze to see Madame standing, the mob of misshapen souls squirming around her ankles, their arms thumping against her shins. Tears fell from the woman’s eyes, the furrowed brow urging what her words could not.
“Please,” Madame said. “Think of what you are choosing. Of what it might be. At the end.
“You are young. Too young. And I know you hope, as I did many years ago, that this will be the answer. But it is not—”
A hand the color of moonlight rose to stop the words, the flesh soon wet with a stream of blood that stole between her long, pale fingers. Madame closed her eyes and, taking a deep breath, wiped the red from her lips with the back of her hand before speaking.
“I have said all I can. But know this: there is nothing to fear from death, but much to fear from a life without consequence.”
Lucky turned from her, her eyes once again on the dark.
There was a long moment of silence.
“Are you afraid, little Lucky?” Madame said.
Lucky shook her head. Leave behind a life of work and pain? Even now, her arms ached. Even now, hunger burned and her body wept. Even though her day had been quick and her work interrupted by the invitation to tea, there were years of pain weeping in every bone and muscle and breath. Her days, day after day, cursed with pain she’d always feel, no matter how long her life.
Freedom from this is what was being offered. This was the choice she had in front of her.
Why wouldn’t I take that? she thought. Afraid?
No, she was not afraid.
“You will be,” Madame was saying as Lucky stepped into the dark.
CHAPTER FIVE
Below her, the waves of Hangzhou Bay slapped the pilings of the dock. Around her, men worked, barefoot, the thick denim of their pants rolled up to the knees. Or stood, smoking strong tobacco rolled in cheap paper.
She needed help, but couldn’t speak. There’d been a hall. A narrow space with a low ceiling and many doors. The light was red. The walls reflected red. The floor more glowing red. Even the shadows waiting at what could be the end of the hall—for the hall had to have an end, yes?—were red.
Madame Xuo had stood in a mountain of bodies. Arms without fists that flailed and hit. Crude legs that thumped the floor as they tried to crawl, and lift, and stand. Teeth too large for mouths that sliced faces in two. Gashes that still whimpered, still wept, still bled.
And Madame had spoken. There’d been a warning, and then blood. But the air, it was cool and inviting. There’d been silence, then. And knowing what the future held, she’d stepped into the dark, the shade, the shadow.
Yes, Lucky remembered.
Here, the sun was bright and the sky was blue. Here, men rushed to and fro, piles of fish shimmering and flapping and wiggling as wheelbarrows bounced along the dock. They stood in groups, these men, talking as more ships came in, others running to retrieve the nets and fill the crates and stock the wheelbarrows and push past yet again.
No one stopped for the strange girl in the flowered dress.
She opened her eyes, but they were black, someone said from the past.
She blinked, her vision clear.
Flies crawled from between her lips.
She opened her mouth. Nothing but the sour smell of vomit.
Black started to run from under her dress and down her legs.
She glanced down. The wood beneath her bare feet was free of black and blood or anything else that might slip from her body and slide down her legs.
She was a demon.
“Hello,” she said to the man, a young scrawny thing with hooded eyes and thin lips, who passed within inches of her.
He ignored her.
A second man, this one larger with the belly of a Buddha and legs like tree trunks, shuffled near.
“Hello?” she said again.
He passed by without so much as a glance.
“Sir,” she said to the third, this one older with the bent back and frail legs of one who’d seen decades of work. But, perhaps deaf and exhausted, he, too, ignored her.
She stepped forward, out of the shade.
The shade followed.
Another step. The shadow kept pace. Tightened its grip. Refused to leave her.
A man stopped to light a cigarette.
“Hello, sir,” she said. “Sir?”
The match jumped to life, the flame meeting its target, the man drawing deep before exhaling in a cloud of silver and blue.
“Sir!” she said as she drew close, face to face, the shadow now covering him.
He paused and looked down at the sudden dark staining the dock. And then glanced up at the sun, looking for a cloud that wasn’t there.
A moment later, cigarette in hand, he turned and left, quickly moving to join the crowd welcoming a new boat to shore.
They couldn’t see her, she realized. Her shadow, this new dark that was now a part of her, had made her invisible. A second step and it followed her again. For a moment, she feared she’d never feel the sun again. And then, remembering the blood pouring between Madame’s fingers as they covered her mouth, she pushed the thought out of her mind.
She lifted her arm. It looked muted and pale, like moonlight, the boards beneath almost visible. She flexed her fingers and then made a fist. It felt normal. It all felt normal, save for the dark that would never leave her.
A man watched her.
Standing away from the crowd, he stood dressed in worn denim. Thin and older, a touch of silver to the little tufts of hair clinging to his head, he stared, his eyes shifting to the side as he noticed her looking at him.
Dragging her dark behind her, she marched over.
“Sir,” she said, “You can see me? Yes?”
He looked at his sandals, and the dock beneath, and then finally the waves rolling in from the horizon.
“I’m lost,” she said. “Is this Hangzhou Bay?”
No response.
“Please,” she said. “Help me.”
“I know what you are,” he said, his eyes refusing her.
“You can see the shadow?”
His eyes still on the horizon, the waves, his brethren pulling the nets and loading the crates, he nodded and then spoke. “I know where this comes from.”
“Madame Xuo,” she said.
He shook his head. “Madame Xuo is no more.”
“I just left her. I work for her and I was with her just—”
“Madame Xuo was found in a doorway near her home over a week ago. She’d been dead for many months. Maybe years.”
“And Yin Ying?” she said. “Her servant?”
He shrugged. “All I know is the house is no more. The servants released. The windows shuttered and the doors locked.” His eyes met hers. “Do you not know what you are now?”
She shook her head. All around her, men passed by, navigating clear of her shadow as if she was seen, though she knew she was not. “I know I’m not seen. That they don’t see me,” she said, glancing toward the crowd. “But you see me. Why?”
“It is not a gift. Seeing you is a burden. Knowing what you are is something I don’t want. Something no one wants. Go away.”
A man pushing a wheelbarrow of wiggling, snapping, jumping fish stumbled and ducked into her shade, the wheelbarrow coming to the briefest of stops in the dark as he adjusted his grip and righted the wheel.
The wiggling, snapping, jumping stopped, the fish coming to a final rest.
Her reluctant friend stood and moved away, pulling a large knife, the kind used to gut fish, from a holster wound ‘round his leg. “I’m sorry,” he said as he walked to the edge of the dock to go back to work.
She and her dark followed.
“Wait,” she said. “Talk to me. Am I invisible? Can I be seen? What can this do?”
“Were you not told?”
She shook her head.
Standing at the edge of the slapping waves, he spoke. “Then this is new. It can be stopped. If you can, do so now. Save those who will die. Save those mothers and wives and children who will weep because of you. Save all those whose lives will be ruined because you chose to live and breathe and walk among us. End this, here and now, and you can save us all.
“Do you see?” he said as she moved to stand in front of him. “You have a choice.” He held the knife out to her. “It is early. You can choose good. You can still do good.”
She took the knife.
The dark grew.
“Families will thank you,” he said. “Your death will answer prayers they’ve yet to pray.”
She thought of her cursed birth. The cruelty of her parents. Her mother smelling of vomit. And falling into selfish sleep driven by too much drink. Of her father’s fingers reaching, grabbing and gripping before pulling her close, too close, to destroy her innocence. She thought of the bend in her back and the burning scream of her muscles as she scrubbed an already spotless floor for the dead Madame Xuo.
A drop of rain slapped the dock. And another. Then another.
She realized that a life without power wasn’t one worth living. Always at the mercy of others. Saying “yes” when your body cried “no.” Hiding your exhaustion and terror beneath small smiles and low bows. Enduring smacks, slaps and kicks day after day after day.
No. He was right. That wasn’t a life she wanted. Not anymore. Perhaps the journey wasn’t even worth being blessed by a darkness with an appetite, a hunger, she could almost feel.
She didn’t know.
The man watched her, his shirt growing wet from the rain. A rain that fell from a cloud that darkened only them. He took a drag from his cigarette. His eyes narrowed and he nodded.
Her father was in those eyes, that cigarette. Even that nod.
She swallowed her rage and tightened her grip.
It cannot falter, Madame had said. It cannot fail.
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