‘I’ll tell you when we’re on the boat, Little Cloud. We will need to go back to the house first and pick up a few things, though,’ she says.
As we catch the water taxi back home, Por Por looks at me then says, ‘I was going to talk to you later about all this business. But as there’s a job to do now, I won’t have time … Anyway, it was the way I learnt.’
‘Learnt what, Por Por?’
‘To be a ghost-hunter.’
‘A ghost-hunter?!’ I say, shocked.
‘Yes. It’s what our family has been doing for generations,’ Por Por says. ‘It’s a talent. Some people are good at maths, some at literature, the Bao family is good at catching ghosts.’
‘But … but …’ I don’t know what to say.
‘Sometimes the talent can skip a generation. And it is only passed down through the female line. But it is certainly in the genes and I think you have inherited it, Little Cloud.’
‘Me?’ I laugh. ‘I’m scared of the dark and I hate watching ghost movies.’ The boat passes under a bridge for a moment. ‘And I’ve tried to speak with Mama but she never answers me.’ My voice echoes in the dark.
Por Por squeezes my hand and we come back out into the light. ‘That’s because there is no need for your mama to linger in this world. She is at peace. The ghosts that haunt places are lost souls that don’t want to leave, and so they have fallen into the crack between two worlds.’
The boat nudges the small stone wharf. Por Por pays the boatman and we climb out. As we make our way up the stone alley towards the house, my mind fills with questions. Is that why I can hear the houses talking to me? Now it all starts to make sense. The house in Shanghai with the Frenchman, the way I felt drawn to the secret room and all the weird stuff in it, why everyone wants Por Por to come to their houses. Even Ting Ting makes more sense to me now. Por Por must be training her to be a ghost-hunter, too.
‘My grandmother was a ghost-hunter,’ Por Por says, as she unlocks the front door. ‘And so was her mother. And I believe, Little Cloud, that you have this special gift of ours.’ She pushes the door open, loops her arm through mine and takes me inside the house.
I’m not sure I want to talk with the dead. It’s hard enough talking to the living. But I don’t want to disappoint Por Por, so I stay quiet and listen.
‘It’s not a bad job being a ghost-hunter,’ she says. ‘It’s very challenging and rewarding, and extremely exciting at times. And it is a great privilege to be able to help people in this way.’
‘Did Mama have the gift?’ I ask.
‘When she was little, she had some ability. But she was more interested in science and microscopes, and her talent grew weaker and weaker. Did she never mention anything to you about your por por being a ghost-hunter?’
I shake my head. ‘Mama used to say ghosts were figments of the imagination. Did your grandmother teach you how to be a ghost-hunter, Por Por?’
‘No. I never knew my grandmother. A man called Crazy Big Head taught me.’
‘That’s a funny name.’ I smile.
‘People called him Crazy because he acted mad, and Big Head because he had a mass of tangled hair that made his head look twice as large as it really was. He lived at the back of the market in a shack made out of everybody’s rubbish, and he collected scraps of food to eat when market day was over. But he wasn’t mad at all.’ Por Por smiles. ‘In fact, he was the wisest man I have ever known. Have you heard the saying: in every three people you meet, one can be your teacher.’?
I shake my head.
‘Almost everyone can teach you something, so you must never judge anyone just by the way they look. Always remember that, Little Cloud.’
‘Yes, Por Por,’ I say.
‘I was fifteen when I went searching for my mother and brothers. I never found them, but instead I found Crazy Big Head, or rather, he found me. I stayed on in his town, living in the shack with him, living off scraps like he did. People talked, children stared and called us names, but what did I care? I loved that man like a father. We worked together for a time, then after he died I went to Shanghai and began working on my own as a professional ghost-hunter there.’ Por Por puts her hand gently under my chin and tilts my head up to face her. ‘And now I want to teach you, Little Cloud.’
‘But are you sure …’
‘Come, help me take out the equipment and we’ll see,’ she says, unlocking a long cupboard in the kitchen.
Inside are all kinds of things neatly hanging on hooks and sitting on small ledges. It’s like a mini version of the secret room in Por Por’s house in Shanghai. She lays a large piece of cloth on the ground and hands me a coin sword. As soon as I touch the sword, I feel a strange tingling in my fingers that goes all the way up my arm like a weak electric shock. The coins sound like tiny bells as they vibrate along the blade. I look at Por Por but she’s busy rearranging the things in the cupboard.
She takes out dried plants, strips of paper, powder wrapped in pieces of cloth, a box of bells, and a small mirror with symbols around the edge. It’s strange because I can’t see my face in it, or any reflection for that matter. Instead, it’s as if I’m looking into a very deep well. I feel it begin to draw me in.
Por Por turns to me and snatches it out of my hands, wrapping it up quickly in red silk cloth. ‘The mingshen mirror is used only to trap ghosts,’ she says. ‘Once a ghost has been captured, then, and only then, is it safe to look into it. Understand?’
I nod.
‘This mirror belonged to Crazy Big Head. It has accumulated great power over the years so must be handled with extreme care. Staring into any mingshen mirror long enough can be very dangerous. And especially so if the mirror belongs to you. I have heard of some ghost-hunters who have become trapped in their own mirrors forever.’
‘You mean they can never get out? That would be terrible.’
Por Por shakes her head. ‘Not as far as I know,’ she says, tying the equipment up in a long green bag and locking the cupboard.
‘Well, are you ready?’ She smiles at me.
I feel sick in my stomach. But I don’t want Por Por to think that I’m a coward, so I nod, grit my teeth, and follow her out the door into the fading afternoon light.
‘The Guo house is not far from here. Just a short walk along the canal,’ Por Por says.
‘But what do you want me to do when we get there?’ I ask, trying to steady my quivering voice. In the late afternoon the canals look like paths of gold, but I don’t have time to admire their beauty. I’m so scared.
‘Wait and see,’ she says. ‘Every situation is unique. You can never anticipate what might happen.’ She has that look in her eye again – the look of a hunter on the prowl. She slows down and points to a house with an outside staircase leading to a balcony on the second floor. ‘The Guo family lives up there,’ she says quietly, her eyes surveying the building.
It’s getting dark as we climb the stairs. With each step I take, the wood creaks and groans. I’m small and light, but I feel like an elephant next to Por Por, who doesn’t make a sound.
She looks at my feet. ‘That’s the first thing we have to work on,’ she whispers. At the top of the stairs she stops to listen, cocking her head like a dog hearing an unusual sound. ‘There,’ she says. ‘Do you hear it?’
‘Do you mean that flute music?’ I whisper.
‘No. The sound behind the flute,’ she says. ‘You must listen from here, Little Cloud. Not from here.’ Por Por points first to her chest, then to her ears.
How can I listen with my heart? I want to ask. But I don’t want to sound dumb, so I nod.
We reach the balcony. Por Por puts the long green bag on the floor and takes out the box of brass bells. She hands me a medium-sized one and a small one.
I shake off a shiver and try to relax, but my hands are trembling and the bells tinkle, so I shove them into the pockets of my jacket.
At the end of the balcony there’s a carved wooden door. It’s wide open and dark in
side. The light from a flickering candle makes eerie shadows dance across the floorboards.
Por Por moves towards the door with quick, silent steps.
I tiptoe as quietly as I can, wincing every time I feel the floor creak under me.
The flute music stops. My breath catches in my throat. Silence falls like a veil. I feel my heart beating so hard in my chest I think it’s going to break out of my skin and run away.
Then I hear something – no, I feel it. A high-pitched demon-like wail.
Por Por gestures at me to get my brass bells ready. But what do I do with them? I follow her into the room, a bell in each hand, my arms in the air. I feel like a chimpanzee.
The room is empty except for an old wooden bed. There’s no wispy white cloud or smoky apparition like you’d expect from a haunted room. Everything looks totally normal. I lower my aching arms.
‘No, be ready!’ Por Por’s whisper is fierce and her gaze intense.
My arms shoot up into chimpanzee position again as I look around the room, startled.
‘Steady yourself,’ Por Por whispers. ‘It’s here …’
As she says this, the room starts rocking. It feels like an earthquake!
I reach for the bed.
‘No!’ Por Por cries. ‘Not the bed! Hold on to the wall over there. Quick!’
I stumble towards the wall and press against it as best I can. Por Por doesn’t need to hold onto anything. She’s balancing perfectly, as if her feet are stuck to the floor with superglue.
I’m looking around for the ghost, wide-eyed and stunned, when Por Por whips out the coin sword from her sleeve.
The room stops rocking in an instant. Is it scared of her? I still haven’t seen any sign of a ghost. But then … the bed starts moving as if it’s alive! It stomps around on the floor with its short thick legs. Then it rears in the air.
I remember the bells in my hands and ring them as fast as I can. At first I’m a bit uncoordinated and my timing is out. But the more I forget about controlling them and let them do their own thing, the faster they ring until my hands are pink blurs. Soon I’m using my whole body to shake the bells. That’s when a strange thing happens. I start singing. A song like nothing I have ever sung or heard before pours out of my mouth.
Por Por glances at me quickly, but I don’t stop – I can’t stop – because it feels so right. She points the coin sword at the bed, her face calm and fearless. With her free hand, she slowly reaches inside her sleeve and brings out the mingshen mirror. Then she begins to chant. Her voice starts off soft and low, but as the bed starts to vibrate her voice gets louder and louder until the sound is so strong it’s like thunder. I want to stick my fingers in my ears, but I’m ringing the bells, so I can’t.
The bed is balancing on its back legs, kicking out with its front ones like a rearing stallion. It’s right above Por Por. If it comes down on her, she’ll be squashed for sure! She looks so small, so brave.
‘GUI … EEEE, KUAI! Ghost, be gone!’ she cries as she swipes the air with the coin sword. Then she draws the sword in towards the mirror. This time her voice sounds like a Chinese chopper, splintering bone. It’s sharp and clean and piercing.
‘GUI … EEEE, KUAI!’ Her cry is like a whiplash.
Suddenly, the bed begins losing its balance and then, as if in slow motion, it totters backwards and crashes against the wall, smashing a huge hole in the plaster.
Por Por looks into the mirror. ‘We got it, Little Cloud,’ she says, her eyes bright and her voice light and cheerful. ‘We’ve caught that naughty old ghost. Do you want to see?’
I step closer and peer over Por Por’s shoulder. There is something there – a faint, shimmery, blobby thing. I can’t believe it.
‘He’s not harmless yet, though,’ Por Por says. ‘If we’re not careful, he could escape and cause more trouble than before. Now watch very carefully.’ She lays the mirror face down on the red silk. ‘This is called the ghostlock fold. First, fold all the corners into the centre. Then tie this gold cord firmly around the mirror three times, using a ghost knot. I will teach you that later. This will hold the ghost inside the mirror until you find a safe place to let him go. Every ghost you catch in the mirror must be locked up in this way.’
‘What are you going to do with him now, Por Por?’ I ask.
‘We’re going to take him home.’
‘To your house?’ I say, shocked.
‘All the naughty ghosts I catch go home with me, except for the really evil ones. Those spirits have to be dissolved. You did well, very well, Little Cloud. And your ghost song – I’ve never heard anyone sing like that before.’
I smile, proudly. ‘I was scared,’ I say, ‘but at the same time it was exciting and …’ I feel funny saying this, ‘I wanted more.’
She smiles. ‘I felt exactly the same way with my first experience,’ she says. ‘The only difference was Crazy Big Head had to show me how to hold those bells. For you, it seemed so natural!’ She strokes my hair.
When we reach home, Por Por takes a torch from her bag and we go down some stone steps that lead underneath the house. The black waters of the canal reflect the moonlight. I see a fish pond like the one in Shanghai. The goldfish are sleeping, but when they see the light they dart away. Very carefully she unties the gold cord, unwraps the mirror, turns the glass upside down and taps the back.
‘Off you go, then,’ she says.
Nothing happens at first, but then I hear a loud plop. I see a big yellow goldfish with a black scar across its back swim behind a rock.
That’s when I realise. ‘All the fish in your ponds are ghosts!’ I say.
‘Yes, they are. That man used to be boss of a big gang. I recognise him from that scar across his back. But now he must learn to be humble like the rest of us. In Por Por’s pond, nobody is boss. Not for long, anyway.’ She smiles and I smile, too.
We go back up the stairs and I ring Papa and Robbie. I’m so excited I can’t stop talking. I tell them about the Isle of Clouds and how everyone goes around in boats and how beautiful it is here. But I don’t mention anything about being a ghost-hunter.
Something happened to me while I was ringing those bells and singing my strange song – something new and exciting. Even though fighting ghosts is the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life, there’s something about it that gets inside you, deep inside you.
I remember one of my dad’s friends – a paramedic – describing to me the excitement he felt when he was in the ambulance heading to an accident, sirens blaring. Now I know what he is talking about. It’s as if your breath is rushing on ahead of you. And all your senses are right there, ready to use. Por Por said she had never heard or read in any of her books of a ghost-hunter using their voice like I did, which makes me feel kind of special. I’ve found a key, a golden key, that has unlocked a secret part of me.
At breakfast the next morning, Por Por winces and rubs her lower back. ‘I must have strained myself while fighting that ghost last night,’ she says, stretching painfully. ‘I’ll need some acupuncture before we go to Bao Mansion. There’s a clinic on the way.’
The sky is saturated with clouds and the canals have gone a milky green. They seem to change colour all the time from grey to green to pink and gold. We walk down the narrow streets towards the centre of town. Nearly everybody we pass knows Por Por and says hello to her. I guess it’s because our family has been here for such a long time. Just thinking that my ancestors would have walked this same path five hundred years ago is amazing to me. I can feel their shadows everywhere – in the buildings, in the stones that I’m walking on, along the canals, gliding across bridges. I hear their voices, too, as if bits of conversation are floating in the air. They’re not ghosts. I know what a ghost feels and looks like now. No, these are fragments of memory that hang around like old autumn leaves collecting in dusty corners. I’m glad the government is preserving ancient towns like the Isle of Clouds. Because if the buildings were pulled down and new ones put up,
where would these memories go? They would have to exist in people’s minds. But then people die and memories die along with them.
The acupuncture clinic is attached to a small hospital. Hanging on the wall of the clinic is a drawing of a naked man with dots and lines all over his body. Por Por says they show the acupuncture points.
The doctor is a short man with a big smile. He wears a white clinic coat and asks Por Por to take her shoes off and lie down on the bed. I sit on a chair in the corner. I feel squirmy inside already. I hate needles – even if they’re going into someone else’s arm. I can’t even watch them on TV.
The doctor presses certain spots on Por Por’s leg then rubs alcohol on them and pushes a needle in. Each needle is about four centimetres long and looks like a thread of silver cotton. The doctor puts more needles on her other leg and on her back and neck.
‘Does it hurt, Por Por?’ I ask, looking at her through half-closed eyes.
‘I can’t feel the needles going in because they are so thin. But I do feel a dull ache. That means the doctor has hit the right spot.’ She smiles. I stand up and look more closely. Por Por is right. The needles are thin, they even bend.
When Por Por has about ten needles sticking out of her, the acupuncturist attaches some wires to the ends and connects them to a machine. I can see the needles gently pulsating.
‘I’ll probably be another half an hour or so. Why don’t you go outside and walk around the shops for a while? Take some money from my purse and get yourself something to eat.’
‘All right,’ I say. ‘Do you want something too, Por Por?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
I rush out of the clinic, eager to explore on my own. On either side of the narrow lane are two-storey wooden buildings with shops on the lower floor and tiny rooms up above. They are beautiful, with carved wooden windows and pillars. The shops open right out onto the street and don’t have glass fronts like the shops in Australia. I’ve noticed that at night, when the shops close, the owners put up wooden panels across the front.
A Ghost in my Suitcase Page 5