Journey to Wudang

by Kylie Chan

  ‘That was unnecessary, I was coming with you,’ I said, holding my arm and glaring at her.

  She smiled slightly. ‘Just making sure.’

  I turned back to Leo. The boys were next to him; he took their hands and they all disappeared.

  The Death Mother took advantage of my movement and grabbed my hands, pulling them behind me. She roughly tied them together with raffia packing twine, commonly used to bind boxes and shopping bags in Hong Kong. It would cut my wrists open before I could snap it. She pulled the twine so tight it hurt, then grasped my arm again.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Boat at anchor.’

  The building around us disappeared.

  We landed on the deck of an old-fashioned Chinese junk floating next to a jungle-covered island just visible in the darkness. I didn’t get to see much before they dragged me down the stairs to the front of the boat, but from what I glimpsed we weren’t in Hong Kong any more — the water around us was calm and muddy and there were hardly any other boats.

  Whatever the Death Mother had given me began to take hold and everything felt heavy. My legs were too massive to lift and I sagged under my own weight.

  ‘Help me,’ she said, and one of the demons lifted me by the other arm.

  They half-dragged, half-carried me into a stateroom that had been converted into what appeared to be a medical treatment room, with an examination couch and cupboards. When I saw the IV stand next to the couch, I panicked and tried to escape, but both of them held me.

  I took deep breaths, trying to clear the drug from me and change to snake, but they’d hit me with a heavy dose. My eyes were closing by themselves and I was a dead weight as they lifted me onto the couch. They pushed me onto my side and unbound my hands, but I couldn’t move them even when they were free.

  They rolled me back, painfully crushing my left arm, then pulled my right arm out and prepared it for the IV. I tried to yell with fear and pain as they inserted the needle, but all that came out was a heavy, silent gasp.

  I tried to stay awake as the black fluid dripped into the tube, but it was too hard.

  The pain woke me — the demon essence was being burnt out of me again, but just in my arm. Where was I? My entire right arm was on fire and I wanted to grab at it, but my left arm was bent painfully under me. I tried to roll over to release my left arm but I couldn’t move.

  If I could have thrashed around, I would have. The demon essence was going in, I couldn’t move — someone please kill me now. What had happened, where was I?

  Stone?

  No reply. The terror burst inside me and I wanted to scream but I couldn’t make a sound.

  Someone appeared above me next to the couch, their face blurred and their movements in slow motion. They said something, but I didn’t understand.

  They slapped my face and I didn’t react.

  What was happening? John?

  They wrenched the IV out of my arm, stabbed me with a hypodermic, and rolled me over to release my left arm. They did something with my hands — bound me to the couch — and then moved out of sight. I was still paralysed. As I watched the room spin around me, I wondered why I couldn’t move. At least the demon essence wasn’t going in any more, but my arm was still on fire. Stone? John?

  Later, the sound of shouting brought me around; my head was clearing. I looked down at my arm: the skin was black and shiny where the essence had gone in; it looked like it was covered in oil. It didn’t hurt. I tried to move my left hand to touch it but I was bound to the couch.

  I dropped my head back, took some deep breaths and my head cleared even more.

  ‘She didn’t die last time, she won’t die this time! Just fill her up!’ the Death Mother shouted outside the room.

  ‘She will die,’ Kitty said, her voice calmer. ‘She’s somehow caught AIDS. You saw what it did to her arm. If we fill her up, not only will it kill her but I could catch it too. I don’t want to even go near her now — she’s contagious and that disease is mean.’

  ‘So just kill her and dump her off the boat.’

  ‘We should drop her back in Hong Kong. They’ll find her and leave us alone.’

  ‘You’d just let her go?’ the Death Mother said, full of spite. ‘After all she’s done to you? You’re weak.’

  ‘Look, you stupid bitch,’ Kitty said, ‘if we kill her, he’ll know. He’ll be straight down here and he won’t rest until he’s torn both of us to tiny pieces. If we throw her out there alive, he’ll find her and leave us alone.’ Her voice went sly. ‘How about we break her head, fill her full of alcohol and dump her in Lan Kwai Fong? She won’t know who she is, and the authorities will think she’s just another drunk gweipoh who hit her head. Even better, we give her a fake ID, and they’ll send her home to Australia thinking she’s someone else. Even she’ll think she’s someone else. He’ll be busy looking for her for years, and we can find that other one again and breed from him.’

  I nearly smiled. Do it, he’ll find me. He vowed he would … But I wouldn’t remember him.

  I concentrated and quietly tried to pull myself free of the bonds that held me on the coach, but they were made of the nylon bands used to hold loads on trucks. They had been ready for me. I tried to change to snake, but the drugs and the demon essence had mixed up my energy and I couldn’t.

  ‘Let me do it,’ the Death Mother said.

  ‘Oh no, this one’s mine,’ Kitty said.

  They came into the room, both of them looking smug. Kitty leaned over me.

  ‘I’ll change her name to Donahue,’ she said. ‘It’s about time she spelled it right.’

  I was surrounded by noise and confusing light. I was lying on something rough and I ached all over. My head throbbed. People were speaking in a language I didn’t understand — all I could see was feet. Someone prodded me and I couldn’t do anything. I vomited without moving my head; I couldn’t even shift it back out of the way. I tried to lift my head, but I couldn’t. Everything was too hard.

  I was jostled, then people were speaking softly near me. I opened my eyes — dim light. I looked around: I was in the back of a van. I saw the IV and tried to rip it out, but again I was bound. We swerved and hit a bump — definitely in a van.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘Going to hospital, stay calm,’ someone said with a Cantonese accent.

  More Cantonese: they were discussing the quickest route to the hospital in the Saturday-night traffic. Someone made a bawdy comment about gweipohs that I only half-understood, and they all laughed. The radio chattered in Cantonese and I couldn’t understand it at all.

  Someone shone a light in my eyes and I tried to wince away from it. They held my head and I grabbed their hands. Someone took my wrists and tried to pull them away, so I flipped my hands out to release them, did a one-handed somersault out of the bed, and stood next to it in a long defensive stance.

  ‘Wah,’ the doctor said.

  I dropped my hands. I was next to a hospital bed, with a doctor and a couple of nurses staring bewildered at me. I bent double as my head thundered with pain, then glanced up at them.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘You were found drunk and unconscious in Lan Kwai Fong,’ one of the nurses said. Her face screwed up with disapproval. ‘You hit your head; you have concussion. You could have died of alcohol poisoning.’

  I moved out of the stance. ‘I can do kung fu.’ A wave of weakness swept over me and I leaned on the bed. ‘That’s a line out of The Matrix. I can do kung fu, and I have no idea who I am.’ I gripped the bedsheets, wadding them in my hands. ‘I have amnesia, I don’t know who I am. I can remember lines out of movies, but I don’t know who I am!’

  ‘You are …’ The doctor looked down at my chart. ‘You are Emily Donahue, you’re from Australia. You’re a tourist here in Hong Kong, and we’re trying to find out which hotel you were staying at. You have an Australian passport and a ticket back to Australia for tomorrow night.’ He glanced up at me. ‘But I thi
nk we’ll need to keep you here for a day or so if you don’t remember who you are. You had a bad bump on the head. Do you have travel insurance?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I sat on the bed; my arm was bleeding. I must have ripped out an IV when I jumped out of it. ‘Did I have a phone with me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A diary?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anything with some contact numbers on it?’

  ‘We’ll call the Australian Consulate,’ he said, and put my chart back on the clip at the end of the bed. ‘You’re staying overnight for observation. Put the IV line back into her —’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly.

  ‘You need fluids.’

  ‘I don’t care, no IVs.’

  ‘Do you have a religious rule?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I wish I could remember why, but I don’t want any IVs.’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘Drink plenty of water then. Oh. Sit on the bed, there’s something I want to ask you.’

  I climbed up onto the bed as directed.

  He held my right arm out; it was bandaged. ‘What happened here? How long have you had this?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t notice it until now. Is it a cut or something? What happened?’

  ‘We want to ask you.’

  The nurses moved closer to watch as the doctor unwound the gauze from my arm.

  ‘Is it poison, or gangrene?’ the doctor said. ‘Your hand seems to be fine, which is very strange. We’re calling in a specialist because we don’t know what it is.’

  He finished unwinding the gauze and I saw that my skin was black from the middle of my upper arm to close to my wrist. It wasn’t the gelatinous black of rotting flesh; it was smooth and shiny. It looked like my arm was coated in black plastic. I touched the surface and it was hard.

  I leapt off the bed again, staring at my arm in horror. I backed away from it, but it followed me. I took deep breaths, then moved forward again to stand next to the bed and put my hand around the blackness. The area had the same sensations as regular skin. I clenched my right hand a few times.

  ‘It feels completely normal,’ I said with wonder, watching the lights dance across the blackness. I looked up at the doctor. ‘And you don’t know what it is?’

  ‘The dermatologist will take a look at it tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Also, you appear to have had recent keyhole surgery in your abdomen. Did you have an ovarian cyst?’

  I felt it now that he’d mentioned it: a tight, painful sensation low on my right side. I turned away from them and lifted the hospital gown; I wasn’t wearing anything beneath it and I wondered for a moment where my clothes had gone. A piece of self-adhesive gauze was plastered just above my right hip. I lifted the edge of the gauze to find a five-centimetre-long incision closed with stitches. I replaced the gauze and turned back to them. ‘I have no idea what that is.’

  ‘It’s healing well anyway,’ the doctor said. ‘Rest now, and we’ll let you out as soon as you’re better, and the Consulate will find your family in Australia.’

  I crawled back into bed and noticed a ring on my left hand. It was on my ring finger, like an engagement ring, but it looked very old, with an old-fashioned setting. The stone, whatever it was, was gone.

  The stone. Something jolted within me, like a bolt of electricity, from my eyes straight down my spine to my toes, and then it was gone.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the doctor said, peering at me.

  I nodded. ‘I hope you can find my family. Was I with anybody at Lan Kwai Fong?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have amnesia,’ I said. ‘I may get my memory back, or I may never remember. That was a hell of a clout on the head.’ I touched the lump; it was exquisitely tender. ‘But there’s something important I have to do.’

  The doctor gave the bandage to one of the nurses and she wound it over my arm again.

  ‘That’s probably remembering to take your flight home tomorrow,’ the doctor said. ‘Don’t worry about it. When we contact the Consulate, they will look after you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, lying back and closing my eyes. I snapped them open again. ‘This has happened to me before. I woke up in hospital with a massive headache — but I had family …’ I tried to remember. ‘There were people here with me!’

  ‘That’s good,’ the doctor said. ‘We’ll find your family, and you’ll be just fine.’ He patted my foot under the cotton blanket. ‘Take it easy, and you’ll be out of here in no time.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I caught his gaze. ‘I appreciate all of you looking after me like this.’

  He smiled slightly and I realised he was good-looking and about the same age as me. He had some serious bone structure going on, and a strong chin, with kind eyes and flawless golden skin … He saw me looking at him and his smile widened, and that same lightning feeling smacked through me again. There was something extremely important that I needed to do; and I had family.

  I studied my left hand again. It didn’t look like an engagement ring. I slid it off my finger and the impression remained. Whatever it was, I had been wearing it for a very long time: it had worn a groove in my finger. I put it back on and slid my finger over it, feeling for the stone …

  I looked up. The doctor had gone, and the nurse was finishing the bandage on my right arm.

  ‘We tried to take that ring off your hand,’ she said. ‘But you wouldn’t let us.’

  She nodded to me and went out, leaving me alone to stare at the curtains around my bed.

  I was woken early the next morning by a group of nurses and orderlies loudly discussing something in Cantonese. They gathered around my bed, all in surgical gowns, rubber gloves, masks and goggles. They slid the barriers up around my bed with loud clangs and wheeled me out of the room.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said, clutching the side of the bed. ‘What happened? Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Move ward,’ the nurse at the top of the bed said.

  ‘Why are you all done up like you’re going to operate on me?’

  She grimaced behind the mask. ‘Infection control.’

  Panic shot through me. ‘I have something infectious? What’s wrong with me?’

  ‘You filled in health form when you arrived, you should not have come into Hong Kong,’ she said, her voice angry. She added something in Cantonese that I didn’t understand and one of the other nurses hushed her.

  They took me down three floors in a lift and to a single-occupant room at the very end of the building, in what was obviously the infection-control unit. They wheeled me into the room and one of the nurses stuck a sign onto the wall above me. I peered up to see it. It was a large biohazard sign with ‘HIV+’ written in marker underneath it. The nurse added a few more signs, in both English and Chinese, giving specific directions on how to deal with me, then glared down at me and left.

  ‘That’s not right, is it?’ I said. ‘I don’t have AIDS. I can’t have AIDS.’

  ‘Test was positive,’ one of the other nurses said. Her expression seemed to soften behind the mask. ‘Tested twice. Both times positive. Sorry.’

  They went out, closing the door behind them, and I buried my head in the pillow and wept.

  At lunchtime, just after they’d cleared away my untouched plates, the doctor came in with two people. One of them was a cranky-looking, middle-aged woman in a Hong Kong Immigration Department uniform; the other was an older Chinese man in an expensive bespoke suit. All three of them pulled on full infection-control coveralls at the doorway.

  The man in the suit sat next to the bed. His voice was gentle and he had an Australian accent as strong as mine. ‘Miss Donahue, there is a possibility that you are in serious trouble. Your passport isn’t genuine, it’s a forgery, an extremely good one. We wouldn’t have picked it except that one of our staff was very meticulous and checked the microchip page in the middle.’

  ‘Why is that a problem?’ I said. ‘It’s supposed to have a microchip page in the middle.’

>   ‘The microchip page has personal details for a woman called April Ho. The passport number matches up with this April Ho, whoever she is. It looks like someone made a fake passport, removed the microchip page out of a real one and put it into the fake. The air ticket wasn’t a fake, but we can’t find any records of you arriving in Hong Kong. I suggest that you tell us the whole story right now and we’ll do our best to help you out. If you can prove your Australian citizenship, we can step in. Otherwise, we’ll have to let the police and Immigration take over.’

  He thought I was a prostitute with AIDS on a faked passport. I was in serious trouble. I glanced at the Immigration officer; no wonder she was scowling. She was waiting for me to confess so she could lock me up or deport me.

  I checked the doctor. His eyes weren’t kind any more.

  I turned back to the Consular official and did what I always do: I told him the truth. That was what I always did, wasn’t it?

  ‘I don’t remember anything,’ I said. ‘I hit my head. The last thing I remember is being dizzy and disoriented in Lan Kwai Fong. I wish I could remember before that, because I really have no idea who I am.’

  The Consular officer glanced at the doctor, who nodded confirmation.

  ‘We’re trying to track down who you really are,’ the official said. ‘Is Emily Donahue your real name? Tell me if it isn’t — it’ll be three times easier on you to be deported back to Australia than it will be to stay here.’

  ‘I’m not sure, but it sounds right. It sounds like me.’

  ‘We’ll check it then; track down the Emily Donahues who left Australia.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I caught his eye. ‘I really have no idea who I am. I swear. Please find someone who knows me so I can go home.’

  ‘Forging passports is a serious offence, Miss Donahue,’ he said. ‘Miss or Mrs?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ I raised my left hand. ‘Looks like the diamond fell out, so a Miss on the way to a Mrs, I think.’

  He glanced at the doctor again, then back to me. I’d just passed a test.