“Ten bucks. This is the only place in Chinatown that sells this and I don’t sell to everyone. You want it?”
“If it’s so special, why are you selling to me?”
“Because you know Liang and if there’s anybody that I feel for, it’s that crazy old Chinaman.”
“He drinks this rat piss?”
“Drink it? Absolutely. He’s my best customer. Top shelf. He too has a past that he doesn’t want to remember.”
“Hard to figure anything out about that weird duck.”
“Honor. Future. Loss. Who knows?” Susan hands the bag to Todd. “Ten dollars. You want it?”
“I’ll take three.” Todd reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet and forks over thirty dollars while Susan pulls out two more bottles from below the counter. “Can you tell Angela I have to see her again?”
“You think I can be bought for thirty bucks?”
“I’m not trying to buy her.” Todd looks out the window. “I know her pain.”
Todd swings around back to Susan but there’s no one there.
His eyes widen in terror. “Hello! Hello!”
But there is no response.
He quickly leaves.
Chapter 14
A battered and bleeding Jasmine sits at the grand piano, massaging the keys into the discordant, unnerving melody of single notes that was heard earlier in the empty room. She’s not a talented pianist. The movement of her fingers shows a stiffness in the motions. However, that doesn’t stop the mood from coming through—the simple tune embodies Jasmine’s pain, something that no one living or dead can truly understand.
The blood from her wounds seeps onto the keys as she piano plays—it was her blood that flowed onto the keys earlier.
The door opens. Jasmine stops abruptly.
Todd enters and closes the door, then looks at the room. His nerves unbend.
There is no Jasmine but the place has been ransacked. A complete shambles. All the furniture is capsized, his laptop is gone, his music books strewn throughout the room, but most horrifically, he sees blood smeared across the ivory keys of the piano and oozing over the edges.
Mysteriously, the porcelain statues of the old Chinese men, including the two that exploded, are intact.
***
Liang and Cam watch Todd in rapt attention on the television in the gallery but that is all they have in common. Inside, their emotions couldn’t have been more different.
Liang’s thoughts are only of Jasmine and of revenge on Todd. He knows that he is right, that Todd butchered his beloved daughter, and it is only a question of time before he can provide the definitive proof that Jasmine wants so that he can accomplish the only thing that matters to him—a mission of revenge.
Cam, on the other hand, is scheming away like the lowlife he is. How much longer do I have to put up with this crazy Chinaman? When I am going to get some real action and snuff that miserable piano player? And most importantly, how can I screw Angela?
Liang pulls out the Tibetan dagger imbedded in his desk and hands it to Cam. Cam holds it up and examines the glinting blade. Cam gets up and starts walking toward the door.
“Doesn’t it slay you, Liang, to have me to do your dirty work? A proud guy like you having to rely on a scumbag like me.”
“Results are all I care about.” The older man glares at Cam as he swaggers out.
“Then I got a job to do.” Without turning around, Cam gives a mock salute and is out the door.
Chapter 15
Todd rubs vigorously, trying to clean the blood off the piano with a rag and cleanser. No success and he looks up in despair. Liang’s going to kill me. It makes him rub even harder that the stains refuse to be removed.
He goes to the kitchen and grabs a scouring pad, one of those with a yellow sponge that is topped with a green scouring surface. “Please don’t scratch the piano.”
At the keyboard, he tries a delicate scouring. The blood still refuses to come off the piano and now, some of the red residue clings to his hands.
He slumps back, dejected. “Damn.” Sensing the vacant eyes of a porcelain mandarin staring at him, he picks it off the pedestal, examining it.
He notices nothing out of the ordinary and he puts it back. Had he been paying more attention, though, he would have noticed that the eyes of the rotund figure had little cameras fitted into them.
Actually, had he been paying really careful attention, he would have discovered that there were carefully hidden cameras, sound and imaging devices throughout the apartment unit, as well as other little surprises.
Shaking, he drifts to the overturned sofa, takes one of the bottles of Fen Jiu out of the paper bag and twists off the cap. “Power of light in the void or power of bullshit on a dummy.”
He drinks directly out of the bottle. He downs it slowly, grimacing bitterly as he forces down each swallow of the fiery drink. Can’t believe I actually paid for this. But if it works… well, it works.
There’s a wild look in his eyes as he brings the bottle with him back to the accursed piano. He resumes the gentle rubbing with renewed hope but the stains still refuse to come off the keyboard.
Suddenly feeling a tingling warmth, he inspects his hands. They seem redder than ever. Is he imagining things or is it the Fen Jiu softening his guard? He tries the cloth to remove the blood but it doesn’t work. He wipes harder then suddenly drops the rag. Smoke begins to emit from the red stains on his hands.
“No. No. Not the hands. No!” Of all the parts of the body that a human has, to a pianist, the most important is his hands. They are gold, they are life.
Without warning, his hands spontaneously ignite.
“Damn it!” Screaming, he waves his flaming hands in the air as he dashes back to the kitchen.
He turns the tap on full blast and puts his hands under the downpour, hoping to douse the fire, but the water has no effect. He cranks the tap full bore and the gushing water douses the flames.
“Thank God.”
Breathing quickly, he looks at his hands. The red stains are gone but suddenly his hands ignite again.
“No, please no.”
***
“In a little while, Mr. Mathers, your hands will be the least of your worries.”
Liang’s gaze is fixed on the monitor, seeing the results of his handiwork. A lifetime of preparation has gone into this. As the set designer of a small theater, he had to learn how to do everything. Unlike the bigger houses where you could hire specialist tradesmen, Liang, or Huang as he was known then, had to learn many different skills. Carpentry, plumbing, electrical, painting, costume design were just the beginning.
But he wanted to direct and in Beijing, he was pigeonholed and could never get out of that rut. That, plus he was not a willing politician. He hated playing the game of parties, sucking up to Party officials, to top-notch actors and their agents.
He would have rotted at the Xing-xing had not an indie theater group booked Xing-xing for their Beijing performances. Had Zaphos had any inkling at all, they would have researched and discovered that the Beijing theater was far past its heyday and the declining Xing-xing was in a back-alley location, hence the miserably attended performances. Like all good stories where treasure can be found in the unexpected, Huang found his in Zaphos; he met Susan.
He hardly knew English, her Chinese was even worse, but there was magic… and opportunity. She convinced him that if he really wanted to direct, he had to leave China…
***
Todd again runs the water onto his burning hands. Suddenly the fire on his hands stops. At the same time, the tap shuts off by itself.
“What the…”
Absolutely stunned, Todd presses his hands together, then wiggles his fingers as if playing the piano. Everything is fine and there is no pain, no stains on his hands.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. It’s the echo from the mind’s recesses from so long ago.
He buries his face into his hands
. “Why? Why?”
The truth is, Todd suspects the answer and much as he’d like to leave this place, this city, there is something compelling him to stay, something he has searched for for years and something he thinks he will find soon.
The truth.
He slowly pulls his hands off his face, then rubs his fingers against his palms, all the while staring at his hands.
He whimpers, “The dead are dead, aren’t they?” His teeth start chattering. “You’re dead, right? Right?”
He muses, his mind on Jasmine… again. He’s almost positive that he did not have anything to do with her death, yet there’s a little voice that speaks to him every now and then. “Todd, why did you do it? You could have stopped, you should have stopped but you didn’t.” He feels a crushing guilt but at the same time just doesn’t believe that is was him.
Except there are the images of Jasmine that have followed him around the world. No matter where he is, no matter how remote the village, no matter how large the city, somehow her image comes back. The mind is the devil’s playground. Is it her or is it his guilty imagination or is it his desperate longing for a woman that he still loves?
There’s no answer as he takes the few steps back to the living room and sits at the piano, grabbing the open bottle of the illegal liquor. He has no enjoyment as he lifts the bottle over his head, pouring it directly into his mouth, draining every remaining drop.
He blinks at the bloodied piano, then gapes as the child's ball rolls across the room and right through the wall. He staggers to the wall where the ball went through and feels it—the wall is solid.
World spinning dizzily around him, Todd stumbles into the bedroom, then collapses onto his bed. He whimpers, “No, no...”
He passes out, releasing a huge grunt. His is not the calm, deep, rhythmic sleep of the innocent but the fitful restlessness of the damned. Only the alcohol gives reason for his moments of slumber and there is uneven, heavy snoring.
There is the sound of a door creaking open ever so quietly but Todd is so out of it, he’s not even aware that it happened.
***
In the kitchen, Cam noiselessly enters, brandishing the Tibetan blade of death. He slaps it silently against his palm as he treads lightly across the floor. This is a man who is used to taking life. He knows the inherent dangers and risks but then there is the thrill of the chase, the euphoria of the kill.
Crossing the hallway to the bedroom, Cam twirls the knife with the ease of someone who is totally familiar with the weapon as he treads softly, stopping as a mouse scoots in front of him. He grunts a silent grunt. For all the better mousetraps that have been invented since the days of creation, none have succeeded in annihilating these miserable rodents.
Cam silently resumes his steps and slips into Todd’s bedroom and stands at the entrance, where he sees Todd tossing, turning, rolling onto his back... then finally onto his stomach.
Finally Todd curls himself up into the fetus position at the edge of the bed.
Shaking... shuddering... stopping.
Cam approaches silently and stealthily toward Todd, stopping at the side of the bed. There is frustration in his eyes as he hovers over the pianist in his fetal position. Frustration yet knowledge that there is a job to be done.
Cam drives the knife toward Todd’s head but at the last possible moment, a hand pushes the knife into the wooden bed frame, an inch from Todd’s head.
Cam looks up and sees Jasmine. “What the hell are you doing?”
Jasmine hisses at Cam. “No! What the hell are you doing?”
“Shit, you just about polished him off.”
“Me? I saved him. You drove the knife.”
“Yeah, and I aimed six inches away from his head. You almost pushed the damn thing into his eyeball.”
“That’s not what it looked like to me.”
“Look, Jasmine, this guy’s a tough nut. You’re the one wanting proof. He’s stonewalling, lying, two-facing for years.”
The two glare at each other in complete exasperation.
Cam snaps, “Stop interfering with the plan.”
“What plan? You have no plan,” Jasmine snarls. “And why are you here? You’re not supposed to hurt him.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jasmine, recalibrate your mind. It makes no sense. If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead. I am very good at my job and it’s a job that I like a lot. We gotta squeeze this bastard. If you want real answers, why don’t you start helping and stop trying to hold things up.”
Jasmine takes a breath. She looks at the ignorant, sleeping musician, then her eyes travel to the knife imbedded into the bed frame. She paints a mental portrait of her father, the director of this escapade. Let me play it out, Jasmine, she hears him saying to her.
“What do you want me to do?”
Cam beams like a Christmas light. “Now you’re talking, baby doll. Let’s boogie and I’ll tell you.”
Chauvinist asshole. Jasmine nods and she and Cam soundlessly leave.
Todd snorts and curls up even tighter.
He puts the pillow on top of his head. The room chills and Todd pulls the blanket over his body.
Chapter 16
Grating sounds of scraping strings on the inside of a piano waft the
air. Under the blanket, Todd’s eyes strain open at this avant-garde piano music that is found in so many cheesy horror films. However, this is no fantasy and he’s not on a concert stage. This is reality and he cringes as he hears the sound of random pizzicato plucking of the strings, a chromatic sweep of the strings with the fingers, harmonic overtones… He whispers, “Not again.”
A loud thunk on the piano of someone striking the strings with their fist jolts Todd upright and he pulls the blanket off him. “No!”
He sees the Tibetan knife imbedded into the bed’s wood frame.
“No, no, no.”
He gets on his knees and pulls on it mightily. Initially, there is resistance but then he yanks the dagger from the bed frame. The force of pulling it out knocks Todd tumbling off the bed and the knife flies in slow motion through the air.
Todd watches transfixed as the knife falls to the ground, bouncing across the room with smacking, booming sounds that resonate many times louder than it should have.
Todd gapes at the knife as the music ends abruptly.
There is silence. Deafening silence. Deadly silence.
Todd crawls to the knife, picks it up and rises to his feet. He noiselessly moves out of the bedroom.
Todd, brandishing the dagger like a ready weapon, enters the living room. The totally freaked pianist flicks on the light to discover that there is no one. However, the bloodstained piano keys are pure again and the room has been restored to neatness. The music books are back in place and the laptop is back on the desk.
“What? How?” he asks out loud but as his guts churn, he suspects the answer.
He spent long enough in China to know that the Western worldview is flawed. For the Chinese, there is a free flow between the natural and supernatural, between the dead and the living. You worship your deceased ancestors because maybe they will intervene in life on your behalf. Maybe they will provide justice… but… there is always a “but.”
Todd gingerly steps to the piano and places the knife on the music stand. He pats the piano expectantly, as if something unique was about to transpire... but nothing does. He sits on the piano bench, his worried, frantic eyes searching the room... nothing is out of the ordinary.
A moving shadow makes him twist lightning fast... nothing.
He surveys the room again but sees nothing unusual. Everything seems peaceful. Everything is peaceful except for Todd.
He gets off the piano bench and paces carefully. Each step seems a minefield waiting to explode but again, it is a quiet, uneventful journey to the kitchen, just like what one expects but…
Todd’s hands shake as he takes a jar of instant coffee and a cup from the cupboard.
He pours the powder directly
into the cup then places the cup onto the counter. He turns the tap on, putting water directly from the tap into the cup, but before he takes a sip, the chilling piano sounds begin again. More frightening than music could ever be, it is ... ghostly... ghastly...
The door to the living room suddenly swings open by itself.
Todd jumps back, watching the door swing back and forth, back and forth, until it gradually comes to a stop.
Todd hesitantly inches his way in the direction of the macabre piano music.
Then, the child’s ball rolls across the floor.
Todd follows it and ventures into the room but instead of finding the ball, he sees something he did not expect to see—Jasmine is playing the piano.
Jasmine uses her fists and palms in aberrant percussive rhythms on the keyboard to create the unearthly sound. Totally absorbed in her performance, Jasmine ignores Todd as he grimly approaches her.
Color drains from his face, emotion from his voice. “Jasmine,” he whispers, but she either does not hear or does not acknowledge or maybe she doesn’t exist.
Todd moves to touch her but his hand passes through her body.
Jasmine keeps playing. Over and over, he flails at the alluring apparition. “Jasmine, say something.”
None of the blows contact flesh. “Why do you do this to me, Jasmine? Why?”
He kneels to the floor and closes his eyes. He falls prostrate at her feet, which pump the piano pedals. “Please God, stop it.”
Suddenly stillness. Quiet. Ominously quiet. Deathly quiet
Todd opens his eyes to see that Jasmine’s feet are gone. He lifts himself up to see Jasmine calmly sitting on the couch, brandishing the dagger.
“You’re talking about God? How shallow. Todd Mathers, the altar boy who was raped by a church father, whose daddy left his family for the church secretary. The one who sneered that religion was for losers…”
Jasmine shakes her head.
Ghosts of Chinatown Page 6