The House of Life 3

by Vann Chow

  The butler bowed his head even lower in the face of young master’s rage.

  Michael saw the reflections of Elise and Jade behind him on the tinted window of the car at the head a long procession of men and women from the Big Eye Fish. He turned around to speak to Jade.

  “Take all women, children, the sick and the injured back on the Big Eye Fish across the harbor and settle down in the old mansion at the Victoria Peak. Use the bomb shelter if needed,” he commanded, his eyes fixed on the distant white spot on the mountain across. “And all the able-bodied men follow me to the command center!”

  “Why only the men?” Elise protested. Jade tugged at her sleeves in apprehension. “Women are just as capable!”

  “Yes, I might be of help,” the snake demon echoed Elise, but her bold declaration was followed by a fit of coughs.

  “I’ll go with you instead, Elise,” Ian stepped out from behind the queue. Albeit feeling still a bit stiff here and there, his motor ability had almost fully returned to him. Chad nodded in unison. There was no question that the almost inseparable pair were coming together.

  “Young Master, we must hurry,” the butler reminded him, the corner of his eyes caught the minute hand of the clock on the tower. “We only have forty minutes left. The Walled City is at least fifteen minutes away without the horrific lunchtime traffic.”

  “Let us come help you,” Elise insisted.

  “There’s no more room in the vehicle,” Michael hissed, trying to deter them as much as possible.

  “We can take the bus! It’s not like we don’t know the way!” Chad grabbed Ian, who in turn snatched Elise’s hand and together they hopped onto the bus heading towards the Walled City park as it was pulling away. “And we’re going to beat you there!” Chad shouted back cheekily.

  Michael shook his head and slipped into the back of his car together with the able-bodied prisoners who had eagerly pledged their allegiance to the Hong Kong Celestial Court. The Mongolian twin, as Michael expected, took up most of the space in it and some more. Black and White Commissioners flew after the sprinting sedan.

  ***

  “I wonder how it looks like in real life, the Walled City?!” Chad was screaming on top of his lungs against the hubbub of the full mid-day bus. Since none of the living bus-takers could really hear them, he leaned his head out of the window of the upper deck of the bus to let the summer breeze brushed his face and hooted in the simple, unrestrained pleasure. “Yooohoo! I never knew it would be so great just to breath fresh air!” They had been cooped up under water for days. Despite the magic that allowed them to breath under water, it was a peculiar and unusual experience.

  “Didn’t the Wall City get knocked down by the British Government thirty years ago?” Elise asked. “How are we going to find our way to the Command Center?”

  “We’ll find out when we get there!” Chad’s optimism was undeterred. “Don’t forget that we’re La Salle boys. Our college is right next to the ruins of the Kowloon Walled City! We snuck out there all the time when we skipped classes!”

  Elise found herself enjoying the bus ride very much. After days at sea far away from home, the sight of familiar urban landscape of her beloved hometown outside the windows comforted her. In contrast, Elise noticed that Ian looked rather apprehensive.

  Elise nudged Ian to spill the beans, and he finally did after much circumvention, “We didn’t pay. I’ve never not paid before for anything.”

  “C’mon, don’t be absurd! We’re wandering souls. The driver can’t even see us, let alone charge us for the bus fare.”

  “You two are Dreamers, to be precise,” There was a cold chuckle coming from behind them. Chad and Ian turned to look, but saw no one. Elise, however, saw the owner of the voice. It was an old man with a long white beard and a half-shaven head of ashen long hair combed back into a long queue. It was the style that belonged to pre-colonial times Hong Kong.

  “Who’s laughing?!” Chad questioned, not knowing where to look.

  Ian observed the minuscule signs of surprise on Elise’s face, and he asked her, “Could you see the man? You could see a man, can you?”

  Elise gulped and nodded.

  “Mister, are you also…one of us?” she asked the man hesitantly.

  The old man chuckled, “I’m more like you, than them,” he replied. Chad felt a chill down his spine hearing the ghost spoke. “These modern motor vehicles invented by the Gweilo are really something. It’s the perfect means of transportation to navigate the busy streets of Kowloon. I’ve been working on this route many, many years, and I have never felt bored.”

  Chad frowned at Ian. A ghost spending years on a bus was talking to them. Chad was now imagining how bone-chilling it would be for unsuspicious passenger to share a seat with the dead man. He wondered if he had ever encountered one before without knowing.

  “The fare is one thousand Celestial Emperor of the Heavens Dollar per person. Pay up!”

  Before Chad realized, the old man had floated to the front, invisible to their naked eyes except Elise’s, and stood by his side. His voice boomed directly next to Chad’s face. He could smell the repugnant breath of his decaying body surrounding him, suffocating him.

  “Jeeze…!” He yelped, covering his nose with his sleeve.

  “Are you the conductor of the bus in the realm of the dead?” Elise asked, her eyes fixated on the man’s mismatched driver uniform and the shoulder bag stuffed full with ink press-printed bus tickets.

  “We don’t have any money, and especially not Celestial Emperor Dollars…” Ian said, not knowing where to focus his sight when he spoke, but he spoke sincerely and full of regret. “I’m very sorry. Is there something we can do?”

  “He’s here,” Elise put her hands on his head and turned it to the old man’s direction. “Conductor, we’re very sorry. We didn’t know that we need to pay a fare for the bus, too, when we’re…”

  “Whether you’re a human, a ghost or a dreamer, business is business! There’s no free lunch even in the Flux, understand?!”

  “The Flux?”

  “This world! Do you not even know where we you are?” The old man exclaimed. “This world between the living and the dead is called the Flux.”

  “We understand,” Elise answered apologetically. “I think you can probably tell already, we are all new to this realm, the Flux, as you called it.”

  “Should we get off the bus?” Ian stood up to go, but Chad pulled him back down.

  “Old man,” Chad said, “We’re in a hurry to go to the Walled City. A life is at stake here! A very important life. As a matter of fact, you might have heard of him if you’re a Celestial governing body employee in this realm. Court official, Judge Siu Lok Wing from the Chamber of Life and Nutrition has been kidnapped by a group of bandits and was locked up in the tower in the Walled City. We’re on our way to rescue him.”

  “What?” The conductor exclaimed in surprise. “Your ill-disciplined clique of freshers think you can save Master Siu when his most capable son couldn’t? Don’t make me laugh!”

  “You know about it?” Elise asked.

  “Of course! I’m observant,” he said. “A band of carrier pigeons flew out of the Chamber at Nathan Road every three hours the last two days. None has returned. Then there are all these fare-shirking tourist-ghost riders! You’re the fifth group I have caught today! So, yes, I am sure something big is happening. And besides, it’s on the Ming Po news.”

  “Ming Po? Do you also get news from the Flux on Ming Po?” Elise asked. The Ming Po (the ‘Early Morning Post’ when translated into English) was one of the oldest and most reliable newspapers in Hong Kong.

  “Of course!” He said. “The living gets their news early in the morning. We get the news at night when these papers go into the incinerator at the recycling facilities. The newspapers get transported into our realm with news pertaining only to us once they were burnt into ashes by the living.”

  “I have no idea…” Ian commented. He was fasc
inating by the workings of the underworld.

  “Anyway, we’re not getting off,” Chad reiterated. “Besides, we’re almost there. There’s no point of kicking us out now. Look!”

  He pointed at the tightly packed towers that loomed ahead of them that was the legendary Kowloon Walled City. It was a monster of a construction, an amalgam formed by many individual commercial and residential units squeezed together into one tiny patch of land since mid-1800s. Every crack and crevice between existing architecture was filled with another hastily thrown together wood, steel and concrete shop or apartment. When there was no more room in one layer, people of the Walled City put another layer on top of the haphazard, uneven stack below. Thirty thousand people were said to have lived inside the ‘walls’ formed by the outermost layer of these ugly apartment blocks, making it one of the most densely populated ‘city’ in the world during its existence until it was knocked down in 1993.

  “Whoa!” Elise couldn’t help but exclaimed. She was starting to appreciate her new spiritual status. As a ghost, she was able to see everything that had ever existed in the past, even knocked-down buildings such as those of the Kowloon Walled City where many urban legends were sprung. It was an amazing experience if she wasn’t so dead. The offer from Michael to marry him and stay in this realm as the wife of a Celestial Court official as opposed to heading down the Nether Bridge, the Bridge of No Return, into the Wheel of Reincarnation seven days after her death was beginning to become very attractive to her. She liked Michael, but was it enough to marry him?

  “Next station Kowloon Walled City Park!” The voice of the driver boomed in the overhead speakers.

  “Let’s go!” Chad shoved Ian towards the stairs, who in turn pulled Elise with him, ignoring the shouts of the infuriated Bus Conductor.

  “Hey! Pay up, you brats!” The old man was unaccustomed to walking down the stairs. Already over a hundred year olds, his body had almost forgotten how to flex his knees and lift his legs enough to step down. After all, there was no reason to. His job in the afterlife was to sell tickets on the upper deck and there he stayed for a very long time. Painstakingly, he tumbled down the stairs of the double-decker, and by the time he arrived at the landing, the fare-evaders had already rushed out of the bus. He was crushed subsequently by the crowd of bus-takers, living and dead, swarming on to the vehicle. Overwhelmed by anger, he ignored the new passengers who did want to pay him their fares and he ran after the girl and her insolent Dreamer-companions who were heading towards the Walled City.

  The Plaque

  “This is so freaking awesome!!” Chad looked up in awe at the colossal mess of human endeavors. He counted at least twelves levels in the closest tower nearest to him. A myriad of rectangle signs in white with red painted Chinese words in all size and shapes advertised the plethora of businesses housed within it. Many of the storefront ones facing outwards were dentistry, doctors, snack bars, hair salon and bookstores, serving the community within and without. They were the more harmless ones, according to the stories. The storefront facing inwards were less innocuous. Fight clubs, casinos, brothels, drug-manufacturing factory, dog-meat serving dens, opium smoking joints and anti-establishment communities flourished, attracting businesses from within and without. The Walled City was once a Qing Fort and it was never occupied by the colonizers. It stayed outside of the British’s jurisdiction even after Hong Kong became its colony. And with it being so far out of reach of the Chinese Qing empire, almost ‘an island’ on its own like post-WWII Germany but with no clear governance, it had become a city of endless sins and pleasures where everything went.

  Because they were in the Flux, they expected to see lingering souls going about their normal businesses in and out of the city fort and to hear long-dead children playing ball games on the roofs during lunchbreaks at the makeshift primary schools its residents organized for the under-educated occupants’ children when they have to work. Yet the group heard and saw nothing. The stores on the lower levels were closed, and all the windows on the upper levels were shut with their curtains were drawn. The place looked utterly deserted. They could felt the tense vibrations in the air.

  “How dare you run off without paying?!” They saw the relentless bus conductor materialized from the side of the moving bus and charged towards them. In his hand, he was flicking a long and lean bamboo stick at them, hitting them on their feet and calves, making them jump, as if a herder rounding up stray sheep.

  “Are you crazy, old fool!” Chad shouted at him as he skipped to and fro to avoid being hit by the stick.

  The ruckus the old man started trigged a movement behind one of the windows. Something flashed. Ian glanced up to locate the gleam he caught from the corner of his eye under the blinding sun at high noon. When he saw what it was, it was too late.

  “Run!” He shouted at the group, then grabbed Elise’s hand and ran as fast as he could. Behind him, a trail of bullets hit the ground and followed his steps like an unrelenting biting dog. It was only when they ducked behind a large plaque planted to the ground that the firing stopped.

  “What on earth!” Chad looked down to check if he still had both of his feet and all ten of his toes.

  “Kowloon Fortress,” Elise turned around to read the words on the giant stone plaque. “It says Fortress on it,” she gasped in surprised.

  “Of course,” the old man said, panting. He hadn’t had to run in a long time, having been trapped on the double-decker for over a century. “It has always been a fortress, first of the Song (dynasty), then of the Qing. Many battles happened in here. I bet today’s no different,” he ruminated as he rubbed his aching knees. “What do you three think you’re doing here anyway? You almost got me shot and killed!”

  “Aren’t you already dead?” Chad questioned him. “If you haven’t made a scene, they wouldn’t have noticed us!”

  The old man flicked his bamboo stick and it hit Chad on the arm. Instinctively, he dodged and his back was exposed for a second. A series of shots pelted down like rain around him and at the plaque he now hid himself completely behind. He heard lumps of the broken plaque crumbled to the ground.

  “If my soul got ripped to shreds today, I would haunt you all even as particles!” The old man glared angrily at him as the four of them huddled awkwardly behind the plaque. “You freshers don’t understand, do you? A dead person couldn’t die again, but his soul could be dispersed by weapons born from violent hatred! Once a soul is dispersed and disintegrated, it will be absorbed by the earth. And this person is never again to be seen. His name will be removed from all records in heaven and on earth. There will be no coming back!”

  “Violent hatred…” Ian repeated his words. “Why are Wuzha’s men so angry?”

  “They wouldn’t be lingering here on earth long after their physical deaths if they were not seriously slighted when they were alive. They are looking for revenge!” The old man said.

  “But why are they targeting us?!” Chad said. “I have nothing to do with any of it!”

  BAMMMM!

  Suddenly, a small scale explosion in the foot of the tower made them all duck instinctively. The attacking army from House of Siu had fired their canons from their stations. The plaque behind them shuddered. A crack appeared above their head.

  “The fight is breaking out. We have to get out of the way!” Chad said above the noise of another explosion which they couldn’t see.

  “What should we do now?” Elise looked apprehensively at Ian.

  “We should go to the command center and take shelter,” he said.

  “Sure, but where is it?” Chad said sarcastically. He now regretted his curiosity greatly. Maybe he should have stayed with the group and went to the mansion in Victoria Peak.

  “Michael said it was two miles South of the Walled City,” Elise recalled. “Which way is South?”

  The group looked around cluelessly for something to orientate themselves to no avail.

  “There! Idiots!” The old man pointed left with his
stick. The exposed stick got snapped into hundreds of pieces by bullets of their pursuers. The poor man looked at the tiny dark clouds that were the remnants of the end of his beloved walking stick and sighed.

  “How are we ever going to get out from behind the plaque without killing ourselves?!” Chad said in a whiny voice.

  “That’s also my question!” Elise said.

  “Don’t worry. Remember that Chad and I are not yet dead. We are just apparitions of ourselves. Their bullets can’t do nothing to us. If you two stay in our shadows, we might just be able to shield you from harm.”

  “Are you sure?!” Chad and Elise asked him at the same time. “What about the explosives?!” Chad added.

  “No, I’m not sure,” Ian replied after a while, the injuries he suffered from willing himself out of the dream had almost hardened him irreversibly into a human crystal. He wasn’t sure he could survive another round. Actually, Jade had explained, even as Dreamers, they could be killed in their dreams, too, just not in the same way as the others.

  His answer made the old man snickered. The old man himself wasn’t sure as well what would or would not work despite his years of experience in the Flux. The bullets that landed around their feet were oozing dark mushroom clouds with tiny snaring faces, before they were dispersed by the wind. Their enemy’s resentment seemed more powerful than anything he had ever encountered. But the explosives from the Celestial army were even deadlier. He had never seen any ghost survives it. “I can’t believe I’m to be destroyed here because of you three fare-shirking, irresponsible dimwits!”

  “What are you doing?” Ian caught Chad squatted on the ground with his eyes squeezed shut.

  “Asking for help by telepathy!” Chad had his eyes closed to focus his entire mind on the Black Commissioner. After all these time they had spent together, he was hoping the flying soul reaper would hear his cry for help.

  “It can’t possibility work, can it?” Elise squinted anxiously at him. But in such desperate time, she herself was not above seeking rescue via paranormal phenomenon. She had seen Michael deflect objects with a blue electric force field. Could she produce something like that herself? Didn’t the Buddha grant her great powers? The instructions were all written in the sutra.