by Zen Cho
Past the courtyard were fields of grass as far as the eye could see, no buildings to interrupt the flat, rolling vastness. In the daytime it would have been pretty; at night, there was something frightening about those looming fields.
The sky in the countryside seemed larger than it was in town. Jia Qi craned her head, shivering as the air hit her bare neck. Above her a handful of stars glowed white around a yellow moon.
"I thought there are more stars in the country," said Jia Qi.
"England's too cloudy," said Coco. She rapped the side of the drum. The lion's head snapped up. It blinked. The dance was on.
Their audience seemed eager to be pleased — Jia Qi had never felt more grateful for the existence of alcohol — but she could still sense Coco tensing as they reached the dénouement. A stick emerged from one of the windows and the cabbage dropped down. It bounced a few times as George waggled the stick to make sure everyone in the audience had noticed it.
The lion dropped into a crouch, shaking its behind in anticipation.
Why did lions like eating cabbage? Perhaps, being magical creatures, they could taste metaphor, and eating cabbage was like having the golden flavor of prosperity lying on their tongue. Lions were also fond of wine, but this was an inclination that did not require explanation.
Jia Qi wimped out and closed her eyes at the pivotal moment. When she opened them the lion was standing upright, the cabbage right next to its gaping maw. Inside the lion, Simon had managed to climb onto Tiong Han's shoulders.
The audience broke out into impressed applause. Jia Qi clanged as hard as she could, her hands aching from clutching the cymbals too hard. The lion wobbled — please don't let Tiong Han lose his grip, don't let Simon slip — the lion's head lunged forward, the cabbage vanished, and the tower of lion collapsed, but in a way that almost looked purposeful. The next moment the lion was itself again, Simon and Tiong Han back in control.
The lion staggered. The cabbage was not suiting its stomach. Why did lions have such delicate stomachs? Jia Qi understood the artistic usefulness of a storytelling device that enabled things to be thrown out of the lion's mouth to an appreciative crowd, but it still seemed funny to her that so many lion dance routines revolved around vomit.
Traditionally one showered the audience with shredded greens, indicating that it was now covered with prosperity, but there was a risk with this audience that it might just think it had been covered with cabbage. The troupe had therefore come up with an alternative. Jia Qi had suggested it, and she swelled with pride as the gold chocolate coins filled the air, accompanied by the laughter and cheering of the crowd.
"Wah, close one," said Tiong Han afterwards. "Simon almost fell, man. I thought habislah, sure die already."
"I don't think the audience noticed," said Jia Qi.
Alec dismissed the audience with a wave of his hand. "The audience doesn't know how to see what's right or what's wrong. We are the ones who know whether it was good or not," he said. "What did you think, George?"
George's eyes were shining.
"It was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen," he said.
"George is your number one fan," said Coco to Simon.
"You were also very good," Simon told him solemnly.
"Yah, good cabbage-holding," said Tiong Han. George glowed.
"It wasn't bad lah," Alec conceded. "Apart from the slip, not bad. Eh, did you keep any of those chocolate coins?"
They ate the chocolate coins while watching the fireworks. George was enthralled — he barely glanced at the chocolate when it was offered.
"Thank you, but I don't do that anymore," he said.
Jia Qi withdrew into her hoodie, crimping her sleeves closed with her fingers so the air would not come in.
"Are you cold?" whispered George. Jia Qi nodded. "Here, take my hand."
"Oh," said Jia Qi. "You're so warm!"
George was watching the sky. Red sparks bloomed against the clouds, were reflected in his enchanted eyes.
"It's always been warm," he said. "Since I died."
They were packing away the equipment when Jia Qi said, "What are we going to do about George?"
The troupe stopped and looked at one another.
"We can't take him away from here," said Coco. "Ghosts have to stay with the object they're haunting."
"Then?" said Jia Qi. Her chest felt tight. "We just leave him here, is it? Never mind that this small kid is lonely. It's none of our business also."
No response, though everyone looked uncomfortable. Jia Qi plowed on. "Like that we might as well finish the job. Go back to the room and make sure the lion eats him this time. Otherwise we've just left it dangling."
"Oh, we can't do that," Coco exclaimed, almost involuntarily.
"You said they all are not meant to be here," said Jia Qi. She hardly recognized her own voice. "At least if the lion eats him then he's free. Maybe he can go to heaven, or be reborn, or—"
"Jia Qi, spirits don't go free after they get eaten," said Alec.
"Oh," said Jia Qi, taken aback. "What happens to them?"
"What d'you think happens after a lion eats you?" said Tiong Han.
"Digested," said Simon briefly.
"Yes," said Coco. She seemed embarrassed. "Sorry, Jia Qi, I should have explained that to you in the beginning. We're not priests. We're just an extermination service."
"Doesn't seem so right to eat George," said Simon. "He's smaller than my little brother also."
"But if we all leave him stuck here, what we gonna tell Mr. Yu?" said Jia Qi.
From Tiong Han's face it was clear he had been hoping to avoid this question.
"I thought if we just left, maybe he won't notice," he ventured.
Coco rounded on him. "Tiong Han! He paid us an extra £100 for the ghostbusting! You weren't going to tell him we didn't do it?"
"OK, OK, fine," said Tiong Han. He looked wistful: their lion head was becoming somewhat tattered in its old age, and he'd been eyeing new ones on the Internet. "But you tell him, can or not? I feel shy. They gave us free dinner some more."
"I will tell him," said Jia Qi.
Mr. Yu was not pleased. "Lion dance is supposed to get rid of evil spirits. Why should I hire you if you're not going to bring good luck?"
"He's nine or ten only," said Simon. "He can't be an evil spirit at that age, right? Naughty at the very most."
"Mr. Yu, the ghost is a child," said Jia Qi. "How is he going to bring bad luck?"
"Yah, he can't even drive," said Tiong Han helpfully.
"Old or young, ghosts are bad for business," said Mr. Yu. "You can't have this kind of supernatural thing in the hospitality industry. People go to hotels to relax, not to pretend they are in a horror movie. I'll have to get a priest in — or burn the cabinet—"
A cry of protest rose from the troupe.
"You can't do that!" said Coco.
"Mr. Yu," said Jia Qi. "Give us the cabinet. We'll get rid of it for you."
"We will?" said Tiong Han.
Mr. Yu hesitated. "What will I tell Nick?"
"Tell him we stole it," said Jia Qi recklessly.
"Oh no, don't say that," said Tiong Han. "Say you lost it."
"We can't take the cabinet," whispered Alec. "Where are we going to keep it?"
Jia Qi left the others to argue it out between themselves. She had more important things to worry about.
The air in the hotel room was cold. The lights took a while to brighten after she flipped the switch, and in their dim glow the cabinet looked like nothing more than a dead piece of wood. Maybe George wasn't there anymore?
But when Jia Qi knelt down and asked her question, she felt the room grow warm. A breath of humid air brushed her cheek. George was sitting on the floor next to her.
"Could I help with the dance again? If I came with you?" he said. "Tiong Han said I held the cabbage well."
"Of course. You can do other things also if you like," said Jia Qi. "We'll teach you how to play the cym
bals. And—" George was probably too small to be the lion. "And you can learn how to be the Buddha. You'll be the youngest member of the troupe ever."
"Would I be a member of the troupe?" said George, wide-eyed.
"You won't be on the mailing list," said Jia Qi. "But yah. Only if you want lah."
"Oh yes," said George.
There wasn't any space left in the back of the van, so they put the cabinet on the back seat. Jia Qi sat next to it, promising to make sure it didn't fall over. The rest of the troupe sat in the front and talked all the way back, but in the back it was quiet and stiflingly warm. Jia Qi felt herself blinking, her eyelids trying to gum her eyes shut.
The drive back seemed longer than the drive to the hotel had been. They went deeper and deeper into the darkness, hedges rising up outside the window and falling away, the country a slumbering mystery behind them. Jia Qi stretched out an arm across the front of the cabinet. It would wake her up if it so much as wobbled. She could let herself drift.
As sleep veiled her eyes, she felt a small warm hand grasp hers. She slept and dreamt of sunshine; she dreamt of home.
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七星鼓(Seven Star Drum)
"When Boris was a kid," said Coco, "he was scared of everything."
Boris had been born with an extra membrane around his brain that filtered in things other people didn't see.
This was not unheard of. Everybody knows somebody who can see ghosts. But Boris's peculiar tragedy was that his parents were skeptics. Marvellously, incredibly, they did not believe in spirits.
It was not just that they did not pray. Boris's parents used to go jungle-trekking during their holidays. They were the kind of people who kicked tree stumps and shouted at the wind without fear of retaliation. They spoke openly of death as something that happened to everyone — something that would, one day, happen to them and people they knew.
This is all right, unless you are a child who sees ghosts. And Boris saw all kinds of ghosts. His eyes did not discriminate. He saw red-eyed, white-faced, long-tongued vampires, hopping horribly, reaching out for him with sharp-nailed hands. He saw pontianak and langsuir and toyol and penanggalan, orang minyak, hantu tetek, hantu kum-kum, evil genies, plain old dead people.
Even the quiet ones were terrifying, with their sad eyes and transparent bodies. They were so hungry.
Every ghost wanted something from Boris. Usually they wanted his entrails.
As a small child Boris started at everything. He was afraid of shadows and the dark, of loud noises, of whispers, of people with red faces, of cats and dogs, of old people and babies. He could not sleep if it was raining. He threw tantrums if he was forced to go to the bathroom alone.
This was irritating for his parents. Boris withdrew into himself. People started wondering if there was something, you know, funny about him. They felt sorry for his parents, though it was Boris who was suffering, at prey to the whims of the ubiquitous underworld.
In the picture on the lion dance troupe's website, Boris looks strong and cheerful. His forehead is beaded with sweat from a training session. His lean arms hoist the lion head high in the air. He smiles fearlessly into the camera.
You can tell that here is a young man who has found a destiny to push him forward. He has the sunny conviction of one secure in the knowledge of what he is meant for.
But peel off the layers of time, roll him back to the child he was. Boris never got very large or tall, and he's never quite lost the frown that drew his eyebrows together. With not too strenuous an effort of the imagination you can see in the dauntless lion dancer the child's skinny legs pitted with scabs, the hunched shoulders, the small, guarded face.
He could easily have lived out his life with those hunched shoulders, pursued by the unfulfillable longings of the dead and spiritous, if not for the discovery.
It had happened when he was seven. It was Chinese New Year and for once his parents hadn't gone hiking on some spirit-soaked mountain. They were in Ipoh, where Boris's grandmother lived. His parents were buying kuih from a streetside hawker stall when Boris realised there was a man at the end of the street whom he should not look at.
Boris had learnt not to seem frightened no matter how much his heart shook and his breath stuttered. But his eyes stopped seeing; his mouth went dry. Because he refused to turn around he was not sure what the man looked like, but out of the corner of his eyes he saw the inhuman blue tufts of hair. He smelt the stale exhalations of the undead.
He must be calm. The man had not yet realised that Boris could see him.
Seeing ghosts was not really the problem. The problem was when they looked back.
"Ma," he whimpered.
Boris's tough, hearty parents ignored him:
"I'm getting the pisang goreng," said his mother. "You know your favourite? You wait first lah. Mummy will get for you."
Boris could not help himself. He looked.
He was wrong after all. It was only shaped like a man. When you had a proper look at it, it was not very like.
The thing looked back.
Nobody told Boris what happened when ghosts realise you can see them, but he knew it on a bone-deep level. He had escaped horror many times in his short life, but somehow he knew this time was different.
The thing started moving towards him, in a spiky mechanical shamble. Boris could not move or cry out, though doing that had saved him before. He was frozen. He knew his doom was upon him, that fate was about to touch him on the face.
That was when he heard the drum.
The thing paused and raised its many-eyed head.
The lion came flaming down the road, attended by golden clashings.
"Ah!" said the hawker stall auntie, pleased.
"Aiyoh," said Boris's parents, dismayed — just when they'd thought they'd be able for once to have an afternoon out without an exhibition from Boris.
They looked at Boris and seeing his still face, thought him struck with terror.
It was a great emotion that held Boris in its grasp, but for once it was not fear.
The lion was gold and red and silver; its head was white-furred like the face of a kind grandfather; the bounce of its feet was like the dance of sunlight on water. Its sequined body twinkled in the lights from the hawker stalls. The sky was blue with evening, but the lion was bright as the day.
When it landed in front of him his mother put a hand on Boris's shoulder, to reassure her always-frightened son.
But Boris looked up into the lion's round glass eyes and what he felt was love. The lion's hinged mouth dropped open. The antennae on its snout quivered. Its hot stinking breath brushed his cheek.
Boris knew, for the first time in his life, that he was safe. For once the membrane showed him something worth seeing — the fact that the lion was real. He saw the muscles rippling underneath its fur-lined scaly hide. He saw the pulse throbbed out by the drum shake the lion's flanks.
Under the clanging of the cymbals, he heard the ghost chitter with fear.
When the lion reared on its back legs and leaped forward, when its massive jaws closed around the ghost, it was only doing what Boris had expected it to do.
The other people on the street saw the lion eat air. Boris saw the lion's first snap crush the ghost's leg.
The lion bowed its head, blinking at a gourd quietly placed on the ground by a troupe member. A second snap.
One way of seeing: a human hand reached out from the lion's mouth and grabbed the gourd. You could only see it if you were close to the lion, and only from a certain angle. It was so swift you could almost believe the lion had done it itself.
Another way of seeing, just as true: the lion swallowed the ghost. It snatched the gourd by the neck and chugged its contents down. It dropped the gourd and raised its shaggy head in triumph, shaking its rear, puffed up with pride:
"See what I did?" it would have said, if lions spoke human languages. "I have kept everyone safe."
But lions don't talk
— or roar, for that matter. They let their hearts speak for them.
As the lion pranced away down the road, the drum and the cymbals following, Boris disentangled his hand from his mother's and walked to the spot where the ghost had been slaughtered.
The lion hadn't cleaned its plate. A great brown slug glared up at Boris from the ground. Bizarrely for a slug, it had six staring red eyes, and a lot of blue hair.
"Eeyer," said Boris's mother. "Don't be scared, boy, come here and take Mummy's hand. Insect is more scared of you. Boris, what are you doing!"
Boris squashed the slug under his heel.
The viscera of the slug was corrosive. Smeared on the road, it created the smallest of potholes. Boris inspected the underside of his shoe. There didn't seem to be much shoe left, so he decided to take it off.
His mother could never understand what had happened to that shoe, and she never knew what happened to her son, either. He became outgoing and unflappable. He stared fearlessly into the corners of houses, went to sleep the minute his head hit the pillow, seemed to enjoy horror movies as if they were comedies.
At ten, he started to train with a local lion dance troupe. He went on with it when he went overseas to study, and founded a troupe at university.
"Otherwise I'll have nothing on my CV," he said when people asked, but really it was his favourite thing to do.
It was an expensive hobby, however. Lion heads cost a few hundred pounds; the large drum costs more; and all these things must be replaced as they are worn down over time.
The university paid out a little to support cultural diversity, but it wasn't enough. People are happy to shell out to have a lion dance inaugurate their shop or bless their wedding. They pay even more to have the skeletons cleaned out of their closets. Nobody likes having a ghost in the house.
"And that's how the troupe ended up ghostbusting," said Coco. "It's a good story, right?"
