“Do you really enjoy what you do?”
He looked up at the ceiling, then back down again, then let his gaze wander across the restaurant. “Yes, I suppose I do. I really do.”
“So you wouldn’t really have chosen anything else to do for the rest of your life?”
He shook his head. “I don’t suppose so, flower. I’m far too old and set in my ways.”
鬼说
I wear the false face, and I am reborn. I am no longer Zheng. Or Dainty. I am far from lovely, as far from it as I have ever been. I am a living corpse. I am pain. I am punishment and grace and heartless retribution.
I am the face of death.
I am resolved to death, both my own and the death of my target.
But I will not die now. I still have work to finish.
The false face, the deathface, frightens the American. His tone gives away his fear.
“Oh shit!” he screams as I dive at him from the shadows. “He’s wearing James’ face!”
It is all he says.
He raises his pistol and fires at me. One shot flies past my shoulder and the other past my knee. His men stand behind him and seem to be frozen in place.
They clearly did not come here to die. He has failed to set his heart right. He will not find the Way. But, even though the words are from the Hage Kure and not a Chinese manuscript, as my father would have no doubt reminded, they are no less true:
“If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.”
I am without blame, and I will succeed.
The American will die, as will the monsters he serves.
My blade cuts into his shoulder before my feet find the safety of solid ground. It bites deep and he screams obscenities at me. I pull it free and smash the head of my dao into his wrist. He drops one of the pistols. The other hangs limply at his side as blood from his shoulder coats his now useless left arm.
He spits blood at me, and it hits the false face. I smile and the face of the child killer smiles with me.
I swing the dao across the horizon of his shoulders, and the American’s head spins round once, then topples to the ground. His companions flee like so many scurrying beetles.
As much as I would love to savor the moment, I cannot allow myself to spare the time. Instead, I pack the head quickly into my bag and retreat to the Triumph Hurricane I had hidden between a row of boxes. After tying the bag to the handlebars, I kick the starter and race away into the night.
Barely two miles onto the highway, I peel away the false face and let it flutter away in the evening breeze.
I will have a new one soon enough.
怪物说话
“I want this bastard dead, do you hear me?!”
Boss Wu Song slammed his fist on the table. The extra skin hanging from his cheeks and chin bounced in rhythm as he hit the metal tabletop over and over, like a child throwing a tantrum.
“The boys said he was a ghost—yuan gui—that he was James come back to kill us for getting him killed.”
“Why would James want to kill us, you idiot? He was my number three man. I made him rich. Thanks to me and my business, he could have all the women he could want.”
“Who knows the ways of the yuan gui, Boss?”
Yang stood opposite the boss at the table. He twirled a butterfly knife and passed it from hand to hand without having to pay too much attention.
“There is no such thing as ghosts or demons, Yang. Tell the boys they’re being superstitious children.” He grimaced and gruffed out a loud, grumbled sigh. “We were supposed to have left all this old fashioned nonsense behind us when we left China.”
“The old ways are hard to remove completely, Boss.”
“So is the face of a dead man, but apparently this bastard was able to do that.”
Yang coughed.
“Boss?” A young man in work clothes entered the room.
“Yes?”
“You wanted to see the girl.”
“Right. Bring her in.”
The worker left the room and let the door clink closed behind him. Moments later he returned, dragging behind him the girl Yǐjīng sǐle. Her wrists lay bound with rope and metal cuffs in front of her, and her mouth and eyes were covered with black cloth. Even her ankles were trapped by rope and she hopped more than walked in step behind the young man.
Once he had led her to the table in front of the boss, the worker jerked the blindfold from her eyes. She winced at the sudden influx of light and shook her head.
She glared at the heavy mountain of a man who stared at her.
“They tell me you escaped, and they got lucky and found you trying to sneak back in.”
The girl only continued to glare.
“They also tell me you are not responding to the punishments, that you resist the education I have instructed my men to give you.”
She said nothing.
Boss Wu motioned to the worker. The young man snapped to attention and ripped the gag from the girl’s mouth.
“How did you escape?”
She spoke without altering her expression. “I told you. I am Yǐjīng sǐle. That is the answer to all your questions.”
Wu motioned to the man again, and he struck the girl across the face. She snapped to the left from the blow, but made no sound.
“I will have answers from you, child. You will not mock me.”
“I do not mock you. You only mock yourself.”
He slammed his fist on the table again. “Bitch! You think yourself wise beyond your years, child, but trust me. You are little more than a fool, and I will train your tongue to be respectful.”
“My grandfather taught me that men must earn respect.”
Without being told this time, the young man slapped her fiercely across the face again. The girl fell back and onto her knees on the floor. She cried out once, then grew silent.
“You will talk to the boss with resp—” the man started, but Wu cut him off with a shake of his head.
“How did you escape the pens, and why did you not take the other girls with you?”
“I alone am Yǐjīng sǐle,” she said. “Where I go, the others can not.”
“You speak in riddles, child. You frustrate me endlessly.” Wu turned to Yang. “Take two of the boys. Search the pens for any way she could have slipped out. Don’t fail to find it. She got out somehow, and you will either find it or I will use you as an example to show the rest of the boys what happens when they fail me.”
“I’ll do my best, Boss.”
“You’ll find it, Yang.”
“If it’s there to be found, it won’t hide from me. We’ll turn those cells upside down if we have to.”
Yang clicked across the concrete warehouse floor with his fancy dress shoes, and when he was gone, Wu motioned for the young man to bring the girl closer. He did, jerking her by the arm roughly and dragging her to a spot near the boss’ knee.
“Let her go,” he said.
The man did as he was told.
“Leave us. I would speak privately to this one.”
“Are you sure, Boss?”
Wu cut his eyes at the man. “Have I ever given you reason to question my orders?”
The man shook his head. “No, sir. Call me if you need me. I’ll be waiting outside the bay doors.”
“Go watch the river,” the boss said. “I won’t need you.”
The man adjusted his gaze as if he were about to speak, then nodded and walked away. Boss Wu Song grabbed the chains and raised the girl’s arms so far above her that she was forced to her tiptoes.
“In any other life,” he said, “you could have been a famous acrobat. You have the figure for it.”
She said nothing.
“But this is not any other life. This is the only life you have, and you belong to me through no fault of your own. It is not fair, and I acknowle
dge that. I would not want my own niece to experience the life in store for you, but unfair will be what it will be.”
He let go of her chain and let her arms fall again to her front.
“However, I do have it within my power to make your life less troublesome for you than it will be for the other girls in your pen. Do you understand me?”
The girl nodded.
“Good. I have a certain haunting that I must be rid of, and I think there is a way we can help each other.”
鬼说
The wind blowing across the river keeps the air crisp and biting tonight. It is the opposite that the heat of my blood needs for what is to come.
I fight the urge to unsheathe my dao, but it would not do for it to greet the moonlight and announce that I am already here. I must remain hidden until the time of death is upon me.
So I use the time to stretch the face of the American over my own, to smooth out his cheeks over my cheeks, to rub his wrinkles and creases across my smooth forehead. A little glue around the edges, and I cease to be the girl I had been moments before. I become the ghost of the American named Anderson. I become the demon who kills the evil that would steal little girls and make them slaves. I become that darkness that grows stronger the more people do nothing to stop monsters. I become the beast that must take form to stop the monsters personally.
A black limousine parks outside the warehouse, and three men exit the car. The first to do so opens the driver’s door then walks around to get the back door for the large man in the black suit.
Wu Song. The yaoguai demon. The devourer of the life force of children.
Once the big man is out, another door opens and a man in slacks and a dark shirt steps out to join them. This man is Yang. I know of him. I have seen him with the girls. I have seen him look at them with eyes like teeth, ready to consume. He will die tonight, and then I will become his ghost when it is time for Wu Song to die.
I wait for the men to leave the car, but they remain behind. Yang leans inside and calls out, “Chūlái!” and a child emerges from the car’s dark interior. Her head is covered by a black bag tied at the neck. Her arms are bound behind her with what looks like a thin white twine. Her dress is ragged and her knees are bruised. Her feet are bare. The light from the car door tells me this, but no more.
Yang pushes the girl to her knees in front of him, facing Wu Song. He pulls a pistol from his waist and shoves it against the back of her head, then looks for direction from his boss.
The big man nods and gazes around the dock, quickly scanning not only the buildings but also the surface of the river. After a minute or so, he stops and shouts into the night, “Ghost! I know you are here. The idiots who work for me claim you are yuan gui, but I am not superstitious like those fools.”
He stops and lets the words float in the cold for a few moments, then a few moments more.
“I will give you one chance to save this girl’s life. Show yourself by the count of five or I will kill her. You know I’m not bluffing you.”
I don’t give him the opportunity to count.
Instead I drop from the safety of the box ledge and land behind Yang. In the space between heartbeats my dao is threatening to bite his throat.
“I care not for the girl,” I whisper. “I am here for vengeance alone.”
“I don’t believe you,” Yang grunts.
I press the blade into Yang’s Adam’s apple. It bites and tastes blood, but only enough to frighten him. “That doesn’t mean that I won’t save her from you if it doesn’t prevent me from killing you.”
I peer around Yang’s head and let the big man and the chauffeur take in the full glory of my new face.
“So it’s true,” Wu Song says. “You do wear the face of the last man you killed. You’re one sick bitch.” He coughed, then followed the sound with an almost gentle laugh. “I have to admit that finding out you’re a woman throws me for a loop a bit. Judging by the ferocity of the kills, I assumed you were a man.”
“I am neither man nor woman. You yourself called me correctly.”
He laughs loudly this time. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
He motions to the chauffeur, who draws a pistol and lines me in its sights.
“But I’m willing to put that theory to the test and try to make you a ghost for real. What do you say?”
“You will not kill me this evening or any other. But I will kill you… when it is time.”
In the next second, Wu Song nods, the chauffeur fires his gun, and I pirouette to the left, slicing through Yang’s neck, all but avoiding the bullet that merely grazes my arm and cuts through my shirt and across the top layer of my skin.
As I come to a stop on my toes, knees bent, ready for the next blow, sword relaxed but tense with the lust for death, I watch time slow down and count the minutes that seem to pass before Yang’s head hits the dirty concrete, then bounces twice before rolling to a stop between my ankles.
“You will not have this face,” Wu Song yells and, like a strike of lightning that doesn’t match his heavy stature, retrieves a long, slender blade and throws it toward me. At the same moment, the chauffeur fires another three rounds. I dance like a possessed crane, flying in place as much as spinning, and I avoid the bullets with little effort. The knife also misses wide to my left.
When I stop my dance, I reach for the girl, who has remained still, not running away in the midst of such violence. She is strong. My mission will need strong girls in the years to come.
“Come,” I say, reaching for her arm.
As I do, her hands release from their bindings and snap around toward me. One rips the bag from her head to reveal the face of a young man, barely seventeen by my guess. One hand holds a short knife.
The betrayal is so sudden I am struck before I can react. Several inches of the blade bite into my thigh. I give way as the pain announces itself, but I do not drop to my knee. Instead I reach for the betrayer’s wrist, snap it until bones break, take the knife, and spin it around and drive it into his face.
He is not on my list. His face need not be unblemished for my mission.
He falls. I hear a snapping crack as his face hits the concrete.
“You do not matter anymore, yuan gui,” says the big man. “The knife was tipped with poison. You will be dead before the end of tomorrow, and you will wish you were dead long before then.”
He turns and motions for the chauffeur to get back into the car. Then together they drive off into the night.
When they are gone, only then do I allow myself to drop to my knees. The face of Alex Yang stares blankly at my false face, and I resist the urge to cry. It will be my new face, and it must not be defiled by tears. I will have to act faster, but act I will.
The monster’s arms and legs may have been cut off, but its head remains.
I smile, watch the blood flow from my thigh, then use the knife that bit me to remove Yang’s face.
怪物说话
“What the hell do you mean, she’s missing again?! She was bound in chains and given enough drugs to keep her asleep for three days.”
Wu Song grabbed the closest item from his desk he could reach, a jade statue of a monk his niece had given him. He raised it to throw it against the wall, then reconsidered and put it down. Instead, he grabbed the ashtray that had belonged to his father and threw it across the room, where it shattered into shards that rained all over the floor.
All this talk of ghosts and demons and spirits. His blood boiled within him. His best men dead.
He had overcome his great enemy only to be confounded by a child. A mere girl.
“Find her,” he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. “And this talk of yuan gui is done. Do you hear me? This so-called ghost is just another dead fool who set herself against me.”
He slammed the phone on the cradle and a half-inch crack broke into the back of the handset. He glared at the rotary dial as if it too were mocking him. The most powerful man in the Bergs. The man wh
o owned cops and criminals alike. The man who couldn’t be stopped. The man who had destroyed the face-stealing bitch who thought she could bring him down.
After counting to ten and letting his fists relax, he shoved his thick index finger into the dial. Seven digits later, he waited for the familiar voice to answer.
“Hello,” said the lovely, calming voice of his niece.
“Hello, Jiao,” he said. “I thought we were meeting for lunch today.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Song. I’ve got a stomachache today. Must have been something in the seafood last night. I was stupid and let Billy talk me into going with him and Suze to that new place on the river.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, flower. I was looking forward to taking you somewhere new myself.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise. We’ll save it for next week.”
“Thanks.”
He waited a moment before continuing, then said, “I suppose it’s best. I have a few things I really need to take care of today. Gotta track down some missing goods that none of my so-called brilliant workers can seem to find.”
Jiao laughed gently. “Sorry to hear that. But I’m sure you can find it, Uncle Song.”
“Oh,” he said, his voice suddenly flat and more gruff than he intended. “I know I can.”
He said goodbye and hung up the phone, then called out for one of the guys to send the chauffeur around with the car.
Good little Jiao. Gentle little Jiao. His flower. Without her own father, she needed him more than ever. She needed him strong. She needed him powerful. She needed him to make sure she would never know pain or shame or loss or the humiliation of the girls he processed each week. He had sold hundreds before, and he would damn well sell hundreds, even thousands more to make sure Jiao would never want for anything to make her life special.
The chauffeur took him downtown for lunch, and he got the payphone number from the maître d’ and sent the driver to give it to the men—with instructions to damn sure call when they finally found that little brat again.
He had finished the second order of tartare aller-retour when a waiter let him know he had a phone call.
Asian Pulp Page 26
