"Is it gone?" she said. “Is the demon gone from him?”
"Yes, it is gone," I replied, though I could barely speak.
It was as I stood up and moved away from her father's body that she saw for the first time the condition it was in. Its limbs were so mangled that it barely looked human. She let out a small cry and knelt down next to it, then laid it out on its back, straightening the arms and legs as best she could, all the while weeping over the damage she had inflicted.
"You had to do it," I said, hoping my words would carry some comfort. "Whatever that thing was, using him, you had to do it."
She paused from her work and looked up, still kneeling by the corpse, and stared into space.
"They took him from our village," she said eventually. It wasn't even clear if she was talking to me.
"Who did?"
"Men who give offerings to demons. They took him the day he died, stole him from his own house. I had to follow them. I had to."
"Why did they do it?"
"I do not know."
Then she moved away from him and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees. Still she would not look at me.
"Who are you, Englishman?"
"My name is Daniel," I said. "Daniel Getty. I'm a captain, with Whitechapel Mercantile."
"So you sell your filth, and poison our people. Is that right?"
I didn't know how to answer. It was clear she meant the opium, but at that time providing a drug that had been used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years was something I'd never had much trouble justifying, despite my first hand experience of its effects.
"Always you work to destroy us," she continued. "We had doctors and religious men come to our village, preaching Christian love and peace, but only if we worshiped your God and learned your language would they treat our diseases. Then the opium comes, and turns us all to walking corpses. It was the opium that killed my father. Did you know that?"
"No," I said. "No, I didn't."
She stood up, and approached the body again. "I need to take him back home."
"Where do you live?"
"Suzhou," she said. It wasn't a place I was familiar with. Then she took the corpse under its arms, and made ready to lift it off the floor. "You will help me?" The tone suggested there was only one possible answer.
The body weighed next to nothing, probably the result of a lifetime of malnutrition and opium use, but in my condition even that much effort was painful. It was like carrying a sack of broken bones and rotting flesh. Devoid of the controlling force that had held it together and given movement to its limbs, the corpse felt ready to disintegrate in our hands. The slime of putrefaction was oozing from its wounds, congealed blood and pulped flesh staining my arms and my clothes. We carried it through those dark hallways, still deserted, taking it carefully down the steep stairways.
Who set this up? I asked myself as we went. Who had done this, drawing me in by playing on my greatest weakness? Not Barrington, my instincts said, though I barely knew the man. Someone had drawn him into this, exploiting his pain as they’d exploited mine, then had given him that note and that story to tell. The true culprit seemed clear, and I knew that the next time I saw the pale, flabby face of John Wellan, he would not walk away with his usual smirk. I was soon to discover just how wrong I had been.
We were roughly halfway to the entrance when we were joined by a third person, and although the voice was one I recognised, the tone and the substance of the words might as well have come from a complete stranger.
"Put the body down and come here. Now."
Facing us in the corridor, holding us at gunpoint, was my own ship's doctor, Tom Adams.
"Tom? What the hell are you doing?"
"I don't have time for a discussion, Daniel. Just do as I say. Put him down and come here."
I did as I was told, unable to believe what I was seeing, and approached him warily.
"You too," he said to the girl.
"Tom, just tell me what's going on here," I said.
"You know Daniel, I actually thought about letting you in on this when I first met you. I thought about opening your mind to the realities of who we are, and our place in this world, but something stopped me. I knew your condition would make you useful to us, but there was something else, too. I didn't think you'd have the same vision that the rest of us do. I see now I was right."
"The rest of us? The rest of who?"
"We who understand, we who revere - we who serve. Now get on your knees, both of you."
I hesitated, but the way he levelled the gun at me and repeated the command showed how serious he was. I have only seen cold-blooded resolve like that on a few occasions, but I recognised it now. I reluctantly complied, waiting for whatever would come next. I did not have to wait long.
In one move he turned to face the girl, took aim, then shot her in the face at less than two feet. The noise almost deafened me in the confined hallway, but I still heard her cry out as she fell beside me. I leant over her at once to see the blood gushing from the wound to her eye. Her face was distorted in agony, and I could see she had only seconds to live, but still she managed to speak.
"Tell my family," she whispered.
"Who are they?" I replied desperately. "Who are you?"
I cannot say why it was important to me at that time, but the idea of her dying next to someone who didn't even know who she was seemed deeply wrong. I was glad she was able to reply, for her answer was to be the last thing she ever said.
"Pi Xiaoming," she said, and then she became still.
I'd known her for all of thirty minutes, and yet somehow the murder of this brave, formidable woman affected me more than any other death I'd witnessed. I turned to Tom, the fury as strong in me as the incomprehension. "What the hell …?"
"Some people are more useful dead than alive. As, my dear friend, you are about to see." Then he continued speaking, but it was like no language I'd ever heard, then or since. It sounded ritualistic, occult, and demonic. Though whatever incantation he was casting was not simply for show, for it was then, with jerking, spasmodic motions, that Pi Xiaoming's body sat up in its own pool of blood, its disfigured face looking straight ahead, and got to its feet. Then it turned to face Tom, who responded by stepping back and bowing, all the while keeping his gun trained on me.
"You should be honoured, Daniel," he said, straightening up again. "You are in the presence of Earth's true master. I was hoping you would have the opportunity to meet. After all, you have aided his continued existence. Something for which we are all truly grateful."
Any doubts I may have had as to the reality of all this demon talk were now dispelled. As I looked into the face of Pi Xiaoming beside me, I could tell that the consciousness looking out through her remaining eye was not of this Earth, and not of this age.
"You sent me here," I said to Tom. "When you tried to talk me out of it, to warn me not to come, and all along you knew I'd come anyway, obediently turning up to, what? Help you in your devil worship? Is that it?"
He smiled for the first time, but it was not the smile of friendship I'd come to know over the years. "Clever boy," he said. "I knew you'd listen to the pain before you listened to me - as you're about to do once more." Then he aimed low, going for my leg, and pulled the trigger once more.
I found myself on the floor with no memory of having fallen there. The demon had Pi Xiaoming's hands on me in an instant, drawing the pain from my body as my blood mingled with hers on the floor.
"Imagine the worst curse you could live under!" Tom shouted at me as I writhed there, his voice almost ecstatic. "Imagine being cursed to live forever in perpetual agony, or to die! Imagine the strength you would need, to choose life! To choose a life of endless pain when you could finish it at any time! That is why He deserves to rule us again! That is why He will rule again! Do you not see the magnificence? The majesty?"
He was mad, or worse. Worse because it seemed the things he was saying were real, and true, not m
erely delusions. Just what had he fallen into during those long years travelling the interior of the country? What sect or cult had taken hold of him, then sent him out to do its work? At the time, I had little or no hope of ever finding out. But his purpose, in sending me to pass my pain to this demon while it used the possessed corpse provided by its followers as a conduit for the agony, was clear. It was also clear to me that Pi Xiaoming’s father had not been the first, and unless I acted, it would happen again.
Pi Xiaoming was screaming, or rather the demon inside her was. It was my pain, I realised, that provoked that scream. Though with what I now knew, I would have taken every bit of that pain back in an instant. And that was when I realised what I must do.
I got to my feet, a new-found strength coursing through my body, and walked towards Tom. Pi Xiaoming's body stayed with me, the demon clinging on in joyous agony. Then with my one free hand I reached for my gun, and took aim at Tom. He raised his gun again, but the demon screamed at him, words I couldn't even begin to understand, but with a meaning that was clear: Keep him alive.
Tom shot once, then twice, then again and again into my legs, but I barely felt it. The pain was sucked out of my body before it even had a chance to take hold. He threw his revolver to the side and made as if to flee, but then I took aim again, cocked the hammer, and shot my friend of seven years in the chest. He fell, and did not move again.
I had to run as I took Pi Xiaoming's body to the docks, carrying its screaming, thrashing form. More than a few people tried to stop me or block my way, seeing the spectacle for the kidnapping and mutilation it must have so clearly resembled. I, however, was beyond human frailties, immune to pain, limitless in strength; and as I forced my way through, I knew the demon would not want to give up such a rich source of torture. I felt my leg muscles tearing and shredding on broken shards of bone and bullet, but somehow they kept me going until we reached the dockside.
I rounded the final corner, and saw - as I had hoped - that the tar troughs were still lit, the thick, bubbling liquid filling them almost to the brim. I could have just thrown her in at that point, rendered her body useless to the demon, but I had seen it abandon one wrecked body already that day, only to return again. This time I had to force it to stay to the end, using the one thing it wanted of me, and that meant only one course of action. I ran to the nearest trough, holding Pi Xiaoming's body over my shoulder, then in one movement I mounted the side and slid in.
I felt the flesh baking, then peeling, then disintegrating from my legs as I stood there with the tar halfway up my thighs, leaning against the inside of the trough for support. The demon was screaming with even greater agonies now, but was still more than happy to take them on.
"Let's see how much you really want it!" I said, and pushed the girl's corpse into the trough. "You can stay in that body and burn with it, or you can go, and give the pain back to me! What's it to be? Me or you?"
It struggled and thrashed, but held firm. Pi Xiaoming's body was burnt and tarred beyond recognition, but still the demon could not bring itself to release her. For a moment it looked as if it really would stay with her to the end, destroying itself in an orgy of pain, but then at last the body became still, and I knew that it had gone. And at that moment, the pain became all mine.
I tried pulling myself out of the trough, but I could not even move, so destroyed and wracked with agony was my body. I screamed, trying to support myself on the rim of the trough as my legs collapsed. I was burning alive, and this time there was nothing to take the pain away. I could well believe that those were my final moments, but then I felt hands on my shoulders, and under my arms, hoisting me out and onto the ground. I looked up as I lay there, slipping away from wakefulness and awareness, to see the faces of the tar spreaders and sailors, Matt Jarrow and John Wellan among them, looking down on me in horror.
"My God, his legs," was the last thing I heard, but I do not know which of them said it. Then the darkness took me.
They who guard, they who worship, they who nourish. They are no longer of this world, those who were taken aeons ago to serve and revere. And when their master's time has come, they will gladly take the sweet release of death, for their heaven lies not in the green fields and meadows of their ancestors, but in blackness, and oblivion.
(The Book of the Counting of the Stars)
I was unconscious for three weeks, I later discovered, and woke to find my legs amputated, with burns extending halfway up my back and abdomen. Most of the bodily functions that others take for granted, I can no longer perform without assistance. I live in a naval convalescent home in Hong Kong now, and considering that I am here as a prisoner - a triple murderer according to the evidence - there is every chance that I will never leave this place again. Only the presumption of insanity saved me from execution.
I had Tom's belongings brought to me, when I still had friends with influence. I wanted to search for anything that might be of interest, given his evident dual life. It was a bizarre collection of objects that I received: strange, unidentifiable carvings, metal implements of unknown purpose, and among them a small, hidebound book, about six inches by four, filled end to end with hand-written Chinese. This was the final conundrum in his life, and my knowledge of it. For when I asked one of the staff here to translate it to me the poor chap almost keeled over with fright after the first page. It was Tom's own demonic bible, a text which, translations aside, had according to Tom’s notes remained unchanged for over two thousand years since its origins in ancient Mesopotamia.
They came up with some strange religions in those days, running round the desert half-starved and mad from dehydration. More than a few got some queer ideas into their heads. I've heard of books that no sane man would want to even look at, held in private collections or locked away in university vaults. This one, however, once I’d convinced my translator to finish the job, had a truth to it that I could no longer deny.
It was never named, that entity cursed to choose between agony and death, forced to draw pain from the living after escaping its captivity in the tenuous, bodiless form it presumably still holds to this day. The torture fields of its unearthly mountain home keep it alive, but somehow the pain willingly given by its followers is only enough to ensure its survival. To strengthen, and grow its powers, only the keenest and sweetest of agonies will suffice.
Yet I know that it is not invulnerable. I saw what it saw when it left Pi Xiaoming’s body, just as I had when it left her father, and I felt what it felt as well. And this time, in that instant when it moved between worlds, after I had taken it within seconds of obliteration, I felt its fear, its injury, and its damage. Minor deity it may have been, but I had harmed it, genuinely harmed it, in ways that went beyond merely giving it pain.
Though my minor victory is of little comfort. I have had a good deal of time to think since I came here, on my past as well as on my future. For that nameless entity is not the only demon to have invaded this land, its promise of relief from pain coming at unimaginable cost. The other, I now see, was as much my fault as anyone's.
I live in pain every day of my life, pain from legs I no longer even possess, pain barely muted by the hospital-rationed opium, and I know that my life will be many years shorter as a result. Though I am glad of it, for the prospect of a life of agony fills me with dread. Yet if anyone were to offer to take the pain away, I would refuse. Relief, I now know, can only ever come at a price. I have never been one for religion, but when men of the church teach that suffering is to be endured, not shirked, I sit here crippled and broken, remember the demon and the Jiang Shi, and somehow I cannot bring myself to disagree.
THE WATCHER IN THE CORNER
by Michael Hodges
I eat words. I don’t know why. I hang in the corners of this old and meticulous house by unseen hooks or latches. The words come to me from the mouths of the family and their visitors. The words of the adults come out grey, brown and black; the words of the young rise to me in reds, greens and blues. I sw
allow them all, and each time I do, something inside me grows. I know not what it is, only that I receive energy from this action.
Something Wicked Anthology, Vol. One Page 25
