“Jesus. Were there any survivors?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think every priest was inside at the time, but the ones that were…my teacher didn’t want to say, ’cause I was a kid, but it was an old wooden building. It would have gone up like kindling.”
I exhaled in a rush—I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath through his story. “Still, how do you know he was a ghost? He could have been a survivor, or one of those historical reenactment people.”
“Wait—I haven’t told you everything yet. In that picture, the one in the museum? I saw the guy who stood outside my window every night. He was a bit different, of course, ’cause he wasn’t burned in the picture. But I knew it was him. I would recognize that face anywhere.”
“Jesus…” I said again, at an unusual loss for words. “What did you do? That would have freaked the shit out of me.”
“Yeah, it was creepy, but in a way, I felt better knowing who he was. I was excited to tell my mom what I’d found out.” His hands drummed against his legs the way they always did when he was craving a cigarette. My roommate was well stocked with nicotine patches to help him get through the long plane rides and non-smoking hotel rooms, but they only went so far.
“What’d she say?” I thought of my own mother, who was as big a skeptic as I was. How would she have handled something like that? Not well, I’d guess.
“She didn’t say anything at first, but I could tell it bothered her, you know? She got real quiet and my mom is never quiet. She sent me outside to play, and when I came in, she never mentioned it again. I tried to bring it up a few times, but she refused to discuss it. Eventually I decided that if she didn’t want to talk about it, I should drop it. So I did.”
“I don’t know how you handled it. That’s a lot for a little kid to deal with on his own.” I’d never forget how much that rustling sound in the ghost city had spooked me. What would it have been like, having some ghost peering in my bedroom window—for years?
Erik shrugged before retrieving a pair of cargo shorts—the unofficial uniform of American tourists everywhere—from his bag. “Like I said, it was scary at first, but after a while I got used to it. It was almost like having a friend, you know? When we moved to the new place, I kind of missed his company.”
“I would have been glad to be rid of him.”
“Aw, he wasn’t that bad. I think he was lonely. It has to be hard, being dead and not able to talk to any of your friends anymore.” He headed to the bathroom with his shorts, but hesitated in the doorway. “There was something that was kind of cool, though.”
“What’s that?” My mind was still reeling from the other stuff he’d told me. In Minneapolis, I didn’t know a single person who had seen a spirit. Now I seemed to be surrounded.
“Underneath that picture at the museum was a list of the priests’ names. So I wrote down the info, and the next time I saw the man, I said it. I came right out and said, ‘Hello, Father Carlo.’ And you know what happened?”
“What?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“He smiled at me. Every other time I’d seen him, he’d looked so sad, but when I said his name, he smiled. He didn’t come around as often after that.” Erik paused for a moment, lost in thought. “It was like he didn’t need to anymore.”
~ Chapter Nine ~
It was crucial to stake my claim at Table Awesome before beginning my search for Harold. In addition to draping my napkin across my seat, I stuck a wad of used gum to the edge of the plate. Kate sat on one side of me with Matt on the other, and you couldn’t ask for better dinner companions. Larry was well into one of his ‘Crazy Things Cons Do’ stories, and best of all, Meghan and Martin were seated at a table across the room. I wasn’t taking any chances. If I had scent glands, I would have used them.
Matt saw what I was doing and grinned. “Don’t worry. That seat is definitely taken.”
“Thanks.”
At the other table Meghan had launched into one of her epic lectures, while Martin stayed busy correcting her. I’d already seen a few longing looks cast our way. I wouldn’t have put it past some of those people to steal a temporarily vacant chair, especially not after Meghan’s performance at lunch. Some of the women were giving her a wide berth now.
Finding Harold was easy. All I had to do was ask myself where a tourist would be least likely to go. I headed toward the kitchen, directly in the path of a dozen harried waiters who probably longed to dump their overladen trays on my head.
Our guide was ensconced at a tiny table beside the kitchen door. A small but boisterous group dressed in cook’s whites chattered and laughed as they served themselves from a huge bowl of noodles. Their meal smelled amazing, and for a moment, I wished I could join them. Larry aside, their table looked like a lot more fun. They quieted down when they saw me, but Harold, who was bent over his phone, didn’t even notice.
I had to say his name twice before he heard me. Sometimes I think he forgot that he was supposed to be Harold. That was probably a blessing.
His expression was serious when he glanced up, but I didn’t detect any of the animosity I’d been expecting. That was good, but it also might make it harder to get tough with him.
“What’s wrong, Jackson? Something wrong with the food?”
“No, the food is fine. I mean…it hasn’t come yet, but when it does, I’m sure it will be fine.”
“It will come soon. Don’t worry.” Confident that the issue was resolved, he returned to his phone.
“Harold, I need to talk to you, but it isn’t about the food.”
I sensed rather than heard him sigh. I’d pegged him as a short-tempered, frustrated guy who’d been forced to take a job that required him to be patient and polite all the time. One of these days, he was gonna blow. I hoped it would be after our tour.
“Don’t worry about this morning,” he said.
“What?”
Sighing for real this time, he forced himself to acknowledge me. “This morning. You were late. It happens. You say it won’t happen again, so I believe you. I accept your apology. No problem.”
And then I understood. Harold thought I’d come to ask for forgiveness. In the moment it had taken my slow brain to catch up, he’d shifted his attention to his phone again. It was all I could do not to grab that thing and throw it across the room.
The restaurant staff spoke in rapid, half-whispered Mandarin, their words tumbling over each other. I glimpsed a few wary looks aimed in my direction. I couldn’t tell if they understood what I was saying, or were just picking up on my frustration.
“You misunderstand—I didn’t come here to apologize. I needed to tell you why I was late.”
Harold smiled, but the gesture was meant for whomever was texting him, not me. He didn’t bother to meet my eyes as he mumbled what I’m sure he intended to be a conversation ender. “No need to explain. I told you it was okay. You should go and join the group. I am sure the food has arrived by now.”
My eyelid twitched. A muscle in my jaw jumped, but I willed myself to relax. As wonderful as it would be to dump the entire bowl of noodles over his head, no good would come from incapacitating our guide. If Harold decided to ditch us, we’d never find our way out of this place.
One of the cooks rose from the table, gesturing to his vacant chair. I accepted, moving closer to Harold. I wanted him to figure out that the quickest way to get rid of me was to listen. “But I need to explain. You should know what happened last night.”
I’m not sure he ever would have listened, except for a woman who leapt from her chair and smacked him in the arm. The effect was immediate. Harold yelled something that sounded like “Aiyee!” and tossed his phone on the table. He was so furious I wondered if I was going to have to defend her—until she laid into him with a savagery I’d never before encountered. I had no idea what she was saying, but whatever it was, it was effective. She kept gesturing at me and yelling in Mandarin. Finally she moved his phone to the other side of the table and
returned to her chair. Folding her arms across her chest, she glared at him.
Harold had the resigned air of a doomed man. “All right, Jackson. What do you need to tell me?”
I decided to ignore the fact that he made it sound as if needing his help was a weakness—or a disease. “Remember the girl I told you about yesterday?”
He scowled. “No. I don’t remember any girl.”
“The girl I met at Hensu, remember? The one who said she lived there.”
“No one live there, Jackson. I told you. Ghost city is deserted.”
Trying my best to keep from screaming in frustration, I gritted my teeth. “I know no one lives there now. She lived there before. Before the city was flooded.”
“Okay…” Harold said in a tone ordinarily reserved for small children or the pathologically insane.
“I’m not here to talk to you about the ghost city.” Not this time, at least. “I’m here to talk to you about the girl.” Seeing he was on the verge of interrupting, I finished the sentence as fast as I could. “She broke into my room last night.”
“Wait…whose room?” The guide frowned again, but this time in confusion. I fantasized taking his head and pounding it repeatedly into the wall behind him. Instead, I took a deep breath, figuring it would calm me down.
“My room. Mine and Erik’s.”
“How did she get in?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t give her a key,” I said, hoping to nip that line of questioning in the proverbial bud. “I got up in the middle of the night and she was just there, in the bathroom.” Well, actually in the little space between the bathroom door and the outside one, but I figured that was more detail than he needed.
“What did she say? Did she take something from you?”
The last was an odd question, but I realized it made sense to Harold. Why else would she break into our room, he probably thought, if not to steal from the rich Westerners?
“No, she wants me to tell her story. She’s getting pretty insistent about it.”
“Story? What story?”
“I asked you about it yesterday morning, when you guys picked me up from Hensu. She says that the villagers’ homes were flooded before they could get their things. They lost everything.”
Harold snorted. “She is crazy. This did not happen. Everyone evacuated in lots of time, everyone fine.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. I think maybe she is crazy. She was there today too, at the place we ate lunch.”
It might have been my imagination, but Harold had turned a bit pale. “She is following you?”
“She seems to be, yes.”
He rose from his chair, scanning the room as if he expected her to be there, waving a sign. “Is she here now?”
In spite of everything that had happened so far, the thought had never occurred to me. I was afraid to check, but he was already surveying the room, even though he had no idea what she looked like. It would have been weird not to help him.
“No, she’s not here. Or at least, I don’t see her,” I said after a minute. The intense relief I felt told me this chick was bothering me more than I’d been willing to admit.
“Can you describe her?”
“She has dark hair that comes to her shoulders, dark eyes, pale skin, and she’s usually wearing a dress. Sometimes she wears a blue raincoat. She goes without shoes a lot of the time.”
From out of the corner of my eye, I could see one of the cooks duck her head to hide a smile. She could definitely understand what I’d said, and I realized that, except for the dress and lack of shoes, I’d described almost every woman in China.
“Is she young, old? Fat, thin?” Harold asked with more than a trace of impatience.
“Uh…she’s young. I’d guess in her late teens or early twenties. And she’s thin. Very thin.” I held my hands a short distance apart to indicate how tiny she was.
Harold nodded, and patted me on the shoulder. “Okay. You let me know if you see her again, and in the meantime I will keep an eye out for this woman, okay?”
At least he appeared to be taking me seriously for once. “Okay.”
“You will go join the rest of the group now, okay? Your food will be getting cold.”
Before I left, I went to thank the woman who had managed to get Harold’s attention. Before I could say a word, she winked at me.
When I returned to the table, everybody had their food. A generous portion remained on each of the serving dishes.
“We saved you some food,” Matt said.
“Great, thanks.” I wasted no time in helping myself, piling my plate high with eggplant, roasted potatoes, tomatoes with bits of scrambled egg, and this amazing Chinese vegetable I’d recently discovered—garlic leeks, which oddly didn’t taste like garlic or leeks.
Taking much smaller amounts of the crispy chicken, stir-fried beef, and baby octopus, I gestured for whoever was still hungry to help themselves. Matt and Larry quickly obliged, and even Kate snagged another helping of beef with her chopsticks. China was rapidly turning me into a vegetarian, something I’d never considered before. But then again, before coming to China, I’d had no idea vegetables could taste so good.
Once Larry had resumed the story I’d interrupted, Kate leaned over to me. “Did you tell him?”
My mouth was full of the sweet spring taste of garlic leeks, which were the love child of fresh pea pods and baby asparagus. “Mmm-hmm,” was the best I could manage.
“What did he say?”
“Pretty much what you’d expect,” I said once I’d finished chewing. “He wants me to tell him if I see her again, he’ll keep an eye out, etcetera, etcetera.”
“You don’t believe him.”
Biting into a piece of beef, I closed my eyes for a moment to savor the taste. Food like that deserved a minute of silence. The meat was covered in a flaky crumb coating, like panko, and I immediately regretted donating the rest of my share. When I opened my eyes again, Kate was watching me with a bemused smile. “It’s not that I don’t believe him. I just don’t think he’s telling me everything.”
“Why do you say that?”
To avoid answering for a bit, I shoved some eggplant into my mouth. I used to hate eggplant—I’d considered it one of the most useless vegetables on the planet. Every time I’d tried it, it had been reduced to a mound of overcooked, tasteless mush. I have one thing to say to the eggplant haters of the world—go to China and order it. Seriously.
Truth was, I didn’t want to talk anymore. About Harold or the girl. I wanted to enjoy this meal and then go back to being your average tourist. No more lofty ambitions of million-dollar book deals, no more sleepovers in haunted places. I still thought my book idea was a good one, but right now, resuming my boring old life was pretty damn appealing.
I had to tell Kate something, though. She was waiting for me to respond. I glanced around the table. Everyone else was listening to Larry—even Matt and Erik. “What would you do if you were the guide and a member of your group told you he was being stalked—that some woman went so far as to break into his room, and she’s been following him ever since?”
She was quiet for a moment, and I seized the opportunity to sample some roast chicken and potatoes. They melted in my mouth. I’ll say this for Harold—the man knew how to order.
“I’d be freaking out, but I’d try my best to act calm. I’d definitely call the police, and then I’d get the whole group together and tell them what was going on. I’d make sure everyone was watching out for this woman and that they were fully aware of the situation.”
I hadn’t considered that Harold might be hiding his real emotions to reassure me. It was possible. Possible, but I didn’t think it was true. “He’s hiding something, Kate.” I said the words quietly, under my breath.
“Hiding what?” She sounded scared, but I had to tell someone how I felt. And since I’d begun confiding in her, I didn’t know how to stop.
“I don’t know, but he’s been acting str
ange ever since I asked him about Hensu. And when I talked to him tonight, he didn’t seem surprised. He acted concerned, sure, but that’s just it—it felt like an act. If it hadn’t been for this woman who works at the restaurant, he wouldn’t have listened to me at all. I’ve gone on a few tours with Valiant before, and trust me—there’s something about this guy that isn’t right.”
As Kate began to respond, the man himself interrupted her. We’d been so deep in conversation we hadn’t noticed him, which made me nervous. What had he overheard?
“Okay. Everyone ready to go?” Harold gestured at the exit. I’d never noticed before how often he avoided eye contact with us, but it was a lot. It was as if he were pretending we weren’t there.
“Uh, Harold? Jackson hasn’t had much time to eat. He only got here a few minutes ago. Can’t we just hang out here and chill until he’s finished?” I was grateful for Larry’s intervention, but also embarrassed. My cheeks grew warm as everyone turned to look at me—the people from the other table were already on their feet. “It’d be great if he could get a drink too. He wasn’t around when the waitress took our orders.”
The resulting silence was heavy on my shoulders. For a moment, I thought Harold was going to ignore Larry. Then he spoke.
“Does anyone remember the way to the hotel?”
Several people raised their hands, including Meghan and Martin. “Martin, could you take everyone back with you?”
Martin nodded. “I’d be glad to, Harold.” You could almost see the little man’s chest puff out with pride.
The remainder of my group stood up with much scraping of chairs. Matt nudged me. “Do you want me to wait with you?”
“You guys go ahead. I’ll keep him company.” To my surprise, Kate squeezed my hand. I almost dropped my chopsticks. Matt and Erik exchanged a look, and I knew what they’d be talking about as soon as they left the restaurant.
“That’s not necessary, Kate. I will stay with Jackson.” Harold pulled out a chair across from mine and sat down.
“That’s okay. I don’t mind. I’d like to finish our conversation.” Kate was turning on the charm for him, but I could have told her she needn’t have bothered. The man was a stone.
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