City of Ghosts

by J. H. Moncrieff

  For a moment, all I could do was blink, like an escaped cow pinned by the farmer’s headlights. A Cantonese boy had played the race card to help us?

  Finally, I shrugged. “Whatever works.”

  * * *

  Kai and his sister invited us to stay at their family home, but we didn’t want to get them in more trouble than we already had. After questioning them for a minute or two, it was obvious they had no idea what, if anything, had happened in Hensu. They hadn’t even heard of it.

  “China has lots of ghost cities,” Kai said. “It’s impossible to keep track of them all.”

  Great. Trust me to pick the one with an actual ghost.

  “Ghosts are a fable, something the old people believe,” he continued. “We know these spirits are only a myth. They are not real.”

  I almost hoped Yuèhai would make an appearance and show them otherwise. You know—just for fun. But, as usual, she didn’t give a damn what I wanted.

  As we left Kai and Lin Na behind, refusing once again to take money for their meal, Kate startled me, calling out a string of impossibly long, foreign-sounding words. I had no idea what she said, but it had a profound effect on the teens. Kai’s mouth dropped open and he stared at Kate in shock, while Lin Na cried out like she’d been pinched.

  Kate waved and smiled. “Thanks again for your help,” she said, leading me away.

  “I didn’t know you spoke Mandarin.”

  “I don’t. I gave them a message from their grandfather. I know I shouldn’t do shit like that, but I can’t help it. When someone says ghosts don’t exist, it brings out the smartass in me.”

  ~ Chapter Twenty-One ~

  Ugh, Hensu. I dreaded going back there.

  “I don’t get why we can’t go home. If the soldiers see us leave, they’ll know we’re not a problem anymore.”

  After taking another train to Hong Kong, we made our way through the crowd of people on the streets, wandering aimlessly as we figured out our next move.

  “Have you forgotten about your girlfriend? Yuèhai isn’t going to let you drop this until you do what she wants,” Kate said, shifting the ball cap for the hundredth time. I could tell she longed to take it off. “Do you want a dead Chinese girl hanging around, watching you jack off?”

  I shuddered at the thought. “Jeez, Kate. Must you be so fucking graphic?”

  She laughed. “It gets results. Like you said, whatever works. Trust me—we need to go to Hensu. That’s the only way to put this mess behind us.”

  “I still don’t understand why. What do you think we’re going to find? A plaque that says, ‘This is what we did to Yuèhai. Sorry if she haunts your ass. Have a nice day’? A signed confession from Harold? Trust me, I was there. That place is tourist city. There’s nothing there but some statues, a lot of rain, and a whackload of annoying tourists.” I scowled, remembering how many times I’d narrowly avoided getting poked in the eye with wayward umbrellas. “I hate that place.”

  “You said you’d love to talk to the woman who led your tour. Maybe she knows something.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah, talking to guides has worked real well so far. That’s what started this shit, remember? All we need is for that chick to contact her soldier buddies. That would be awesome.”

  Kate shoulder-checked me hard enough to make me stumble. “Don’t be such an ass. Not everyone is as nasty as Harold, and not everyone has something to hide. I bet I could get her to talk to me.”

  “And if she knows Harold? All it would take is one text, and we’d be in the same situation we were in on the train.”

  “What other choice do we have? We’re not going to find out anything in Hong Kong. Our best chance is—”

  Embracing her, I ended up accidently kissing the bill of my cap instead of her forehead. “That’s it. You’re a genius. Annoying as hell sometimes, but still a genius.”

  She squinted up at me, so damned adorable I could have done a lot more than hug her, audience with iPhones be damned. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re in Hong Kong. That means the Great Firewall of China is no more. Google is our friend. We don’t need to go to Hensu to talk to that chick—we can find out everything we want to know right here, from the comfort of our hotel room. Assuming we can find a hotel room.”

  I’d suggested a few places, all of which Kate had rejected for being too obvious. I wasn’t sure what would make her feel comfortable, but I hoped she found it soon. After a night of hardly any sleep, I was exhausted, and my feet were aching something terrible. I badly needed to crash.

  Kate wrinkled her nose, clearly not impressed by my idea.

  “What? What did I say?”

  “Do you honestly think there’d be goons chasing you all over China if the information we needed was on the Internet? It wouldn’t be much of a dirty secret then, would it?”

  Shit. As usual, she had a point. “I didn’t think of that. But there’s no harm in seeing what our old buddy Wikipedia has to say, is there? We might as well check.”

  I pulled out my phone, but before I could turn it on she snatched it out of my hand. “Hey!”

  “Use mine,” she said, handing me a phone that had the coolest case I’d ever seen—brass knuckles. “They might be monitoring yours.”

  “This is awesome.” I slipped my fingers through the weapon. “Would these work for real?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been in a situation where I needed to find out.” She frowned, and the rest of the sentence didn’t need to be said. Until now…. “But I doubt it. They’re plastic.”

  “Oh. Probably not then.” I was strangely disappointed. A weapon might not do any good when it came to my spooky little friend, but it would make Harold and his goons take us more seriously.

  In Minneapolis, walking, talking, and texting was no big deal. It had become as natural as breathing to me. In Hong Kong, a city with over seven million people who were all in a hurry to get somewhere, it was another thing altogether. I had several careen into me before I gave up.

  As fate would have it, we were in front of a hostel. The outside of the building was pretty grimy, but I was in no mood to be picky. “This seems like a good place to crash.” I attempted to sound more enthusiastic than I felt in the hopes that she’d agree with me, but Kate barely acknowledged it.

  “Nope. Let’s keep going.”

  “What’s wrong with it? It’s a hostel, so it’s probably not that expensive.” Nothing killed a vacation faster than worrying about money, and I hadn’t expected to pay my own way through Hong Kong, which was rumored to be one of the most costly cities in the world.

  “That’s the problem. It’s a hostel. That’s the first place they’d expect us to be.”

  “Kate. Wait. Hold up.” Taking her by the arm, I pulled her off to the side. In spite of the grungy hostel, we appeared to be in a posh neighborhood. We were close to the entrance of a gigantic Gucci store. Behind the smoky glass, a security guard raised his eyebrow at me. I’m sure we both looked like hell. “You’ve been saying that for hours now. We have to stop somewhere—or was your plan to keep dragging me all over town until we can catch a flight to Hensu?”

  I’d argued about the plane too. That nasty little thing called a budget reared its ugly head, but Kate didn’t have to twist my arm too hard. Flying was faster, more secure, and if I never saw another train or bus in my lifetime, that would have been fine with me.

  “Kind of.” She kept checking over my shoulder as if someone was going to arrest us at any moment. I didn’t like it—her paranoia was freaking me out. “I don’t feel comfortable staying in one place, okay? Once we stop, all we’re doing is waiting for them to find us.” She drew a finger across her throat.

  “You have to calm down. You felt the same about McDonald’s, and that worked out all right, didn’t it? It’s not like they’re going to kill us or anything. Worst-case scenario, they’ll deport us, which is sort of what we want anyway.” As I said the words, I didn’t believe
them. Not anymore. Call me crazy, but Yuèhai’s persistence had paid off. Now I was obsessed with discovering the truth of what had happened in Hensu. That’s probably why she hadn’t badgered me in a while. She knew her work was done.

  “You really think so? Haven’t you heard of The Body?”

  “The Stephen King story?” Now she had really lost me. I wasn’t the most literate guy on the block, but I didn’t think King had written about Chinese ghost cities. Or maybe he had? Maybe it was old news already. Damned if I knew.

  She rolled her eyes. “No, the museum exhibit. Remember, the one that had dissections of real people?”

  Oh yeah. I had heard of that. “I don’t think that was called The Body. Wasn’t it Bodies or something like that? Besides, it was shut down, wasn’t it?”

  Why in the hell were we talking about museum exhibits in the middle of Hong Kong, while lurking in front of a Gucci store? I guess it wasn’t stranger than anything else that had occurred in the past week. Thankfully, I was only visiting Weird. Kate seemed to live there.

  “Sadly, it wasn’t. But lots of cities banned it. You know why?”

  “Why don’t you save me the suspense?”

  “Because it was a Chinese exhibit and no one knew where the bodies came from.” In her panic, her voice rose to an uncomfortable level. I gestured for her to keep it down. In Hong Kong, most people would be able to understand her. “There were rumors that they were the bodies of executed Chinese political prisoners—rumors that were never denied.”

  “No one’s going to put us in an exhibit, Kate.”

  “That’s not the point. If they catch us, what do you think they’ll do? We’ll be the political prisoners—and that’s if they arrest us officially. I don’t trust them, Jackson. I don’t trust Harold.”

  “I don’t either, but we have to rest at some point. We can’t keep walking around like this for much longer. We don’t have to use our real names to check into a hotel. If you think about it, there’s more risk that someone will see us if we stay outside.”

  I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. Already jumpy, Kate started flinching at shadows. She scrutinized everyone who crossed our path, which only made her stand out more. In return she got a few bemused smiles, some scowls, and lots of impromptu photos.

  “Do you have the itinerary on you?”

  Kate nodded, and swung her pack off her shoulders to root through an outside pocket. She handed the tattered paper to me.

  “They’re staying at a hotel on the other end of the city, I think.” Juggling the map and my daypack, I pulled out my own copy of the Rough Guide, which I’d rarely had to use, thanks to Martin. I wished Martin were with us now. He probably had the damn thing memorized. “See?” I tried to indicate our location without dropping the guide. “Here’s where we are, and here’s where the group is supposed to be. We can stay in this area without worrying about bumping into them.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something? They’ll ask for our passports before they give us a room, Jackson. They’ll notice if we use different names.”

  “I don’t think so.” I tucked her itinerary into my pocket. “Not in Hong Kong. Things are different here.”

  And they were. Maybe it was because most people spoke or at least understood English, but Hong Kong felt more like a Western city than an Asian one. It also was a lot more relaxed. As anxious as I was, my shoulders were settling back to their normal position instead of being up around my ears.

  “We should get off the streets, though,” I said. “Remember the orientation tour.”

  Orientation tour was Harold’s fancy term for dragging a bunch of starving, exhausted tourists on a never-ending sightseeing death trudge as soon as we exited the train or bus. Which was not that different from what Kate was doing to me now, but at least we had gotten to eat first, thanks to Kai.

  “You’re right. Let’s go.” She hoisted her bag onto her shoulders again, staggering the slightest bit. I held her forearm to steady her, and she gave me a weak smile. “Maybe a rest wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

  I was tempted to ask the Gucci guard for a good hotel recommendation, but I didn’t want anyone to know where we were, just in case. That meant I had to channel Martin and use the Rough Guide again.

  “The Cosmopolitan Hotel isn’t far from here, maybe a ten-minute walk.” I consulted the map again. “It doesn’t seem too bad. Reviews are decent. The rooms are about a hundred a night—can you handle that?”

  “The Cosmopolitan?” She wrinkled her nose like a little kid. Next she’d be sticking out her tongue to rate my hotel suggestions.

  “What were you hoping for, The Sleeping Dragon? Stop being so picky, and let’s go.”

  * * *

  I’d been wrong about the location of the hotel. We were only seven minutes away. It was perfect, as far as hotel rooms went. One—it had a bed. (Two beds, actually, which I’m sure was a relief for Kate.) Two—it had a shower. And three—it had staff who were so thrilled to be paid in cash that they didn’t ask any questions.

  Reconnecting with the world was not nearly as pleasant. I had five texts from my mom, each one more panicked than the last. The rest were from Roxi.

  Y r u not on tour anymore? Going out of minds with worry. Pls let me know ASAP that u r ok!

  I was about to text her but hesitated, my fingers hovering over the keypad. Kate was in the middle of pulling everything she owned out of her pack and throwing it on a bed. I’d thought she was going to have a shower.

  “Uh oh. Someone told my family I’m not with the tour anymore. You’d better check your messages.” At least Brandi appeared to have gotten the message.

  Kate shrugged. “It’s okay. My family won’t be worried.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t picture a mother who didn’t go out of her mind imagining every possible doom that could befall her children. For my mom, it was almost a hobby. “Why’s that?”

  “We’re not that close.”

  I couldn’t imagine that, either. As much as my family drove me crazy sometimes, I had always been able to count on them. Couldn’t say that about too many people. “They do know you’re in China, right?”

  Kate sighed, tugging the last T-shirt out of her bag and attempting to fold it. “Yeah, I told them, but I don’t think I mentioned it’s a tour. They don’t care about the details.”

  “Must be nice. My mom demanded copies of the itinerary. She probably knows our schedule better than Martin.”

  “I don’t think about it much. It’s just the way things have always been. My sisters breed and I travel. It is what it is.”

  “I’m thinking maybe we should go home.”

  Kate finally gave up on the shirt, dropping it on the bed with its companions. “We can’t do that. What about Yuèhai?”

  “She doesn’t seem to be around as much. Haven’t you noticed? I haven’t seen her since she woke me up on the train, and before that…well, she’s not sneaking into my bathroom at midnight anymore. I think that’s a good sign.” Leaning over, I gave the night table a sharp rap with my knuckles. “Knock on wood. I kind of like being able to piss in peace.”

  “Just because you can’t see her doesn’t mean she’s not around, Jackson. Don’t fool yourself.”

  “You’re shitting me…right?” Cold fingers crept along my spine. Accepting the existence of ghosts was one thing. Being comfortable in their company was quite another.

  “I wish.” She stared at something past my left shoulder, widening her eyes. When I whirled, she laughed.

  “Wench. You did that on purpose.”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. But seriously, can’t you feel her? You don’t have to see her in order to know she’s here.”

  “What does she feel like?” I strongly suspected Kate was still pulling my leg, but I was too curious not to ask.

  “Malevolent.” She glanced warily around the room as if afraid someone was listening. “I’ve only encountered a spirit that angr
y once, and it…” She lowered her head, unwilling to meet my eyes. She busied herself with her T-shirts again, folding and then refolding them. “It wasn’t a good time.”

  “If she’s that pissed, why did she wake me? Why didn’t she let those guys get me?” I remembered all the times Yuèhai had spoken to me—her large, dark eyes, her soft, whispery voice. If anything, she’d come across as sad, not angry. That’s why I’d wanted to help her in the first place.

  “Oh, she’s not pissed at you…yet. But she will be if you take off without fulfilling your promise.” Seeing I was about to interrupt, she hurried to correct herself. “Sorry, what she thinks you promised. She wants her story told, and you’re not going to get any peace until you tell it.”

  “How big a story does it have to be?” Surprisingly, considering the lack of sleep and decent food, my brain had been active all day. I was eager to get Kate’s feedback. If my new idea was as brilliant as I suspected, it could be the solution to our problems.

  “What do you mean, ‘how big’?” Kate wrinkled her nose at me again. Either she’d smelled something bad, or she thought I was being an idiot. Both were possibilities.

  “I mean, what if I wrote a blog post?”

  “No one reads blogs anymore. I don’t think she’ll go for that.”

  Pushing my bag to the floor, I stretched out on the bed. For once, the mattress was actually comfortable. “Hear me out. They’ll read this one. We’ll focus on the mystery of the ghost city, and then describe all the weird shit that’s happened since I was there. How can Harold and his toadies make us disappear if the whole world is watching?”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. “The whole world? Exaggerate much? Even if you wrote a post that went viral, people would forget about it in a day or two. And do you have any idea how hard it is to go viral?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not that hard. I’ve done it before.”

  “Suuuuurrrre you have.”

  “I’m not messing with you, Kate. This could work. I’ve given it a lot of thought. I think it’s our best chance.”