The Girl with Ghost Eyes

by M. H. Boroson

  That night, my father brought paper offerings to burn at the corner of Dupont and California. He carried an iron basket and a satchel of paper offerings. I followed close behind. The streets had never felt less haunted. I looked at the crowds of Chinese immigrants. For the first time I could remember, I saw no swirl of misty faces around any of them, even though the sun had set. My father’s spell had worked. Ancestors, ghosts, and goblins, all the creatures that come out at night, were hidden from me.

  My father placed First Treasure at the bottom of his iron basket. First Treasure was coarse paper painted with purple and green stripes. Moving with the soft, rounded motions of a true taiji master, my father lit a match. He held the first of the Hell Bank Notes over the match’s flame. Fire took the printed sheet by inches. Each movement was perfect, because perfection mattered to him. When the bill had begun to burn well, he dropped the flaming bank note onto First Treasure. He lit another bill.

  I had seen my father perform this ceremony before, many times, but the spirit world had always been visible to me. I’d watched my father’s performance and seen the spirits respond. This was the first time I’d ever watched him without being able to see the other side. My father had never seen the spirits mill around him, groping for money. He’d never been able to see the gratitude in their pale, no-longer-quite-human faces.

  The meaning of my father’s actions changed. Seeing him like this reshaped my notion of my father as a man: unsmiling but generous, smoke and sparks swirling around him, he labored every night to bring riches to dead men he would never see. The depth of his devotion moved me. So much effort, so much sacrifice, and all of it on faith. He spent his life protecting the living, assuaging the dead, and at the end of the day he had no one to love him, no one but me.

  I looked up. It was getting dark out. Fog and smoke obscured the streets. In the haze I saw something glowing. It was a rich amber glow. It came from a pair of eyes.

  The water dragon was longer than a man’s height, but no wider than a man’s thigh. His fur glistened, blue and white, like foam on the sea. There was an unearthly beauty to his sea-blue mane. His whiskers streamed like a kite in the wind.

  With a barking laugh, he peeled back and away, surging up off the street and into the air. He flew upward in coils and dove into the clouds. The fog twisted as it accepted him. He flowed into the clouds foot by foot until there was no sign of him but a glowing pair of amber eyes only I could see.

  I shouldn’t have been able to see it at all. Not anymore. My father’s spell had failed.

  I turned to face my father. Focused completely on his ceremony, he noticed no other world. He was proud of his work, proud of the perfect execution of his rituals. He started burning another thousand-yuan bill. It blackened into cinder. I witnessed the change. What had been paper was transformed, by fire, into a thing of spirit. It became real money in the spirit world. Ghostly arms reached out from the shadows to gather the wealth. I could see them.

  Tears tried to come out of my eyes, but I held them back. I never forgot that moment, the fire and shadows, the magnificence of the water dragon, the paper-smoke smell of an older country’s magic. Watching my father, I knew to my core that I would rather live a painful life than tell him that his spell had worn off. My yin eyes had returned, and I was going to keep them.

  At that moment I found my Jing. My refined essence.

  Where am I? I wondered. I felt stronger. My legs began to twitch. There were people screaming all around me. Something was fighting me. And I had started to fight back.

  A dark worm was eating my memories. I felt them go—a spring day, a cold morning, a conversation, an encounter. Gone. Snow fell over a village and something happened, but I forgot what it was. In the place of the memory, there was only haze. The steamer surged across the Pacific, someone said something, a barrel of rice began to bleed, and then fog rolled over the memory. I felt small losses as my history flitted away, an hour at a time.

  Sparring with Rocket—no.

  It couldn’t have that.

  Not that.

  His fist came flying at me. He could break bricks, my husband, yet I knew he’d never hurt me. I dodged his hammer-punch and spun to face him. I was too slow. His knee raised up to crunch my chin but somehow he stopped himself an inch away. I laughed and thrust both hands at him, gouging with my thumbs. He caught my hands, pressed them to his lips, and flipped me over. I landed rolling and sprang up to face him. His eyes were so soft, and his mouth was so serious.

  He launched a forward kick at my stomach and I dove in below his leg, yanking back at his ankle. Somehow he dropped his other leg and used his arms to propel himself into a flying kick. Both legs hit me and we landed in a sprawling laughing heap. I wrapped my ankles in front of his neck and shoved him off, and in instants we were back on our feet. I wasn’t close to being his equal in a fight—no one was—but he was the greatest man I’d ever known, the greatest fighter, and I was going to make myself the best woman I could be. I was going to be a woman who deserved a man like him.

  An eye was standing on the ground. “There are three treasures,” it said. I blinked. That wasn’t right. I looked again. There was no eye there, and there never had been.

  I launched myself at the man I loved. My flurry of jabs and kicks forced him to take a step back, and then another. He smiled at me, impressed. His approving smile filled me with vigor, so I shot after him again. I was going to give him the best fight of his life.

  I wouldn’t let go of that memory, the one time I ever fought Rocket to a standstill. The one time anyone ever did. Something was trying to take the memory away from me, trying to tear it away, but I refused to let it go. I held on with a kind of determination that only those who have loved and loved deeply could understand. I had lost my husband, but I would not lose the memory. Not that one. I dug in, and it felt as though a wind were pressing at me. For that memory, I would be a mountain against the wind.

  The wind came to a stop. And with that, I found my Qi, the vital energy that animates the body and the universe.

  I felt invigorated, stronger, and more certain. Voices were screaming all around me. I was in trouble, I knew that, though I didn’t know why. But I also knew that I was going to find a way out of it.

  Suddenly, somehow, I was no longer inside the scream spirit.

  I was lying on my back on the roof. The scream spirit was trying to climb on top of me again, a centipede of dark smoke.

  And then the sky tore open and Father stood over it with a wooden staff.

  25

  The scream spirit unfurled in the air. Its dark wormy length shot out at my father, but he was ready for its attack. Even missing an eye, even recovering from severe injuries, he sidestepped the charging worm and struck out with his goosewood staff, gouging a massive wound along its side.

  I pushed myself up to my elbows and watched my father fight the scream monster. It attacked him, he stepped away, he hit it again with his staff. With each strike the monster grew more enraged and more reckless. Then it died.

  Near the mass of darkness, other men sprawled around. The hatchetmen were dead. Liu Qiang was dead. I looked at Father. “You did this?” I asked, and there was awe in my voice. “You did all this? Alone?”

  He gave a curt nod and offered a hand to help me up. “Well,” he said, “not really alone. Your help was valuable.”

  I flushed at the unexpected praise. “I did nothing important, Father.”

  He flashed a fierce little grin. He looked immensely proud of himself. “Look behind me, Li-lin.”

  A tall man was standing behind him. And my world turned upside-down.

  “Rocket?” I said. Tears began to stream down my face. “Gods and ancestors, you must be a ghost.”

  My father grinned. “Among Liu Qiang’s possessions, he had a number of books. One of them had a spell that allowed me to bring your husband back to life.”

  “What are you saying?” I said amid sobs. “How could this be? Is this re
al?” I looked around me, at the rooftop. “Please let this be real,” I whispered.

  “It’s really me,” said my husband, young and serious, handsome, caring, and concerned. My husband.

  “Husband, I wailed at your grave for forty-nine days. I have cried myself to sleep every night for two years.”

  “I am here now.”

  My husband was alive. I couldn’t believe it. It made no sense. He died. His corpse was buried. His name was intoned with the ancestors. In a few months it would be time for us to unearth his bones and have them smuggled to China, where they would be buried alongside his ancestors.

  I gazed in his face, the face of the boy who had always wanted to protect everyone, the face of the serious young man he had grown into. It was my husband’s face. I loved seeing his eyes and mouth again.

  “How …” I began. “How can you be here, Husband? Long ago you should have drunk tea with Lady Meng Po. You should have forgotten me. You should have forgotten your life, and been born afresh somewhere else.”

  He gave a brief sigh, as he had so often before. “The questions you ask are for philosophers to answer, Li-lin. If I were a wise man I could answer you, but I’m only a fisherman’s son who likes to jump and kick.”

  I stared at him, tears welling in my eyes. These were my husband’s words, and I’d heard him say such things many a time. His face, his posture, his eyes, no different from the bold young man who loved me until the day he died.

  I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. My husband had come back to me.

  The next morning we climbed to the roof of Father’s temple and watched the sun come up. Purple and orange streaks painted the dawn sky, while I hunkered down in the security of my husband’s arms.

  In the afternoon Rocket and I went to see Bok Choy, and he told me I’d been released from my contract. “I made peace with Mr. Wong,” he said. The two tongs worked together and created great prosperity in Chinatown.

  Father found a spell that cured me of my yin eyes. Never again would I be afflicted with the horrors of the spirit world.

  Rocket and I moved to a little house in South Berkeley. Every morning he held me tight while we watched the dawn break. The sun rose each day through wisps of fog, rising over the tall buildings of the San Francisco skyline. Each day’s light renewed the world.

  One day Dr. Wei told me that my husband and I were going to have a baby. I was so happy. The man I loved was back in my life, and we were going to start a family. “I hope I can give you sons,” I said.

  “Sons or daughters, it doesn’t matter to me, Li-lin,” Rocket said.

  My father rolled his eyes. “Idiot,” he said affectionately.

  I stared at my father’s face. I felt like I was forgetting something. His eyes sparkled. He seemed happier than I could remember. I smiled, content.

  Shuai Hu started coming to our house to play fantan with Father and Rocket. The Buddhist sat at our dinner table eating with his hands. A mess of vegetables sprawled across the table and spattered his jolly face. “Daonu Xian, I’m not a tiger anymore!” he said. “Your father cured me.”

  “I’m not a Daonu anymore, Brother Hu,” I told him, smiling. “You were the only one who ever seemed to realize that I was.”

  “I want your babies to call me Uncle Tiger,” he said in a booming voice. I laughed with delight.

  A voice said, “There are three treasures.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked the monk.

  “Hear what?” He and Rocket looked at me with concern. My father locked his eyes on my face, his gaze intense.

  I swallowed. “I thought I heard someone say that there are three treasures.”

  “Be careful, Rocket,” Shuai Hu said to him with a lopsided grin, “I think your wife is hearing things.”

  I touched my stomach. It was swollen with child. The cuts had almost healed by now. There were Liu Qiang’s cuts, Father’s cuts, and there were mine. Months ago I had tried to cut three characters into my skin. The characters were supposed to be a kind of ladder for me to climb, so I could return to myself and escape from a spirit that had me trapped.

  Months had gone by but I could still trace those three cuts on my skin. There was Jing, and Qi, and I had started to carve a third character, Shen. Together they were known as the Three Treasures.

  “What are you doing, Li-lin?” my father asked, his voice solemn and disapproving.

  I turned to face him. “That night on the roof, Father,” I asked, “how did I escape from the scream spirit?”

  He shrugged. “That was months ago,” he said. “You awoke your mind.”

  I gave a slow shake of my head. “That wouldn’t have been enough. There were three rungs on the ladder. I needed to climb three rungs to get out. And I only managed to carve two of them into my skin.”

  My father, my husband, and Shuai Hu pressed close around me. All three of them wore the same concerned expression. Their expressions were exactly the same. I looked at my father’s eyes. I stepped back from the men and faced my husband. Tears welled in my eyes, but I would not let them fall.

  “It’s hard to believe that even a scream spirit could be this cruel,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” the thing with my husband’s face asked.

  “You are not Rocket,” I said, “though I hate the fact with rage and passion, though I wish, how I wish, it were otherwise. My husband is dead, and he is buried. You are not my husband.” I drove a fingernail into my stomach and finished the third character.

  Shen, or spirit.

  I watched my husband’s face melt. I kept my eyes on his face while the whole world melted around us.

  My spirit woke. The scream monster’s spirit-flesh held me like a cocoon, its substance cold but so soft it was nearly liquid. I punched through its skin. The monster burst apart. Its spirit-matter splashed outward, convulsing. I fell from its torn body, dropping a few feet to land on my hands and knees on the roof, while the scream spirit erupted over the roof, spattering the surfaces with smoky fluid.

  I wiped my face clean. I took a long, slow breath. My time of screaming was done, and now I shouted with rage.

  There were fires burning everywhere I could see. And over the buildings, eclipsing the moon, I saw something tremendous and terrible, gleaming, undead, and fifty feet high.

  The Kulou-Yuanling had risen.

  26

  In the moonlight, its head and shoulders loomed over the buildings of Chinatown. The Kulou-Yuanling was a human skeleton on an enormous scale, ten feet higher than Chinatown’s tallest buildings. It had a skull for a head—a giant, human skull. A sick greenish glow shone from its empty eye sockets, and blood dribbled from its teeth and its jaws. In the spirit world, I could see lines of qi circulating around its yellow bones. Streams of energy flowed in two directions, glimmering around the monstrous skeleton.

  The sheer size of the monster was terrifying. Looking at it strained my neck and made me feel dizzy. I stood gaping. Yes, it must have taken armies to bring this kind of monster down. There could be no reasoning with a creature born from so much misery.

  Sympathy would only hinder me. I needed to cut off this line of thinking, or my emotions would cripple my tactics. No matter its origins, it was a tool in the hand of a man I despised. An automaton under his control. I watched its shoulderblades pivot with the swinging of its arms. The movement was slow and mechanical. Life-energy circulated outside its body in glowing ribbons of yin and yang.

  In the streets people were fleeing in a panic, shouting and screaming. A man, or half a man, dangled from the giant’s skeletal right hand; it looked like the Kulou-Yuanling had bitten off his upper body. In the monster’s left hand, another man was sitting, serene and composed.

  It was Liu Qiang. The spirit in place of his right arm coiled like white smoke, and its three eyes lit an angry red. I didn’t know what manner of creature the arm was, but it was clear that the spirit was enjoying the destruction as much as Liu Qiang was. It was the arm’s t
riumph as much as the man’s.

  I had failed to stop the ritual. All of Chinatown was going to suffer the effects of my failure, and I had no idea how I could stop the Kulou-Yuanling now.

  In the street below me, the monstrous skeleton lowered a tremendous bone foot onto a carriage. The buggy crunched to boards and splinters under the monster’s weight. The horse panicked and fled down the street, dragging its trace and neighing wildly.

  Slow and shaky, I rose, first to my knees, and then to my feet. Around me on the rooftop were scattered globules of gray-white slime. It was all that remained of the scream spirit after I burst out of it.

  Mr. Yanqiu stood near me. I looked at the spirit of my father’s eye and knew the truth. I had exorcised him, exiled him to the world of spirits. But when I was losing myself to the scream spirit, the authority of my spells had begun to fade. Feeling the exorcism weaken, Mr. Yanqiu had crossed into the world of men. I was in trouble, so he climbed inside the scream spirit to rescue me. It was his voice I heard, over and over, reminding me that I needed to finish scratching the third character into my stomach.

  “You saved me, Mr. Yanqiu,” I said. “You saved me again.”

  He beamed at me. “You’re all right, Li-lin?”

  I hesitated. I had thought I’d been reunited with my husband, but it was all a lie, and the loss of that dream would torment me for a long time. “No,” I said. “I’m not all right. But I have to find a way to stop the Kulou-Yuanling anyway.”

  Mr. Yanqiu started to speak, but a babyish voice interrupted him. The voice came from one of the blobs of slime that were splashed across the roof. “I hate you, Xian Li-lin!” it said.

  My eyes widened. The scream spirit was still alive. It was in pieces, but alive. And drifting along the rooftop there were faces, dozens of ghost-faces. They floated, looking lonely and confused.

  “The screaming faces,” I said to Mr. Yanqiu. “They’re the ghosts that were trapped inside the scream spirit.” I turned to the blob of slime that had spoken. “You. You did this to them.”