The 8th Sky_A Psychological Novel With An Unforgettable Twist

by Leigh Lyn

  Taken aback, Wen looked around him, feeling quite uncomfortable. “Seriously, Mrs. Lee, it’s looking bad for Lin and I want to help.”

  “Haven’t you done enough?” The rage in her eyes gave him the chills as the old lady continued. “You still don’t get it, do you, Doctor? Your colleague, Dr. Liu, told me my daughter’s alter is the arsonist who burned our restaurant down. How sick is that? I was there, and my daughter did not burn it down.”

  Wen’s spine stiffened. “Dr. Liu said that?”

  “He sure did, but you don’t know, do you? Can you stop saying you want to help?”

  Wen blushed. “I... I’m sorry, I guess I missed a lot, but—”

  “Never mind.” The old lady lifted her hand. “Look, no matter how horrible she told you I am, nothing can change the fact I am her mother. No matter how misdirected I may or may not be, I’m trying. You, on the other hand, are a therapist tied to professional conduct and legal obligations. Unlike me, you will not stand by her regardless of the crimes she claims she’s committed. Not the way I would, even though you may sympathize.”

  Appalled, Wen looked at her as she continued. “But Lin does not need sympathy. She needs someone to protect her.”

  “I will find a way to help,” Wen said, feebly.

  “Trust me,” the old lady said. “If you have a plan, Dr. Wen, please abandon it. You’re only going to make it worse.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Let me finish.” The old lady gripped the table with both hands. “The second you think of a plan, an effective one, it’ll seal her fate. On the other hand, if you leave it alone, she’d have a chance.”

  Wen nearly dropped his jaw. The old lady raised her hand. “And that’s the last word I have to say about this.”

  Wen sighed. Embarrassed, he turned to Mimi. “You like longevity buns?”

  She nodded.

  He smiled. “And where is your sister?”

  She frowned and, with a stealthy glance at her grandmother, she replied, “I don’t have a sister.”

  Gobsmacked, Wen stared at her for a few seconds. “You live with your grandma?”

  “Yes, Niang moved in when Mom went into the hospital,” Mimi took a bite of her bun.

  “Your mom told me about the wonky line in your room,” he said.

  “Wonky line? Oh, that is where the plastic sheeting once ran. It kept the side where I slept dust-free while the workmen worked on the other side.”

  Wen offered her a tissue.

  “Thanks,” Mimi wiped her mouth with it. “What manuscript were you talking about?”

  The nonchalant indifference in Mimi’s eyes struck Wen as odd but genuine. He scrutinized the young woman’s face to find nothing other than a polite curiosity.

  “It’s not urgent. It can wait until your mom feels better,” he said. “Anyway, I’m glad to see you turned out so well. She would be proud of you.”

  “Would she?” Mimi smiled, but Wen could detect a slight tremor in her voice. “Will Mom ever get better?”

  Wen looked from granddaughter to grandmother and leaned back to contemplate what would be a reasonable response. While doing so, he knocked over a glass of water and grabbed the napkins and tissues on the table as a waitress hurried forward with a white cloth.

  “I hope so but, until then, take care of your grandmother.” Wen got up and turned to Niang. “Thanks for answering my questions, Mrs. Lee.”

  Coming up from the MTR, Wen saw a crowd in white ‘I love Hong Kong’ T-shirts, shouting and confronting the Occupy Central protesters. A line of police sandwiched between tried to keep the two agitated groups separate. In locations where this failed, fights had broken out. Police officers in black vests marked POLICE in bright orange letters over casual wear rather than the usual blue uniform were there too, keeping the fighters of the two camps apart. Staying close to the shops where bystanders and reporters watched the revolts, Wen walked at a steady pace, staying out of the mayhem, when he noticed a tall, skinny, young man sitting on the curb. Rivers of red were streaming down his face from a gaping wound an inch long across his forehead.

  “Daniel?”

  Wen kneeled down and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

  “Fuck, Dr. Wen!” Daniel exclaimed. “You’re the last person I expected to see here.”

  “My boy, do you know you’re bleeding?” Wen searched his pockets. “Let me help you.”

  “I’m effing fine,” the young man said. “It’s nothing.”

  Wen found his handkerchief and put it on the wound. “Hold this, will you?” Wen guided Daniel’s hand toward it. “Keep the pressure on.”

  Wen looked around for help. Despite the number of people around, none took any notice. The old man took off his scarf to tie it around Daniel’s head. “This is getting out of hand, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not. For the first time, we’re going all out to do whatever Hong Kong needs; what we all need to get a grip on our fate before it’s too fucking late.”

  Like a defiant boxer who, after being knocked out, refused to stay down, Daniel struggled to get up. The blood had seeped through the handkerchief, and a small stream was trickling down his face again.

  “It looks to me like people are fighting each other,” Wen said.

  “We can’t expect everyone to agree with what we do, can we, Doc?” Daniel squinted his blood-shot eyes.

  “No, we can’t, Daniel, but slamming one another like this is more than a disagreement.”

  “That’s not on us, Doc. They are thugs who call for the rule of law one second and then bash us over the head the next.”

  Daniel ran his hand over his face and his shirt, smearing blood all over it.

  “This proposal for election they’ve come up with is a farce. The people of Hong Kong have been sold out. There’s seven million of us. Let those who refuse to be governed by a self-serving hypocritical government come out, and we’ll see what will happen.”

  Daniel stumbled up.

  “You need solidarity to win.” Wen raised his hand to Daniel’s still bleeding wound.

  “I know,” Daniel said, fending off his hand. “That’s why I don’t have time for this; I’m going to join my frigging friends. Take care, Doc.”

  And with that, Daniel disappeared into the shouting, shuffling, and fighting crowd, leaving Wen to stare after him.

  Chapter 56

  Disheveled, Wen stepped into the cabin of Chang E after hauling himself through the riot. He switched on the TV to follow the live reports of the violent confrontations while he changed out of his ruffled and bloodied clothes. He showered with the door open so he wouldn’t miss anything. Ten minutes later, he stepped out of the bathroom, shaven and in a fresh change of clothes.

  “Let’s get you some food,” he said to the sad-looking little white dog. Wen bent down to pick up his furry friend. Straightening up, he looked right into Daniel’s bloodied face on the TV screen.

  “They’re thugs!” Daniel exclaimed, pointing at the rioters in the white I love Hong Kong T-shirts. “Someone paid them to sabotage us. They want to make us out as violent troublemakers so they have an excuse to get rid of us!”

  A protester pushed Daniel and was at once confronted by his friends, who shuffled him out of the camera while swearing.

  Daniel continued. “We need the people of Hong Kong to come out. Join us in our fight for true democracy! Fight for your freedom and that of your children!”

  Bull’s Eye, whom Wen was carrying, placed a paw on Wen’s nose and barked. The old man poured dry kibbles into his bowl while mulling over the fact Daniel had not sworn during this interview. He sighed at the thought he’d been had by yet another patient as Mr. B wolfed down his food. Wen made himself a cup of coffee. His eye fell on a sand-colored mug with embossed, handwritten text at the back of the shelf and took it out of the cabinet. He smiled at having found his favorite mug. It was a set of six he and Karen had bought a decade ago. Wen had thought they’d broken all o
f them years ago.

  Amidst the chaos and violence, the reporter yelled, “This protest belongs to angry youngsters who have undying hopes about the positive outcome of their perseverance. But fights continue to break out between them and more conservative groups, who claim nothing this antagonistic can change the Party’s views.”

  Wen turned down the noise level.

  The reporter stuck the microphone in the face of a much older man wearing an “I love Hong Kong” T-shirt. “Why have you come out onto the street tonight, sir?”

  “I don’t want Hong Kong to go to the dogs. My kids can’t get to school, my mother can’t get to the doctor for her check-up, the value of my property is falling. The Occupy Central movement sabotages the livelihood of the people. They’re sacrificing them against the will of the people. On top, this road barricade is illegal.”

  “You don’t think democracy is worth the sacrifice?” the reporter asked.

  “What I sacrifice should be my decision to make, so I can accommodate it. I don’t have confidence in the future this bunch of snot noses might create if this is the way they go about democracy! Besides, in the eyes of the Party, what’s seventy-two days compared to six decades of struggle by generations of Chinese?”

  “Can you expand on your point, sir?”

  “To the Party, the momentary blight of seven million Hong Kong people means nothing compared to the social stability in a country with one-point-three-billion people. What the Occupy Central movement thought was leverage, amounts to nothing.” The man turned to face the camera point-blank. “I have come out tonight because I don’t want to be sacrificed by a manipulating, lawless bottom and trampled on by a self-serving, lawless top. I’ve come out to say they don’t represent me.”

  “Coward!” a young protestor standing behind the man shouted, and a shouting match ensued, joined by protesters from both camps.

  Wen sighed. His thumb caressed the dense text on the coffee mug. He loved the consistency of the cursive letters. Not that it made it any more legible. He had bought the set at the old Palace Green Library in Durham when he brought Stacy there to start her freshman year in law. Printed on it was the Magnum Carta signed by King John in 1216, of which Durham Cathedral still had the original copy. Although he wasn’t interested in politics, he had thought the handwritten script so beautiful and its content ‘awesome’ to use Stacy’s favorite word. He’d been intrigued by the story of a small group of barons who had the sobering insight that power and authority had to be curtailed. Because power seldom lasts, the powerful—more than anyone else—needed to be protected from their opponents and successors.

  Wen brought the mug closer to his glasses. He adored the precise penmanship, the consistency in the thinning and fattening of the cursive lines that made up the letters of this magical text. The notion that the spirit of Magna Carta was alive in Hong Kong and that kids like Daniel still had a voice was encouraging.

  Be that as it may, the more information he took in, the further his memory seemed to wane. Time had taken its toll, and he was getting old. On the surface, what you do or don’t remember seems random, but it really is not. Eighteen years had passed since Hong Kong’s handover, during which his perception of what freedom meant had been formed not so much by riots as by the little voices in his head. They silently reminded him of survival, about being sensible, about learning to play the game, about abiding by what is lawful, and about the futility of protest against the cards life dealt one. He knew he too had been guilty of surrendering to the collective will. He was guilty of taking the path of least resistance, whether he admitted it or not. Who knew, another decade down the road, our liberties could be further curtailed, and he might not even notice. If he was still around...

  Wen sighed again. Now was the time. It was his last chance to do his bit.

  Wen lifted anchor and set course to return to Sai Kung. He told himself to lay off the whiskey and raided the fridge instead. Returning to the deck with a board of cheese, he shared it with Mr. B at the helm of the boat. He watched the wind fill the sail while musing on the riots. Would young protestors like Daniel in ten or twenty years still feel and comprehend the passion that made them camp on the streets years ago? Who perseveres wins, who wins gets to write history and—so far—history has dictated that people watch this footage of themselves in riots with pride, sadness and alienation.

  What we do or don’t remember appears to be driven by our emotions; our desires, loves, hatred, fears, and insecurities. But Wen knew that, in reality, each culture has its own devices, rituals and rites to shape the collective memory and make the individual mind submit to the communal will. The urge to stand up to what’s right or wrong surrenders to one’s instinct to survive that inevitably kicks in when the futility of the protest becomes obvious. One not only surrenders but justifies it to the detriment of one’s discourse.

  The exceptions to the rule are the martyrs; brave individuals who’d rather die than surrender regardless of how successful they would be or how many sacrifices they need to make. It seemed Lin was one. Her unkempt hair and scrawny, rocking body tied in leathers flashed in front of his eyes.

  “Do you remember? Don’t you remember?” she’d muttered.

  What if Lin’s muttering was not a question, but a flashback of something in her past? Another spike of adrenaline hit Wen. He stumbled down the steps to the small cabin. He picked up Lin’s manuscript, crashed his agonizing body on the bench and flicked to the passage about the farewell party. There it was. Lorna said:

  “I’m saying the induction phrases ‘Do-you-remember-don’t-you-remember-blah-blah-blah’ do nothing for me.”

  How could he have missed that on the first reading? With aching muscles and churning stomach, Wen spent the next few hours flipping feverishly through the manuscript. It was long after mooring in Saikung when he had marked up all the locations when the phrase appeared in Lin’s journal and highlighted who had uttered them. It had often been used, but not often enough to stand as conclusive evidence it was the induction phrase to Lin’s actions. Wen closed his eyes and told himself not to jump to conclusions but, all things considered, Au-Yeung’s suspicion the manuscript was dreamt up or concocted by Lin in her deluded state of mind seemed grounded. Perhaps he should go down that route too, to give his pal the benefit of the doubt.

  Wen went back up on deck and set up a deckchair under a low hanging moon. Resting one hand on Bull’s back, he checked the manuscript for cues that supported Au-Yeung’s side of the coin. Suppose that, on a subliminal level, Lin had never ceased the fight for justice even though she was coerced to repress it in real life. She continued having these lucid dreams which she mingled with reality. Dreams constitute the issues and elements in one’s actual life. Deconstructed and put back together in a seemingly haphazard way. In Lin’s dream, her quest was transferred to Chongqing. There she stood up for her great-uncle in an attack by the bonesetter from her past.

  Suppose the bonesetter personified the superstition and tradition that Lin loathed so much. She internalized it and subconsciously processed it into a dark part of her ego, or one of her egos, so that she could fight it. In the backwash of her psychosis, the loathing spilled over into other areas of her life, taking over her psyche, driving her id, and fueling her passion to eradicate her demon.

  Could this great-uncle, with whom she reunited, represent the mother Lin wished for? Shi Gong answered Lin’s need to mend the relationship with Niang, with whom she, in reality, failed to work out her issues. In her head, she granted herself the wish, which Niang was adamant to ignore.

  Shi Gong, in his representation of Niang, gave her noble motives to justify what was essentially a narcissistic and suffocating mother-daughter relationship. Shi Gong satisfied Lin on a subliminal level by being what Lin had wanted Niang to be.

  This did not relieve her of the terrible guilt of being unfilial to Niang though. In Lin’s mind, the notion she might be the monster who wrongly accused her mother never went away, o
r she wouldn’t have obsessed about it. Her conflicting emotions combined with her deeply rooted need for catharsis might have incubated the alters, which had been stashed away so far. An inciting event caused the alters to go rogue, appear and kill Shi Gong either in a dream or for real.

  Wen got up and walked up to the railing. He peered at the dark waves, which Lin had described as bats with fluttering wings. Something was not computing. What bothered him was the part of the internal inspector, which in hindsight seemed too outlandish to be born out of Lin’s hallucinations. It made little sense because it was unrelated to Lin’s life and seemed to have fallen out of the sky. It was not something she could have dreamt up out of the blue.

  Wen went down to the cabin to the bottle of whiskey and a glass. Something he had read in the manuscript crept back into his mind. It was the passage where Lin mentioned she had an eye for apparitions. He flicked through the manuscript until he found the page. His finger scrolled down:

  “…I remember spending a few lunches wandering around in churchyards like the Greyfriars Kirkyard. Reading the tombstone epitaphs filled me with a certain thrill as I imagined the life of the deceased lying six feet under…”

  Wen opened his laptop and googled Adam Smith’s biography. Feverishly, he waited for the page to load. Taking off his glasses, he briefly pressed his palms against his sore eyes to relax them. The screen filled with text, next to which a hand-drawn portrait appeared of a man in a wig with a large, crooked nose. Wen scrolled down the page. There it was. He sank in his chair and felt light-headed, giddy, and grateful at the same time. Smith was buried at Canon-gate Kirkyard, Edinburgh. A chill went down Wen’s spine as he googled its location. It was two miles away from South Bridge while just around the corner and down Chamber Street was Greyfriars Kirkyard Cemetery, which was by far the most notorious churchyard used in ghost tours.