After a few months dating a woman he found so mysterious and intoxicating, she finally began to reveal her past.
“I’m not the innocent girl you think I am, Nicky,” she had said one night over dinner at a restaurant.
“Nonsense, you’re an angel sent from heaven.” He sipped his green tea.
“I wish that were true. There’s something you should know about me.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I had another life before this one.” She glanced around at the other tables, lowered her voice. “I used to be . . . a concubine.”
Nick set down the teacup, spilling hot tea on his hand. “You were a prostitute?”
“Yes, but not like you think.” Ming’s dark eyes clouded. “My world is very different from the one you come from. I was born into a class of people that dates back to ancient China. The girls are raised to be concubines for emperors and rich men. For ten years I worked inside a den that offered everything imaginable from opium to sex to slavery. Every man’s fantasy. At the time the opium was my only escape. Then I met a Turkish man who bought me freedom. He set me up in his art store, paid for my apartment.”
Nick leaned back in his chair. “So you have a sugar daddy, as well?”
“No, no, he was too old for sex. And he was ill. He only needed a woman to love, to pamper. He died five years ago. Left me his business and the apartment.”
“Christ.” Nick tossed his chopsticks on the table. He flagged the waiter over. “Check, please.”
They walked home in silence.
She began sobbing.
“Ming, please don’t cry.”
“You hate me now.”
“No, I don’t hate you, but Jesus, how am I supposed to react?”
“I can’t help my past, Nick. I was born into it.” She wiped her eyes, sniffled. Please don’t look at me that way. “I’m not that girl anymore.”
“So why are you telling me this all of the sudden? You could have kept this secret.”
She glanced around, searching the dark street. “Because Madame Xang tells me that my future is clouded with darkness. And that I am in danger if I keep seeing you. We both are.”
“I thought you stopped seeing that lady.”
“I had a nightmare and needed to talk to her. Nicky, I’m afraid.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. She’s just filling your head with superstition so you’ll keep coming back.”
“No, Madame Xang is never wrong.” Ming’s eyes glazed with worry. “Promise me you’ll protect me.”
Nick pulled her delicate frame into his arms. “You’re safe with me. I promise.”
The next day Ming vanished.
* * *
For six months Nick lived a hollow existence.
The police gave up the search after just a few weeks. Nick had hired a detective—a chain-smoking Chinaman who claimed he could track down anyone. But when his investigating led to the underworld of Hong Kong, he quit suddenly, advising Nick to stop chasing a ghost.
He nearly lost all hope, until he paid one last visit to Ming’s apartment. In her bedroom he found an ornate ivory box full of strange herbs. Inside lay a thin note, like the kind found when cracking open a fortune cookie. On one side it read in typed letters: “Happiness lies between two worlds.” The other side read: “If you want a remedy for your miseries, come see Madame Xang. 999 Peking St., Hong Kong Island.” There was a logo of a black dragon coiled into a circle.
The same as Ming’s tattoo.
Now Nick sat shirtless on the massage table. The emptiness inside him was growing, pressing outward against his chest and ribs. He had a vision of his chest bursting open from a black creature’s head like in the movie Alien, only it was a dragon’s head.
If you want a remedy for your miseries, come see Madame Xang.
The entrance curtain danced upward as if by a gust of wind, and a striking Chinese woman with long black hair and high cheek bones entered, chanting, dropping a trail of fresh flower petals on the floor. Her orange linen robes wrapped around her torso like a toga, exposing a black-scaled tattoo that coiled over one shoulder and down her left arm.
Madame Xang walked barefoot. Her eyes remained closed as she chanted. Her eyelids were painted an iridescent green, like the shells of jewel beetles. Then her eyes opened, the most piercing jade green Nick had ever seen. Mesmerizing. Speaking Cantonese, Madame Xang motioned Nick to lie back on the table.
He swallowed hard, lying flat on his back, his head resting on the gun-enshrouded pillow. He stared up at a ceiling painted sky blue with clouds.
The woman rolled the table with the ivory box beside the bed. “So you come to experience my remedies,” she crooned in a sensual voice.
“Actually, I’m here to ask you some questions.”
“All my clients seek answers.” With long, green-lacquered fingernails, Madame Xang opened the ivory box, and pulled out a scroll of velvet cloth.
“There was a Chinese-French woman who used to come here. Do you remember . . .”
Nick froze as the herbal doctor rolled out the cloth, revealing several dozen needles. “Whoa, I don’t like needles.”
“Relax,” she said in a tone as calming as an herbal tea. “These needles are not sharp. See?” She pushed the rounded edge of the needle against her claw-tipped finger. “You will like, I promise.”
“Is this really necessary?” Nick said. “I just want to ask you some questions.”
Madame Xang stared at him with those eyes. “Necessary to find the answers you seek.”
Nick took a deep breath and lay back, gazing up at the ceiling. A damp cloth rubbed liquid across his bicep. Then came a light prick, as a thin metal pin stabbed into his skin. The woman thumped the needle and the area around it went numb. Soon Nick’s right arm looked like a pincushion, and it felt light, as if floating beside his body.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“Needles are like keys to doorways. They open parts of you that have been closed.”
One by one, she placed needles across his shoulders and down his left arm, draining the heaviness, until both arms seemed to levitate off the table. He drifted in and out of consciousness, almost forgetting why he was here. When he awoke, twenty needles covered his chest and stomach. The clouds on the sky-blue ceiling seemed to be swirling, forming into Ming’s face.
“I’m looking for a woman.” Nick’s voice sounded hollow, as though he were speaking inside a tunnel.
“That can be arranged.”
“No, I mean she used to be your client. Ming Trudeau, do you remember her?”
Madame Xang nodded, placing needles between Nick’s toes. “A woman filled with many demons.”
“So you know where she is?” Nick sat up and was rocked by excruciating pain as each needle wrenched his nerve endings. “Christ.” He collapsed back, moaning.
“Lie still.” The woman rounded the table, holding her palms over his chest. “You must remain like a pond with no wind.”
The pain sucked upward out of his body, until he was lying at the edge of sleep again.
She grabbed another needle. “Your body is clouded with dark spirits. You need to focus on centering yourself, so I may cleanse them.”
“I need to know where Ming is.”
“She is inside you. One of your many dark spirits.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Her destiny took a different course.” Madame Xang inserted needles into his neck. “She is now where she belongs.”
“Who took her? The Triad?”
“She came here on her own. Asked me to end her nightmare. I gave her a remedy.”
Completely paralyzed now, Nick couldn’t turn his head as she moved out of his line of sight. “I need to know what happened to her.”
Her feet padded the floor behind him. Madame Xang returned, her face now directly over his. “Hold still.” She stuck a needle between his eyes. “You would not understand her world. Some truths are b
est left in darkness.”
The robed woman waved a palm over his eyes, draping a black tarp over his awareness.
* * *
Happiness lies between two worlds.
He drifted there in the void, like a jellyfish bobbing on the ocean. The tentacles of his consciousness expanded outward, beyond his body, beyond the pagoda, stretching high above the neon lights of Hong Kong, into the clouds. He felt Ming’s presence so strong here. Her voice cried out from the haze. Come to me, Nicky.
The smoke clouded his vision. The more Nick moved towards her, the farther her voice retreated. Where are you, Ming?
The Tapestry. Please come find me. Her voice trailed off.
Nick’s pleasure dissipated, replaced by an unrelenting sadness. He began spiraling downward, crashing back into the gravity of his flesh. His eyes opened. The ceiling drifted overhead, a haze of blue and white swirls. His fingers crawled along his bare torso, the numb flesh tingling with every touch. All the needles had been removed.
“Ming’s still alive.”
He sat up. A strange current rushed down his legs then bounced back to the top of his head with electrical sparks. The walls pushed in from all sides, and Nick gripped the table for support. A moment later the room warped back to normal.
“Whoa.”
The sensations in his body contracted, wrenching inside his chest, as if a surgeon’s hands had gripped his heart. He doubled over, fist clenching. “Madame Xang!”
The woman was gone.
Nick sat forward, hyperventilating. His vision remained foggy, but his gut feelings were strong. Ming was somewhere inside this pagoda. The Tapestry.
He slipped on his shirt, relieved to find his .38 still inside his jacket. He walked barefoot across the room, feeling buoyant and energized. He put on his shoes.
At the entrance the curtain fluttered open, and Madame Xang entered. “Ah, you have a new spark in your eyes.”
“What did you do to me? One minute I’m flying out of my body, the next I’m going into cardiac arrest.”
“I opened your meridians. Your body is adjusting to the lightness of burdens lifted.”
“I received contact from Ming. She’s here, isn’t she?”
Madame Xang’s eyes narrowed. “Still carrying her demon, are you?”
“Please, I need to find her.”
“You are balanced now. Let her go.” Her hand waved the air as if to shoo away Ming’s ghost.
“Lady, enough games.” Nick pulled out his pistol. “I’m not leaving without Ming. She’s in a place called the Tapestry. Take me there.”
Madame Xang’s fiery green eyes stared at the barrel. “Very well, come.”
Nick followed, keeping the .38 aimed. The woman led him down the hall, her long orange robe dragging behind her like a tail. The marble hallway seemed to come to life. Flowers standing in vases breathed in and out and turned toward the passing woman as if in worship. The blue and gold porcelain guard dogs, staring with jade eyes, turned their heads as Nick passed. He spun, aiming his gun in case they suddenly leapt off their pedestals. But the grimacing dogs remained frozen, now facing a new direction. He chased after the woman crossing through the opium den.
Several of the girls stood as Nick entered. Twenty to thirty concubines watched him with feral eyes. He feared they might rush him, but Madame Xang held up a palm and the girls stayed. Crossing through the atrium, Madame Xang drifted into an elevator shaped like a birdcage. Nick entered as her green-clawed-finger pushed number nine, the top-floor button. The cage door rattled closed and the elevator began its ascent, overlooking the atrium.
“Madame, tell me everything you know about Ming. No herbal doctor bullshit this time.”
“Some of my patients heal fast and release their bad spirits. They return to live out their lives. Others choose a different path.”
“What kind of path?”
“They choose to live with their demons.”
Nick’s eyes filled with hope. “So she’s still here.”
“She is no longer in this world.”
“Then she’s dead.”
“That is one form of it.”
“And you killed her.” Nick gripped the golden bars, staring down through the floor’s grate. The atrium continued to shrink beneath him, his vertigo making the garden spin.
“I gave her a remedy. She chose her path.”
The birdcage stopped at the ninth floor.
They walked down a wide chamber where statues of Chinese armored soldiers stood guard. At the end of the hall stood two giant iron doors.
Madame Xang placed her hand on a lever that jutted from the floor. She hesitated. “You have numerous paths in this world. Each one you choose has a consequence, some good, some bad. You must ask your inner self if this is the right path for you.”
“Believe me, Madame, if Ming is in there, then this is the path I choose.” Nick motioned with the pistol. “Now open it.”
“Your destiny lies in your own hands.” She pulled back the lever and the massive doors opened inward with a metallic echo. Inside the vault was pure darkness. Madame Xang entered first. She disappeared in the gloom. A moment later lanterns lit up in sequence, illuminating thirty-foot granite walls. The vault was the size of an airplane hangar, its height and depth defying the architecture of the pagoda.
“How can this be?” Nick craned his head to take in the entire chamber. Entombed within were hundreds upon hundreds of rolled carpets, stacked atop one another, some mounds reaching the ceiling. He looked around, wide-eyed. “What is this place?”
The woman’s green eyes seemed incandescent in the lantern light. “The Archives of Alternative Dimensions. I am the keeper.”
“I said no more bullshit.”
“See for yourself.”
She lifted her palm. The carpet rolls on the right wall started to move, rumbling, stirring up an avalanche of dust. Several carpets floated upward, found new positions along the wall. His mouth agape, Nick watched as one rolled carpet, buried five layers deep, slid outward. The scroll floated down toward the floor in front of them. Nick circled the carpet roll, searching for wires that might have carried it down, but there were none. “How did you do that?”
“Unroll it.”
Nick shoved the carpet with his foot. It rolled open, sending up a cloud of dust. Cocooned inside was the decomposed mummy of a spindly creature, the upper half that of a woman, the bottom half something alien. Dried cracked flesh clung to a skeleton with a nest of long cherry black hair. The eye sockets were hollow pits, the lipless mouth open, sharp teeth exposed.
Nick knelt and grabbed a brittle hand wearing the sapphire ring that he’d bought for her. “Ming . . .” His tears fell on her dried skull. He held her hand for several moments, until rage boiled within him. “You . . . You did this.” He turned around.
Madame Xang was gone.
The iron doors slammed closed.
One by one the wall lanterns snuffed out. Nick stood alone in the pitch-black crypt, his heated rage freezing as his blood reached subzero. Then the unrolled carpet began to glow with amber light. Beneath Ming’s skeleton the carpet was some kind of scene. A tapestry. Heart surging, Nick wiped away the dust, and moved the bones so he could see the tapestry in its entirety. The detailed stitching depicted a young woman weeping inside a room with a bed. Every few seconds the weaving changed, giving a slow, choppy movement to the scene. Soon she was kicking the bed in an act of rage, then her legs began shifting, turning black and spiky, a tail shooting outward . . .
Nick looked away. Warm air brushed past his back. He whirled with the pistol. “Who’s there?”
Something moved outside the halo of light that emanated from the rug. It didn’t have the presence of a woman, but something unearthly. Something that dwelled in dark chambers. Then came the scrape of claws against carpet and a heavy dragging.
“Madame, if that’s you, show yourself.”
There were other sounds moving behind him. More scraping .
. . and hissing. The darkness became illuminated by several pairs of glowing green eyes. Emerald flames hissed outward, lighting up the faces of Chinese women with demonic features.
DARK NEEDS: Three Twisted Tales of Horror Page 7
