The Girl with Ghost Eyes (20 page)

To the side of the infirmary’s door I saw three squirming shapes. They reminded me of cats that boys have trapped inside bags, to toy with and torture, but they were human spirits. Three people had lost portions of their souls here, trapped in the gray-white webs. The goblin spiders would suck out the essence of spirit at their leisure. It was a horrifying fate.

I walked closer, to get a better look. The yaozhizhu had spun an enormous spirit web. It covered the entire entryway with gossamer strands and a filthing of the air. I guessed they had spun another one over the back door. No one would be able to enter or leave the infirmary without getting caught in the sticky, fleshy webs of the goblin spiders.

I looked at the baby faces of the yaozhizhu and felt my skin crawl. They were foul creatures. Vile mockeries of humanity. Looking at them, I wanted a different life. I wanted to be someone who didn’t have to see such monstrosities.

The goblin spiders skittered and giggled by dozens or hundreds. Drool and snot dripped from their childlike faces.

One of the webbed bags of human spirit squirmed, struggling inside its snare. No human thing should be so degraded. The spirit portion would last hours or days, slurped down like milk by the baby-faces of the goblin spiders.

“Get out of here, Li-lin!” Dr. Wei stuck his head out of the second-floor window. “The infirmary is under quarantine! Go away!”

So the residents of the infirmary were aware of the yaozhizhu. They were treating it like an epidemic.

“Is Father inside?” I called up to the window.

“There’s nothing you can do for him. Go away from here!”

“Is he well?” I called up.

Dr. Wei pushed his spectacles higher on his nose with a weary look. “The infirmary is under quarantine, Li-lin! Do you understand me? You need to go away, now.”

“Is my father well?”

The doctor hesitated. “If I tell you, will you go away?”

“Of course I will, Dr. Wei,” I lied.

“He’s gotten worse,” he called down. “He came down with an illness.”

A wave of horror washed over me. “Did he try to leave?” I asked Dr. Wei.

“He took two steps out the door and collapsed,” he called back.

I stared up at him, my mouth open. My father was one of the yaozhizhu’s bundled victims, a webbed captive spirit to be fed upon. Missing a significant portion of his spirit, he would weaken, sicken, and eventually die; but not before he was lost and broken.

The sight of the goblin spiders made me feel ill. Liu Qiang must have sent them to harm my father, or keep him out of the way long enough for him to complete his ritual and raise the Kulou-Yuanling.

Once again Liu Qiang saw my father as an obstacle, and once again he saw me as nothing. The yaozhizhu were here, but they hadn’t been sent for me. I didn’t even need to face them.

Looking at the grotesque monsters, I realized I could turn around and walk away. I could still find a way to stop Liu Qiang’s ritual, without facing the baby-faced spiders. There was no need for me to fight them.

The goblin spiders had trapped a portion of my father’s spirit, but it was merely a third. He would wake up and still be two thirds of what he was. He’d be strong enough to kill the yaozhizhu by himself. Once Father knew what he was facing, he could incinerate the goblin spiders with five syllables and a two-handed gesture. He could reclaim the missing portion of his spirit without my help. Even diminished by a third, my father was still stronger and more experienced than I could ever hope to become.

I stood at the corner, thinking. I could walk away. The thought of it felt like a breeze on a hot day. It felt like freedom. Let someone else handle this. I didn’t need to scar my mind by confronting the yaozhizhu.

I stood still, watching the skittering spiders and hearing their babyish cries. Behind them, webbed up, a portion of my father’s spirit was struggling, trapped.

When my spirit was trapped, my father sacrificed his eye to rescue me.

Drawing my peachwood sword, I charged at the goblin spiders. The closest locked its infant eyes on me with a false look of innocence, and it died on the point of my peachwood sword. I impaled a second, and a third, and the twitchy crowd of monsters turned on me. Hundreds of baby eyes, thousands of hairy, skittering spider legs, the entire horde of the yaozhizhu advanced.

I stepped back, and swung my sword to clear it of the guts and parts of goblin spiders. The rest of the yaozhizhu were coming after me. There were too many of them. One girl with a sword would never be enough to hack her way through this disgusting swarm. My arm would tire long before they were finished.

I needed to fight them on my terms. From a better vantage point. But where?

I continued stepping back, one step back and then another, while all of the goblin spiders swarmed toward me.

Then an idea occurred to me. I could fight them from behind the doorway, protected by a string of cloth talismans.

The only problem was, the yaozhizhu were massed between me and the door.

I bolted to the left and the goblin spiders sped after me, a multitude of clicking legs and crying faces. Angling my feet toward the wall, I began the dynamic shifts of weight and motion that make up qinggong. I only needed to lighten my body a little. My feet hit the ground, lighter from one moment to the next, and I had done enough by the time I reached the wall.

One foot against the wall, push up, and spring off: I flipped over the seething moat of goblin spiders. They had all come at me together, and I was behind them now. Their animal intelligence was basic, but cunning. One alerted the others to my whereabouts with a warbling screech, and the mob of baby-faced monsters pivoted toward me again.

But I had already crossed to their other side, and I was running. I sped toward the door of the infirmary, wielding my wooden blade in both hands. I heard Dr. Wei’s voice. He called down warnings from the second floor. But I saw things he could not see, and I swung my peachwood sword at the pale fleshy web the yaozhizhu had spun over his doorway. The peachwood sliced down, and the web shredded into flimsy strands of gossamer.

I burst in through the doorway, panting. The goblin spiders charged after me, but when they hit the perimeter marked by my father’s talismans, they stopped in their tracks. I heard them chitter in their rage and frustration.

Dr. Wei ran down the stairs. “What are you doing, Li-lin? You said you’d go away.”

“Yes, Dr. Wei,” I said, catching my breath. “I did say that. I was lying.”

He stopped and stared. “You are a very strange girl,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come back. You’ll have to stay inside the quarantine now.”

“It’s not an epidemic, Dr. Wei. It’s yaozhizhu. There are goblin spiders outside the door. They can’t get past the string of talismans, but they put up a web outside the door. They’ve caught some spirits in their webs. Father’s spirit is caught.”

If a bird had been flying through the infirmary, it might have flown into Dr. Wei’s mouth at that moment. His eyes bulged wide behind his spectacles as he pieced the information together, then he snapped his mouth shut and gave me a firm look.

“Li-lin, why didn’t you ever tell me you have yin eyes?”

“There’s no time for this, Dr. Wei. I need to kill the yaozhizhu outside, and I need to save the soul portions that they’ve caught. How much lamp oil can you spare?”

“Lamp oil?” he asked.

“Yes, Dr. Wei. Lamp oil.”

He pushed his spectacles farther back on his nose with a sigh. “A lot?” he said.

“I need oil,” I said. “And matches.”

I poured fish oil over the goblin spiders, and lit them on fire. Pedestrians watched and gaped. I heard one say, “That’s the girl who beat up Tom Wong in the street!”

In the spirit world, flames took the baby-faced spiders. They coughed and cried and fled in circles, spinning on their hairy, segmented legs, burning. Mucus dripped down their baby noses. I felt none of the elation of victory. This wasn’t a fight; it was merely an execution.

I carried the buckets of lamp oil to the back door and executed the rest.

When it was done, I went out front. The captive spirits were nearly weightless. Encased in cobweb, their essential matter diminished by hungry goblin spiders, my father’s spirit and the others had started to shrivel.

They would survive. Thanks to me, they would survive, but none would ever thank me for it. We would put all this behind us. For once I was glad of it. I wanted the yaozhizhu gone and forgotten.

Carefully, with my peachwood sword, I sliced the webs off of the spirits. I kept my arm steady, making sure I didn’t even nick the soul portions with the blade. They emerged from the webbing like puffs of steam. I watched them float, indistinct as clouds at night. They would drift back to join the rest of the spirit that had been fractioned. I watched a piece of my father’s spirit pass into the infirmary, unimpeded by his own talisman.

Mrs. Wei approached me from inside the infirmary. I eyed her with suspicion. I never wanted to talk to her again.

“I have been thinking about you, Li-lin. There is so much I could teach you,” she said. Her words came out in an excited rush. “I could teach you to walk the spirit bridge like a Wushi woman. I could show you how to recruit spirit servants.”

I recoiled as if she’d kicked me in the gut. “I am a Daoshi, Mrs. Wei. I am the daughter of a Daoshi, and I am the widow of a Daoshi. I will not shake and gouge my skin, and I will not learn your witchcraft or claim your demons.”

Her body went stiff and her face cold. “They are not demons,” she said. Old anger hardened her voice.

I walked past her to the cot where my father was resting. Fresh bandages covered the side of his face, where he had torn out his eye. For me. He was breathing slowly.

Dr. Wei sat on a stool at his side, checking his pulses. He looked up at me. “Your father’s vital signs are stronger,” he told me. “He was breathing shallowly, and four of his pulses had failed. But now he’s stabilized. He just needs some rest.”

I smiled, nodding. “You can call off the quarantine,” I said.

He gave me a steady, regarding look, and nodded. “Does your father know about your yin eyes?”

“He did know, once. He thinks he cured me.” I paused. “You won’t tell him, will you?”

“I’ve taken the Hippocratic Oath, Li-lin,” he said, “so I will never divulge a medical secret. But one of these days you and I will need to talk.”

I knew what he would say: women with yin eyes die young. A woman with yin eyes will lead a painful life. Drink this water infused with talismanic ashes. Let me stick needles into your meridians. Drink this herbal tea. Let me touch your meridians with this hot moxa stick. I’d been hearing it from my father ever since I was a little girl.

“I should check on my other patients now,” the doctor said. “But do come talk to me soon, Li-lin.”

“I will return tonight, to see how Father is doing,” I said.

I walked back toward the apartment, feeling tense. Edges grew indistinct in the hazy six o’clock light. Liu Qiang was going to perform his ritual at eleven. It was only five hours away. I needed a plan. I needed allies.

Mrs. Wei offered to help me find spirit allies, but really she was offering to corrupt me. She practiced a forbidden magic. Those ways were wild and ruinous. I had seen Mrs. Wei perform a ritual. She shook and cut herself. Generations of scholars and Daoshi had taken magic and made it civilized. They cleansed it of its madness, its grisliness, and its contaminations.

Mr. Wong had suggested that I go to the Xie Liang tong and ask them for help. But he made sure no one could hear him when he said it. The Xie Liangs were supposed to be reckless, and dangerous in the way of undisciplined men. If I went to the Xie Liang tong for help, I could expect to be shut out from the world I knew.

Even Dr. Wei worked for the Ansheng tong. I thought of him for a moment, how he would react to me if I was no longer welcome among the Ansheng. The thought of him turning away, treating me like some kind of stranger or an enemy, was nearly enough to make me start crying.

And yet I had to do something. I couldn’t sit back and let Tom Wong slaughter innocent men. Rocket would never tolerate such a thing. I could not allow him a legacy that he would find shaming.

I turned and began to walk away from the Ansheng territory. Away from everything I had ever known.

Crossing into the southwest side of Chinatown felt like passing out of one country and into another. My father had always worked for the Ansheng tong, so the territory of the Xie Liangs felt like a hostile foreign land.

It looked the same. The same grungy, boxy buildings. The ramshackle balconies and rickety stairways looked no different. On Sacramento Street there were greengrocers and street vendors. Men walked past with the resolute and tired eyes of those who work hard, and their queues swished behind them as they walked. Nothing here was truly different. There were the same suspicious glances, the same whispers, the same odd mix of vibrancy and despair. The high-pitched music of an erhu floated through the air. Chinatown took its own shape, and neither Mr. Wong nor Bok Choy could force it to take a different one.

It felt to me like the world was sinking. My father—the invincible, the powerful protector of Chinatown—lay in bed, feeble. There was no one else who could stand in his place. No one but me. It was up to me to protect Chinatown.

My father and I had always been with the Ansheng tong, so the Xie Liang tong had always been our enemy. Now Tom Wong wanted to destroy the Xie Liangs. I found myself wondering why I would want to stop him.

I stopped walking. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. The Ansheng tong had sheltered my family since we first came to Gold Mountain. They were good people. They provided Father with his temple, and they paid for my husband’s funeral.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t need to do this. I didn’t need to do anything. The Anshengs were my people. And who were the Xie Liangs? Strangers. I could simply go back to my life, pretending there was nothing else I could have done. The Anshengs were my people. Why would I step outside the social order? Why would I fight against men who helped raise me?