Chapter #21The Ghost by: Seuzz   "Zoiks," you mutter as you stare up at the pile of wood and lacquer. The pillars and pilings of the old shrine creak and groan softly, though there's no wind. "Jinkies," you add for good measure.
Hu Minquiang tilts his head to look at you. "I would learn from you too. What do these words mean?" he softly asks.
"Huh? Oh. Well." You grimace with embarrassment. "I guess 'jinkies' means 'That's a big surprise,' and 'zoiks' means 'That's a scary surprise'."
Hu looks up at the shrine. "What do you see that surprises you?"
"Oh, nothing, actually. I'm just babbling."
"Do not approach this place with a light heart, Will" he says gravely. "We must be on our guard, for we are protecting not only ourselves but the others."
"'Phil'," you correct him, and rub the heavy gut sticking out from under your vest. "I am trying to stay serious underneath," you add in a quiet voice. "But I've got a character to maintain."
He ducks his head in a tiny gesture of acknowledgement. The shrine creaks again.
"Phil!" You turn at Callahan's call, and see him trotting out from the temple, sweat stains darkening his shirt where it stretches over his paunch. (You have stains there too.) Once your attention is away from the shrine, you again notice the sawing of insects in the sultry evening air. "Sara wants to talk to you."
"You jogged over to tell me that?"
"Jogged over to escape." He slaps the back of his neck. "I prefer the bloodsuckers out here."
"Christ," you mutter, and start walking heavily back to the temple, Hu trailing behind. Fuck talent, you grumble to yourself, and it's not in the love-making sense that you wish such a fate on Sara Driver. Not after ten months--
Okay, technically, it's only been a week, but you've got Phil Pugh's memories of ten months of working with her, and they feel like ten years.
Oh, at the start of the job you'd have cut off your jerk-off hand for just ten minutes with her. The producers had found her doing weather in Oregon. Fuck 'em, they should've left her there. She was suitably grateful for the promotion to host of a new paranormal investigation show ... but only for about five minutes. Then she'd started acting the part of TV star.
It's dark in the temple except where the lights have been set up. Under them, Sara is looking at herself through the camera on her phone and primping her hair. It is long and blonde and curly, and though anyone would tell her it looks fabulous even when bedraggled by the heat and humidity, you can tell even at a distance what she's going to say. She does a double take as you draw up.
"Phil, for God's sake, I can't do this in here. It's stifling."
"We need to film on location, Sara," you sigh, holding up your hands in a gesture that conveys both a desire to help and a comment on the futility of the situation.
"So do it with a night-cam, outside. No one will know the difference."
"Our social media audience will. They think they're experts, and a lot of them are."
"I've read the comments, Phil," she says in a withering tone. "They're not looking at ghosts, and they're not fantasizing about things that go bump in the night."
You bite back the obvious retort--"Yes they are; they're stroking themselves while thinking about knocking boots with you"--because although Sara can refer to her own pulchritude and its effect on the cable show's miniscule audience, no one else is allowed to. "We're all set up, Sara," you say. "I can't break everything down and move it just because--"
"I'm not ready," she crossly declares. "And I never will be if we have to shoot in this sauna."
Behind her, Xander Watt, the American expert the production has taken on this shoot in Anhui Province, rolls his eyes and turns his back. Not for the first time, you wish it was you and not the real Phil Pugh taking that "spirit quest" with Maria Cardoza; oh, but its conclusion is going to explain the case of amnesia Pugh will come down with so he doesn't remember being here. Well, you wouldn't mind forgetting all about this nightmare too. "Then take in the air," you tell Sara wearily. "Cool off and get your hair fixed. We'll start with the others." She frowns, and for a moment you're sure she'd going to argue about being bumped back. "We'll cut your footage in during post," you add. She glowers, and strides out.
"Okay, everyone," you call in loud voice to the crew. "We'll start with analysis of what we haven't shot yet." You gesture at the experts. "We'll have Hu on first, Watt second--"
"I can't analyze what hasn't happened," Watt says crossly.
"Bullshit," you retort. "Bullshit it. Nothing's going to happen, right?"
A shrill shriek cuts the air.
* * * * *
"It was the woman," Hu says. "You chose her well."
The shrine is silent again; the crew dispersed; Sara, collapsed, on her way back to the hotel. Only you and Hu remain, ostensibly to discuss how best to shoot his explanation for Sara's encounter with the elusive spirit rumored to inhabit the shrine.
"Oh, anyone would try to kill Sara," you retort. "I'm getting kind of fond of this spook. Are we sure we wanna exorcise it?"
Hu smiles thinly: possibly his first acknowledgement that he'd overheard Sara's "fortune cookie" remark on the drive out from the airport. "How did you come to choose her?"
"Coincidence. Father Ed--that's another one of us--likes the show, calls it the funniest thing he's seen since Martin and Lewis broke up." Hu doesn't react. "Well, we got your note, and on a hunch--and because Father Ed's a fan--we did some research on Sara. Evidence suggested-- Oh, shit, it just seemed worth a shot." You lift your vest and try fanning the heat away. "And Charles had wanted me to meet you anyway, get some experience with you, so, lucky me, here I am."
"I wish I could have met him," Hu says. "It's long since we've had an Emperor in the east," he adds quietly.
"We have a new one," you say. "She likes it when people pop in unannounced. Hop on a plane sometime." Hu bows slightly, and you return to the main subject. "So it's a jealous old shrine maiden, hates beautiful girls, and it tried ripping Sara's face off?"
Hu starts to reply, then closes his mouth. He cocks his head and looks over your shoulder. Then he frowns slightly. "But there were no marks on her," he says in a faintly puzzled voice.
"Should there have been?"
Hu adjusts his glasses and tugs at the robe you'd asked him to don for the filming. "The figure she described," he says slowly. He stops, and looks up at the dark eaves. "No," he finally says with quiet firmness. "Now that I look for them, I do not see the signs."
"But Sara said-- And you said she must have provoked the spirit."
"She excited it, those signs I see. It is now active, as it wasn't the other times I have been here."
But you are not looking at what he's talking about. You are looking at the small girl who has stepped out of a shadow, and at the faint glow about her.
Hu is still talking, though. "Perhaps you do not see them, Will. The light of Sun Tzu reveals them to me."
"I see her," you say, and lightly grasp his sleeve.
He turns.
The girl is dark-haired, and dressed in an elaborate robe, and she can't be more than seven years old. Her eyes are like coal, and they draw down in an expression of inconsolable sorrow. "Do I need the light of Arbol to see her?" you softly ask.
"No," Hu whispers back.
Your trio stands very still for a very long time before the girl fades away.
"I came to learn from you, Professor," you say. "Do you want to show me how to get rid of her?"
Hu crosses slowly to the spot where she had been, and kneels next to a withered post that stands incongruously unattached to anything else. He runs his hands over it, and studies it, and murmurs over it. It seems fixed to the floor, but it comes easily away when he pulls at it. He briefly examines the hole he has left, and then returns to you, cradling the post in his arms as though it were a child. "It is here," he says. "Upon this thing."
You lay your palm on it. The post is warm, warmer than it should be. A soft voice speaks in your mind. Father. Please don't.
"I have nothing to teach you here," Hu says sadly. "This is no spirit. Only an echo. An echo of something very tragic."
"No, there is something here," you quietly argue.
Hu raises the post to his ear, and listens. As he does so, his face becomes very long. "Yes, I hear it too. The poor thing. The poor, poor thing."
You place your hand back on the post, and feel a faint sigil prickling. "Can you make the pain stop," you ask him. He shakes his head. "I think I can," you say quietly, and try not to think of seven wooden dummies burning on a pyre. You explain it to him.
"I think that would be best," Hu says.
* * * * *
"Just a minute!" Sara calls after you rap on her door again. When she opens it, her eyes are bright, and she's a little breathless. "Did you get it all done?"
"No. There were too many visual artifacts," you say. "The footage was useless, and I just erased it."
Her expression curdles. "You mean after all I did out there? I mean, all I went through?"
"Cut the bullshit, Sara. Nothing happened. You faked it."
"Of course I did, Phil," she retorts with a sour twist of her lips. "There's no such thing as ghosts, but there are such things as ratings."
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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