Ghosts of Chinatown (13 page)

She hands the metronome to Todd. “Here.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Lie down.”

“Shall I take my clothes off?”

“Very funny. Just lie down.”

Todd obediently lies down on the floor.

Jasmine takes the metronome and holds it high over her head.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Do you trust me or not?”

“Can I plead the fifth?”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind. Just do it.”

“Okay. When you come down hard, make sure that your palm is what lands first. Angle the metronome in such a way that the audience will not see the palm but think that it’s the metronome that’s hitting me.”

“That’s totally sketch.”

Jasmine demonstrates. With as much force as she can muster, she brings down the metronome and strikes Todd on the cheek. Upon impact, blood squirts out of the metronome.

“Ouch!”

“Don’t be a baby. That’s just fake blood inside the metronome.”

“I’m still freaked and even it it’s just your palm, it still hurt.”

“What is it Americans say? No pain, no gain. Well, a little pain never hurt anybody.”

“Are we supposed to believe that you actually can’t tell the difference between when someone is acting and someone is really injured?”
 

Susan pulls out a shotgun and aims it at Todd. Todd raises his arms in surrender.

“Wasting me will not solve anything. Then nobody will ever know what happened. Susan, I want to know more than anyone else. If you pull the trigger, you will kill an innocent man.”

“I will not kill an innocent man. I will give justice for my stepdaughter’s murderer.”

Susan fires. The bullet flies through the air in slow motion.

Todd dives to the floor and watches the bullet pass by him and shatter the storefront window into a million reflective bits.

“I told you I’m innocent,” Todd screams.
 

He looks up to Susan but she’s not there. In fact, nothing is there. The Bamboo Curios is an empty shop full of cobwebs, devoid of anything to sell, broken counters... nobody has been here for a long time.

“Nooo!”

Hyper-reality continuing and confusion reigning, Todd races out of the shop, blazing through the busy Oriental street. Fear drives him faster than he’s ever run in his life...

Todd, totally unnerved and panting for breath, constantly checks every motion to see its source.

He hears soft fragments of voices in Chinese—whispering, screaming, crying, laughing, rustling, scurrying.

Out of nowhere, a young Chinese coolie with jet-black pigtails appears and Todd runs into him and the two fall to the ground.

Todd sits up and tries to help the coolie up but instead of the laborer, there is an old, wizened Chinese man smoking an opium pipe.

The old man offers the pipe to Todd. “I think you need this.”

Todd refuses but in front of his eyes, the old man fades into the ether.

The friendly neighborhood has lost its innocence. Sounds and voices emanate from the ancient Chinatown buildings. They are the voices of Chinese laborers from over a century ago, wishing they had never left China to come to make a fortune that never appeared.

“Help me! I haven’t seen my son and he’s ten years old.”
 

“I need money to send my body to China.”

“Opium. Where’s the opium?”

The cacophony haunts Todd as he makes his way past the Chinese athletic associations, the curio shops, Asian restaurants and family clan buildings.

All sound stops as Todd arrives at the Shanghai Gallery.
 

He tries the door but it still won’t unlock. However, without assistance, the side entrance to the upper floors swings open.

The hyper-reality ends.

Chapter 24

Todd climbs the stairs to the fourth floor and steps fearfully to the end of the dark hallway to Cam’s apartment. From the recesses of his mind, an Edgar Allan Poe poem springs from a high school memory.

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?
 

He stops and hammers on the door. “Cam, open up.”

Todd waits but there is no answer.

He tries the doorknob and the door opens into an empty room with no furniture, no pictures, faded, peeling wallpaper, flooring breaking off, cracks in the ceiling.

However, there are sheets of yellow legal pad paper with Cam’s handwriting everywhere—they are taped to the wall, laid out on the floor.

He steps inside and walks to the wall. He reads one of the yellow sheets and his brow furrows, puzzled.

“The primary research objective of this paper is to improve the understanding of crude oil in the shallow subsurface.”

Todd studies another sheet.

“We wish to design better control and removal treatments with defined composition and physicochemical properties.”

Todd sees a closed bedroom door and walks to it.
 

He opens the door and sees Cam and Angela having sex on top of a bed. They are oblivious to Todd watching. Angela’s on top and Cam squeezes her very ample breasts, which bob as she thrusts and thrusts and thrusts. An hour ago, Todd had hoped that it would be him with Angela. But now?

“Yes, my god, yes.”
See what you are missing, Todd, you asshole.
“Do it more. Harder.”

“I aim to please, you nasty bitch.”

“Yes, I am. Oh, oh.”
You men are all alike. Treat me like a hooker and think you’re king bee. Neanderthal.

Angela looks to the side of the room and pretends that she sees Todd standing like a Peeping Tom at the door for the first time.

“Aaah! Pervert. Get out of here.”

She quickly pushes Cam off and pulls the covers over herself.

Cam looks to Todd with murder in his eyes. “What the hell are you doing, Todd?”

“You just called me Todd.”

“Of course I called you Todd. That is your name, isn’t it?

Todd’s not understanding any of this. “Okay, Cam, What’s your game? You always call me Piano Man.”

“You are some piece of work. You interrupt a man making love to his wife and want to ask about Billy Joel?”

This is the final straw. Todd takes a deep breath, then slowly exhales. “I am going to leave this building. I’m gonna go pack my stuff and disappear.”

“You are so lucky. We would too but what with me still working on my Ph.D. thesis, money is tight.”

The inconsistencies confound Todd. “You’re a writer of ghost stories.”

“Todd, are you okay? I am a doctoral student in geophysics.”

“And you love it here. You even helped renovate the building.”

Angela pulls off the covers. “Who are you kidding? The roof leaks, walls need painting, faucet drips constantly, who needs a slum landlord like Liang?”

Todd stares at the naked couple, then exhales. “You’re absolutely right. Sorry to disturb you.”

Cam and Angela watch as Todd exits the room and closes the door.

Angela gets out of bed and starts dressing.

Cam tries to pull her back down. “Hey, I was just getting started.”

“So am I.” Angela speaks disdainfully. “But not with you.”

Cam lights a cigarette. “At least I got the nasty bitch part right.”
 

She cups her breasts and pushes them into Cam’s face. “One hot nasty bitch.”

Chapter 25

Todd steps outside of Cam’s apartment and the door slams behind him.
 

Then he hears something that sends chills to the fibers of his being... the spastic ticking of a metronome from somewhere down the hall.

“Cam! Cam!” He tries to open the door to his drinking buddy’s apartment but it is locked tight. “Cam! Cam!”
 

The only answer is silence.
Damn
. Todd bounds down the flights of steps to the door to the Shanghai Gallery.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

Suddenly the sound of the erhu playing the melancholy melody joins the ticking of the metronome. The sound floods the hallway and Todd’s totally freaked.

Todd hears the creak of a door opening. It’s not the door to the street but he rotates his head to see that the Shanghai Gallery door has opened and beckons him in.
 

The metronome stops but the erhu continues.

Todd enters to see Liang facing the front window, playing the Chinese instrument. In the window, the reflection shows no image of Liang, only the erhu playing by itself.

“Liang! Liang!”

Todd dashes to the Chinese man and tries to shake him but Todd’s hand passes through an incorporeal body that continues playing.

At the back of the room, beside one of the Chinese paintings, he sees a sliver of light.
 

He walks to the light source and enters Liang’s workroom and sees the chaotic mixture of yin and yang, high tech and traditional Chinese.
 

Todd inhales in realization when he sees the large pictures of Jasmine in costume on the walls. He turns his eye to the bench and sees the smaller 8” X 10” black-and-white photo of the innocent Jasmine.

It’s a creepy feeling as Todd examines the room, finally seeing Liang standing silently in the doorway.

Liang steps back into the Shanghai Gallery as Todd runs toward him.

“Liang!” shouts Todd but there is no answer.

Susan stands beside Liang as Todd enters.
 

The room starts to rumble and Todd feels as if he’s in the middle of an earthquake. “No!” but that does not stop the tremors.
 

All the fixtures stay in place but they sway dangerously.

Then the room begins to transform.

Todd looks around in abject dread and then amazement as the front window breaks and glass shards fall to the floor...

The wallpaper fades and peels and the elaborate woodwork metamorphoses to cracked old wood...

The elegant Chinese watercolor paintings disappear, changing into old cheap calendars and pinup girl posters.

A horde of mice scatters across the floor, leaving little paw prints in a growing layer of dust.

Then, like the death of the bad guy Nazi in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,
Liang and Susan’s hair lengthens and whitens, their faces dry up and age like leather, their skin withering like wafer-thin paper, moisture sucks from their bodies, and the two fall face first to the ground.

The metamorphosis is complete—Todd sees two skeletons, each with a knife in their back. One is dressed like Liang, the other like Susan.

He hears the cocking of a gun and flattens to the ground.

The sound of the gun’s trigger clicks empty—there are no bullets.
 

Todd crawls to the skeletons and turns over the one dressed like Liang.
 

He sees a locket around its neck exactly like his. He opens it up...
 

and sees a picture of Liang, Jasmine, Susan and Catherine.

“You took away my future, Todd.” Todd looks up to see Liang and Susan hovering over him. Susan levels a gun aimed at Todd’s heart.

“Jasmine was the only reason for me to exist after my death,” Liang says. “She would have been a star. Talent, sensitivity... the stage loved her.”

He motions to Susan. “We have been preparing for you to come ever since you murdered Jasmine. Every inch of the apartment, every atom of the piano...

Susan chimes in, “Not to mention Bamboo Curios and the Ho Inn.”

Liang finishes. “Everything has been in motion for the last five years preparing for today.” He sighs. “Judgment Day is come.”

Chapter 26
 

Liang slaps Todd as hard as he can, sending him flying across the room and onto the ground.
 

Todd struggles to his feet. “Jasmine meant everything to me too. I loved her, I wanted to marry her, I wanted children with her.”

Susan screams, “Monster!”

Liang whips from his pocket several
shuriken
, the Japanese ninja throwing stars. With absolute precision, he hurls them at Todd and the whirling devices slice the air.

Todd dives to the floor but the shuriken pass right through him.
 

Todd watches the stars shatter the television screen into tiny little bits.

He looks up but Susan and Liang are gone.

Todd runs to the front door... but it is locked.
 

Runs out of the side door and up the stairs and the door to his suite swings open.
 

He gingerly leans in. Everything seems in order. He gingerly enters.

Everything looks in order. The horrifying sounds stop but the silence is even more terrifying.

Hands trembling, he crosses the room to the antique desk.

He reaches into the drawer where he put the Bible and takes it out and the page flips itself to Revelations.
 

“And the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who did mighty miracles on behalf of the beast—miracles that deceived all who had accepted the mark of the beast and who worshiped his statue. Both the beast and his false prophet were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.”

Suddenly, the Bible bursts into flames... His eyes widen in horror as the sacred scriptures burn in front of him.
Is this judgment? If it is, then God doesn’t exist because I’m not guilty.

The fire flames bigger, like the cathedral of hell, keeping Todd bound in morbid fascination. Did you hear me? I’m innocent.
 

Todd backs away but the flames consume the whole room.

The inferno surrounds Todd over his head around the room. He looks into the center of the fire and sees Jasmine's body, lying there battered and bruised just as he left her five years ago.