The Ghost Bride (11 page)

Madam Lim nodded absently, but as she turned away, Yan Hong shot her a look of pure, unguarded hatred. Surprised, I followed her upstairs into a bedroom, despite my anxiety about leaving. Bolting the door, she lifted the heavy lid of a wooden chest. It was filled with clothing that she hastily set on the floor. At the very bottom of the chest was a cloth-wrapped bundle. Yan Hong wavered for a moment, then untied the knots as though she felt compelled to check something. She unrolled a corner and paused with a sigh of relief. Swiftly she wrapped it up again, but not before I had glimpsed the discolored rim of a celadon teacup.

Chapter
13

I
was so
surprised that I could hardly gather my thoughts. Why did Yan Hong have what
looked suspiciously like Lim Tian Ching’s missing cup? There might be an
innocent explanation, I thought, for surely only a fool would keep such a thing
and Yan Hong didn’t strike me as stupid. But the servant had said it was a
family heirloom and perhaps she couldn’t bear to throw it away. I was struck as
well by the discoloration of the rim. Celadon was prized for its translucency,
and from what I had glimpsed, the cup itself had a fine clear glaze.

Even as I speculated, however, I felt an increasing
sense of oppression, like an ominous fog rolling into the room. Something was
coming; I was sure of it. Fearful, I thought of Lim Tian Ching or even the
border officials he had spoken of. The air became weighty and my chest
constricted. It was the same choking sensation I experienced whenever Lim Tian
Ching strayed too long in my dreams. My mouth was dry; I could barely draw
breath, feeling that the house itself deeply resented my intrusion. With growing
unease, I went to the window. In the deepening twilight, I saw a strange
procession of dim green lights. They bobbed eerily as they passed the porter at
the gate, though he did not appear to see them. It was then that I knew they
were spirit lights.

I raced down the stairs, cutting through the
servants’ quarters and out through a side gate. My side ached, my lungs burned,
but still I ran on, trying desperately to increase the distance between myself
and those spectral lights. Terrified, I took turn after turn through a maze of
back lanes until at last the suffocating sensation lifted and I could think
clearly again. My heart was racing, my thoughts in turmoil. Yan Hong had just as
much of a motive for murdering Lim Tian Ching if it meant depriving Madam Lim of
her son, to avenge her own mother’s death. And her husband was a doctor. It
would have been easy enough for her to procure drugs or poison. Even as I
considered this, however, I recalled with a sinking feeling that Tian Bai had
also studied medicine. He had mentioned that his studies were interrupted, but I
had never found out why.

A breeze sprang up with a tang of the sea that was
never far from Malacca. Opposite, lamps were lit in the small row of shop
houses. Drawn to the comforting clank of pots, I peered disconsolately at the
enclosed backyards of these houses, eventually choosing a wooden gate that
seemed less sturdy. I struggled to force myself through the tight grain of the
wood, emerging finally in a stone courtyard. Large glazed jars held drinking
water, and a girl my own age was drawing some into a jug. Balancing it against
her hip, she carried it inside.

I followed her through a dingy kitchen into a tiny
dining area. This was the living quarters of a typical shop house that was built
extremely long and narrow so that each lay next to its neighbors like an eel in
an eel bed. A family sat around a marble table. There was a father, mother, an
old grandfather, two little boys, and the girl I had followed. But I was drawn
to the aroma of food that rose like a mist from the table. It was a plain meal:
soup and pickles, tofu, and a platter of fried fish, the
ikan kembong
that are no larger than a child’s hand. I was so
hungry, however, that it seemed like a feast. But despite my best attempts, the
fragrance of the food left me gnawingly unsatisfied. It seemed that I would
starve unless someone made a spirit offering to me. Miserably, I crouched in a
corner of the room as they ate, envying their chatter and every mouthful of food
they ingested. I had been hungry before, but never like this. Old Wong always
had a few peanuts or a pinch of melon seeds for me. I missed him right now and
our familiar kitchen with a fierceness that frightened me.

After a while, the old man motioned to the girl.
“Did you make the ancestor’s offering today?”

She pouted. “Of course I did, Grandfather.”

He turned and squinted at the family altar. “How
about the hungry ghosts?”

“Those creatures! It’s not even Qing Ming.”

The old man shook his head from side to side as
though there was something in his ears. “Put a little rice out for them.”

Sighing, the girl got up and scooped some rice into
a bowl, setting it on the altar with a brief mumble. As soon as she was done, I
ran to the altar, inhaling sharply so that the fragrance filled my nostrils and,
thankfully, my stomach. I placed my hands together to thank the old man, though
he was absorbed in his own meal. Eventually, lulled by their conversation and
the events of the day, I closed my eyes. How strange it was that the spirit
could sleep, eat, and rest, yet how else could one account for the quantities of
paper funeral food and furniture that were burned to accompany the houses and
carriages of the dead?

I
woke
suddenly to silent darkness. The family had retired to bed but some noise had
startled me awake. Straining my ears, I heard a skittering rustle again. The
darkness was gradually broken by a faint greenish light from the corridor, much
like the ones I had seen approaching the Lim mansion. Nearer and nearer it
drifted till I felt the hairs on my neck tingling. Petrified, I pressed myself
half into a great chest of drawers, hoping for the semi-visibility that had
aided my escape from the hungry ghosts.

The dim light entered the room and paused. At
first, all I saw was the back of a figure clad in old-fashioned garments, the
hair elaborately dressed with dangling ornaments. It was a young woman, not as
thin as the poor hungry ghost who had spoken to me. When she turned, however, I
saw the slight shriveling of her features, as though a slow process of
mummification had begun. She began to wander around the empty dining room,
pausing for a moment at the old man’s chair. At the rice bowl offering, she
stopped.

“Who has eaten this?” The corpse light that
enveloped her rippled in agitation. “How dare you trespass here?”

Her sharp eyes roved around the room like needles.
I raised my hand before my face and was horrified to see that it too emitted a
faint glow. Not the eerie green that bathed the woman, but a pale shine like
moonlight. Enraged, she swept around the room, finally catching sight of me the
second time.

Her eyes widened as she examined me. “I thought you
were a hungry ghost, but now I see that you’re not of the dead. Are you here to
call me back?”

Perhaps it was only natural, I thought, that each
ghost’s thoughts instantly flew to his own situation. After all, I myself could
scarcely forget my disembodiment.

“What are you, demon or fairy?” she demanded.

Not knowing how to reply I said, “I’m sorry I took
your rice. The old man said it was an offering.”

“It was on the altar. But for years it has been
mine.”

Despite her initial hostility, she seemed eager to
talk. Perhaps it had been a long time since there had been anyone to communicate
with. I couldn’t tell when she had died, as the fashion in funeral garments
remained antique and unchanging. Still, I might learn something from her.

“Were you waiting for a messenger?” I hazarded.

Glancing doubtfully at me, she said, “So you were
looking for me! I’m not yet ready to go, though.”

“I’m not sure,” I began, but she cut me off.

“My name is Fan, of the Liew family. I can explain
why I’m still here.”

“You’re not a hungry ghost.”

“Of course not! By rights I should have gone on to
the courts already. Did the border officials send you?”

“My business isn’t with you.” I felt I ought to put
her straight before I floundered into deeper waters.

She sighed. “I suppose it’s silly to expect them to
send someone like you. Are you a fairy maiden, then? I’ve always wanted to meet
one. I know they sometimes come from paradise. Yet—” She broke off, studying my
pajamas.

“I’ve lost my way.”

“Did you lose your steed too?”

“My steed?”

“Don’t you have a carriage or a horse? Or maybe
your rank is too low,” she said dismissively. “It’s just that your clothes
. . .  I mean, you’re very pretty of course. That’s how I knew
you were a fairy.”

Stalling, I said, “I am but a humble handmaid on an
errand.”

“Oh!” she said. “Is it a love affair? Because
that’s why I’m here too!” Once she started, it was as though she couldn’t stop
talking. “I died for love, did you know that?”

Y
es,”
said the ghost as she folded herself on one of the dining chairs. Unlike myself,
she had far less mass, for her sleeves trailed through the wood of the chair and
she was so light that a puff of air would have dislodged her from her perch. “It
was really very romantic. I still remember when I first saw him. He was already
married, of course, but she was much older than him. Anyway, it didn’t bother
me.”

“You didn’t mind being a second wife?”

She waved a hand negligently. “I was the one he
loved. My father refused, of course. He was only a petty shopkeeper, not good
enough for me, whereas my family owned a lodging house near Jonker Street. So
when I locked myself in my room and refused to eat, my father said he would ship
me back to relatives in China. He bought me passage on a junk through the
Straits of Malacca. I think he really intended to marry me off to a business
acquaintance in Singapore, but there was a terrible typhoon and our ship
capsized. Never having learned to swim, I quickly drowned.” Fan shook her long
sleeves out with a sigh. “If I had known how easy it is to lose your life, I
would have treasured mine better.”

If she only knew how heartily I agreed with her.
But I was desperate to discover as much as possible about this afterlife and how
things worked. “If you drowned, why are you here in this house?”

She turned to me in astonishment. “Didn’t I tell
you? This is my lover’s house.”

“The old man?”

“He stayed with his wife and had more children.
Still, he dreams of me every night. My father of course gave me a funeral and
burned offerings, though my lover was never told of this. For all he knew I had
been disowned and become a hungry ghost. That’s why he puts out rice every
evening. He means it for me.”

With sudden anxiety, I wondered whether I would
even realize it if my own physical body stopped breathing. “What was it like
when you died?”

“I saw other souls streaming toward the gateway of
the Courts of Judgment. I was supposed to go too, except I wanted to see my
beloved again. Oh, his wife was relieved when I died, I tell you! But I made
sure that he still loved me in his dreams.” Her laughter was a thin tinkle.
“Though I’ve always been afraid that they’ll send someone to fetch me. But the
time is almost at hand anyway.”

“What time is that?”

“Why, I’ve been waiting for him to die, of course!
He almost did several times. He fell off a ladder once and another time he
contracted typhoid. But now I think the end is near.”

“Do you wish him dead, then?” Repulsed by her
cheer, I was reminded of the negative influence ghosts were said to be on the
living.

“No!” she said in alarm. “Oh, you mustn’t report me
to the authorities! I thought that if he died then I would wait for him to go
together. After all, we’re linked by this.” She held out an invisible object
pinched together between her fingers. Try as I might, however, I could discern
nothing.

“How odd,” she said. “For I can see it clearly.
It’s a shining thread.”

My heart gave a leap. “I’ve been searching for
something like that. What is it?”

“It shows the intensity of your feelings,” she
said. “When I was alive we exchanged tokens. I gave him a hairpin and he gave me
a jade thumb ring that had belonged to his father. Once I was dead, I found that
if I followed this thread it led me straight to him. He still has my hairpin in
a wooden chest upstairs.”

I thought about Tian Bai’s watch and the comb that
I had slipped him the day he had come to our house. But how was it that my
thread hadn’t gone toward the Lim mansion?

“Perhaps your task is difficult because only lovers
can find their own thread,” said Fan.

“Does your thread float in the air?”

She frowned. “The other end is probably at the
bottom of the sea with the ring that he gave me. But I manage quite well with
this end. If I leave the house I hold on to it. It’s so hard to get around as a
ghost, you know! Corners, mirrors. Such things make me lose my way. And I’m so
light now, I would blow away down the street if I didn’t have this thread to
hold on to.”

Her words confirmed my suspicions that I was,
indeed, different from the dead in the manner that I could move easily from
place to place. Even the hungry ghosts that had chased me had fluttered wildly
and dispersed.

“I don’t go out much anyway,” Fan continued. “It’s
so much of a bother. I’m sure I don’t know what ordinary ghosts without a thread
like mine do.” She looked pointedly at me again. “You don’t seem to know much
about anything.”

“We led a sheltered existence,” I said, realizing
that I had to come up with something to satisfy her curiosity. “My job was to
pick fruit in the Blessed Peach Orchard.” Though I felt guilty lying to her, she
was enthralled.

“How very boring! Heaven must be overrated.”

“It was marvelous fruit,” I said cautiously.

“Then it must surely have been the fruit of
longevity. If I only had one, I’m sure I could bribe the border officials to be
lenient with me!”

Lim Tian Ching had also mentioned border officials.
“Where can I find them?” I asked.

“At the gateway, of course. I can see it as soon as
I go out.”

“Why don’t the hungry ghosts go there?”

“They can’t find it,” she said contemptuously.
“What do you expect? They had no proper burial, no prayers or offerings. They’re
hopeless.” I listened to her with a sinking heart.