Qing Tian Yi lifted the wok and poured the stir-fried potatoes onto two different plates, before carefully wiping down the edge of the plate with a cloth. The details were where it mattered when it came to making things presentable.
It was the fifteenth day of the lunar month. Even though she did not believe in the Taoist religious doctrine, she had promised her husband to keep up the ritual offerings to the local earth deity in their home. Dressed in a pale blue blouse and pants, Tian Yi placed the potatoes and rice in front of the small shrine. She lit three joss sticks and bowed to the altar before sticking the joss sticks into the incense burner.
Having done this, she left and returned with the other plate of potatoes. She placed it before the Buddha's statue and muttered a prayer for her husband, blessing him to be reborn in a better world than this one. Slowly, bit by bit, the young widow was trying to learn to find peace in her husband’s death.
The potatoes were only barely warm by the time she took them off the altar and placed them on the table. Four women, nine children and a baby sat at the table, sharing a meal between themselves between a few words of conversation. Most of the talking was done by Granny Wu, who somehow retained her plump shape and cheerful countenance despite the years spent living without the sun.
“Slow down, boy, where are you in a hurry to go?” she chuckled and patted the back of her grandson.
The young boy was wolfishly devouring the contents of his bowl and choked when he was patted on the back.
She turned and said to Tian Yi’s daughter, "Better finish your food, Ru Yi, or you’ll grow a pimple on your face for every leftover grain!”
The young girl turned to her mother with a pleading expression on her face. The girl had always been bad with strangers, especially the more friendly ones. It had been over a month now and she still hadn't gotten used to the elderly woman. Tian Yi ignored her plight and made the girl finish her vegetables.
Granny Wu continued to dote on the other children, including those the women were only looking after during the day while their parents were off working.
Yun Lan, one of the women that Tian Yi had taken in, was feeding rice gruel to the baby in her arms, cooing as she did so. She only stopped once or twice to make a few polite comments or to thank Tian Yi.
Zhen Xi, the young widow, on the other hand, seemed more reserved than usual, even for her quiet self. She had barely touched her food since they started eating.
“What’s the matter, Zhen Xi? You don't have an appetite?” asked Tian Yi.
She nodded.
Tian Yi placed a hand on hers and gave her a reassuring pat.
Later, Tian Yi caught her staring off into the distance again while they were weaving baskets to be sold in the morning market later that week. Somehow, she felt a sudden urge to talk to this young woman, perhaps because of their similar fates. The mayor made sure that no one went around talking about Song Yu’s death, on account of avoiding further unrest. For the most part, no one knew what had happened to him. Even without the mayor’s request, Tian Yi likely wouldn't have arranged a funeral or any sort of religious rite either. It just seemed empty, when his body hadn’t even been recovered yet. Perhaps some small part of her believed that their parting wasn't final until she had seen with his own eyes that he was gone.
Nevertheless, ever since the day Nazirudin returned, Tian Yi had felt an unfortunate kinship towards Zhen Xi. She wanted to help her somehow, maybe because helping her would mean that she herself could find peace.
“Are you thinking about your husband?” asked Tian Yi gently.
The young widow turned around in surprise. She paused for a moment before shaking her head vigorously. Then she nodded meekly instead, before shaking her head again.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Tian Yi looked at her gently, but with a sort of intensity that seemed to be insisting that she speak.
Zhen Xi hesitated again before starting, "It's just…I was helping sew a few clothes at Miss Yan Leng’s shop the other day and one of the women that was also working there told me about how her husband died and…it just— it just reminded me of my own husband.”
A strange shiver ran down Tian Yi's spine and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Pushing down that odd sensation, she asked, “How did it remind you of your own husband?”
Zhen Xi looked nervous, scared even, but there was something unusual to the way she shifted her weight. It was almost as if there was something she wanted to say, but didn’t dare to, for fear of it coming true.
In the end, the young woman acquiesced.
Her hands shaking slightly, she finally explained in a whisper, “It was a usual day like always. He came back after hanging out with his colleagues after work. He doesn't like drinking you know? So he came home after just a few drinks. He was completely sober and perfectly healthy when he came home. He was really happy too, because he had just gotten a promotion at work and he was going to get a rise and he was telling me that we could finally have a child and—”
Zhen Xi started sobbing, but choked back her tears and continued, “—and the next morning, when I woke up, he was already…dead. I— the doctor said that it was a case of acute organ failure. What does that even mean? How could someone who was perfectly fine the night before die suddenly in the night? I didn’t even hear anything. He never said anything about being sick and he never made a single noise throughout the night. I would’ve heard if he screamed; I’m a really light sleeper!”
The young widow broke down completely and started wailing into the sleeve of her shirt. Tian Yi put her arm around her and comforted her as best as she could. Meanwhile, her mind was in turmoil. She had heard many similar rumors recently: of men found dead in their beds. She had dismissed them as the mere rumors they were supposed to be, but if even someone close to her had been a victim of similar circumstances, things might not be quite as simple.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Tian Yi didn’t know what she was supposed to do with this strange conjecture she had come up with. She should drop this subject entirely, but that restlessness that had grown inside of her since her husband went missing gnawed at her. Whatever this was, she had to get to the bottom of it. If not for herself, for Zhen Xi and for everyone else grieving over a lost family member.
Tian Yi dropped the subject momentarily and did her best to console the young widow, even though she herself didn’t know how she was supposed to move on from her husband. All she could offer were kind words and heartfelt empathy. She listened to the young woman recall memories of her husband and herself in the past and made sure she knew that she was on her side.
When Zhen Xi was finally feeling better, Tian Yi asked her calmly, “Earlier you said the same thing happened to someone else’s husband?”
She nodded and said, “Mm, Qi Ling’s husband. She also found him dead when she woke up. Heart failure.”
Tian Yi rubbed the young woman's back and asked, "Do you think you could bring me to see Miss Qi Ling?”
——————————————————————————————
The house was situated close to the center of the city, a modest building whose only entrance was in a narrow alleyway. The wayside shop was supported on cheap wooden pillars and protected only by a thin zinc roof. A few women walked in and out through its doors every so often, but its inside was more spacious than it looked on the outside.
Close to ten women worked on tables running down the length of a narrow aisle, taking measurements of fabric, cutting up cloth, or sewing clothes in silence.
Zhen Xi pointed at a woman in the back of the room, quietly sewing what seemed to be pants of sorts.
“Should I go with you?” she asked Qing Tian Yi.
Tian Yi shook her head and said, “Go do your work. I just want to ask her a few questions.”
The young woman looked at her worriedly, confused as to why Tian Yi would want to speak with someone from her work. Tian Yi gave her a reassuring look and said, “Don’t worry. It's no big deal.”
She then walked down the aisle and stopped in front of the woman's table. The woman was much older than both her and Zhen Xi. She appeared to be in her forties, with grey streaks running through her frazzled hair, tied into an untidy bun. Her face was an unhealthy shade of gray and her eyes looked as if they had sunken in beneath their sockets. The flesh on her body hung loosely from her skinny frame like a set of ill-fitting clothes. There was the unmistakable look of grief and resignation on her face, a look fixed on the faces of many residents of Luo Shan from the years of hard work and despair.
“I’m really sorry for disturbing you, but are you Miss Qi Ling?”
The woman turned her head slowly and stared into Tian Yi's eyes for an uncomfortably long moment before saying, “Yes, I am.”
“Would you mind if I had a word with you? I have some questions about your husband.”
The woman paused for an awkward amount of time again. She nodded and went back to work on her sewing.
Tian Yi took this as a yes. She pulled up a chair and sat down beside the woman, pulling out a small notebook and a small piece of sharpened graphite.
“Miss Qi Ling, I’m really sorry to hear about what happened to your husband. Zhen Xi told me everything. How you found him dead in your bed in the morning. I was hoping you could tell me—”
“It was ghosts,” the woman interrupted.
“I’m sorry?”
“Ghosts. That’s what killed him. He was possessed by a ghost!”
“Your husband was possessed by a ghost?”
“I told him; working in those mines, you don’t know what manner of dirty things you will run into. So many people have died in those shafts, lost forever in the tunnels. I told him to be careful and to always keep his talismans on his person,” the woman croaked, her voice turning a little hoarse and tearful near the end, “but the damn idiot lost his stupid talismans. And what do you know? The next morning he wakes up dead.”
“What makes you think your husband was killed by ghosts, Miss Qi Ling? What did the doctor say?” asked Tian Yi.
“Both the doctor and the coroner said it was heart failure, but it couldn’t possibly be! No one dies of heart failure so suddenly. Not my husband. He wasn’t like me, always sick and frail. He was healthy as an ox, and could carry twice as much weight than anyone else. But he died the morning after he lost the talismans I made him take with him. It’s ghosts. Ghosts! You too, be careful—” Qi Ling said as she rummaged in the mess on her work table.
She pulled out a wad of crumpled yellow papers with red markings on them. She shoved them in Tian Yi’s hands and said, “Here. Take this. Protect yourself.”
“Er— thank you, Miss Qi Ling. Again, I’m sorry about your husband. I know what it’s like to lose a loved one.“
“What happened to your husband? Was it ghosts as well?” Qi Ling said suddenly, looking straight into Tian Yi’s eyes. Somehow, she knew Tian Yi was talking about her husband.
Tian Yi felt like she was being stripped naked under the intense gaze. Like all the despair, all the anger and loneliness that she had been trying to bury in herself had been exposed before the sun.
“No, it was something else. Unrelated. Natural causes.” Even though death rarely felt natural for the ones left behind.
There was a moment of silence. Qi Ling placed her hand on Tian Yi’s own and even though she didn’t say anything, Tian Yi understood what she meant: I know.
Tian Yi gave her a thankful nod and asked, “If this was a ghost attack, did you report the incident to the enforcers?”
“I did and they said it was natural causes. They told me there was nothing they could do. I insisted they looked into it, but they refused and sent me away.”
Tian Yi bit her lip and sank deep in thought. She knew the enforcers were stretched thin at the moment and a case of acute heart failure was hardly a priority, but if these weren’t natural deaths…
“If you don’t mind, may I ask what your husband was doing the night before he died?” asked Tian Yi.
The woman looked blankly at her and said, “I don’t know. He always comes home around eight in the evening. That day was no different. He said he’d drop his talismans and his money somewhere. We had a fight over that; he was supposed to bring home some rice that day.”
“And where does your husband work?”
“One of the mines in the northeast. Bluestone Mines, I believe.”
“And when did he die?”
“It’s been around six weeks now.”
Tian Yi asked a few more questions, trying to get as much detail as she could out of the woman. She wrote down everything in her little notebook, keeping track of every bit of information in an organized fashion, including a list of other people that the woman knew of who had supposedly died in these ‘ghost’ attacks. For a brief moment, Tian Yi wondered if this was how her husband used to investigate cases. She found a faint sense of comfort in that thought.
Soon, after exhausting her questions and finding it difficult to get anything else other than gloomy warnings of ghost attacks from the woman, Tian Yi stood up to leave.
“I don’t know if it’s a ghost attack, but I promise I will do my best to find out what happened to your husband. You deserve to know that much,” said Tian Yi.
The woman shoved the talismans into her arms and warned her once more, “Remember, keep the talismans close to you. The ghosts will strike again, the same way they’ve claimed the lives of all those other people.”
As she walked away toward the exit of the tailor’s shop, Tian Yi wondered if there was any truth to these claims of ghosts. Her own husband had worked as an enforcer in this city for seven years and despite all the sorcerous crimes and magical murders, he had never mentioned the existence of ghosts. Nevertheless, there was no question that these deaths were exceedingly strange. Tian Yi looked at the talismans in her hand. She thought for a moment and set them aside on one of the seamstresses’ tables before walking out of the shop.
She had a lot more places to be.