Page 13 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
“I…” Mercy opened her eyes. She sat on dry linoleum. The vines had vanished and so had the water. The creature she thought of as Sea Sister was also gone. The ceiling fan spun with nonchalant indifference. “Fine. Good. All fine.” Her heart hammered erratically.
Cobra Lily helped her stand. “That’s a strange definition of fine.”
“It was a dream.” Mercy leaned against the nearest wall. “The same one that I get, sometimes. Memories, old things.” From a life she could not recall.
“Dreams happen when you sleep,” her boss said, sharp as razor wire. “We are wide-awake. You even said so yourself.”
“… I know.”
“For the second time this month!”
“I know.”
“Stubborn as an old turtle!” Cobra Lily said again, exasperated this time. “Ifthis were happening to someone else, I would assume they were experiencing a haunting. It has all the classic signs.”
“It can’t be.” Mercy trailed her fingers over her skin, her clothes, seeking comfort in the solidity of familiar things. Wanting to check her own tangibility. “It is not a ghost. No spiritual traces. The experts you hired found nothing—”
“Maybe we are not looking hard enough. Or in the right way. Maybe my experts were bad.”
“—and you never see it either, boss,” Mercy continued, firmly. “It is bad memories, waking dreams for a wounded mind. The war has left lots of people with scars on their spirit.”
“The war ended over thirty years ago,” Cobra Lily said, brows drawn together. “If this is something left from the war, then why don’t you see… oh, I don’t know. Battles, dead bodies, ships, burning… angry soldiers… any of that?”
“No idea.” Mercy ran her hand through her short hair. “I am not even sure it’s malignant, as dreams go. Just vines. Water. Jungle flowers and tiny plants.” A green-skinned monster, spouting cliché Buddhist quotes.
Cobra Lily glowered. “Losing your sense of reality cannot be a good thing, however benevolent the visions.”
“Please don’t worry, boss.” Mercy offered a shaky bow. “It’s just the effect of Ghost Month. Strange winds and negative energies. I will be fine.”
Catch them. Hold them. Drag them to the water and keep them down until their blood is salt and their eyes are food for the fishes—
Head still bowed, Mercy ground her teeth and fought down the grotesque whisper. In truth, the problem was getting worse. Nightly dreams she was used to, and did not mind. Ever since washing up on the shores of Hong Kong’s mainland, missing her past and her memories and having nothing but a name, she had been plagued by odd dreams.
But these waking visions, or whatever one was supposed to call them, were very new and extremely disconcerting. The incidents had gotten steadily more frequent over the past year, and harder to hide. Especially from Cobra Lily, who was so often around.
Same for the whispers tocatch, hold, drag; she could always ignore them, but she could not shut them out. She dared not say anything about that in case people started thinking that she was some kind of crazed killer.
“In that case, promise me you will do something about it if this doesn’t clear up when Ghost Month ends,” Cobra Lily said, clapping her shoulder. “We willfind more doctors, or speak to a specialist, if you wish. What if you embarrass me in public?”
Of course. Her boss was always concerned about losing face.
“I am the best ghost talker around, and you are the most powerful person in Kowloon.” Mercy laughed shakily. “If we cannot solve my problems, no one else will, either.”
“How do you know, if you do not let them try?” Cobra Lily sighed. “I do hate to see you like this. Having all these…” She paused, left the word hanging.
Hallucinations, Mercy finished silently. Too heavy a term to speak out loud, as if admitting to what was happening was also an admission of weakness.
“You are right,” she said, more to change the subject than out of true agreement. “I should seek help.” She straightened up. “But for now, we have that, um… wait, what are we doing this afternoon?”
“Iknewyou’d forgotten,” Cobra Lily said, instantly aggrieved and distracted. Just as Mercy had hoped. “The demolition consultation? Fate of our city, that’s all. Nothing much, hey!”
A pit formed in Mercy’s stomach. “Oh. Yes. Very serious.” It wasn’t so much that she’d forgotten as she’d been trying not to think about it. Trying a little too hard, clearly.
The local Hong Kong authorities, which included both British and Chinese officials, had an intense dislike of the Walled City. They considered it an eyesore, a filthy embarrassment that signified the shame and trauma of past war years, and they desperately wanted to demolish the whole place. Didn’t help that the general Hong Kong public felt much the same.
Every so often, someone went through the administrative motions of trying to organize the destruction of the neighborhood, but still, it usually stalled. The operation would be huge and expensive, and the Walled City residents did not want their home destroyed. Buying them out would cost the government a lot of money, and that was just the first of many costs.
This was one of those times; another proposal had been put forward. The city was once again under legislative threat. Only, it was moving forward a lot further and faster than other attempts.
