Page 8 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
August 20, 1975
Catch him.
People milled in the streets, trying to smother the small fires started by the elderly ghost.
Hold him.
Rat Tattoo’s yelling echoed, faintly audible above the racket. And Mercy veered away from the crowds, the noise, hands curled into fists, breathing through her nose.
Drag him to the water—
The refrain echoed through her head, cacophonously loud. Tight pain speared behind her eyes, as if her blood pressure were rising sharply.
—and keep him down until his blood is salt and his eyes are food for the fishes—
She held her face still as a stone statue and kept walking, conscious of Rat Tattoo still in the background somewhere. Conscious, too, of the local residents still flustered and cross.
The moment she turned a fresh corner, Mercy broke into a jog. She didn’t like running at the best of times and was soon out of breath, but she knew from experience that whenthe urgecrept up on her, she should avoid other people. She needed space.
Space, of course, was the one thing that was not easy to find in Kowloon. The city was small in area, the foundations hemmed in by fort walls built long ago.
It compensated by being complex in structure. Dozens of paths and alleys crisscrossed at all levels. Of these, the Snakeskin triad guarded only the eight main roads which ran at ground level, and slapped wards on the bigger alleys or streets in upper areas. It made sense to do this; the eight main roads were the most important to keep free of ghosts. Most of the ground-level areas were steeped in perpetual shadow.
People still traversed the smaller roads and alleys, because they had to. They either lived there, worked there, could not afford the tolls too often, or all three. But those streets were less crowded, and that was what Mercy wanted right now.
Three streets over and two stories down, she finally came to a quiet little courtyard on the ground level, squashed on all sides by other buildings. No sunlight at all. The only other person around was a young girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen, who was drawing filthy water from a crude well. It was too much to expect total privacy in Kowloon; this would have to do.
Mercy slumped against the nearest wall in a crouch, heels of her hands pressed to her eye sockets, waiting for her breath to settle and the headache to subside. Bao pressed close against her neck, oozing chilly comfort. She counted up to fifteen, then down again in reverse.
After so many years, Mercy had more or less accepted the intrusive thoughts she could not explain, because she could at least control them. Even when they overwhelmed her, it was never enough to drive her to unfortunate acts—apart from that very first time, as a girl at Silverstrand Beach.
Didn’t mean she wasn’t scared by it every time, though.
“Hey? Hey, auntie!”
Mercy looked up, trying to suppress a flash of irritation at being disturbed. Bao, who had immediately fallen into a nap, opened one resentful eye.
The young girl was gesturing at them, a hopeful expression on her face.
Mercy sighed. “What is it, little niece?”
She grinned. “You’re Madam Chan, right? The ghost talker who works for Cobra Lily?”
“Heard of me, have you?”
“I watched you talk to a ghost on my street,” she said, excitedly. “It wouldn’t speak to anyone except you.”
“I’m lucky.” Mercy hated this line of conversation, because she never knew what to say when it came up, or how to explain why ghosts responded to her. Maybe other people just didn’t use the right tone of voice. “I have a knack.”
“It ate a man’s head after you talked to it,” the girl said, chewing a ragged nail.
“Sheate her husband’s head, and it was no worse than what he’d done to her while she was alive,” Mercy said, shortly. The head-eating thing was specific enough for her to recall the case. She added, with a hint of guilt, “Sorry you had to see that.”
“Naw, it was fun. You were clever, too.” She lifted the bucket, holding it up. “Need a drink of water, Madam Ghost Talker?”
Gray liquid slopped over the rim of the metallic pail. It had an oily sheen and smelled like rotten cabbage. Bao actually bared his teeth, as if threatened.
Mercy eyed first the girl, and then the bucket, with a raised eyebrow. Next to the well was a basket of cheap bottles that she had partly filled up.
