Page 87 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
Her arms hang limp, eyes lidded and unresponsive. She has a worker’s build, strong all over, hands blooming with calluses. Dark hair fans out in the water, forming a cloud around her face. A gold bracelet with a tiger charm encircles one wrist.
The current stirs and swirls. She does not.
Dead things surround her. A few drowned men drift in the water, limbs rigid and possessions scattered. The broken remnants of freshly sunken boats lie half buried on the ocean floor. History is eroding down here, rusting in the mud.
Beneath the water, her eyes open…
We know the rest of Mercy’s tale from here, I think.
Yourstory, though, is just getting started.
PART
THREE
27LIKE A SUIT OF CLOTHES
Thirty-three years ago…
Swimming as a ghost is a revelatory experience. Cut through emerald water, following the coastline up and westward. A tilt of the head changes direction; a flick of the feet alters speed. You don’t fully realize how fast you’re going until you overtake a pod of pink dolphins, who scatter at your approach with chittering cries.
Oddly, you have never felt more grounded and aware than in that moment. The living walk through life half asleep; the dead are wide-awake. They are connected deeply to the spirit world, and they cannot shut their eyes or rest.
The burn of suffocation in your chest grinds on, a relentless ache. Oddly, knowing there is no way to ease it makes it possible to bear. When pain becomes a way of existence, we stop hoping for an end to the suffering. The death of hope is its own resilience.
In the darkest hours of the night, you wash up through the cresting waves along a barren stretch of shore. You’re still far to the north, in the rural Sai Kung districts; the city is not visible from here. To reach the rest of Hong Kong would be several hours’ walk through mountainous paths.
But you aren’t thinking of going to the city just yet. For now, all you want is to stand on dry land, if only for a moment. As if in a dream, you rise slowly, night air drying your skin. Surf rolls across your feet, caking them in sand.
Glancing down, you catch sight of your reflection in a still pool of water, trapped between rocks.
A pallid face, tinted ever-so-slightly green. Hollow cheeks, gaunt features; the blood is all washed out. Some cultures prize slender delicacy, but this is not beauty. Your body is shriveled rather than slender; you are sinewy and twisted, rather than delicate. Despite the corporeality of your form, translucency hazes every line and edge, giving a shimmery appearance. The filmy white of your eyes is clouded and dull.
The tide roars, the stars burning in the heavens as you huddle in a sullen knot of withered limbs over a rock pool, haunted by the reflection within. Even knowing what you would see, it is still a momentary shock.
An ache tightens across your body, catching you off guard. The skin on yourarms is flaking as the dryness accelerates, cracks deepening and spreading with rapidity.
Alarmed, you scuttle back to the cool relief of the ocean, ducking your head beneath the waves. The symptoms stop. Though still drawn and papery, your spirit-skin is recovering.
Trying to leave the water is dangerous. Same as it was for Mei Chi, whose limitations you now possess. You regard your limbs with grim discontent. Are you bound to the ocean, then? Not a very useful kind of ghost.
If Mei Chi were here, the hell and fury you’d wreak—
But she isn’t here. She’s gone, took your skin and ran. Probably she’ll end up in a prisoner of war camp, somewhere. Heaven knows what will happen to your body then. Perhaps she’ll even die again, and take your body with her this time.
Helplessness wells up, swamping you. In stories, ghosts always seem to know what to do. They come back overwhelmed with compulsions and rote behaviors, perhaps even enslaved to them.
Not you, though. You’re lost, aimless. Grateful to have autonomy, as if you’ve won a kind of hellish lottery, but also at a complete loss for how to use it. Where are the stories about ghosts who are just confused and unsure?
Frustration drives you to move, even though you scarcely know where you want to go. Swim farther out to get a better view and begin following the coast. Every so often, you lift your head above the surface to scan the area.
A mile down the shoreline, closer to the city, and you finally see something. A group of men have made camp on the beach, clustered around a fire in the wilderness. Five of them together, and all heavily armed as they laugh and chatter and cook their food.
They are wearing Japanese uniforms.
Fate has brought you here this night, to an encounter that will alter the course of your un-life.
Edge closer, careful to keep behind an outcropping of rocks, and watch from the water. There is, you realize with interest, a sixth man among them, whom you hadn’t seen before, because he’s lying down. He doesn’t wear a uniform, and appears to be a citizen. His face is bruised and his limbs are tied; a prisoner, of some kind.
