Page 94 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
Hiroshima is over two thousand kilometers away, too far to see the nuclear blast with physical eyes. You do not yet know the name of the city that just died in a single breath, or its exact location.
But you feel it, oh so clearly. You and every other ghost or medium fromhere to China to Russia to Guam and all the places in between—you all feel the spiritual energy of a hundred thousand souls, plus other living animals and plants, as they are converted from flesh to spirit.
“What is it?” Wing Yun is outside, next to you now. He hasn’t missed the collective reaction of the camp’s gathered spirits. “What’s happening?”
“Something terrible,” you say, surprised to find yourself weeping. “A horrible act of destruction. I don’t have words—”
Wing Yun takes your hand, giving it a squeeze. Hesitantly, you squeeze back, both of you kneeling in the damp earth beneath a quiet sky. He doesn’t understand, can’t know yet what you’ve sensed. But he knows you are distressed, and that’s enough.
Against all the cruel and dark things you’ve experienced in this world, that one act of kindness is precious, and you hold it close in your fractured heart.
29THE LONG NIGHT
Thirty years ago…
Nuclear devastation ends the war, eventually. The Japanese resist for a while, although that collapses shortly after the second bomb.
But even as the opposition folds, even as hope grows in the hearts of the resistance fighters, your own hopes are fading. While it’s a venerable occupation to possess the bodies of enemy soldiers during times of war, that kind of ability makes people uneasy in times of peace.
When the Japanese capitulate, the British will take over. And they are none too keen on the “ghost regiments” of Sai Kung, however useful they found you during these past three years. Even Wing Yun’s recommendation isn’t going to help. The messages coming from the remnants of Hong Kong’s government have made that clear as day.
The developments frustrate you. All this work you did was driven by the desire to find Mei Chi and your mother, but the return of peace doesn’t seem to be making that any easier.
Still, you can’t do anything if you’re caught by exorcists. Angry and bitter, you take off in the night, the day after the second atomic bomb falls. And you go to hide in the forest, intending to lay low until you can see which way the political winds are blowing.
You are therefore rather surprised when Wing Yun comes to find you one morning, in early September.
The resistance fighters have mostly disbanded by now, and all gone home. But you have remained, lingering in your military tent and stolen body like a bad smell, continuing to squat in the tree-riddled hills of the New Territories. Away from the rest of humanity.
The resistance camp held a few Japanese POWs, before the war ended, but it doesn’t anymore. You brought them along when you left, and have been “going through” them like disposable gowns. They were up for execution anyway, not that this makes it any more ethical. But ethics have stopped mattering to you as much as they once did.
“Siu Yin? Is that you?” Wing Yun kneels outside the battered tent, peeringin. His nose wrinkles at the stench of your stolen, unwashed flesh. “So, it’s true. You are still out here, lurking around.”
“Where else would I go?” You sit cross-legged beneath the grimy tent, shirt worn to rags, flesh emaciated from days of not eating. The only bathing you’ve done is whatever the rain chooses to bestow.
It isn’t comfortable squatting in the woods, and there are few facilities. Even less food. Fortunately, you don’t care about comfort, or taking care of your body. It’s only a dead enemy, and their corpse doesn’t require your respect. Let it starve, let it be dirty.
“Fair answer.” He crouches outside the tent, fingers interlaced. “How long have you been in that body?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I thought you told me once that staying in the same vessel for too many days is bad.”
“My memories start to fade, if I inhabit a skin too long, and I forget myself.” You don’t admit that some memories are already slipping from you, like soup through a sieve. “But I wouldn’t call that bad.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Everyone likes to forget, sometimes. Living people drink beer; I stay in my skins an extra day.”
“Beer doesn’t erase an entire person,” he counters.
“Doesn’t it? I think it does for some. Besides, the memories come back when I shed the skin.” You’ve done it twice before, by accident: stayed too long, started to lose yourself, then fortunately gotten “killed” in action. The death brought it all back. Since then, you’ve been more careful.
Well, usually.
You add, “I won’t stay much longer. Since you seem worried. This body is on the verge of fatal dehydration, and that will clear my head.”
“Shouldn’t you be near water, if you’re about to leave this body behind?”
