Mulberry and Peach (20 page)

The next morning a monk walked into the yard of Pao-tz'u Temple. He saw a man lying under the palm tree. The monk carried him on his back into the temple and poured ginger water down his throat. When he came to, he said his name was Lin Huo-t'u.

Lin went home. At home he found his three friends dead. They were
lying in pools of water and they stank. The families of the dead men objected to the idea of having the coroner do autopsies. Instead, they held a ceremony to invoke the Ma-tsu Goddess to come. Speaking for the Goddess, the exorcist announced that an evil spirit was lurking in the tomb beside Pao-tz'u Temple. The coffin would have to be moved. Only then could the people of the village avoid calamity.

A girl, Pan Chin-chiao, was buried in the tomb. Six years before she had left the village to go to Taipei. Someone from the village had run into her when she was working as a prostitute in the red light district. She was beautiful and clever. She had acquired quite a reputation for herself in the district. Then, four years ago, Pan suddenly killed herself. There were only two sentences in her suicide note:

The people of the village moved Pan's coffin, but it was still buried in the same grave.

The third day, just as Lin was waking up, his own dog that he had had for three years, suddenly leaped at him. He fell to the ground and expired. In rapid succession, three young men between twenty and thirty died in the village.

After Lin's death, a story began circulating in the village. On Lin's birthday, the four drunk men had fallen asleep in their chairs. Dazed, Lin heard silk rustling. He opened his eyes and saw a girl in a red dress and hat. She had a lovely face and long hair; waves of cold came from her body. He pretended to be asleep. The girl in red breathed into the faces of the three other men. Lin jumped out of his chair and ran away. The girl in red chased him. He saw the lights of Pao-tz'u Temple. He thought to himself: Inside the temple, the gods will protect me. He ran up and pounded on the gate. There was no answer. The girl in red caught up with him. Lin grabbed hold of a cypress tree outside the temple to protect himself. The girl in red reached her arms around the tree and tried to grab him. He ducked left and right to get away from her. Her fingernails were like hooks and sank deep into the cypress bark. She couldn't pull them out. Lin jumped over the temple wall and rolled under the palm tree. Then he passed out. The next day the monk from Pao-tz'u Temple revived him. On the cypress tree there were four fingernail cuts each a foot deep. A trail of blood went from the gate to the temple all the way to Pan's grave.

... The ghoul devours people. Another young man died. The people
of the village went to find the monk from Pao-tz'u Temple to have him verify the traces of blood left by the corpse. The monk had disappeared. It was rumoured that he did not keep his vows of chastity. It was said that he kept a woman from a good family at the temple. The district magistrate wanted to punish him according to the law, but the monk had run away. Someone found part of a corpse in a clump of straw in the mountains behind the village. All that remained were the thigh bones, pelvis, fingers, and head. His spine was missing. The coroner could not establish the cause of death. He guessed that the dead person had died while sitting in the clump of straw. It was sitting, facing south, looking at the village at the foot of the mountain. The people of the village claimed that it was the monk of Pao-tz'u Temple. He was sitting in the lotus position in the clump of straw when the ghoul found him. The girl in red ate human spines.

Two more people died in the village, both under strange circumstances. The people of the village went to Pao-tz'u Temple to ask for help from the gods. The exorcist said that Pan's body had not yet decomposed, so she had become a ghoul who ate human flesh. Though at first, she was only eating men, later she would eat women. In two months she would eat all the people in the village. In six months she would eat all the people in the city. In a year, she would finish off all the people on the island and not even the fishermen would be spared. Taiwan would become a deserted island. The people of the village must burn her body.

On the next day the exorcist died.

On the third day the statues of the gods in the temple disappeared.

The people of the village decided not to disturb the corpse.

Then the people in the village began to attribute calamities to a different spirit - the spirit of the 11th century Judge Pao, who returned to avenge secret crimes and reward good deeds. Sometimes he inhabited the body of the victims; other times he appeared in the flesh. It was said that he had two black horns on his head.

A seventy-two-year-old carpenter quarrelled with his wife over an egg. Suddenly he lost consciousness. When he came to, his wife was lying in a puddle of blood. He was holding a bloody cleaver in his own hand.

A woman dreamed that a man with two black horns on his head wanted to take her to heaven. From then on she saw that man with black horns during the day. She burned incense and lit candles to seek his forgiveness. But the man with black horns did not spare her. She hanged herself.

A woman visited her mother's house. When she saw her younger brother, she grabbed his hand and shouted for the Goddess of Mercy to save them from disaster. The two shouted as they raced toward the pond. When the family got there, the brother and sister had already drowned in the pond. Before their death, neither had shown any signs of depression. The sister had been married for ten years and had four children. The younger brother had just gotten married. The two were both happy, optimistic people, and not the least bit insane.

The people of the village decided that those people were all guilty of some secret crime and that was why Judge Pao had settled with each of them. Within one month, fourteen people died in the village. It had become a village of death. Every house kept the main gate shut. Pao-tz'u Temple was a temple without statues of the gods. No one chanted sutras. No one went there to ask the gods for help. The grave where the corpse lay became a taboo area. No one dared to go near it. When people from the outside walked past the grave they could hear the villagers' loud curses from far away. The more they cursed, the more impassioned their voices became, as if their cursing could appease the ghoul and they would escape death. No one dared to mention the ghoul. They would just say that ‘the Granddaddy' was back which meant that the ghoul was out eating people again. Everyone was terrified. They all felt they were guilty of secret crimes. They lived waiting for death. Every time someone died, they didn't need to tell each other. They immediately smelled the odour of death. Then every household would hurriedly burn incense and chant sutras. They weren't paying homage to the gods. They were begging ‘the Granddaddy' to spare their lives.

Ch'ing, who returned to the village from Taipei, didn't believe in evil spirits. He wanted to help the people of the village. He advocated cremating the corpse. But no one dared to remove a handful of dirt from the grave where the corpse lay buried. No one dared carry the corpse to the crematorium. Ch'ing took a shovel and knocked down the gravestone. He broke into the grave. He opened up the coffin. She was a sleeping beauty, looking very much alive. Dressed in a pink gown flecked with gold. Long, black hair. Sleek, supple arms. Eyes wide open, staring at the sky. Ch'ing sprinkled gasoline over the corpse and coffin. The fire burned from early morning until midnight. In the evening Ch'ing dug out her intestines with a stick. They were dripping with blood. The blood spattered on the grass of the grave. The odour of the smoke mingled with the smell of blood and fresh grass. A slight breeze carried the odour throughout the village.

The people of the village recognised the smell, that's what it smelled like when the ghoul was out eating people.

Four days after the corpse was cremated, Ch'ing died suddenly.

 

Twilight again. I open the window. No one is in the yard. A heavy rain mixed with hot air presses in the window.

A truck with a loudspeaker drives down the lane, warning that a typhoon has hit the northeast coast.

The people are asked to inspect their roofs, doors, and windows to make sure they are secured. They should collect flashlights, candles, and matches in case the electricity goes off. They should store drinking water in case the water supply is cut off. They must be careful with burners and stoves to prevent fires.

I speak to Chia-kang about leaving the attic. We have already gone through half of the ten thousand dollars that he embezzled from the government treasury when we fled. We can't depend on the Ts'ais for left-overs for the rest of our lives. He should give himself up. He can still get a reduced sentence. He can still get his freedom back someday.

He turns over suddenly and sits up. He says life in the attic is imprisonment. If he leaves, he'll just go to another prison. He simply won't flee anymore. He asks if I plan to escape alone. He wants to know that.

I say even if it came to rolling down the Mountain of Knives, I would roll down with him. But Sang-wa is an innocent child who should not suffer.

‘I'm sorry. She was born at the wrong time.' When Chia-kang says this, he looks at Sang-wa and grits his teeth.

Over the past year I have unconsciously collected a lot of newspaper clippings about escapes. There's a large pile of newspaper clippings on my
tatami
mat.

Chia-kang says that all those fugitives were extraordinarily clever. But they were all caught and sent back to prison. What's the use of trying to escape? With one finger he lifts the pile of clippings and weighs them.

 

It's late at night. The typhoon snarls above the green eye. The green eye is still open wide.

Downstairs I hear the sound of chiselling at the shed door.

They have really come for us.

The door is creaking open. The attic shudders with the wind and rain.

It is absolutely silent. I can see Chia-kang's eyes open wide, staring at the ceiling.

I am sitting on my
tatami
mat. He is lying on his
tatami
mat. They could come up for us at any time.

We wait out the night.

By morning the gale winds have died down. Downstairs Old Wang coughs when he comes to get some coal. I open the door to the stairway. He says that a burglar broke into a house on the lane during the storm. He was discovered when the owner returned. The burglar killed the owner with an iron, then fled. Old Wang discovered footprints leading from the wall to the door in the shed that goes up to the attic.

Did he get away? Did he get away? Chia-kang and I shout in unison from where we lie at the top of the stairs.