The Ghost Bride (24 page)

Chapter
28

S
omeone was
stroking my hair. At first I thought that I was a child again and Amah was
soothing me after a bad dream. The relief of waking up was so great that tears
streamed from my closed eyes. Then I opened them. Lim Tian Ching was bending
over me. It was his hand that was tangled in my hair, and his face that lingered
so solicitously next to mine. I began to scream.

“Stop it!” he said, but I couldn’t. Lim Tian Ching
tried to stifle my cries with a meaty hand, but it only made me more hysterical.
He shook me roughly and, reflexively, I slapped him. The sting of my hand upon
his face was the best feeling I had experienced since I had lost my body. We
stared at each other in shock.

“What did you do that for?” he said.

“How dare you touch me!” I said. “You kidnapper!
You fiend!”

His thick lips loosened in surprise as he quailed
momentarily before this barrage. “What are you talking about? You’re the one who
came here. How did you get here?”

I looked around. From the size of the room and the
men’s clothes strewn upon the ground, I had the sinking feeling that it was Lim
Tian Ching’s bedroom. Crossing my arms, I was relieved at the stiff rustle of
the letter hidden in my clothes. So they hadn’t searched me yet. In the chaos of
broken furniture, the Old Master must have momentarily forgotten his letter, but
inevitably he would realize his loss.

Stalling, I said, “I was lost.” Lim Tian Ching’s
small eyes stared hard at me, flicking across my disheveled clothes and wild
hair. “I followed some ghosts and they took me down a tunnel across a plain
until we reached this place.”

“You crossed the Plains of the Dead? How did you do
that?”

The last thing I wanted was for him to know about
my little horse. “I walked. It took a long, long time. Months,” I said,
remembering Er Lang’s discussion of how time moved erratically here.

“So that’s where you were!” he said, half to
himself. “No wonder you look terrible.” For some reason, his words enraged me
and I flew at him with my nails. He blanched for a moment, then caught me by the
wrists.

“My, my,” he said. “I see your temper hasn’t
improved.” He brought his face close to mine, even as I struggled futilely.
Despite his soft and pudgy appearance, he was far stronger than me. He was a
man, even in this world of deathly make-believe, and I was only a weak girl. The
same thought must have occurred to him, for his expression changed.

“Li Lan, I can’t tell you how happy I am that you
are safe.” The moony shine had returned to his eyes. I struggled in silence. “My
people were looking for you everywhere.”

“Who told you to send demons to my house? I was
frightened out of my wits!”

“You were frightened?” he cooed. “Of course, I
should have thought of that. My poor dear. You had no need to be afraid of them.
They are merely my minions.” At this I almost snorted, but his solicitous gaze
was making me feel increasingly uncomfortable, especially since he still had me
by the wrists.

“You know, I was wrong to say you look terrible.”
His large face loomed ever closer, so that I could see every shiny pore. It was
a shame that death hadn’t improved him. I thought illogically that it must have
been difficult for him to grow up in the shadow of Tian Bai’s pleasant
features.

“In fact, you look quite . . .
 fetching. I like your hair loose like this.” He touched a strand of my
hair, and any pity I felt for him vanished. I jerked abruptly away from him.

“Don’t touch me! You have no right to touch
me.”

“How can you say that? You were promised to
me.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter what you want.” He turned
away with a wounded air. “The border officials have already approved our
marriage.”

“Do you mean those ox-headed demons?”

“Be careful of what you say! Some of them are of
very high rank.” The smirk on his face was a pale imitation of his
great-uncle’s. Lim Tian Ching walked toward the far end of the room and picked
up a cup. “Some tea?” he asked. I sat down heavily, relieved by the physical
distance between us.

“I can’t imagine why you had to run off like that,”
he said. “You must know I only had your best interests at heart.” The hurt look
reappeared on his face. “Why are you always so stubborn? Isn’t it better for a
young maiden to marry someone who cherishes her? I hadn’t intended for you to
reach the Plains of the Dead so soon. Indeed, I hoped you would enjoy many more
years of a long life.”

His words reminded me of Fan and her prematurely
aged lover. “So you could feed off my
qi
?”

Lim Tian Ching’s denial was a shade too vehement.
“I don’t need to resort to such cheap tricks! I’m not some hungry ghost. Look
around you.” He drew himself up. “I’m an important man, Li Lan. If you’re lucky,
you can be a great
tai tai
here.”

“What makes you think you’re such a great man?” I
asked. “Just because your family humors you?”

His expression darkened. “I’m the one who humors
them! It’s because of the special status of my case that we have a relationship
with the border officials. And when I’ve gathered enough evidence, I’ll prove to
everyone what happened.”

“How do you even know whether you were
murdered?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! It’s true I had a fever that
day, but it wasn’t until I drank that tea before bedtime that my pulse began to
race. I couldn’t breathe or even call out. And in the night, my heart stopped.”
He glared at me.

“It could have been a seizure from the fever,” I
said, thinking rapidly of all the illnesses Amah had ever warned me about.

“There was a thick residue in the cup. You know he
was once a medical student—who else in the house would know about drugs and
dosages? And who profited from my death but Tian Bai?”

I swallowed, wondering whether to say anything.
“There might have been other people who didn’t like you. Or your mother,” I
said, hurrying on in spite of his outrage. “Tian Bai wasn’t even at home when
you died. And Yan Hong still has your teacup hidden away. Did you ever consider
her instead?”

“She hid it?” He had an odd expression on his face.
“How do you know?”

Not wanting to mention that I had gone spying into
the real Lim mansion, I dropped my eyes. But Lim Tian Ching said angrily, “So
what if she kept the teacup? That doesn’t mean anything. It was Tian Bai who
gave me a present of rare tea!”

My tongue was thick and numb, as though it was two
sizes too large for my mouth. Lim Tian Ching began to pace, picking at his
trailing robes.

“He could have slipped something into the leaves
earlier. He didn’t need to be around when I died. In fact, he would probably
ensure he was away at such a time. Yan Hong must have been protecting him. The
two of them were always close, always against me. When she wanted help arranging
her marriage to that penniless husband of hers, who did she go running to, Tian
Bai or me?” He paused, controlling his voice with difficulty.

“My cousin always got what he wanted. The servants
cosseted him, even my father had a soft spot for him. The only one who saw
through him was my mother. She urged my father to send him abroad to study. I
hoped he would never come back.” The pupils of his eyes contracted until they
were no more than specks.

“Did you know he had a mistress in Hong Kong?”
Seeing my reaction, he pursued his advantage relentlessly. “She was some
half-caste Portuguese girl. There was a huge scandal and he was forced to leave
school. My father had to pay an enormous sum of money to get rid of her. Some
people said there was even a child. So don’t believe him if he says you’re the
only one he loves. In the end he would have abandoned you, just as he cast that
woman off.”

A terrible silence descended upon the room. Lim
Tian Ching wiped his mouth with the edge of his sleeve. I couldn’t utter a word.
At length, he gathered himself. “I’ll leave you to think about this. It has no
doubt been a shock to your delicate sensibilities.” He clapped his hands and the
door opened. A female puppet servant appeared. “See that she’s given every
consideration,” he said. Glancing at me, he added, “The demons will question you
tonight. Perhaps then you’ll revise your opinion of me.”

F
or a
long time after he left, I didn’t move. The puppet servant waited, its patience
unrelenting until, at last, I roused myself to follow its bidding. Dazed, I
washed and combed my hair. Clothes had been laid out for me—heavy, stiff
garments of an antique cut. Burial clothes. I put them on numbly, slipping the
letter and the scale in unobserved. The female puppet servant dressed my hair,
pinning it elaborately with jeweled ornaments. With impersonal movements, it
powdered my face with rice powder and rouged my lips and cheeks. Then it lit a
candle and blackened a pin with soot. It mixed this with a little wax paste and
used it to darken my eyelashes. I didn’t flinch, even when the pin was brought
close to my eyes.

I didn’t cry. Since the Lim family had approached
my father about a ghost marriage, I had shed tears at every juncture. When Lim
Tian Ching had begun haunting me, when I learned of Tian Bai’s arranged
marriage, and later, when I was disembodied and wandering the streets of
Malacca. This time, however, there were no tears. My heart felt as hard and dry
as a salted apricot.

Lim Tian Ching might be lying to me. Nothing would
please him more than to destroy any relationship I had with his cousin. And the
symptoms of his death could apply just as well to a fevered seizure as to an
overdose of a stimulating herb like ma huang. But there was no denying that he
had constructed a plausible case. It would have been easy, very easy to do just
as he suggested and include a poisoned decoction among the rest. I thought with
despair of Tian Bai and realized that I didn’t know whether he was capable of
such a deliberate risk.

But the most damning evidence was what I had seen
when I entered Tian Bai’s dreams and memories. There on a high cliff, I had seen
him stare longingly at a Eurasian girl. Isabel Souza, I remembered her name
well. Surely this was the mistress that Lim Tian Ching had alluded to. To think
that he might have had a child by her! If I survived all this and managed to
return to my body, what future would I have? To be held in Tian Bai’s arms in
the flesh, I had thought, would make all this worthwhile. But even if he were
innocent and such a thing came to pass, I would never be first in
his heart.

D
usk
descended like a curtain in this staged world. My face in the mirror was a pale
oval in the dimness of the room. I looked thinner, more mature. The angles of my
cheekbones frightened me, and I wondered if they heralded the beginning of my
starvation as a hungry ghost. Perhaps it was the clothes or the elaborate
makeup; but the girl in the mirror, with her slender neck and shadowed eyes,
looked like all the romantic heroines I used to pore over in books. I felt sick.
Whatever charms I possessed were destined for Lim Tian Ching’s bedchamber. It
was he who would lift the red bridal veil, and his sweating palms that would
seize hold of me. I thought about snatching up a hairpin to disfigure myself,
but I was reminded of my mother and her status in this household. It would be
foolish to throw away any leverage I had.

Glancing out of the window, I was struck by an
unwelcome realization. The ten days that I had asked Fan to wait for me were up.
She must have already started the journey across the Plains of the Dead. Even if
I survived my interrogation by demons, I might be walled up in this mansion for
centuries as Lim Tian Ching’s bride. And what of Er Lang? Perhaps he too had
gone, since I had missed our rendezvous at the red pavilion. In my anguish, I
gave an involuntary cry. “Er Lang!”

There was a clatter as an empty basin fell off the
washstand. I froze, fearing the appearance of a puppet servant, but long minutes
passed without interruption. Yet something strange was occurring. The air near
the washstand twisted and darkened like smoke, then condensed abruptly into a
familiar, mushroom-brimmed form.

“I thought you would never call me.” Er Lang’s
voice was the sweetest sound I had heard.

“What—where were you?” I asked. In my eagerness, I
grasped his sleeve. It disappeared between my fingers and I gave a faint cry of
surprise.

“It seems I’m having some difficulties maintaining
a form in this world.”

“Er Lang!”

“Call me again!” he said urgently.

I repeated his name, and to my amazement his figure
solidified until I could feel the weight of the cloth in my hand. “What happened
to you?”

“Well, it was harder than I thought to stay in the
Plains of the Dead. This spirit form proved to be quite unstable. It has taken
me all this time to break through again, and if you hadn’t called me, I probably
wouldn’t have been able to return.”

“So you didn’t do any spying after all,” I said. It
was a childish thing to point out, but he made a mock bow.

“No, I didn’t. In fact, I’m in your debt. And by
the way, you look lovely tonight. Much improved from last time.”

Despite myself, I colored. When Lim Tian Ching had
complimented me, I had merely felt revulsion, but praise from Er Lang made my
chest flutter unexpectedly. That fascinating voice was an unfair advantage, I
thought. One that made even his offhanded remarks beguiling. But it didn’t rule
out the possibility that he might use me as some other sort of bait.

“Can you get me out of here?” I asked, ignoring his
last comment. “The demons are coming to interrogate me soon. Or were you
planning to wait until they were done with me?”

“What a scold you are!” he said. “How can you
possibly expect to catch a husband like this? It wasn’t as though I was exactly
sitting on my hands.” Despite his complaints, I could hear the amusement in his
tone, or perhaps it was just that I had become accustomed to him.