The Dark and What It Said Page 16

  "But why is the bowl... like it is?" said Rhoda, regarding it with a look usually reserved for things dragged from blocked sewers.

  "I think time inside the bowl is frozen, which is one serious piece of magic, believe me. I think a Death March spell was begun but not completed."

  "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "Christine unearthed that bowl in the Gower Street lot a few hours before she disappeared."

  "Which means?"

  I put my head in my hands. "I don't know."

  "And quite frankly, neither do I," said a voice from the bowl.

  We jumped up so quickly our chairs crashed over. The voice was female, familiar and decidedly non-oriental. Slowly, cautiously, Rhoda and I peered into the bowl.

  The face in the water was three dimensional, more than a mere image. She had scraggly blonde hair, looked forty or so, and although unsmiling, her eyes twinkled somehow.

  "Raissa!" I yelped.

  "Who?" said Rhoda, eyes wide.

  "Raissa... the witch!"

  "I am not a witch!" said the face in the water.

  "Sorry. She prefers mage,” I said to Rhoda. “If you call her a witch she’s likely to turn you into a frog.”

  "I'll turn you into worse than a frog if you don't tell me what this is about. I'm in the middle of one of my own investigations, you know."

  "How much have you heard?" I asked.

  "Since you fetched the bowl from that other room. I assume I'm reaching you through the Death March rice bowl. Strange feeling in that other room, by the way. A great deal of psychic activity there quite recently."

  "Can you tell me what happened to my daughter?" Rhoda said.

  "My sister Rhoda," I said. "Her daughter Christine found this bowl on the site of an old Chinese laundry yesterday, and last night she turned into an old Chinese bloke and walked out of the house."

  Rhoda took over the story, leaning closer to the bowl, not giving a damn now how bizarre things got if they helped give back Christine. She described the circumstances of the disappearance and how she'd followed her daughter to the flickering ghost of a long-demolished house.

  "Time is, time was," Raissa muttered to herself when Rhoda had finished. "I must admit to being stumped. I don't see the connection between Christine's disappearance and some on-going Death March spell, particularly as that piece of sorcery is one of the most benevolent -- and commercial -- bits of magic in the Chinese cook book. If young Christine disturbed the spirits of the dead buried in that vacant block -- there's bound to be at least one corpse buried there -- they would simply have taken the bowl back. If time can be frozen then reclaiming the bowl would be a parlour trick."

  "Then why take Christine and leave the bowl?" Rhoda asked.

  "Exactly," said Raissa, then fell to musing. “The power of the bowl is transferred to the first to touch it after the death of the previous owner, so there must be more to this than we surmise."

  "I think there is," I said. "Something followed me to the town hall."

  Raissa looked up sharply from the water. “What?”

  "Something followed me when I went to the town hall this morning to check the history of the lot."

  "You didn't tell me this,” said Rhoda.

  "I wasn't sure. Besides, you've got enough to worry about."

  "What did you see?" Raissa asked.

  "A vague shape. White, I think. Darting in and out from behind trees, keeping to the shadows. Might’ve seen it last night, too, in Christine’s room. Couldn't be sure, but if there was something, I might’ve caught it trying to steal the bowl. Any idea what it could’ve been, Raissa?"

  "There's no saying for sure: a familiar that's lost its master, a displaced demon or elemental. There's half a hundred other things that blow in the midnight wind, and it could’ve been any one of them. If there was something trying to snatch the bowl it was probably because, used the wrong way, the bowl has power to enslave the dead. Now if we can adjourn to that other room again I'd like to have another feel of its atmosphere."

  As we left the kitchen I said, "By the way, what are you using to receive us at your end?”

  "A television set," said the witch. "Practically every house has one these days, and it's easier than carrying a scrying mirror or crystal ball."

  I put the bowl down on its side on the dresser, then sat down with Rhoda on Christine’s bed which was still unmade. Raissa, her face framed in the bowl, closed her eyes and a look of deep concentration passed over her.

  She remained like that for maybe half a minute, then her features twisted in fear and disgust.

  "Something hideous happened in this room." She paused, her face relaxed. "And something beautiful."

  Rhoda pressed close to the bowl. "Is Christine alive?"

  "Depends what you mean by alive," said Raissa, trace-like. "If you mean running, laughing, growing, breathing, she is not alive.”

  "Dead," said Rhoda, sounding dead herself.

  "Depends what you mean by dead. If you mean oblivion and decay, she is not dead." Raissa rubbed her forehead. "Quickly. Take the bowl from this room. I need to rest."

  Back in the kitchen Raissa asked for two mirrors. Rhoda brought in a hand mirror and wall mirror, complete with its chain. With these and some awkwardness we gave Raissa an all-round view of the etchings on the outside of the bowl. She went "Hmmm" a lot in a disappointed way, and once "Ah!" and made notes.

  "Unfortunately," she said as we put down the mirrors, "I can't make out most of it. Likely it's magical formula in a personal cipher. However there’s a small engraving like a dragon and a name: Feng Meng Lung."

  "Lung?" I said.

  "Don't you laugh! There are places in this world where the name Ernie Pine would have them in fits. Now this Feng Meng Lung was one of the more notable adepts in old Shanghai. He came to Australia and settled locally about the time of the last gold rush. As I understand it he used to practise his art with the local Chinese community: potions, charms, healing and the like. He was killed in something of a minor race riot and was buried in the North Ferns General Cemetery on January 11th, 1910."

  "Names and dates,” said Rhoda with returning impatience. "How does that help bring back Christine?"

  "Names and dates will help you find the grave, Rhoda," said the witch. "And when you do you must raise Feng Meng Lung from the dead."

  ***

  There's only two things worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about and being talked about by ghosts.

  Dark clad figures wandered the aisles and paths in the cemetery distance, passing, pausing, nodding, looking our way. Rhoda told me not to be silly, that they were mourners and hurried me along. I had a feeling they were residents.

  With the map and instructions received at the administration office Rhoda led the way past marble mausoleums and small wooden crosses, past graves of centenarians and babies, and over the strict borders fencing off religion and race.

  The Old Chinese section was a strip of lawn hard by the bottom fence. Chinese grave markers are like big stone icy-pole sticks: thin, tall slabs, rounded at one end, jammed into the ground at the other, the who, what and when of the occupant inscribed down the centre. Hardly any like that were to be seen here. The whole section had been heavily vandalized. Stones were either snapped off at the base or shattered into angry scimitar shapes jutting from the grass.

  The lack of any rubble and the weathered edges of the broken stone showed the damage to be old, perhaps many decades old. Only one stone stood intact. But its inscribed characters were worn and faded. With a stub of pencil we outlined what we could find of the inscription, then compared it to the characters on the bowl which Raissa had said were the wizard's name. It looked similar but I couldn't be sure. And was that a worn carving of a dragon at the top, or just pitting?

  "It has to be his grave," Rhoda said. "Don't you see, Ernie? It's his magic that's kept it safe while all the others have been smashed. It has to be!"

  It was desp
erate reasoning, but she had a point. If the spirit of Feng Meng Lung still survived it might have protected his grave all these years. And if so, it could still have an effect on the Death March spell.

  "Try it," said Rhoda. She handed me the bowl.

  Yes, I was the pigeon. I'd been the first to touch the bowl after Christine's disappearance, and therefore, so Raissa explained, the only one able to use its magic. In fact the power would remain with me until either I died, the bowl was broken, or until it was reclaimed by its creator.

  And he's welcome to it. I took the approved stance before the grave, the bowl cupped in hands outstretched in front of me. A quick look around. Were those dark figures still lurking about the tombs? Were they still watching?

  "Feng Meng-Lung, arise."

  Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen for a full minute.

  "Maybe it's my accent."

  "Say it again," said Rhoda. "With feeling -- and in Chinese like Raissa said.

  "Ahem. Feng Meng-Lung, chili!"

  The words seemed to hang in the air above the grave. An abnormal silence fell upon us. No traffic noises, no bird song, the breeze had stilled itself.

  Rhoda gasped.

  "What?" I yelped.

  "The water! It rippled!"

  I looked down. The water was smooth.

  "It rippled!" said my sister.

  "I believe you!"

  Our voices fell away into the surrounding silence. Then the sound of the breeze returning reassured me, until I heard it gusting louder and stronger, a narrow wind blowing from straight ahead. It staggered us back and flattened the grass. It roared down the aisles and paths, herding up leaves and litter, twisting cemetery dust among the stones, singing through the statues and ripping at the dark-clad figures.

  A piece of coloured paper stung against my face, fluttering. I clawed at it, for a second thinking it was a bit of toy currency from a Monopoly game. But then I saw that it was “Hell” or “Lucky” money, a sort of after life currency burnt for the dead at Chinese funerals. I went to throw it away, then thought again. Omen or coincidence? I crushed it into my pocket, too crowded with relief to feel scared now. But the figures among the graves were watching – there and there and there! I turned away to face the grave. The wind was dying, and very soon was once again a natural breeze

  "Now what happens?" Rhoda whispered.

  "God knows," I answered the same way -- then went stiff with fright. The water in the bowl was clouding, on its surface a confusion of faces, old and oriental. They blurred and melted into an image of Christine. Her lips were moving but nothing was heard. Then the vision was snatched away, replaced by a hellish face of rags, no nose or mouth, just torn eye holes. I flung the bowl from me with a cry of revulsion. It landed on edge against a broken headstone, the face of rags still there in the water. It stared. It watched me. A mouth tore open, moving with silent words, slowly, carefully so there'd be no mistake.

  "Christine is dead."

  ***

  Neither of us looked much like necromancers.

  Rhoda had her hair tied in a scarf and wore her long coat against the night cold. I had my scruffy jeans and bike jacket. I was also wearing runners, just in case.

  It was nearly two in the morning, and Gower Street was as dead as those we believed lay under the vacant lot. There was no way of finding evidence of a grave, not after all these years. We could only suppose that old Feng Meng Lung's customers were buried near where the bowl had been. Finding where Christine had dug it up had been easy enough in daylight. But the hole was somewhere at the back of the lot where it was dark. There was no moon, and the street lighting didn't reach that far, blocked by the pizza parlour on one side, a Victorian terrace house on the other.

  We stumbled about, tripping over the bricks and tangled grass, searching for the hole until I practically fell into it.

  "We should’ve brought a torch," I muttered, getting up.

  "We can't afford to attract attention," said Rhoda.

  "No, of course not. All we're going to do is raise some dead people out of the ground and maybe play follow-the-leader with them. But let's not do anything that might attract attention."

  "Shhh."

  "Listen, I don't know if this will work without the wizard. And even if it does, what happens then? Do I lead them back to China or something?"

  "You're talking like you don't want Christine back!" Rhoda hissed at me in the dark.

  "Now you're the one being silly... as well as naïve. You don't understand the dangers involved --”

  "This is the only way! Your witch friend said it herself."

  "And you said that I know about these things, but now that I'm trying to warn you about them you're not listening. We can do infinite harm to Christine by doing this, and I don't mean physically. Anyway, what's to say she will rise with the dead? Will she be alive in any way we understand? And what if old Ragface turns up again?"

  "Sooner or later this has to be done. Anyway, that's what killed Christine."

  "What?"

  "'Something hideous happened here, and something beautiful'. That's what the witch said in Christine’s room. Ragface killed Christine for that damned bowl, and the laundryman's ghost saved her by possession. Don't you see?"

  "Not dead and not alive," I thought aloud. It was beginning to make sense.

  "My little girl's down there in the dirt, all mixed up with a dead man. Raise him and we'll raise them both."

  Up until now I thought we were alone in this. But if we had an ally on the other side of the grave, even just the chance of one...

  My hands sweated on the bowl as I held it out before me. "Shrshou chili!" I said in fractured Chinese cribbed from a phrase book -- words my occult books said would begin the Death March: Corpse arise.

  The night remained still. No sudden wind this time, none of the expected trembling of the ground. I heard Rhoda searching through her bag, followed by the scratch of a match. I saw her eyes, wide and watching, caught briefly in the glare.

  "I thought you' d didn’t want to attract attention,” I said.

  "I've changed my mind. OK? Now at least we'll see them before we touch theme"

  "Thanks a lot. Hold the match near the bowl." I wanted to see what was looking out of it.

  Rhoda held up the match. We glimpsed rippling water and the match went out.

  Rhoda struck another one and immediately dropped it with a noise halfway to a scream. I looked down at the match, still alight, and saw a finger wriggling out of the dirt.

  My first impulse was to jump away. But Rhoda was down on hands and knees, striking three or four matches together as other fingers emerged and became an old man's hand.

  Some of the grass was dry and caught fire in little clumps. By its light we could see the ground sprouting fingers all around. Then came the hands and arms, flexing out of shallow graves. Gradually, in four places, the earth humped up. Rhoda stood, the last of her matches burnt. The little grass fires went out. But we saw the dead rise, saw them rise against the dim light of Gower Street. Loose dirt rattled to the ground from their ragged clothes, their hair and stringy beards. They stood a moment like weary men, absolutely still, arms hanging, heads bowed. Then, one following the other, step by stiff step, they moved towards me.

  I shrank back, stumbling on some rubble. Water splashed from the bowl. The dead men faltered, then came on again. So I let them, moved toward them, heard their feet fall into step behind me.

  “What are you doing?" said Rhoda.

  “Damned if I know!" I stepped out into the light, four dead men following.

  “Christine's not among them."

  "No," I said, turning up the street. "She's probably within one of these jokers. Which is the one she turned into?"

  Rhoda ran up beside me, looking down the line. "I don't know. They're all old Chinamen, about sixty or seventy. They're all in rags, have pigtails and wispy beards."

  "Old generation traditionalists," I said as we filed under a st
reet light. "They're the sort who would want this particular spell." As an experiment I slowed a bit. The corpse immediately behind nearly stepped on my heels. I sped up again and crossed Gower Street. They followed.

  It didn't need a degree in physical education to know that this promenade couldn't go on indefinitely. I said, "Rhoda, do you still have that Chinese phrase book handy? What's the word for 'stop’?”

  "Just a second." She dragged the book from her coat pocket. "It's ‘ting’.”

  I made a sharp U-turn and glimpsed the dead men as I went down the line. They turned where I had and kept in perfect step.

  "I'm going to take this lot into Railway Avenue," I said. "Tracks on one side, closed-down shops on the other. No houses, no one to see.

  “Why not take them back to my place?"

  "No. I need room in case they don't respond."

  She nodded and walked beside me, down Gower Street, into Darren Road and around the corner.

  We were the only traffic on Railway Avenue, Rhoda, the dead and I. Our shadows passed on soaped windows and dirty doorways. On the other side stood the trees, spaced out into dark distance beside the railway line.

  As we crossed towards them a familiar voice said in my head, Yes, it sounds like a lovely place. We've been learning about it in school. Has it been a long time since you've been home?

  "Rhoda! It's Christine! I just heard her... in my head!"

  Rhoda stared at me, incredulous.

  "It's Christine!" I said again.

  "Yes," said Rhoda, believing now, wanting to believe. “Yes! Yes!"

  I sometimes have dreams, but I've never dreamed this long. Do you dream, Mr Chin... What about?

  "Can you hear her?" I asked Rhoda.

  Her mouth worked a moment, then she nodded and said, "No."