Chapter 25 After Life #2
Other stories have a darker claim. They say that when the soul has detached from the body, the water ghost can inhabit the skin that remains, her corrupted spirit possessing the empty shell her victim has left behind.
In that version, she climbs out to dry land, encased in the body of the person she’s just drowned.
And their spirit—if it is not dispersed before it can form—becomes a new water ghost. Taking her vacated place.
Thus the cycle of pain continues, passed from one person to another like a torch of misery.
That is how it went, for you and Sea Sister.
You, as her niece, were the first foot across the threshold of her heart in many years. Yours were the first acts of kindness, the first gifts. Your compassion obliterated her loneliness and she loved you like a daughter, like a sister, like a friend. For a time, her anger had been quelled.
But ghosts are not rational. Ghosts are what is left of a soul who has been so hurt that their pain lingers, imprinting on the corporeal world. When you rejected her, she lost control.
Sea Sister was lonely, so she tried to keep you. Sea Sister was a water ghost, so she tried to drown you. It is not an excuse, and she is still guilty.
But I am telling you this so that you will understand: even if you had stayed with her, as she demanded, she would still have drowned you. There was nothing you could have done. It is difficult for ghosts to think clearly, doubly so for those who die as children. As you yourself will soon find out.
Her anger-fueled storm hit Shek Ham Chau like a kick to the throat, just as it did all those years ago when she first died.
The lightning that struck you was born of a spirit’s anguished heart.
The wave that swept you back was the force of her desperation.
Her arms, as she bore you down into the darkness, had the strength of grief.
Then you died, and she was left holding an empty shape.
The sense that your body was a husk, a hollow, an empty thing, began to grow in her mind. It looked to her like a dress waiting to be draped across her spirit, a coat longing to engulf her form.
And she leaped into your dead, lifeless body. A thing she had never done before.
The feeling was exquisite and horrifying all at once. Decades of pain fell away in an instant. One moment she was pressing her cheek to yours and the next your cheek was hers: heavy and real, flesh and blood. Suddenly a person again, after a lifetime as a ghost.
Sea Sister floated, deep underwater.
Then the weight of drowning crushed back down, all the worse for having been briefly alleviated; she had nearly forgotten what it was like not to have sodden lungs.
Except now that dim memory was a bright and recent experience.
She struggled to the surface, broke the water.
Gasped air for the first time in decades, stunned and aghast.
The unexpected happened.
Hands grabbed her as she surfaced, hauling her up. Hands wearing military sleeves, attached by arms to men dressed in Japanese uniforms.
Was it luck that a stray ocean patrol should be diverted by Sea Sister’s storm, and find her/you floating in the ocean? Or a curse of the heavens? Either way, it was not my doing, and that is the course of events as they occurred.
“She’s alive!” one of the men shouted, while someone else yelled, “It’s only a local girl! Throw her back!”
An argument broke out. The invaders were enemies to the region, but still human. Some of them were men with daughters or sisters, and felt they should help. Others disagreed.
She tried to stand, and collapsed against the soldier who had pulled her out. Something was wrong. Your body had been injured badly, bleeding, and though she was now in it, it was still barely functioning. The right lung couldn’t breathe at all. No air. Suffocating all over again.
Everything is wrong, she thought, dizzily and vaguely.
The last thing she felt before passing out was a thin, hard blade sliding between her ribs, and she could not tell if it was meant to kill her off, or save her life.
As I relate this story, fury builds in you.
Are you telling me that this filthy cow turd has killed me, stolen my body, and left me to take her place?
“I’m so sorry, child.”
Sorry? You’re SORRY?
In life you were never an angry person, but cruelty and an unfair death have changed that. The parts of your soul which were soft and gentle are damaged, left behind in the body that was stolen from you and gifted, instead, to your murderer.
All that remains to you is rage unending, a consuming need for justice, and a terrible desire to breathe air. Such is the existence of a ghost.
Throw your head back and scream like an oncoming train. Even that does nothing to vent your cascading anger.
Why did she wait? you say, gnashing your teeth. Four months she swam with me. Why keep me alive so long?
“Every day, a ghost fights their nature. She likely did not intend you harm, not in the beginning. But in the end, her own darkness won.”
Then tell me her name, you snarl, standing almost toe-to-toe with me. I must find her.
“It will do no good, Siu Yin. There is a strong chance she won’t remember you.”
What do you mean?
“When a water ghost takes the skin of another, they begin to lose themselves. The process is not unlike reincarnation,” I say, quietly.
“If Sea Sister does not return your body soon, she will be trapped in it—forgetting who and what she used to be. She will only know herself as a young woman without memories.”
No, that can’t be! The realization of that horrifies you beyond measure. The idea that Sea Sister won’t even recall her betrayal and theft is somehow worse than the act itself. I need her to know! I need to find her, at once!
When I still hesitate, you fall to your knees on the dark, rocky beach before me. Please, Lady Kwun Yam—I am begging! Who else can help me, but you? Who else knows my fate, except yourself? I can have no peace till I have spoken to my killer. I deserve an answer!
“What you seek is folly, but I cannot ignore such a plea,” I say, full of sadness. “If it will help you on the path to peace, then the truth is yours.”
I’m listening.
“Against tradition, and out of shame, your mother abandoned her family name when she met your father, and became Sung Daiyu. But as a child, her family name was Chen—and her sibling, who you know as Sea Sister, was called Chen Mei Chi.”
Chen Mei Chi, you murmur, repeating the syllables over and over until they are seared into memory. Chen Mei Chi. Chen Mei Chi. Chen Mei Chi.
“What will you do with this knowledge?”
Instead of answering, you bow low, palms pressed together in a show of gratitude. Thank you for your answer, Lady Kwun Yam. Straightening, you turn away from me and wade back into the deeper waters of the cavern.
“Where are you going?” I say, with rising unease. “Ghosts are not supposed to go wandering.”
Says who? There is steel in your voice. I will not be a weak prisoner spirit, lurking sadly in an ocean puddle, waiting for my next victim. This ghost goes to seek her truth, and her vengeance. I will have it if I must travel every continent, and live in every human skin.
“Do that, and you will lose yourself,” I warn. “You can do that, but only through committing murder each time. And if you do take another’s form, you may well become trapped in it—as she has in yours. The strength of a water ghost is also her weakness.”
I am already lost, goddess, you say scornfully. Don’t worry on my account.
In legends and stories, water ghosts are lurking spirits who haunt the places where they died. Even Mei Chi was like that: tied to her sad little island, doomed to beg for validation and love from the very people who rejected her, and then tormenting their spirits when they withheld it.
But you, Siu Yin, are determined to be different. Because you have realized that you are not tied to a location, only to a person. Whether it takes five years or fifty, even if you have to slaughter dozens or hundreds, you will go forth into the world.
For the first time in your life, you are powerful. And you will never let the world make you weak, ever again. In that at least, Mei Chi has inadvertently kept her word: she has made you strong, and free.
Violent and unstoppable in death as you never were in life, you fling yourself back into the ocean.
“Wait,” I call, voice supernaturally loud despite my humble form.
But, much like Mei Chi in her ghost years, you do not care to hear me anymore.