Chapter 16
the house. Luna couldn’t shake that fucking house.
Even when she was awake, she could see the blue columns, the garden full of dead leaves and faded wisteria.
She could feel the squelch under her feet, that damp that was comprised of fallen overripe pears and the carcasses of frogs and snakes and field mice.
The humid air smelled of rot and garbage. What was this place?
If she fell asleep, she knew she would soon be crashing toward or away from that house, chased by something with a woman’s voice speaking Cantonese, something that sounded like her Poh Poh but not quite.
She would be caught in that nightmare until her body decided she was allowed to wake up, throwing Luna back into the waking world with a crash as she fell from one nonsensical realm to another.
So instead of sleeping, Luna sat on her bed, hunched over her laptop, searching for a house that she had only ever seen in her dreams. Mansion, blue, haunted, old.
Then, remembering the snippets of Cantonese, she added Hong Kong .
It didn’t take long before she scrolled past a photo that made her heart jump.
There it was: a rusted gate haphazardly propped up against the front door, blue columns on a wide porch, shutters half open, glassless windows like blind eyes.
“Nam Koo Terrace,” Luna whispered. She rubbed her dry eyes with her hand before she continued reading.
There were ghost hunters who had scaled the garden walls and climbed through windows, bloggers who had pieced together what little they knew about the history of this place, photographers who had caught that ephemeral dusk light when the walls, peeling with old paper and mould, seemed to pulse with a heartbeat.
It had been the cursed mansion of a wealthy man that later housed soldiers and comfort women during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.
A house that contained everything anyone could ever want for a horror movie. Or a night terror.
From the other side of her wall, she could hear her mother creeping down the hallway, emerging from her bedroom for another glass of wine or maybe even a condom from the bathroom.
Luna quickly closed her laptop and turned off her bedside lamp.
Even though her mother was probably drunk, Luna knew that if Alice caught her awake, she would take away her computer and insist on having an awkward, depressing conversation about their relationship.
Luna looked at the clock; it was two in the morning.
She knew she would fall asleep soon, would soon be battling her unconscious brain with her daytime logic.
She hoped if she screamed in her sleep this time, her mother would leave her alone.