Chapter Fifty-Six #2
“Still afraid of ghosts, Susu?” Seet Ling laughed, her hand on the knob. Twisting. “I’ll deal with her. You take the rest of the day off. Go on, yes, yes, I’m sure,” she slurred. “Don’t forget to lock the gate on your way out.”
The door creaked open. Seet Ling stood at the threshold holding a candle from Lily’s altar. Its fire turned her dark eyes lambent.
“Marigold?” she called. “You really shouldn’t be up here, darling. There’s a reason this room is sealed off.”
Seet Ling opened the closet, tilted the candlelight inside. “Come out, come out,” she said, singsong. “Come out, little cat.”
Under the bed, Marigold pressed herself hard against the back wall as Seet Ling tottered to the window, looking behind the curtains. She was growing annoyed.
“I should’ve known you’d be a wily little minx,” she muttered, “just like your mother.”
Her voice turned hard. “All these years she’s prospered in America while I’ve been damned to this old house with only ghosts for company.” Seet Ling flung the curtains shut, choking off the sunlight.
“It’s still a mystery to me how she left,” she said.
“My guard never saw her pass through the gate. We searched for her for months. All around the hills, even in the cemetery. But it turns out, Yut Ying was good at hiding.” Seet Ling turned from the window.
Her candlelight fell upon Marigold’s backpack half concealed under a pile of white sheets. “Just like her daughter.”
Fuck, thought Marigold. She rose onto her elbows, inching out from under the bed when Seet Ling lifted the dust ruffle—
And let out a shriek.
It was the last sound Marigold expected her to make, and it startled her back under the bed. But as the old woman staggered, Marigold reached out and grabbed her by the ankle to steady her. It only alarmed her more. With a scream, Seet Ling stumbled back against the wall.
“Get back,” Seet Ling cried. The candle in her hand trembled violently. “Lily, I’m your mother, have you forgotten? Don’t hurt me.”
Lily?
It was the gloves, Marigold realized. They were Lily’s. Seet Ling must have seen them and thought she was Lily’s ghost!
She needed to explain. She started to crawl out from under the bed. “It’s me, Mari—”
“Get back!” Seet Ling lunged and swung the candle at the bed. “Don’t touch me!”
One careless brush against the cotton ruffles was all it took. Fire stole across the bed skirt, rushing across the pink sheet.
Marigold had never moved faster in her life.
Heat flared in her face, fogging up her glasses.
She could already smell her singed hair as she scrambled out.
She grabbed a blanket and threw it over the bed to smother the flames.
No use. The fire was racing up the wooden frame and starting to lick at the peeling varnish.
Smoke billowed across the room, making it hard to see—and breathe.
Marigold’s lungs strained for each breath, her airways starting to swell.
Covering her mouth with her sleeve, she found her way to Seet Ling, who stood frozen by the window.
“You need to get out of here,” she yelled.
It hurt to talk. Marigold pushed her toward the door. “Run, call the police!”
Seet Ling’s eyes were wild, her nostrils flared. She saw not Marigold, but a girl with clouded glasses and long white gloves.
Tears streaked down Seet Ling’s cheeks. “I didn’t kill you,” she wept, shaking Marigold by the shoulder. “It wasn’t me, I never left you. I’ve stayed all this time. All this time!”
Smoke was in Marigold’s lungs. She gasped for air. Go! She pushed Seet Ling into the hall. Go!
Her every instinct screamed for her to flee too, but she couldn’t. She had to get her mother’s shadow first.
But turning her back on Seet Ling was a mistake. Marigold heard the door slam shut and the bolt slide into place with a click.
Her stomach dropped.
“No!” she cried. She pounded on the door, fear clenching her gut when the knob twisted, useless in her hand. Let me out!
Her only response was the sound of Seet Ling’s footsteps fading down the hall.
Marigold cursed. She was trapped, and unless she could get out, she was going to die. The metal rim of her glasses scalded her skin, the buttons on her shirt hot against her chest. She grabbed her backpack as a shield against the heat, coughing.
At this point, only the bed was ablaze, the flames just starting to crackle up the wallpaper and spread across the room, but she knew better than to stay and hope the fire might starve itself out.
She’d die from asphyxiation before that happened.
Holding her breath, she crouched low beneath the smoke and turned toward the bed.
Her mother’s shadow was scarcely three feet away, hugging the burning remnants of her mother’s doll. Only the porcelain face was still intact, black hair spluttering and hissing, strands curling up as they burned. There wasn’t much time.
Marigold held out Helen’s comb. This was my mom’s, she told the shadow. She needs you as much as you need her. I’ll take you to her, I promise.
Helen’s shadow seemed to understand that it wouldn’t survive if it stayed in Lily’s room. It leapt, wrapping itself around the comb’s wooden teeth.
There. Marigold tucked the comb into the Altoids tin and put it in her pocket.
The fire was spreading, trailing her across the room. If she lingered any longer, opening the window would turn into a death sentence and feed the fire. She had to get out before it grew too strong.
She flung aside the curtains, and with a cry, threw her weight into pushing the window open. Smoke went spiraling out and air came rushing in, fresh and crisp and lifesaving.
Marigold hurried out onto a white planter with dead flowers. As her knees sank into the dirt, the box wobbled; it wouldn’t hold her for long. She grabbed a gutter pipe. Just like climbing down a tree, she told herself. She slid down as far as she could, then dropped into the bushes.
Behind her, the fire had already traveled down to the first floor, flames roaring and sparks spitting into the sky.
Marigold ran. She could feel the heat of the blaze on her back as she pushed through the shrubs in the yard, trying to put distance between her and the house.
Embers followed her out the window, carrying their dying flames down into the yard and blinking like fireflies amid the torrents of thick black smoke.
One after another, the embers ignited the dry and withered bushes on the ground. Edison had told her that it hadn’t rained in days. The yard was parched, the untended grass prime for kindling.
Marigold rushed down the stone stairs for the gate. A few times she tripped. Each time it was harder to get back up. She was wheezing and coughing, and her chest hurt—the way it did before an asthma attack.
Can’t stop, she thought.
From every direction, wind buffeted her, spreading banners of fire rapidly across the yard. Soon the trees were burning, their branches rupturing off with visceral snaps, and the weeds between the stone steps made popping sounds against Marigold’s shoes as she ran.
Finally she made it to the bottom. But the gate was locked!
“Help!” she cried weakly.
There was no one on the road. She scanned the burning yard for any sign of Seet Ling. The woman was nowhere to be found. Marigold was alone.
She gripped the iron bars, trying to pull herself up to climb to the other side. No luck. Even if she could get past the barbed wire, her arms had no strength left.
A siren trilled, too far away to be of hope.
Then, as Marigold slumped against the gate, she heard an eerie sound coming from the house.
Above her on the hill, Marigold spotted Seet Ling on a windowsill, her back to the traveling flames.
She was dancing with her shawl and singing Cantonese opera.
The melody sounded tragic, every note painfully long and high.
Her voice grew shrill, vibrating to a peak.
Then Seet Ling opened her arms to the wind.
Marigold looked away before the flames closed in.
Her own world was growing faint. Marigold pressed her cheek to the gate and held her breath. The colors of the world—the bright gasps of fiery orange, the arid yellow of the garden’s treetops, the cerulean sky, the white-painted house—bled to gray.
I’m sorry, Mom, Marigold thought. Her hand slid down the iron bar. Smoke was in her lungs. She couldn’t hold her breath any longer.
Her knees fell, then the rest of her. As she lay among the weeds and the dirt, the fire impending, she could hear the earth itself singing to her.
It hummed a low and resonant song—serene, unlike Seet Ling’s, and before Marigold could wonder whether she was losing her mind, a rush of glittering cold lapped at her skin.
In a wave it fell over her—and stole her into the darkness.