The Ghost Shift Read Free Page B

The man frightened her, and she paddled as hard as she could to evade him. She would be safe around the bend, but the tide flowed against her, pulling her back. Her shoulders ached, the paddle twisting in the stream. Somehow she made it to the bend, then drifted to the far edge of the river, where the water was still and clear. The pebbles were green and yellow, and fish swam across them in shoals, flicking from side to side.
    As Mei gazed at them, a woman floated under the boat and broke through the surface toward her. It was the spirit who lingered in rivers and lakes, waiting to seize the ankles of passersby and drag them down. The water ghost longed to be reborn, but she first needed a substitute to take her place. This story had scared Mei profoundly as a child. When the lights went out, she had imagined the ghost in the shadows.
    The ghost’s fingers were long and elegant, the nails painted a deep red. Mei pried them off her ankle, but the hand fastened on her wrist instead. The ghost was too strong to resist. It dragged her into the water, her body scraping the side of the vessel. The water was inky green, impenetrable. She held her breath as the ghost pulled her deeper, its long hair in her face. Her lungs felt like they would burst.
    Mei awoke with a start. She was in her bed. Her coat was back onthe door, her other garments scattered on the floor where she’d pulled them off only a few hours before. It was six-fifteen, and light was creeping past the edges of the blinds that were supposed to block it. Her shoes, spattered with mud, rested under the desk on the far side of the room. She flung an arm over her face, burying her eyes in the crook of her elbow, as much to block out reality as the dawn.
    One child.
    Until the moment she’d looked into her sister’s eyes, Mei had never known a relative. No brother, no sister, no cousin. Not even a parent. Everyone in her generation felt an absence, living in a country where siblings were banned in case the population grew even more, from one billion to two or three. Deep down, late at night, each of them was alone. Yet she had been the loneliest. Until now.
    It was a terrible discovery—that in the moment that she’d gained a twin, the woman had disappeared into the black water. Her companion, the sister who would have understood her the way that no one else did, was gone. She’d had to make her own way in life, with no background or family to give her the connections that Yao took for granted. Unknowingly, she had had a shadow.
    Breakfast was in less than two hours, and she yearned to lose consciousness again, but it was time to rise. All her life she’d forced herself to get up, to learn, never to be stuck where she was. She’d come so far, and she couldn’t give up now. As she swung her feet from the bed, she remembered her last sight of the Wolf, sitting stiffly in the back of the Audi A8 as it drove away, leaving the body behind. He’d looked older than when she’d first seen him in the marsh, half an hour before. His last act had been to bind her to secrecy. She wondered whether it was for her sake or his.
    “How old are you now?”
    That extra word—
now
—he’d used the night before had stuck in her head, unexplained. Not “how old,” the question a stranger would ask, but
how old now
—the phrase of a relative or an old family friend.
Haven’t you grown? Are you enjoying school? How old are you now?
    She put on a tracksuit and ran down the stairs from the fourth floor of her apartment block—the old elevator was too slow and unreliable,and the noise would wake others. Then she stepped onto Yuexiu Bei Road, turning right toward Yuexiu Park along the red-tiled sidewalk. The road was nearly empty—only a woman squatting under a banyan tree, a yellow bus hauling early commuters, and a lone PLA soldier standing to attention by the entrance to the compound on the far side of the street. The sun was starting to gleam through the gaps in the apartment