Candle in the Attic Window Part 26

"Three days. That fall should have killed you, Li."

Lien's stomach churns. She thinks of the stories about demons and ghosts her parents told her as a girl and mutters a quick prayer to the ancestors.

"Can we set up a shrine?" she asks.

"That's a good idea. The others will be comforted by a shrine, as well. We don't have incense, but we can make do." Bao goes to tell the others, and they begin to construct a small, makeshift shrine with the items available in their packs and in the cave. They build it closest to Fa, who clearly needs the most help from the ancestors. Soon, small offerings of dried rations and tea are sitting before a chalk outline of the characters meaning "n.o.ble ancestors".

With Bao's help, Lien limps to the shrine, where she says a prayer and lays an offering of dried fish. She doesn't feel different as she returns to her position near the fire, but at least the other workers aren't glaring at her, anymore. She is able to sleep, though her leg throbs after the movement and wakes her many times during the night.

Once, she wakes and swears she sees movement near the shrine. She sits up and squints to see a figure hovering over Fa. She calls out to the figure, and it turns and disappears into the darkness. Beside her, Bao is deep in slumber, undisturbed by the noise, so Lien a.s.sumes that she must be dreaming and lies down again.

The second time, she wakes because something is prodding her broken leg and the pain rouses her. She looks down to see a hulking figure crouched by her leg: s...o...b..idge, barely visible in the dying firelight.

"Stop that!" she cries and tries to pull away from him; she gasps with pain when she tries to move the throbbing limb.

s...o...b..idge turns and regards her, eyes narrowed in suspicion. There is something dark and menacing about him. She doesn't like the way he looks at her, rather like a cat observing a bird with a broken wing. Lien reaches for Bao, but finds to her horror that his cot is empty.

"Your friend went to answer nature's call," s...o...b..idge says, and though she doesn't understand all the words, Lien comprehends that Bao has stepped away, leaving her unprotected.

"Leave me alone," she warns him. She's trying to sound intimidating, but instead, she sounds mewling and womanish.

The huge foreman tilts his head and regards her with increased interest.

"There's something not right about you," he says, his voice low, speaking more to himself than to her.

"Go away," Lien says. She looks about for help; the other Chinese workers are safely in their tent, far from the fire, and Fa remains unconscious beside the shrine.

Was that movement she saw in the shadows behind the shrine?

"Help me!" Lien calls out in English. This time, her voice definitely gives her away; she has dropped all pretense and sounds like the woman she is.

s...o...b..idge looms over her, his eyes fixed and unblinking. With shocking alacrity, he reaches down and tears at the blanket covering her. Lien screams as he rips open her tunic to reveal her chest; she tries to cover her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s with her arms, but her lie has been undone, the truth of her s.e.x as obvious as her Chinese heritage.

s...o...b..idge guffaws once, but then his shock turns rapidly to disbelief, as he remembers that Lien is a member of his crew, and then rage as he recalls how quickly and skillfully the Chinese workers blast new tunnels and lay new rails, putting his white workmen to shame. And here, all along, there was a woman hiding among them. Maybe there are others; maybe the little yellow men have made a fool of him all along.

Lien screams as the foreman rushes her with a growl. The fire suddenly dies and engulfs the cavern in blackness.

Lien covers her face, expecting to be beset at any moment, but she remains miraculously unmolested. Slowly, she uncovers her eyes and looks about; she can see nothing in the total darkness, but she can hear the sounds of combat: the smack of fists on flesh and the thud of someone heavy hitting the ground, the soft "oof" of someone being punched in the gut.

Then she hears Bao's footsteps, unmistakable to her after their months together and her growing infatuation, and she calls out to him, "Bao! Help me!"

Bao rushes over to her, his hands seeking her in the dark. She reaches for him and they embrace clumsily. When the fire suddenly flares to life again, they both look down to see that her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s remain exposed, pressed against his chest, and she quickly pulls the torn tunic closed over them.

"You're ... you're ... a woman!" Bao stutters, backing away from her.

Lien won't look at him. She clutches the tunic closed.

"I thought you knew. Xiong figured it out."

Bao looks down to see the foreman beside him, on the ground, so bruised and battered that his face is barely recognizable. One of his arms hangs limp from the socket, twisted underneath his torso at an unnatural angle.

"What happened?" Bao asks, looking at her accusingly.

"You really think I could do that? To Xiong?" she asks.

Bao looks at the man on the ground who groans softly and gurgles some blood onto the cave floor and shakes his head.

"I don't know. You're ... you're ...."

"Female, but not a demon not strong enough to do that." Lien gestures to the crumpled body of the Foreman. Tears rise to her eyes as she says, "After all this time together, you really think I'm capable of that?"

Bao starts to say something in retort, but the other workers come rushing out of the tent just then, pulling on their boots, stalling his words. The men rush over to the Foreman, taking in the scene with expressions of shock and horror, and then glance at Lien. The tableau of her sitting helpless on her cot tells them a story. She holds her shirt closed with shaking hands, her face averted in shame.

The men all look to Bao, their eyes seeking. Lien knows that Bao holds her future in his rough brown hands; with a word, he can condemn her or save her. Finally, without looking at her again, he sighs and says, "Help me," and lifts the Foreman's ankles.

"What are you doing?" Lien demands as the workers gather up s...o...b..idge and begin shuffling toward the cave entrance.

"If he lives, you'll never be safe again, Li if that is your name," Bao says.

When the men return from dumping s...o...b..idge's body in the snow, the others go to their cots in the tent and Bao feeds the fire. He makes sure Fa has slept through the adventure, and then he returns to sit beside Lien, in a meditative pose, saying nothing.

"Lien," she says softly.

He looks at her, his eyes searching her face for the truth.

"My real name is 'Lien'," she repeats. "My parents called me 'Li' and pretended I was a boy, because I was their only child. I left to get away from them, but I don't know how to be a woman, so I stayed Li even when I came over the ocean."

"Did you kill Xiong?" Bao asks.

"No."

"Then who did?"

"I don't know," she insists and begins sobbing uncontrollably. Her careful house of lies has been demolished. Without her secrets, she feels exposed and afraid. And now her closest friend, the man she thinks she might love, can't trust her and thinks she committed murder. "He attacked me," she tries to explain.

To her surprise, Bao places a hand on her knee and pats it comfortingly. "I believe you. But if you didn't kill him, who did?"

"He's dead?" she asks.

Bao nods.

"His neck was broken. He died while we carried him outside. Unless you truly are a demon, you don't have the strength to kill a man like that. So, I believe you, because even if you aren't the man you claimed to be, I can't believe that you're a demon."

Lien hugs him in relief, tears flowing even more freely now. "I don't know ... what happened ... the fire died ...," she says, through sobbing hiccoughs.

Bao lets her cling to him. "Did you see what happened?"

She shakes her head against his chest.

"The white men say this place is haunted."

Lien looks up at him.

"They do?"

"A lot of the white men didn't want to come here. About twenty years ago, some settlers moving west were trapped in this valley during the winter. They all died. The survivors ... they ate their dead. They're cursed people, now, and Donner Valley is cursed by their memory."

Lien shudders, remembering the women and children huddled around the tiny fire. Were these the victims of the hungry, wives and children devoured by their fathers and husbands?

"How horrible," she whispers, her dreams taking on sudden dark import.

Bao holds her close and strokes her hair.

"But not all ghosts are evil," he says, staring out into the dark of the cavern, unafraid. "Some are just waiting."

The sun rises to find the group of Chinese rail workers already on foot, making their way slowly up the ravine to the mountain. The small group of eight men takes turns carrying the two invalids, both of them fortunately small and hardly burdensome. In the evening, they make camp on a rocky promontory, overlooking the valley. One of them, the smallest, who has a broken leg, limps out of the tent at sunset to watch the glorious colours retreating in the sky as night settles over the ravine.

The others now know Lien's secret, but they've sworn to keep it as best they can. She knows it won't remain secret for much longer if Shen finds out, word will be all over camp faster than a swallow flies. As she watches the sun set, she thinks with dread of returning to the camp and lying about the fate of s...o...b..idge. But what is the truth? What difference does it make whether he fell from a cliff wall or was pummeled to death by ghostly hands?

When darkness slides across the landscape, she retreats to her cot in the tent beside the other men. They sit in awkward silence, unsure how to behave now that her secret has been laid bare. She asks that they leave a lamp lit, even when they sleep; the darkness is unbearable for her now. She swears that she can hear s...o...b..idge's husky breathing, or the soft murmurings of the pale doctor who bandaged her wounds. Even years later, married to Foreman Bao and mother to his children, she will not sleep without a lantern's glow or a stoked fire. She does not want to dream of the faceless, bonneted women and their strange children, or remember the frozen nights spent in that mysterious cavern.

But when the winter nights are bone-numbingly cold, her healed leg aches with remembered pain, and her dreams are dark and haunted.

Sarah Hans is a Buddhist, steampunk, and horror writer. Her work is appearing in several anthologies this year, including Historical Lovecraft and The Crimson Pact: Volume 1. You can read more of her work, and follow her adventures aboard The Airship Archon, at her website: http://sarahhans.com/

The Forgotten Ones.

By Mary Cook.

Come and see us now, Mother; this is where we lie

In this dank and distant place with not a glimpse of sky.

Fasten back the turf, Mother, like the man next door

When he dug this grisly grave for when we breathed no more.

He gave us sweets and shiny things said we mustn't tell.

The doorway to his ghastly house became the mouth of h.e.l.l.

This is how we sleep, Mother; neat as in our beds

But now our bones are white and bare, with only skulls for heads.

Don't you feel some shred of guilt, some tiny p.r.i.c.k of pain?

The two of us were led away and never seen again.