“Are you in pain?”
“It’s my stomach, an old problem. It goes spastic when I get agitated. It’s all right. Go on back to sleep.”
He wanted to say he’d massage her abdomen for her, but instead he fumbled in his pocket before producing the magic health sack from Meng Yunfang.
“Here, put this on.”
She nodded with a smile and took the sack, then watched him open the door and walk out.
. . .
Over at Shuangren fu, Niu Yueqing, Liu Yue, and the old lady went to bed early on the night of the thunderstorm. At some point Liu Yue was startled awake by a loud thunderclap; to her it was like a fireball whirling in the sky before falling onto their rooftop and smashing the glazed roof tiles into pieces. When she was at home back in northern Shaanxi, she had seen a dragon snatch people. That was also on a day when thunder crashed, and she heard the villagers shouting, “The second mistress of the Hao family in the east has been taken by the dragon.” She ran over to see. Mrs. Hao, a woman with a fair face and a slender figure, was lying by a locust tree that had been split down the middle; its top half was resting in a pond, still smoking. The woman had turned into a five-foot-long charred log, a recently whitewashed canvas shoe the only thing that was still intact. When Liu Yue heard the thunderclap right above the roof, she wondered if it had come for her. Sticking her head out from under the blanket, she looked outside to see if a fiery red ball was about to break through the window.
“Aunty,” she called out, “Aunty. How can you sleep so soundly tonight of all nights? I’m so scared.”
The old lady didn’t make a sound. Liu Yue tried again; still nothing. It appeared to her that the dragon had taken the old lady instead, and she was dazed, feeling that all the dragons had come to Xijing at the same time to snatch away Wang Ximian’s wife, Meng Yunfang’s wife, Jing Xueyin, and Tang Wan’er, who was taken while washing her privates, which were rotten and filled her tub with bloody water. Liu Yue screamed.
It was a terrifying scream, especially coming so late at night. Niu Yueqing ran from her bedroom into the living room and turned on the light. The girl had crawled, stark-naked, in there and stared at Niu Yueqing as she said, “The dragon is snatching people, Dajie. The dragon is snatching people, and Aunty is gone.”
Niu Yueqing went into their bedroom, and indeed the old lady’s coffin bed was empty. She then went to the kitchen, the toilet, and the study, but there was no sign of her anywhere. “Check her shoes,” Niu Yueqing said. Her shoes were gone, so they opened the door and ran into the yard. It was still raining, and in between the flashes of lightning, they saw the old lady kneeling on a stone, praying, palms together. Still naked, Liu Yue rushed over, picked up the old lady, and brought her inside. Niu Yueqing followed. She found her mother a change of clothes, then draped a thin blanket over the younger woman.
“It’s pitch-black outside, Mother. Why did you go out there? Were you trying to get struck by lightning?”
“They were having a fight in heaven. I was worried it would get out of hand and spread to our city.”
“A fight in heaven?” Liu Yue asked unhappily.
“Demons fighting demons. It was terribly violent, and everyone in the city was watching. Wicked gawkers just wanted to enjoy the scene, and no one wanted to pray.”
“Who’s out there on the street?” Liu Yue said. “Ghosts more likely.”
“Right, it’s ghosts. There are more ghosts than people in the city now. People die and become ghosts, but ghosts never die, so they crowd into each other.”
The girl turned pale.
“Ignore her, or the more she talks the more frightened you’ll get,” Niu Yueqing said to Liu Yue, before turning to her mother. “Go to bed, Mother. Everything is fine.”
The old lady grumbled unhappily as she changed out of her wet clothes, but she would not let go of her wet shoes as she lay down in bed. Niu Yueqing told Liu Yue to go to sleep, too, adding, “Are you becoming as deranged as she is, Liu Yue? When you don’t see her in bed, get up and look around. If she’s not in the toilet, then go look for her in the yard. Where could she go? Why were you screaming about dragons snatching people? You’ve been to school and ought to know that lightning strikes are caused by static electricity. It’s not a dragon snatching people.”
The color had returned to the girl’s face by then, and she looked sheepish, though still afraid. “I don’t know why, but I thought it was a dragon that was snatching people.”
“You must have been dreaming, so you screamed when you woke up to find Mother gone.”
“I’m not sure now.”
The thunder died out after midnight, but the old lady did not go back to sleep. Liu Yue was getting drowsy, but before she fell asleep, the old lady poked her with her cane. “Someone’s knocking at the door, Liu Yue.”
The girl cocked her head to listen. “There’s no one there. Who would come at this hour?”
“Someone is knocking.”
The girl got up to open the door, but saw no one. “No one’s out there.” She went back to bed and slept awhile before the old lady called out again, “Listen, someone’s at the door.”
She got up again to open the door: still no one, not even a breeze. When she got back inside, she lay down without a word. At about four in the morning, the old lady sat up.
“Who’s that?” she asked. “Who’s out there?” She called out to Liu Yue, who pretended to be asleep by snoring loudly. The old lady came over to pinch her nose.
“How can you sleep like that?” she groused. “Someone’s at the door.”
Liu Yue sat up and said, “Do you not want me to get some sleep just because you can’t? Who’s knocking on the door? It’s a ghost.” She scared herself so much just by saying it that she pulled the blanket over her head and lay back down.
“You call yourself a maid? More like a young mistress of the house. You won’t even open the door when someone’s knocking.”
Upset by the comment, Liu Yue got up angrily. There was still no one there. But instead of going back into the bedroom, she lay down on the sofa in the living room.
When day broke and Niu Yueqing got up, she was shocked to see the girl sleeping on the sofa looking tired, with dark circles under her eyes. After hearing Liu Yue’s explanation, she said, “Mother is losing it again, I’m afraid. When Zhuang Laoshi returns today, I’ll have him sleep in her room, since he likes to hear her talk about the ties between humans and ghosts. You can sleep in my room.”
Zhuang came home early that morning and asked where Niu Yueqing was. Liu Yue told him she’d gone to work. Zhuang wondered why she was working on a Sunday, so Liu told him that she was helping someone out with leftover buns, relating the story about how Zhuang’s mentee was having trouble selling the buns he had steamed, how Niu Yueqing had told the man that her office kitchen would buy them and that she would pay for them herself, and how Niu Yueqing was now trying to get the four sacks of buns delivered to a glue manufacturer.