Chapter 14

The ghost child finished the flesh, curled itself up inside Ye Furong's belly, settled down neatly in the shape of a baby, and smacked its lips.

Ning Shu nearly brought her dinner up. And at that moment the ghost child seemed to catch something, and its head came round, and it glared at her with real malice.

It bared its teeth at her. There was a row of sharp teeth in there, set in uneven triangles, with blood all round the mouth, and the whole of it was hideous. The skin was not black. It was the black vicious air hanging round it.

Baring its teeth at her. The thing was trying to frighten her.

Ning Shu thought back to the day Ye Furong had met them at the station, when she had faintly felt there was something wrong inside that belly. She had put it down to her imagination then. Today settled it. The sudden pain and the bleeding that had put Ye Furong in hospital almost certainly had this ghost child behind them.

What was it called. That was it. Carrying a ghost in the womb.

Just then the black pendant at Ning Shu's chest began to grow hot, and the ghost child caught sight of the pure black drop at her neck, and its face changed as though it had seen something terrible. It pulled in every scrap of its vicious air in a hurry and hid itself away.

What Ning Shu saw now was only Ye Furong's round and perfectly ordinary belly.

She put her hand up to the black teardrop at her chest. Tuanzi had given her that. Could it be that the creature in Ye Furong's belly was afraid of it?

Her uncle went over to Ye Furong then and asked her, worried about her, "How are you feeling? Tell your brother where it hurts."

Ye Furong's face was white and her manner was cold. "I'm fine now. You two should go back and look after your own boy. Don't be here…"

She had been going to say making a show of yourselves, and did not get it out, and said only, "I don't need you here."

"That's all right." Her uncle really was a simple soul and could not see the coldness at all. "I'll have your sister-in-law buy an old hen at the market and stew you a soup to build you up."

"We can look after our own son's wife," the old woman said. "There's no call for you to trouble yourselves. I'll hire a carer for her. She'll stay in hospital from now until my precious grandson is born."

Ye Furong heard that and said quickly, "Mum, it's a long time yet till she's due. I'll be so bored sitting in a hospital. And there's work at the company."

"Nothing on this earth matters more than my precious grandson." The old woman would not shift. "You lie in the hospital and you go nowhere until my grandson is born. Walking round out there with that belly, who knows what trouble you'd bring down on us."

That was the end of it, and Ye Furong could say no more.

Ning Shu had left the room by then, and she shook her head. She did pity Ye Furong. When Lu Zheng had kept her shut in, she had paid with her life to get away.

What the old woman was doing to Ye Furong now was a kind of shutting in too.

The difference was that Ye Furong went willingly, a slave and a machine for bearing other people's children. To Ning Shu, that was worse than being dead.

In Gouwazi's ward her uncle was worrying away at it. "How can they be like that? Do they not treat a son's wife as a person at all?"

Her aunt poured him a cup of hot water and tried to settle him. "They've said their piece. What are you fretting for? Leave it. The baby's growing in Furong's body, so they won't do anything to her."

"Of course I know they won't do anything to her. I just can't swallow it." Her uncle was still breathing hard about it. "Listen to the things her mother-in-law comes out with. It's enough to make you sick."

Her aunt sighed and stroked Ning Shu's head, sorry for her. "Talk about wanting sons. Out in the country, if we have a daughter we still bring her up properly. That old woman won't even own the one that was born, and she treats a son in the belly like treasure. No conscience in her. Ningning grew up under my eyes. She's my own daughter as far as I'm concerned."

Ning Shu was moved by that. Set against her own mother and father, her uncle and aunt treated her better than she could say.

But then she thought of the child she had seen in Ye Furong's belly, and something in her would not sit still. She did not know what that ghost child was or where it had come from, and the malice coming off it was heavy.

"Uncle." Ning Shu said it seriously. "There's something wrong with that baby."

"Of course there's something wrong with it," her uncle said, worried. "Would she be in hospital otherwise?"

"No, Uncle. I mean there's something wrong with the baby." Ning Shu put the weight on the baby and looked him steadily in the eye. "That baby must not be born."

"Ningning, I know it's hard on you, your mother having a little brother." Her aunt came over and took Ning Shu's hand to comfort her. "But there's no help for it. Try to understand her."

Ning Shu could see her aunt had taken it for jealousy. "Auntie, Uncle, I'll say it plainly. There's something fishy about the baby in Mum's belly. It isn't a good pregnancy."

Her uncle's brows pulled together. "Ningning, what does that mean? What's not a good pregnancy? Can't it be kept?"

"It isn't about whether it can be kept." Ning Shu said, "I think what Mum is carrying isn't human."

Her aunt put a hand over her chest. "Aiyo. That's a gruesome thing to say."

So Ning Shu told her uncle and aunt what she had seen in her mother's room, the whole business of the ghost child.

Her uncle listened and then sat there blankly for a long while, and he did not quite believe it. "Ningning, are you sure your eyes weren't playing tricks? Didn't the doctors say there was nothing wrong with the baby?"

Ning Shu was not certain of it herself. She had only just come into the trade and she was half a bucket of water, and the heavenly eye had not opened, so she could not say flatly what it was her mother was carrying. But the look of that ghost child had been truly frightening. It was nothing good.

Her aunt spoke up. "I believe Ningning. Mother said herself that Ningning has it in her to be a great feng shui master one day."

Her uncle could not make up his mind, and worried, and did not know what to do for the best.

Ning Shu had no fondness for Ye Furong, but she could hardly stand by and watch while the uncle who had always been good to her was in this state.

So she stayed another week at the hospital, to watch a while longer.

That week was something to see. Ye Furong turned obstetrics upside down. Every day at noon, the moment the hands of the clock came together on twelve, she bled below and the pain in her belly was past bearing, and the baby moved harder and harder, and she screamed like a pig being killed, louder than women actually giving birth.

The old woman was beside herself, terrified something would happen to her treasure.

The doctors had never met anything like it. It turned everything their clinical experience had taught them on its head.

Ye Furong grew weaker too. In one week she was skin and bone. By rights, when a pregnant woman goes like that the baby should weaken with her, or be lost. But it was not so. Her belly got bigger, the baby moved more and more, and the life in it was enormous.

What it felt like to Ning Shu was that the child in Ye Furong's belly was sucking her dry.

So at last, one night when everyone had gone to sleep, Ning Shu took the black teardrop off her neck, shut her eyes and said the two children's names over in her mind.

When she opened her eyes her daughter was in front of her, holding on to Tuanzi's sleeve.

Tuanzi's face was cold and sullen and he was not willing about it, but he let his sister in the red dress keep hold of him.

"Mummy." Yuanzi said it sweetly and came over and nuzzled against her.

Tuanzi came over too, and he seemed to know what she wanted to ask, because he said it before she could open her mouth. "If you can keep out of that, you'd better keep out of it."

"Out of what?"

Tuanzi looked up at her and said two words. "A ghost fetus."

"A ghost fetus?" Ning Shu's brows drew in. "What is that?"

Tuanzi explained. "Two years ago your mother Ye Furong was carrying a daughter, but when she found out it was a girl she got rid of her. A child got rid of like that can't go into the cycle and be born again. They wander about in this world with nobody to belong to, so the resentment in them runs very deep, and that one worked herself up into a vengeful ghost. Now she's come back into your mother's body, eaten her son, and means to be born again out of the same womb."

Ning Shu listened with her skin crawling. There were such things in the world.

Though when you thought about it, it was exactly what the family had earned. The Nings wanted sons and did not want daughters. If the old woman knew that her grandson had been killed by the granddaughter she had turned into a vengeful ghost, there was no telling what she would do.

"That girl's resentment runs very deep. You can't deal with her as you are now. Best to keep out of it."

Ning Shu asked quickly, "What happens if that child is born?"

"Born…" Tuanzi thought about it and said it quite calmly. "It will bring down a disaster."

Yuanzi leaned in to add to it. "It's like this. A ghost fetus is made out of resentment in the first place, so if it's born, it isn't a ghost and it isn't a person…"

"Not a ghost and not a person. Then what is it?"

Tuanzi said, under his breath, "A demon."

"A demon loose in the world. Not just the family. Everyone around her who has anything to do with her comes to a bad end. Exactly how, I can't say. If she can be killed in the womb, that's best. But her vicious air runs very deep, so Big Ningzi had better have nothing more to do with her."

"Big Ningzi?"

Tuanzi coughed, and could not quite carry it off, and said "Mother" properly after all.

"No." Ning Shu's brows came down. "I've no feeling for Ye Furong. But my uncle cares about her, and so does my grandmother. I can't stand by on this one."

Blood is blood, and you can't cut it off.

"Is that so." Tuanzi lowered his head and frowned, and the look of him was Lu Zheng to the life.

Then he said, "Mother, I'll think of something. Whatever happens, don't go near her and don't provoke her. If she really does come into the making of a demon, the first one she won't let go is Big Ningzi. So…"

He came over and took hold of Ning Shu's hand, in earnest about it. "Listen to me. Whatever you do, don't provoke her."

The seriousness of him, and the worry, moved her.

She asked, "Is Tuanzi her match?"

Yuanzi said quickly, "My brother's very strong. He isn't afraid of her at all. Before she turns into a demon, that is. Hee hee."

"What are you going to do?" Ning Shu asked, concerned.

Tuanzi shook his head. "I haven't worked it out yet. It's a difficult one. But you have to listen to me. You have to."

It was not often she saw Tuanzi this tense, so there was nothing for it but to agree.