Chapter 26

When school finished on Monday, Gouwa came running to Ning Shu's classroom. "Sis! Sis!"

Ning Shu got her bag together and came out, taking her time about it. "What are you running for?"

"Wei Xiaotian's gone missing."

Ning Shu said at once, "Missing? Since when?"

Gouwa could not get his breath. "The night we went to the haunted house. He never went home at all. His mum and dad came to the school looking for him afterwards and nobody's found him, and they're beside themselves."

"And what about Wang Yucheng?"

"He got home. But he's been terribly ill since, and he's still in hospital. Neither of them came in today."

When Ning Shu went to that building she had not felt anything out of the ordinary. As a rule, if there was something unclean near her she knew it. But everything in that place had been normal, and she had felt nothing.

She had thought at first that the stories about people vanishing were only a tale that had grown in the telling, and the building was clean.

And now something had happened after all.

"Do you know which hospital Wang Yucheng is in?"

"The town hospital."

Ning Shu and Gouwa flagged a car outside the school and went to the town hospital, and in the ward they found Wang Yucheng and his mother and father.

Wang Yucheng was curled up on the bed with the sheet pulled over his head, shaking all over. "He's gone. He's gone. He's gone."

"You'll be Yucheng's classmates?" The middle-aged woman who spoke was his mother.

Gouwa said quickly, "I'm in his class. He wasn't at school today and the teacher said he was ill, so we came to see him."

His mother sighed. "The doctors say there's nothing wrong with him. He's had a fright, that's all, and we're to keep him calm."

Ning Shu looked at Wang Yucheng shaking like a sieve and thought he had almost certainly seen something unclean that night.

She went over and pulled the sheet off his head. "What did you see that night?"

The sight of Ning Shu was like a rope thrown to a drowning man. He grabbed her sleeve. "He's gone, he's gone. Help me. You have to help me."

"Look at my eyes. You're safe now."

Wang Yucheng stared into those still, deep eyes, and bit by bit he came down out of it.

"What actually happened that night?" Ning Shu asked.

Wang Yucheng made himself remember it, and the fear was all over his face. "Wei Xiaotian and I went into a flat. We only meant to sit out the half hour. I was on the sofa playing a game and he went to the lavatory to pee, and ten minutes later he still hadn't come out. The half hour was up so I called him, and nobody answered, so I went to look, and then. And then."

He was going tight again. "There wasn't a soul in there. Wei Xiaotian was gone."

Gouwa asked, "Could he have left already?"

Wang Yucheng cut him off. "No. He didn't leave. I know he didn't leave. He was in the lavatory."

Wei Xiaotian had vanished inside that flat.

Ning Shu asked him, "Why are you so certain he was still in the lavatory?"

And at that Wang Yucheng's face went white.

"Because."

His voice shook, and the fear in him seemed to have gone as far as fear can go. "Because I saw him. I saw him in the mirror. He was in the mirror waving at me."

---

Out of the hospital, Gouwa was shaking all over.

"Sis, Wang Yucheng's been frightened out of his mind and he's seeing things."

Ning Shu shook her head. She could not make it out. "I'll have to go and look before I know."

"No. Sis, you're not going back to that place." Gouwa could not believe it. "Leave it. Don't go. Let's keep out of this."

Ning Shu asked him back, "Somebody vanishes out of nowhere and you aren't curious?"

Gouwa shook his head and went on shaking it. "I'm not going back there. If what Wang Yucheng said isn't a lie, then it's. It's too strange. I'm not going. I'm not."

And that evening, once everybody was asleep, Gouwa crept into Ning Shu's room all the same. Ning Shu had her bag packed and her things ready and was about to go out.

"I thought you wouldn't go if you were dying."

Gouwa said, with a guilty look, "I have to protect you."

"Fine. You protect me." Ning Shu laughed and got the phone out of her bag and opened the app.

The moment she went live, hundreds of followers came in.

Master Ningning's streaming again!

Sitting right here. Can't wait.

Where are we exploring tonight?

Ning Shu said, "Tonight we're going back to the same house."

Oh, there again?

Boring.

We've been. There weren't any ghosts. Somewhere else.

Ning Shu took a long breath and explained, low. "The other two boys who came with me last time. One of them has been frightened out of his wits. The other one is missing."

For ten solid seconds nothing moved in the room.

Holy hell.

Is that true?

Ning Shu went through what Wang Yucheng had told her.

God, that's horrible.

Just hearing it makes my skin crawl.

That's too dangerous. Master Ningning, don't go.

I don't want Ningning in danger and I really want to watch.

Ning Shu looked at the dim hill path ahead and said to Gouwa as they walked, "Somebody goes missing under my nose. If I let that alone, what was the point of all this learning?"

Gouwa said, "I think we ought to ask Grandma about this."

"Grandma's half retired. I don't want her worrying about things like this at her age."

The whole way along, Ning Shu's screen kept filling up with gifts of every kind. She had to admit it. These people watching from the future were generous.

At about eleven Ning Shu and Gouwa came to the building again.

There was no moon and the wind was high, and the place stood in the dark with a cold coming off it. Ning Shu had Gouwa carry the phone and swung her bag round to her front and walked towards it.

The bag was stuffed with good things and bulging with them.

"Carrying all that," Gouwa said. "Sis, you're such a coward."

Ning Shu gave him a look and handed him the bag. "Yes, I'm a coward. You go instead, then."

Gouwa laughed. "I'm only talking. You've just started at this and you can't get there in one step. Better safe than sorry."

That was fair. Ning Shu's heavenly eye was open and she had learned a great deal from her grandmother, but she had never put any of it into practice, and the truth was she did not know her own depth.

And she had no idea what was actually wrong with this building.

Ning Shu and Gouwa came to the front door and found it shut, with the dark coming off it. They were about to go on when a black cat sprang out and sat down square in the doorway, staring at the pair of them with amber eyes and every hair on its back standing up.

"Mrow." It hissed at them, and it sounded like a warning.

That cat is sinister.

Honestly, it's putting me off cats.

I've heard that if you see a black cat on the road at night, somebody dies.

Is that true?

Gouwa pulled at Ning Shu. "Sis, I don't think it wants us to go in."

"The cat's most likely taken the place for its own house. Would you let strangers walk in and out of yours?"

Ning Shu picked a small stone off the ground and threw it at the cat to scare it off.

The cat gave another thin cry and shot away somewhere else.

Ning Shu ran for the door and Gouwa hurried after her.

Inside it was black and everything was as it had been. Ning Shu got the compass out, went round the sitting room a while, and felt her way to the bathroom.

There was a bath in it and a lavatory, both of them in a bad state, and a basin on the wall with an oval mirror above it. The face of the mirror had a yellow film of dust on it, and it gave back only the outline of a person and nothing clear.

The compass in her hand would not stop turning, and then the needle went hard round to the fixed black point at the northeast of the dial. Ning Shu looked where it pointed, and it was pointing straight at the mirror.

So there was something wrong with the mirror.

Ning Shu put the compass in her bag and took out the demon-subduing staff.

Her grandmother said the staff was a fine thing of its kind and that it knew its own master. To anyone else it weighed a thousand jin and could not be lifted at all. Only the one it had settled on could carry it.

Ning Shu was the one it had settled on.

She held the staff tight and watched the mirror.

There was a grey film of dust over it that blurred whatever it showed.

It looked as though nobody had used it in a long time.

Ning Shu watched it a good while and could make nothing of it.

Then there was another thin cry from the cat. Ning Shu and Gouwa turned together, and the black cat was walking in through the door.

Gouwa said, "Sis, I think that cat's got its eye on us. It's angling for something. Shall we take it home and keep it?"

Ning Shu gave him a look. "Look at it. Does that look like a cat that wants taking home?"

Gouwa looked at the black cat. Its eyes were round as gongs and there was nothing in them but threat.

"Mm. Perhaps not. We've got the big yellow dog at the gate anyway."

Gouwa had not finished when a thin, high voice came. "Who comes here? Who dares walk into forbidden ground between the living and the dead?"

Holy hell, who said that?

God, I nearly died.

The whole room jumped, and Gouwa nearly wet himself. "Who. Who's there?"

Ning Shu was watching the black cat, and the black cat was watching her.

Ning Shu said, "It's the cat."

"How can a cat talk?" Gouwa did not believe it.

"An ordinary cat can't. This one isn't ordinary."

The compass had pointed at a room with something foul in it, and the cat had been sitting in that room, and the moment it left the compass settled. Ning Shu had been wondering about it ever since.

She looked at it, and those black eyes looked back at her.

"I am a disciple of the four hundred and fifty-third generation under the Heavenly Master Huang Xianci, and Aunt Hu Ying's granddaughter. Ning Shu."

She gave the black cat her name and her standing.

The black cat said, "I had heard the Hu family of Pingshui Village had another girl born with the heavenly eye. So it's you. My respects."

"And who are you?"

The cat walked a circle round the two of them and said, "I am a warden of the road where the living and the dead meet, and I have kept this forbidden ground for three years and more."

"Forbidden ground?" Gouwa did not follow. "What's that?"

"This building stands where the world of the dead and the world of the living run into each other. Your friend, and everyone else who has vanished out of this place, put a foot wrong on the road of the living and stepped onto the road of the dead. They can't come back."