Anne Berry - The Hungry Ghosts

Someone will come by and by, and all will be well, I tell myself.

This is in my head as he swings the rifle off his shoulder and rams me in the chest with the butt of it. I feel a shock of pain, a sickening thud, a splintering crack. I reel backwards, lose my footing, and fall against a hard bed of dirt and stones. He has knocked the air out of me. I am gagging, trying to bite in breath. The soldier does not wait for my lungs to fill. He throws the rifle aside along with his cap, leans over me, seizes the top of my blue cotton tunic, and rips it from my body. A slither of oxygen filters into me.Looking down I see my small breasts, the nipples raised, tight and hard against the cedar brown of my flesh. I am going to crawl away, but the pain in my chest blossoms now like a flower. Again the soldier lurches forwards.This time he grasps my trousers.As he wrenches them away my slippers tumble off. My bare feet scrabble in the dirt. I try to draw my knees up to hide my shame, but he lays hold of my legs and thrusts them apart. He thrusts them so wide I think I might split in two. Here, hunched between my open legs, with one hand he frees his penis, with the other he jams fingers inside me, tearing at my soft virgin centre. My scream dies in my throat, paralysed with terror.

He waits a single interminable beat before he drives into me. In that beat his immutable eyes lock with mine, and he brings his fingers up to his mouth. I see they are coated with flecks of blood and matter.While I watch, he sucks at them ravenously. I have found my voice but he smites it with this same hand. My cry is suffocated and becomes no more than a gurgle. I taste myself in the blow, the sea-musk at the core of me, and my own blood, the metallic sweetness of it on the fingers that are clamped across my mouth. As he slams into me I feel rivers scorch and become runnels of ash.With his free hand roughly he kneads a breast, bruising and crushing it, pinching it so hard I am sure his fingers will meet, claw through my soft flesh.

But when the moment comes and he shudders out his power, I cheat him of victory, for I have left my body and am looking down from a great height. My eyes, which have been stretched wide, aflame with fear, are smothered. They set in a dead fish stare. The stare enrages him. He lets go breast and mouth, and sits back heavily. He is gasping, his penis still ramrod straight between his sweat-slicked loins. He clenches a fist and then slams it into my face.The force of the blow breaks two teeth and cuts into my cheek. A trickle of blood courses down it like a single red tear. From above I snigger at him, and the face of that other girl below breaks into a toothless grin, as she joins me, coughing and hacking with laughter. His manhood shrivels then. It becomes a poor thing at the peal of our contempt, and we can see it is no better than a worm. In the same moment he glimpses it too, and his sallow skin is empurpled with fury as he grapples at his belt.

‘What have you got for me now?’ I taunt him, my voice as light as the breeze at his back.‘You have occupied me and I am still whole. How will you plant your filthy flag with its rising sun now?’

It is then that I see the glint of the knife, the bayonet he has freed from its leather sheath, and I know how he will plant his flag. The red of his sun will be stained with my blood when it flutters in the wind. He thrusts forwards with all his might, up beneath my broken ribs where he hits his mark. My heart gives a mighty shudder, unreels in a final leap and freezes, the blood curdling within it. I watch him come back to himself, caging his demon deep within, hefting out the knife, and springing back before the rush of red that fountains up to meet him. He drags my body to the edge of the path and rolls it roughly into the deep green cavern. But the ragged tear in my chest snags on a branch and my body hangs there. My blood spills onto the bark, cloaking it thickly, dripping darkly, and even now drying to a crisp beneath the unforgiving sun.The soldier cleans his bayonet blade in the earth, slicing the wetness off it, slipping it back in its sheath. He adjusts his uniform, stoops to retrieve his cap, slips it on, takes up his rifle and slings it back over his shoulder. He gathers up my garments and slippers, wipes his hands on them, balls them in his fists and hurls them after my body. They do not snag on the branch but unfold as they spin, performing mid-air acrobatics as they shake off their creases, before landing, hidden in the undergrowth below. He scuffs the pool of blood over with earth, kicking at it, as if the merest sight of his sin is now abhorrent to him. Then he is gone, the beat of his boots ebbing away on the dusty tide.

I watch from my perch in the tree where I rest now, beside Lin Shui’s body. Soon all is still once more, but for the ‘drip, drip’ of my blood against a waxy leaf, scalding red, striking cool virgin green. How easy is it then, this business of dying, the ancestors trumpet, preparing to welcome me into their starry fold. That is when the fury unfurls inside me. I shrink from them.

‘I am not ready to go with you,’ I say, clinging to my body, smelling the black hair with just a trace of the mineral sea, and the skin, cotton fresh, and blood that oozes still, salt and copper and cloying with sweetness. And when their rhapsody swells and they pluck at me in their impatience, I hiss and lash the air up into a wind.Then they are frightened and disperse.

The flies come first, bent on blood, crazed with the rancid whiff of decay. And while they swarm over Lin Shui, I consider the shame I might bring on my family if I am found like this. If my father returns and discovers me with the blood bubbling between my thighs, it might prove too great a disgrace for him. I reflect over the buzzing of the flies that it would be better if I was never found. I summon all my strength, pushing the flesh that had once been mine, trying to dislodge it, but it is heavy as lead. When the chorus of cicadas start, I implode, gathering up all the spidery range of me. I slip into the branch, where the limb that bears Lin Shui’s body angles from the tree. I seep into the taut, woody fibres there, already stretched with the weight of their load. I saw at them, fuelled with anguish, and at last there is a great crack. The branch breaks, and Lin Shui’s bloody corpse, my corpse, pitches downwards, the green opening up to her like water, and closing over her when she is gone. Now you can no longer see her from the path. She is hidden, a covert child. I slither down to her. She has landed with a twist. She lies on her belly, her head corkscrewing round, her face still wreathed in its broken-toothed smile, crowning her back.

That night the dogs come. At first there is only one, a sad creature, all ribcage and weeping sores, that skulks nervously around my body, snarling and baring his dripping fangs for several minutes before tucking in. He laps and licks the blood thirstily. He tears at sinew and muscle and flesh. He crushes and crunches bones. His teeth grind and grate. The cacophony of his feeding frenzy appals me. He is joined by another. First they scrap, hackles up, wearing what fur they have on their mangy carcasses like ruffs, gnashing their teeth, growling and snapping over their prize. In the end they realise there is enough for both of them, and they settle down together to feast on Lin Shui. I cannot stay here, I think. If I stay here I shall be reminded that I am dead. So I rise up and shiver on the thermals, and see days come and days go. I soar with the birds. But even here there is buzzing, silver planes somersaulting and diving and chattering, and far below me a seething sea, carved up with sail-less pewter ships, all hard lines against the scrolls of the sea. I want somewhere I can repose and gather my wits, some refuge that I can lose myself in.