Mingmei Yip - The Nine Fold Heaven

Soon the sky was the color of pale ink and the weather was turning chilly. I pulled my thin jacket across my chest and hurried back to the gate. Damn, now I might not be able to get any vehicle in this deserted area to take me back to my hotel.

It began to drizzle as I walked outside the cemetery. On the dirt road, there was no sign of any car or pedestrian. Maybe there were a few ghosts out for an evening stroll, but fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t possess the yin eyes to see them.

Imagining the yin creatures might be arising from their residences as night approached, I felt a deep chill and quickened my pace. If I couldn’t get a car, it would be at least a forty-five-minute walk to reach the main road.

Just as I braced myself for the long walk, I heard honking and turned to see a black car, dust spraying from under its wheels. Should I wave for them to stop and ask for a ride back to the city? What about if it was not a real car but one from the other realm?

The car screeched to a wailing stop. A young woman’s head stuck out. “Miss, please come in, we can give you a ride.”

Figuring it would be safer to get inside a car with humans than to remain behind with ghosts, I crawled in just as the drizzle turned into pouring rain. Inside were the driver and two other women, all in trench coats, probably anticipating the rain.

“Thank you so much for stopping. I just need to go back to the city so I can take the tram home.”

The driver cast me a look from the rearview mirror. “No problem, miss, wherever you want.”

After that, no one talked and the air became eerily silent.

To my surprise, when the car entered the city, the driver didn’t stop at the tram station but continued south.

I asked, “Ma’am, please stop and let me off here, thank you.”

To my surprise, she pressed her foot on the gas pedal instead. The car sped off pass the tram station.

I placed my hand on the driver’s shoulder. “We’re at the tram station, so please let me off. “

She didn’t respond, so I turned to the other two girls next to me. “Can you tell…”

They all smiled darkly. It was then that I realized these three women were abducting me. “Let me off, or I’ll—”

The driver turned to me. “What, call the police? Ha! Don’t make me laugh! I’m sure you know you are the number one fugitive they want!”

“Who are you people?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“You mean you don’t know?” The driver scoffed.

The two girls at the back seat next to me took off their trench coats, revealing pink dresses. I realized they were the girls from the gossip columnist Rainbow Chang’s Pink Skeleton Empire!

“What do you people want from me?”

“We have plans for you. It took us a long time to track you down, and we are not going to let you slip through our fingers again,” one of the Pink Skeleton girls said, casting me a condescending look.

Soon the car arrived at Rainbow Chang’s residence in the French Concession. The girl to my right got out and held the door open for me. I recognized Rainbow’s mansion from the time I’d visited it once as Shanghai’s celebrity Heavenly Songbird.

Inside, as before, the gossip columnist sat like royalty, leaning against the golden arm of her ivory-colored sofa. Several of her pink-clad skeleton girls—her bodyguards, informants, seductresses—were scattered around the living room. Some were sipping champagne from flutes, others chatted, yet others simply sat in elegantly seductive postures. Once Rainbow spotted me, she went up to kiss me on the lips.

“Welcome back to Shanghai, Camilla!”

I was well aware that this was, in fact, a threat disguised as a welcome. The unspoken message was, “You think anyone could escape the girls from my Pink Skeleton Empire, even you? You’re back when you should have stayed away!”

She went on. “But I am glad you’ve come to see me. Come sit with me so we can chat over a glass of champagne.”

She took my hand, invited me to sit beside her on the gold-framed white sofa, and signaled one of the girls to pour two flutes of the golden, bubbly wine.

Rainbow Chang gave me an appreciative once-over with her long-lashed, heavily mascaraed, purple-lidded eyes. “What wind blows you back to Shanghai, Camilla?”

“How do you know that I’m back? Maybe I was here all along.”

“But you weren’t,” she said, flicking her long cigarette’s ashes onto a silver ashtray.

“If you and your girls already know everything, why waste your time to ask?”

She smiled triumphantly. “Just to start a difficult conversation with a pleasantry, what else?”

“All right.” I took a sip of my champagne only to savor the bubbles ambushing my mouth. “Then let’s open the window and look at the mountain. What do you want?”

She tilted her face and sneered. “Ha! A beautiful woman who is also blunt and full of surprises, I love that.” She took another long inhalation of her murderous, pink cigarette, then said, “All right, Camilla, I want to protect you.”

“But I don’t need any protection. Anyway, why would you want to?”

“Everyone in Shanghai needs protection, Camilla, even if you think you don’t. You see the crowds inside the temples? What are they doing there, making friends with the gods and goddesses? Yes, so they’ll protect them.”

“Why would you think I need protection, from you or anyone else? I’m just fine.”

“Because you’re on the run and your life is at risk.”

I didn’t respond, because she was right. To make me feel even worse, now all the Pink Skeleton girls stopped what they’d been doing—drinking, chatting, smoking—to stare at me with pitiful expressions.

The gossip columnist went on. “Camilla, you’re an extremely cunning woman. So if you were already safe somewhere outside Shanghai, why come back? Only because you had to, even at the risk of your life. Am I not right?”

Scared, I remained adamantly silent.

She paused to sip her drink, then spoke again. “You must have done something wrong, something unspeakable, and that’s what I’m going to find out.”

I almost blurted out, “It’s none of your business!” but realized this was exactly what it was. As a gossip columnist, digging up dirt was her business.

Before I decided what to say, Rainbow was speaking again. “You were behind the war between Flying Dragons and Red Demons, am I not right?”

This time I inadvertently blurted out, “How do you know about Big Brother Wang?”

She tilted her head and laughed. “Ha-ha! Just guessing and I’m right!”

Damn! That’s why the Chinese say, “Through the mouth sickness comes in and misfortune comes out.” That’s why the great Daoist sage Zhuangzi said over two thousand years ago, “To know the truth is easy, not to talk about it is hard.” I’d momentarily forgotten that to protect myself, I must keep my mouth shut. Rainbow had only been guessing and I’d let the truth slip out!

“So you’ve been working as a spy?” The gossip columnist encroached another inch into my forbidden territory.

If I told her the truth, would she be my protectress? My mind was whirring like a ceiling fan. Could I somehow regain the upper hand?

But instead of answering her question, I threw her another. “What about Big Brother Wang now?”

“He’s mostly taken over Master Lung’s number one position.”

“Then how come it’s not in the newspapers?”

“If Big Brother Wang has replaced Master Lung, that means he is now Police Chief Li’s best friend. So you think Li wants this all over the newspapers?” She paused to sip her champagne, leaving on the flute a red lipstick mark that looked to me like a capsized boat smeared with blood.