Huang Ying
By Fox-Trot-9

Rated PG-13

Horror/Suspense/Mystery/Vampire

Chapter 8: Sammo's Story Continued

(Pieces of the Puzzle)

Chengde, China

September 19, 1977

Sammo Hung—I woke up sucking in a gulp of air, drenched in sweat and breathing hard, nearly slipping off the toilet seat.

Time passed. After the panic wore off and my breathing returned to normal, I checked my surroundings. Nothing had changed; everything remained the same down to the floor tiles, still musky with the scent of hand sanitizer and traces of ammonia. Then I checked on myself. My hands—nothing lost there; I still had every digit attached, and the ring was still on my middle finger. Then I checked on my chest, putting my hand against my ribs; nothing there felt broken, though the pulsations of my heart were still pretty strong. I did the same thing to my lower extremities and noticed nothing in particular stand out, except for the dull ache in my balls and the sweat on the soles of my feet. Probably the fear sweats.

But other than those, nothing had changed.

Then, without the slightest clue why, I put my hand to my neck, placing the fingers on the area where I had cut myself with a razor back at the Bifeng Hotel; the thin slit of last night had healed over into a scab. Then I got off the toilet and checked it in the mirror, and sure enough, there it was, a thin line of discoloration about an inch long.

I resisted the urge to pick at it though and leaned against the sink, waiting for Yeung to give me my clothes. And waited. And waited. But the urge was too strong. Without thinking about it, I gingerly placed my fingernail on it, picking at it little by little the way a kid picks at an old scab on a knee or an elbow. From my childhood days, I've always had a tendency to pick at my scabs; call it disgusting, call it hazardous to my health, but it's a habit I never quite grew out of.

So I kept picking at it, tempting fate until fate banged on the door—Fuck!—, followed by Yeung's voice: "Hung, are you in there? I got new clothes for you."

Keep this up, and I give you a new face, you bastard! I thought of saying but never did. "Jesus, Yeung, has it ever occurred to you that I might be in the middle of doing something when you just barged in like that?"

"No. What were you doing, exactly?" he said. "Hope it's nothing I wouldn't be doing."

"I was shaving, you asshole!" I lied.

"Oh, sorry about that, man. I'll just leave your stuff at the door then, okay?"

"That'll be fine, thank you." Thank you, Yeung; you're a gentleman and a scholar, I thought. And an asshole!

After he left, I checked myself in the mirror again, noting the fresh trail of blood seeping out of the cut. So I tore off another couple of sheets of toilet paper, ran it through the running faucet, and applied it to the wound until it stopped bleeding. Then I opened the door, grabbed the new clothes and got myself dressed. There was even a professor's jacket included, the buttoned kind with leather pads on the elbows of the sleeves; I guess it was meant to make myself more respectable in the public eye. As for the continence pad, I kept it, believe it or not, stuffing it into the inner pocket of the jacket. I hoped I would never have to use it, but if it ever came down to that, at least I'd be ready for it. Better safe than sorry.

When I walked out of the bathroom, it was with the limping gait of a tenderized pulsing grapefruit between my legs. Every step I took was slow and agonizing.

"Jesus, you must have taken it really hard in the nut sack," Yeung said, grabbing at a chair and having me sit in it. But after surviving such a murderous kick, I couldn't just sit in it; I had to ease my way into it like I was easing into a steaming hot bath, and even then it hurt like hell. "I've seen nut jobs less painful than that."

Then he slid the table closer to me, saving me the agony of scooting myself—chair and all—towards it. "Oh, and, uh… Sorry about all the crap I said earlier in the car and when you got kicked in the balls," he added. "I was trying the lighten the mood a little, after you two had your run-in with that thing in the morgue. It's just that most people always take my humor the wrong way."

I eyed him as he said this. "Well, I'm inclined to think you had good intentions, instead of just wanting to blow off steam," I said.

"I'll admit that, too. I was still kind of pissed at him after he mentioned my father." After that, he took his seat to my right and said no more. I thought of asking about his father but didn't after I saw how angry his looked when Wing mentioned it, so we just sat their silent for a few awkward moments.

All the while, I looked around and found Wing nowhere in the vicinity of the inn. But I heard some heated exchange near the entrance somewhere outside, though I couldn't make out what they were saying or even who they were. I said, "Where did Wing go off to?"

"He's talking with Chen Konichi just outside that entrance," he said, pointing to it. "It's been almost ten minutes, and they're still at it. And by the sound of it, those two aren't getting along too well. Personally, I think he should have let me talk to the old geezer, but then you know how Wing is—always gotta do it by himself. I'm starting to wonder why he even asked me to be on this case with him if he's so pussy-footed about having partners." Then he looked at me, saying, "I trust he told you about that already?"

"About what?"

"About his partnerships. Or lack thereof. Did you notice he didn't roll with any when you got in his cruiser?"

"Yeah, I got that part right away. He said he wasn't an easy guy to deal with."

"Trust me, that's an understatement," and he shook his head as if to punctuate that point. "He's had more partners assigned to him quit than anyone else I know. He burns through his partners like matches, at least that's what I heard. Hell, as far as I know, nobody wants to be his partner anymore."

"Anymore? You mean, he had a steady partner once?"

"Yeah. Whereas most other partners can't last more than a few months with him, my father stuck with him for the first twenty years of Wing's career in the PSB. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it's true. They both volunteered for Mao's guerrilla army back in WWII, fighting the Japs off Chinese soil. They were close, those two, almost like brothers."

"Seriously?" I said, still not believing.

"You can bet your balls I'm serious. Wing respected my dad; in fact, he owes him his life, because my dad saved his ass once during the war. He was never decorated for his efforts, but it was enough to gain Wing's friendship and keep it through the ups and downs in the PSB."

"What exactly did your father do? I bet it must have been pretty damn crazy."

"It was, but my father never really talked to me about it. Whenever I brought it up, he either conveniently forgot about it or just plain ignored it. I didn't really know why until I asked Wing about it a few years ago."

"And what did he tell you?"

Here Yeung took a deep breath and paused, probably thinking about his words. It was a telling sign; either it must be really crazy, really sensitive, really disturbing, or all of these. Whatever the result, it was bound to rattle me one way or another. But instead of answering my question, he said, "Did you ever ask Wing how Yuanchun Jia's body got found?"

"No, he never did." After a moment's pause, I said, "Why? Is there something I should know?"

"Yeah. For one, Wing and my father were the ones that originally found Yuanchun Jia's body; they located it in a ditch beside the Xiaji Road during one of their patrols in that area but kept its location between themselves till the war ended. Did he tell you about that?"

For a moment, I couldn't speak. Why the hell did he leave that part out at the police station? Looks like that guy's a real spook, after all, I thought. "He never mentioned it. And why in God's name would they keep that a secret?"

"I don't know. Neither of them told me why. And even when Wing told me about it, he never really went into details. To this day, he won't tell me what really happened when they found her body. He would only say that it was bad even by his own standards, and I'm assuming it was really bad. Bad enough to keep his mouth shut about it."

"Does he always keep people in the dark?"

"Yeah, but then that's Wing for you. He's always had that 'spook' image about him, even when he was with the PSB; and now that he's gone to the MPS, his legend grows ever-wider in my circle of friends. I mean, you won't believe some of the rumors floating around about him. Most of them came from his former partners."

"Such as?"

"Well, he's rumored to have berated the shit out of Hua Guofeng after one really nasty riot back in 1967 that cost him his position in the PSB. Rumor has it that they transferred him to the MPS to keep a tighter leash on him; he's had something of a bad rep since then. It's kind of an open secret among a few circles in the PSB, though the department's taken all sorts of measures to keep it from the press and most of the members who didn't need to know."

"Damn. I guess the fallout from that must have been pretty bad."

"Yeah, it was. I can only think of one thing worse than that."

"And what's that?"

"Yuanchun Jia's case ten years ago. It's in the same year, I know. I think that year was his worst by far; not only was he ostracized for his tirade against Guofeng, but he also had the Jia case blow up in his face, because some enterprising reporters decided to stick it to him for political reasons. You know—leak the information and try to blame it on him. I happen to get burned because of my father's involvement; they tried to drag his name through the mud, too. But apart from Wing, my father and myself, the only other people who know about it are Dr. Acosta, the coroner, Hua Guofeng and a few others in his department. I don't know all of them."

"You're kidding me. Hua Guofeng knows about this case?"

"Yeah, I know; it's crazy. But then what are you gonna do? The guy's the damn chairman of the Communist Party and the premier, so I guess that entitles him to know about stuff he shouldn't get his prissy nose into. If I were him, I'd have kept my mouth shut and let it be instead of exacerbating the hell out the whole thing. Fucking prick doesn't know what the hell he's dealing with."

"What about you? How much of it do you know?"

"Not enough to get me into too much trouble," he said, but then he shook his head in disgust. "But then again, when you're mixed up into that kind of mess, it's guilt by association. I may not know everything—hell, I may not even have started all this—, but that kind of trouble has a way of finding you, no matter how hard you try to escape it. You see what I'm saying? My ass was dragged into this mess the day I was born into this world, because of what my father ran into with Wing all those years ago. It's like a curse, if you asked me."

A curse. I looked at Yeung for a moment and considered the implications of his words. And before I knew it, those thoughts drifted through my head again. Xiou Godenzi's last words of looking into the past came to mind, specifically those of a sword stained with blood. How much blood must have spilled over its edge? How many lives has it taken? I wondered but couldn't even begin to fathom. Then Chen Konichi's warning about getting out of this place while I still could crept up on me like a shadow flitting across the floor. Or a dead body coming back to life. Or a sudden reflection in the mirror—

The mirror showing his face.

I blinked hard that time, trying to get that horrible incident out of my mind; when that didn't work, I focused my sight on the floor between my knees. But that only made things worse. The morning nausea of a few hours ago decided to drop by and fuck with me again, as if today's events hadn't fucked with me enough already. And before I knew it, there were little knots in my stomach, not the big ones that make you throw up but the little ones that try to tell you something. But what? I haven't the slightest clue.

"Hey, man, you okay?" Yeung said. "You're starting to sweat a little."

"It's nausea, that's all."

"You sure?"

I looked at him. "I'm fine, okay? After everything that's happened to me, nausea's the least of my worries," and he got the picture by raising his hands up; don't aggravate it by questioning it.

"Okay, I'm just checking," and for the next few minutes, he just looked at me in silence; it was awkward, to say the least. It was like we were back to square one again, after the last few minutes of actual friendliness ended by a mere nausea-induced fit. But then he said, "How long have you been married?"

Where the hell did that come from? I thought. "Me? Married? I'm not married."

"Not anymore?"

"I've never been married, period," I said, letting out a few nervous chuckles. Okay, you're starting to creep me out, buddy. "What gives you that idea?"

"It's the ring on your finger; I thought it was a wedding band or something."

"Oh, this?" I showed it to him, and he nodded. "This isn't a wedding band; if it was, it would be worn on my ring finger and not my middle finger."

"Why put it on your middle finger, then?"

"I don't know," I lied. "I guess it's to flip people off when I get angry. Believe it or not, I got this from that dig site in Heibei Province down the road from here. Last night, in fact."

"Before Xiou Godenzi got killed? You're kidding me, right?" He was looking at me in disbelief, though I hadn't a clue why. Then he went silent for a time, rolling things through his head, getting my nerves up on end. Then he got all defensive and said, "If you changed your story, then I'm gonna have to report it too Wing, man. He's gonna be really pissed when he finds—"

"Wait a minute, where are you getting this from?"

"I got it from Wing, who got it from you."

"Can you be more specific than that? What exactly did Wing tell you?"

More silence. Then his eyes narrowed. "Are you implying that Wing lied to me?"

"Just tell me what he told you about this ring, so I know what's going on!"

"Fine," he said, standing up and glowering down at me. "When I got back here, Wing briefed me on what you told him at the morgue. He said you tried to decipher part of that ring, while the old man deciphered the other part. In the end, the ring said something like Huang Ying, or Blood Shadow."

"So what's the problem?"

Yeung looked unimpressed for some reason. "Don't bullshit me by playing dumb, okay? I may be young, but I know when people are lying."

"What the fuck are you saying?" I said, standing up.

"Sit the fuck down, or I'll make you sit down."

"For God's sake, I don't know what I did to piss you off, but you seem to be on my ass ever since I met you. Just tell me what the fuck's gotten you so pissed at me."

"All right, then is that ring on your hand"—and he grabbed at my wrist, but I pulled away just in time—"the ring you found in the dig site with the name of Huang Ying on it?"

"Oh course, it is. If you don't believe me, then ask Wing about it. He's the one that gave me this ring in the first place."

"Then tell me this much. If that's the ring he gave you, the one with Huang Ying's name on it, then why the fuck does it have your name on it?"

Silence.

I was positively dumbstruck. You've gotta be shitting me, man! What medications have you been on?

"Look for yourself," he said, before shoving a finger at me, "and don't bullshit me, man. I'm giving you fair warning, but if you keep this up, all bets are off."

And I could tell that he meant it, too. It was unsettling enough for me to take him seriously and actually look at it. And he was right. There in place of those faded old scratch marks of Huang Ying was my name engraved in the modern kanji script. It was another one of those terrible moments of revelation, like the one I had when Wing told me about Godenzi's death in his cruiser, but that was different compared to this. Unlike the last one that filled me with regret and several burning questions, this came at me with the viciousness and finality of a terrifying answer.

In the space of one look, I knew what Yuanchun Jia's ghost was trying to tell me, I knew what Chen Konichi was trying to tell me, I knew what my instincts were trying to tell me, I knew what Godenzi's corpse was trying to tell me, and I knew what that face in the mirror meant! Haung Ying was not the name of one evil person but the name of Evil itself, the culmination of all evils in one name, one body, one mind and one soul. It picked out my name, it was building up its body from all the missing pieces of multiple victims, and it clearly had a mind of its own, an intention I did not want to know. The only thing it was missing was a soul—my soul!

My hands started shaking, and I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing of any sense came out. It all came out like, "G-g-g-g-get m-m-me out of heeeeere! G-get meeeee out of heeeeere! Get meeee outta heeeeere!"

"Well, well, what do we have here?" Yeung said, crossing his arms and glaring at me. "Looks like your bullshitting days are up, man. Have you ever heard of Chinese water torture, where they strap you to a chair and have dripping water fall on your head for days on end; I heard it's enough to drive people insane, but then you're already there right now, aren't you?"

"You don't understand," and I grabbed at his shirt with both fists, desperate to make him see. "He's out to get me! Huang Ying's out to get me! For God's sake, you've gotta get me out of heeeeere!"

But instead of helping me, Yeung punched me in the stomach, and I collapsed onto the chair groaning. Then he said, "You're lucky I didn't aim for your balls; but on second thought, maybe I will," and he landed a vicious stomp on my crotch, and just like the last time, pain exploded through my crotch and down my thighs like a grenade of molten shrapnel, making me screw my eyes painfully shut and bowling me over in my seat, followed by my screams.

But unlike the last time, nothing got blurry in the least; if anything, everything around me got more vivid, an explosion of details focused so sharp that my eyes hurt. When I looked up, I could literally see the pores in Yeung's face and the blood vessels in his irises. Not only that, but the dial in my head got turned all the way up till my every breath roared through my eardrums and even the faint breeze from the outside filled my head with static, while the saliva in my mouth and nostrils were filled with the sour taste and smell of adrenaline. All this was too surreal, as though life itself was reduced to those five senses, until they canceled each other out. All that was left was sight.

But when I looked at Yeung, the anger and hatred on his face changed into that of sheer terror to the point where I saw the color draining from it, his pupils shrinking to mere bullet points, his jaw slack and open. It was quite a sight to behold, more like a statue than a human being. That's when everything slowed down like slow-motion replay; I saw his slow and jittery hands as if he was choked in fright, reaching from behind his back for his gun, the gun shaking in his hand while he tried to aim. I didn't know what he saw, but it chilled me just to think of it—forget about Yeung's actions. I didn't know if he saw me or someone else, or even saw me changing into someone else.

Maybe even changing into that thing with the face in the mirror.

Then I saw Wing and Chen Konichi running inside. I saw Wing run and tackle his partner to the ground in this slow sludgy reality of my heightened sense of sight. Dislodging the gun from Yeung's hand. Watching it tumble in the air and hit the floor boards, skipping a few times until it comes to a full stop. Wing screaming at his partner pinned to the floor, trying to talk sense into him, while he struggled to keep his arms from flailing about. Yeung screaming back at him till his face was red, struggling to get out of his hold. I watched them in morbid fascination, till Yeung's strength slowly left him, and he became too puckered out to resist. Only then did the clarity of my vision subside, and the four other senses came back to me.

"God, damn it, Wing, listen to me! I'm not the monster, he is! You won't believe what I saw in his eyes! He's the fucking Devil, man! Get off of meeee!"

"Yeung, just shut up, or I'll shut you up for good! I'm not letting you up till you promise me to control yourself; otherwise, I'll have to handcuff you, got that?"

But he didn't make any promises; in fact, Yeung just kept on struggling and swearing at him, and Wing kept on restraining him to the floor. All this idiot horseplay was getting nauseous to the extreme, and on top of that, Wing or Chen Konichi somehow left the front door open to the outside where there was a growing crowd of spectators looking in; most of them were the college rowdies that decided to stick around, and boy, did they get an eye-full of Wing and Yeung acting like idiots. Many of them were laughing their asses off. In other circumstances, this would've been funny as hell, but looking at them now with their scornful looks aimed squarely at me only filled me with despair.

All the while, Chen walked up to me and asked me if I was okay.

"Are you kidding me?" I said, grimacing in rage. "Since I've been here today, I've had my balls kicked twice, I've shat in my pants once, and I won't be surprised if I'm hemorrhaging right now! So don't give me your bullshit of asking me if I'm all right or not; I'm not! End of story!"

Chen stayed silent for awhile, and when I looked up, I saw him looking at me with that pitying look in his eyes, and it only made things worse; it made me think that I was a helpless son-of-a-bitch, and worst part about it was that it's true. Right here, right now, I could barely get off my ass to relieve myself, let alone have enough strength to confront Yeung like a man. Right here, right now, there was nothing I could do to stop those college bastards from looking in through the entrance and cracking off mamma jokes and papa jokes and fuck jokes and racial slurs to my sweat-drenched, white-boy chinaman face.

Chen caught this and said, "Shut the do—"

"No, no, don't shut it; let them look on if they want to. I don't give a flying fuck about that anymore," I said, tears trailing down my weary face when all those bad childhood memories came swarming in like flies to roadkill; hell, in my dejected state, I was roadkill. "I don't give a fuck about anything anymore! Hell, why should I give a fuck? I mean, seriously, what the fuck did I do to deserve all this shit? It's as if the Fates themselves had it all planned out for me, like some god damn conspiracy or something. Godenzi's dead, the guard's dead, every part of my body hurts, and those bastards over there are laughing their asses off about it! It's not enough..."

"Mr. Hung," Chen said.

"…that I had to be the 'white boy' idiot in class; it's not enough to get bullied and threatened; it's not enough to be the outcast; it's not enough to have Dad die after he divorced my Mom! Oh no, they had to throw down their God damn axe over my head with this Blood Shadow character looking for me! God, I wish I was dead; I wish I died in my sleep than woke up to this shit! Hell, if I knew this would happen, I would've ended it with a fucking gun to my head saying the fucking Hail Mary!"

"HUNG!"

"What? Can't you see I'm—?"

Chen cut me off with a bony back hand across my face.

For a moment, I was completely senseless, as if all the thoughts, emotions and words were cut off at the neuron receptors with a scalpel, and I was left in a kind of limbo. I wasn't sure how long I stayed there, but when I got out of it, I noticed everyone was silent. Wing and Yeung had stopped their tussle on the floor and just looked on in shock; even the college kids at the front were silent, some of them with their mouths open in that classic dumbfounded look.

Then I looked at Chen and saw a far different person from the frail old man I'd come to know. His eyes blazed with fury and bore through me like a knife through butter, and it took me a bit longer to regain enough composure to say something.

"Did you just bitch-slap me?"

"You bet your ass I did," he said, his words crushing me into submission, "because that's all I see in front of me. You're 32 years old, at the prime of your life, and you're a God damn disgrace! Never—and I mean never!—have I seen a grown man whine like that in my life!"

"That's because you don't know shit about me!"

"And you sure as hell don't know jack-shit about me, either!" he returned. Then he leaned forward and eyeballed me hard, saying, "Don't give me your whiny bullshit story about your problems! You think you had a hard life? You think fate has placed a curse you? You don't know the meaning of fate, boy! You were never tortured by those damn Japs! You never had to witness them raping your wife, while they beat you to within an inch of your pitiful life! So you either man up, or I'll make you man up, even if I have to rip off your balls and shove 'em down your throat!"

Then he stopped; he'd yelled himself hoarse and was breathing hard, but he still had that unnerving steely gaze of an angry god. Next to that face in the mirror, it was the most unsettling transformation I've ever seen. From old and frail to angry god, I began to understand how he'd managed to survive the hara-kiri torture they put him through; he must be one of the toughest SOB's to walk the earth. He was hard to kill.

But in the midst of my shock and awe, something else hit me like a brick to the face. It was yet another revelation; and looking back on last night, why Yuanchun Jia wanted to see the inn owner from this very inn, the way Chen Konich acted when I told him about her, it all came together.

I said, "You're Lin Xizang."

As though he were in the confession booth, he deflated somewhat, letting out all the anger and frustration in one long sigh, then said, "You're right, I am. And Yuanchun Jia was my wife."

(To be continued...)

A/N: Good God, I can't believe it's been over two months since I last updated! ( O_O ) But you must understand that my concussion took me out for about a little over a week... Believe it or not, between recovery and fits of writer's block, this chapter took me much longer than I anticipated to write; trust me, you have know idea how many times I had to revise this chapter to accomadate the influx of new ideas... It was nuts, awesome but nuts... LOL