Chapter 10: Ghost Butcher

Listening to that old fox’s glib tone, Qi Ran felt a headache coming on. She fumbled blindly into the car and replied in the Pingjiang dialect, “That’s real interesting. If my old man really had the ability you say he does, could he have stomached being a useless waste for over a decade, and even let himself get thrown in the slammer for all those years?”

As she spoke, she quietly reached down and felt the texture of the mat beneath her. The rough, coarse surface was a stark sensation. The thin leather mat provided no softness at all; pressing down slightly revealed the hard surface underneath. When the man had closed the door, there was the clear sound of a sliding car door. She could perfectly picture what kind of vehicle this was—a cheap, unremarkable little minivan used for hauling goods, which fit the stereotypical image of a kidnapper perfectly.

With her hands bound behind her, she stretched her fingertips as far as they could go, searching. Suddenly, she felt a distinct, hard texture. She rubbed the granules between her fingers; they felt like tiny, scattered grains of sand.

Was their destination a construction site currently in progress? Was this van used for hauling materials at the site? Qi Ran pondered this. Perhaps she could leave some clue for the police to find her.

“Heh, that’s where it gets even more interesting,” she heard Li Siwen, sitting in the driver’s seat, chuckle. “Zhique, take off Miss Qi’s hood. Show her the video.”

Qi Ran’s heart went cold. Instinctively, she turned towards her side, and sure enough, she heard a girl’s voice, sounding rather regretful. “Uncle Li, you should have waited a bit to speak. I wanted to see what other tricks the Qi family’s Eldest Miss could pull off while sealed by the Shroud.”

Qi Ran’s hood was removed, and her eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, immediately squinted shut. The girl sitting next to her looked to be around her age, dressed in a slightly loose camel-colored lapel shirt and cargo pants, with a black-and-white baseball cap. On her left arm, the skin visible from the shirt cuff was covered in an intricate tattoo, her skin pale to the point of being almost translucent. The tattoo extended all the way down to her slender index and middle fingers, looking like two snakes coiled around her slim digits. Since most of it was hidden under the long sleeve, Qi Ran couldn’t guess the full design.

The girl noticed Qi Ran’s gaze and seemed to smile. Qi Ran then realized the girl’s features were actually quite delicate. Her soft black hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, the kind of girl who’d be the unattainable ideal of everyone’s youth in a campus romance novel. But the silver glint flashing on her lower lip quickly shattered that stereotype—it was a lip piercing. It was clear she really loved piercings; among her silky hair, her right ear alone sported no less than six ear studs, a sight that caused a sympathetic phantom pain just to look at.

What an odd person, Qi Ran thought. Her clothing style couldn’t be more conservative; she wore no makeup, looking exactly like a student. Yet both the tattoo and the piercings showed she was anything but conventional. The mix created a bizarre sense of dissonance.

The girl called Zhique still held the terrifying, deeply black stun baton in her hand. Even though it wasn’t activated, its deterrent effect kept Qi Ran sitting perfectly still. Zhique spoke, also in the familiar Pingjiang dialect. “Let’s get the unpleasantness out of the way first, Eldest Miss Qi. I’m not a monster like you lot; I’m just a cowardly ordinary person. So, you’d best cooperate. What if my timid little heart gets spooked by you, and I accidentally turn this thing on and accidentally press it against you? How awkward would that be? Then I’d have to be the one changing your pants. So why don’t we agree upfront to both cooperate? Everyone’s happy, right?”

Any slight goodwill Qi Ran had just begun to feel for her vanished instantly, replaced by a sense of familiarity. That hooligan-laced tone always reminded her of those troublemakers who hung around school gates, acting like they owned the street.

“What video?” Qi Ran asked, trying to steer the conversation back to what the driver had mentioned earlier.

“Let me find it,” the girl said, rummaging through her cargo pants pockets. She pulled out a cell phone and a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”

Qi Ran instinctively frowned. “I don’t smoke.”

Because of Qi Jianguo, she harbored a near-visceral hatred for smoking.

“Put the cigarettes away, Jiang Zhique. If you absolutely can’t stand it, get out of my car and go huff some exhaust fumes,” the middle-aged driver said flatly. “I know what you got up to back there; people told me. I just didn’t bother to deal with you. But since you’re out, you follow my rules in this car.”

The girl seemed very afraid of the middle-aged driver. She just clicked her tongue, offered no rebuttal, and obediently put the cigarettes away. She unlocked her phone and held it out for Qi Ran. “Watch. It’s not long, just a few minutes.”

Qi Ran looked at the phone; the video had already started playing.

It began with an unfamiliar man’s face appearing in front of the camera. The angle was shaky, as if someone was holding the camera and filming him. The stranger wore a red outdoor jacket, had a stubbly beard, and was fully equipped with a cold-weather hat and scarf, along with many strange objects Qi Ran couldn’t name. He looked somewhat like a member of a scientific expedition team. The background was a concrete room, its walls covered in cobwebs and dust. Large patches of plaster had peeled off, revealing the shocking brickwork beneath.

The person filming seemed very nervous; their hands were shaking, severely affecting the viewing experience.

Qi Ran noticed there seemed to be other people in the background—two men and a woman, all similarly fully geared up. They were huddled in the corner of the room on a broken bed that was nothing more than wooden planks. The woman leaned against the wall, fast asleep. The two men sat on the edge of the bed, smoking with blank expressions, their movements mechanical.

She quickly interpreted the expression of the man being filmed. It was the numb look of someone who had already experienced despair, a tiredness that had crawled all over that weathered face. He looked towards the cameraperson, seemingly confirming everything was recording normally, then spoke in a low, somber voice:

“Today’s log. December 21st, 2009. The Coiled Incense is completely broken. Although Tang Ci taught me how to use this thing, I’m still a layman. Can’t figure the damn thing out.” He coughed. “Tang Ci once advised me not to go any deeper. I didn’t listen to him. Now he’s dead. I got him killed. But the Tang Family can’t hold me responsible either, because I’m about to die too. We’re all going to die.”

The people in the background didn’t move or speak, seeming to silently agree with his statement. The camera’s viewfinder seemed to shake even more.

“This place is more complicated than we ever imagined. That’s why I’m leaving this video. At least we’ll have died for a reason.” He gave a bitter smile. “I don’t know if this video will ever be received… It doesn’t matter. I’ll just state our findings directly. First, we did indeed find the corpses of the Tao Family Members here. They didn’t just lie; they turned this place into a Dead Zone. A Dead Zone in the literal sense.”

He asked one of the men sitting by the bed for a cigarette, took a deep drag, and then slowly continued, “This village we’re in, it must be very deep in the mountains. All along the way, there were wild graves everywhere. The village itself isn’t peaceful either. I’ve never seen a Ghost Wall so strange…”

Scr-r-ape. Scr-r-ape.

A low, grating sound suddenly came from outside, beyond the concrete room’s walls. It sounded like a blade being sharpened against a whetstone, harsh and jarring. This sound seemed to be the final straw that broke the man before her. Even his forced smile crumbled. “Aside from the Ghost Wall, there’s another unrecorded aberration here. I don’t know how to describe it. For now, let’s call it the… Ghost Butcher. Tang Ci died by its hand. It’s about two meters tall, its flesh all flayed open, as if it had been subjected to death by a thousand cuts. In its hand, it carries a Butcher’s Knife, nearly a meter and a half long. It looks like a giant version of the meat cleavers you see in wet markets.”

He made a gesture. The cameraperson seemed to understand and went to the window, aiming the camera towards the direction of the sharpening sound.

There was nothing there. Just weeds at the base of the wall.

The camera angle returned to the man. He continued, “Before it prepares to kill, it only exists as a sound. As for its killing pattern… from what we can tell so far, we only know you can’t leave the sight of others. Tang Ci wasn’t far from us, only a dozen or so steps away. But none of us were looking at him, because he was… relieving himself. When we heard his scream, it was already too late to stop the Ghost Butcher.”

“This is the first rule. Whether sleeping or… excreting, you must always ensure someone is watching you.”