It didn't claw after us. There was no way it could have kept up, but there it was, six meters behind me. My throat was so tight that I couldn't make a noise. I turned slowly back to the boys, my fingers still wrapped around the jade amulet, and nodded up the hill. We continued to climb.
A beam of sunlight broke through the trees and fell on us with a wave of warmth. Any pleasure of it was robbed by the wails reverberating through the mountains. Every time I glanced over my shoulder there it was, always six meters behind our staggering party. My skin prickled in gooseflesh despite the warm light.
"What do we do if it follows us home?" Zhao Jie asked through trembling lips. His cheeks quivered on the brink of tears.. He was shivering from head to toe, even while holding the little compass closely. "How has he been climbing on such shaky legs?" I wondered.
Shang Haoming, beside him was as still as a tree trunk except for the hand holding the copper. His hand held the coin out like a shield, moving in a figure eight between him and the tiny red monstrosity.
I took a deep breath and spoke, momentarily caught off guard at the quiver in my own voice. "I've never seen anything like this before, but we can't stay here. Ku Tou said no one hears the cries beyond the mountain. There must be a reason it stays here."
They nodded in agreement. Shang Haoming's eyebrows locked together, "Ku Tou's a wimp. I'm gonna' whoop him next time I catch his scrawny ass."
Casting another glance at the forlorn thing behind us, we wasted no time and beat feet towards the road. I was overwhelmed with relief when all three of us had safely planted our shoes on the gravel path. The feeling vanishedwhen the corpse followed without delay. We moved towards town, increasing our pace as often as we could. Only, when we walked quickly, it would scramble faster. When we slowed, it would slow. The cries that belted from the torn mouth quieted to an incessant pitch in my ears.
By the time we crested a hill and could see Ku Tou's village in the distance, we were all drenched in sweat. The corpse had kept pace. It didn't seem to be trapped in the mountains at all. "Why are you doing this?" I turned and screamed at it, suddenly furious. "What do you want?" I yelled.
"Xiao Yong!" Zhao Jie barked in surprise, his face paled and he raised the compass in defense.
"Why did we come here?" I returned. "I musta' been crazy dragging you guys up here to find a ghost! Now it won't leave us alone!" My eyes stung with hot tears and I felt my teeth clenching hard enough to bring an ache to my jaw.
I turned back to the corpse. "Master Liu said that ghosts don't have a physical being! You're not supposed to be here!" As if embarrassed, the baby took a crawling half step back. I watched its mangled knee scrape against the gravel path, dislodging rocks and dust as it did so.
"But you are here… aren't you?" I asked it. The baby's single eye rolled upwards to meet mine. "How can you move?" I asked. "Are you a zombie?"
I shook my head, now talking just to hear something other than that awful ringing scream. "No. Master Liu said zombies are slow. Plus they're scared of fire and sunlight." I gestured up to the sky. "You wouldn't have come this far if the sun hurt you." I knelt down, careful not to get closer, but to see on its level. "What are you?"
A hand suddenly clapped down on my shoulder. I whirled around and lost my footing in shock. Swirling in the dust of the road, I spun and landed on my butt, now facing the boys. Shang Haoming stood over me with a look of surprise. "What was that for?" I asked, not trying to hide the hurt. My shoulder throbbed where his meaty hand had landed.
"I thought you were enchanted. So I slapped you with the copper." Shang Haoming said simply.
I scowled up at him and withdrew my jade necklace. "I have this one so I won't be enchanted." He frowned slightly. "But thanks."
Zhao Jie was staring at the infant. He called out, his voice unnecessarily loud, "Guys, what should we do? We can't let it follow us forever. Can we…you know, fight it off?"
"Don't!" I said before he could move. "We don't even know what it is or why its here! I don't know what would hurt it. One wrong move and we'd be lunch." I raised a finger to my throat and made the dead gesture I'd seen on movies.
"Then what do we do?" Shang Haoming asked.
I thought for a moment. "We run. I think our first plan is the best, we have to see how far it can follow us."
So we walked. The baby followed suit, scrambling and crawling in the dusty road. It left a slight trail behind its dragging feet. The further we got from the mountain though, the lower its cries became until I could barely hear them.
"It's still following." Zhao Jie tried to whisper.
Shang Haoming pointed ahead of us, "There's the village. We can ask an adult for help." There wasn't any question in his voice. Shang Haoming's shoulders had straightened as we neared the village. He was back in normal territory. Here the rules made sense.
Zhao Jie and I immediately nodded. "Good idea." I said. "An adult will know what to do." Though something was nagging at the back of my head.
We picked up speed as the land flattened out. Looking over my shoulder I saw that the baby was indeed still there, but it'd lagged behind significantly. "I think we're losing it!" I said.
Before they could reply, the implacable cry crested the air. The scream begged us to slow and wait for it. For just a moment I considered it, a strange guilt settling in the base of my skull. "We should…" I started, but the others had broken into a run. I moved to follow.
A sound like a shockwave cut the distance between the baby and us. I felt more than heard, an impossible whooshing sound that pulled back towards the baby. Gasping in surprise, I wheeled around to see what had happened. The infant was still as a statue. It had stopped mid crawl with one fleshless hand outstretched towards us. The black smoke was back, seething and whirling around the empty eye socket. All at once the smoke blossomed out into a cloud around the decaying baby and then vanished. The body was still. Whatever was powering it was now gone.
"Oh..." I managed.
A wave of nausea swept through me. My stomach jolted and I doubled over, suddenly violently ill. Behind me I heard Shang Haoming say, "Dude!" in disgust.
Coughing next to him, I wiped my mouth and came to an unsteady standing position. "I don't know what happened."
Shang Haoming was staring at the unmoving corpse maybe twenty meters behind us. "Did we kill it?" He asked.
I shook my head, biting back a mean comment that appeared in my mind. "No, no, no. I think something came out of it. I think it was the ghost. We have to get out of here." The taste of vomit reasserted itself and I gagged.
We turned to leave and paused at the sight of a man and a woman between the village and us. The man gave an inquisitive yell, but none of us could understand them. Sensing the possibility of salvation, Zhao Jie bolted towards them. The woman saw him and gave a slight jump of surprise. Shang Haoming and I rushed after him. We reached them in with a flood of excuses, explanations, and unheeded apologies.
When we got to the part about the baby the man shook his head like we were joking. "Go look!" I said, pointing over my shoulder. We all watched as he slow jogged towards the body and inspected it. A moment later and the man was revisiting his lunch in the ditch beside it.
He walked back to us wiping his mouth and asked, "You said that thing just followed you?"
We nodded.
He looked back at the body, then to the woman, and finally back to us. When he spoke it was more to the lady than us. "That poor baby has been dead for some time. You can see its bones in some places." He turned to Shang Haoming as if he was our leader. "This is a sick excuse for a joke young man. I don't know where you found that poor lad's body or why you dug it up, but there is no reason on this good earth to do something like that." He stepped in a jabbed a finger at Shang Haoming's chest. The man was only half a head taller than him. "Who are you, where are you from, and where are your parents?"
I stepped in front of Shang Haoming and pushed away the man's finger. "We're not lying!"
He turned to the woman, "Head back into town and get the police. I'll stay here and make sure they don't run off." She nodded and set into a jog before we could say anything.
I started to argue, but the man cut me off. "Not another word. Save it for the authorities. I can't believe such a horrible thing could happen by our nice village." He crossed his arms and made hard eye contact with each of us.
We weren't heroes at all, but body-desecrating liars.
The police showed up and took the body. I overheard one saying that there weren't any missing children so it must've been abandoned. I assume they buried it somewhere. When they shuffled us into the village and began pelting us with questions, I did my best to keep quiet. No one would believe me anyway.
All six of our parents arrived in a village bus. Zhao Laohei must have worked some magic because they came in record time and with a united front. By the time I got to my house I'd been berated and yelled at by each of them.
Following a spanking the moment we got home, I managed to spit out through tears of anger, "I'm not lying!" My father raised his hand and took a step towards me, but my mother stopped him with a hand on his chest.
"Say what you have to Sweet One, but know that you're being punished for-" I cut her off, letting the heat flow with me words.
"Why don't you trust me? Master Liu would trust me!" My voice rose to a hitching scream, "It followed us from the mountains! I saw something come out of it! I'm not lying!" My face was hot with anger and embarrassment, the tears making dirty streaks on either side.
My dad looked at me in disapproving silence. My mother took a deep breath, "Xiao Yong, we're not punishing you because we don't trust you. You're in trouble because you snuck off and went looking for something dangerous! We have to worry about your supernatural eyes." Her voice pitched from compassion to justified certainty. "We asked you to stay away from those things, but you seek them out anyway! Have it your way and we'll drop dead of worry!"
I was listening through my own rolling sobs. Every word she said felt like a pointed knife in my heart, "Mom, I just want to be a great person like Master Liu."
She came back very quickly, "Did you forget what he said? He said," She paused, kneeling down in front of me and putting a hand on my chest. "That you have a Taoist's heart, but you'll never be one. So you should study hard and go to a good college. You should find a good job and live safely. Safely!" She repeated. "Use your head and we won't have to worry about you!"
It was the first time my mom had spoken to me seriously. I was upset, angry, embarrassed, and I didn't know how to reply.
She looked into my eyes with a quiet expectation. I swallowed a sob that was threatening to burst and set my jaw. "I know." It was all I could manage.
I thought about the shadow that seeped out of the dead baby and another bout of supernatural warnings rose to my lips, but I bit them back. I didn't want my parents to worry.
But of course they would. Shang Haoming, Zhao Jie, and I had unbound a ghost and let loose a new power onto the world. Of course they would worry because we were already in deep.