The Water Ghost

Green Snail Bend sits at the lowest reach of the White Water River. There the current seems seized by the throat and wrung three times, bending back on itself; where it turns, a pot-shaped trough sinks in the river's heart, never baring bottom even in drought, black and sullen, smelling of rotted duckweed root and rust. Reeds half a man's height crowd the bank, and when the wind passes they whisper, like someone rustling through them.

Old Fu has fished this bend for forty years. His sampan is painted seven times with tung oil; at the bow hangs a storm-lantern with a chipped glass shade, its wick soaked in castor oil, burning a dim yellow that reaches no further than three lengths of rope and turns the near water milky, like a fogged old mirror—but it is no mirror, it is water, and water hides anything.

Every summer the bend turns wicked. Someone always slips in the shallows and comes up with two blue-black handprints on the ankle, five fingers clear as pressed clay—as if something below would not let go. The first was Erzai the cowherd: waist-deep gathering snails, he dropped straight down; pulled up, he was water-logged, a ring of bruise at the ankle with river mud still in the prints. His mother wailed and went to burn paper at the bank; Fu stopped her. "Don't. Burn it and it thinks someone's volunteered, and next year it'll pull another."

Everyone in the bend knew who "it" was, only no one said it. Under Green Snail Bend lay a water ghost—a peddler long ago, overturned into the back-eddy with his whole load, never surfacing. By old reckoning a water ghost escapes only by dragging a living soul down as a substitute, that it might be reborn. Fu had nearly been that substitute himself. Forty years before, on his first time out, his foot gave way and it was that very peddler—still living then—who hauled him ashore. Later the peddler, hurrying a night road by the short cut, caved in the riverbank and went under with his load, never to rise.

After that the bend claimed an ankle-print every year. Fu kept count: Dachun's girl the year before, One-Eye Li the ferryman last year. This dog-day summer, half a month of rain had swollen the river yellow and the back-eddy spun like an eye that would not close.

The day it happened, Fu's granddaughter Bianzi, seven, came along with his supper. She leaned over the stern rail watching fish; Fu had just cast his net when behind him came a splash—Bianzi had toppled in, not even a cry.

Fu dove in without shedding his clothes. The cold below was like countless hands laid on him; he opened his eyes and saw Bianzi standing upright on the riverbed, a black shape at her feet clutching her ankle and pulling down. The shape had no face, only a pair of cadaverous hands, river mud packed under the nails, and about the wrist a length of rotted hemp rope—the peddler's load-rope.

Fu clasped Bianzi and with his other hand pried at the shape's fingers. The instant he touched them a voice came at his ear, water-swollen and muffled: "Old brother, let go. I've stood in for you forty years; it's time someone stood in for me."

Fu opened his eyes on the riverbed, bubbles stringing upward. "I know who you are. You're He Shuan of Ningyuan, a peddler of needles and thread, caught in rain, took the short cut by night, caved in the bank. Forty years ago it was you who pulled me from this water."

The hands loosened a little.

Fu pushed Bianzi toward the surface and sank himself deeper, pressing against the black shape like against a frozen acquaintance. "He Shuan, look close—this is my granddaughter. If you must pull, pull me. I'm seventy; this life was owed to you long since. Pull me and you can go. I won't blame you."

The shape went still. The blue prints on the riverbed released, one by one, and Bianzi was borne up by Fu. He lingered below a moment longer and heard He Shuan's voice, light as a fleck of froth: "Old brother, had you not pulled me up then, you'd have gone under too. This time… I won't pull."

When Fu surfaced, Bianzi lay on the planks retching, sobbing breathless. He wrung out his jacket, brightened the lantern, and toward the heart of the bend cried out: "He Shuan—I ferry you across!"

At the words the water turned with a rush, as if something had stood up from below and lain back down. The lantern's light leapt outward and lit the whole back-eddy; the bottom was clean, nothing there.

After that the bend pulled no one. Fu still rows each night, the lantern on the water. Sometimes just before dawn he sees a blurred figure standing in the reeds across the way, a load-pole on its shoulder, nodding to him gently before walking into the mist. He does not follow, only brightens the light.

Some days later the strange thing settled on a lamp. Fu always put out the lantern with his own hand at the close of rowing; yet once he clearly remembered it burning, turned, and found only a wisp of smoke in the shade, the wick cold—as if someone had put it out for him. Folk on the bank said that on those nights a light smaller than any fisher's fire would drift up from the bend's surface to the river's heart and go out, as if someone carried a lantern to light his own way home. Since the drowning Bianzi sleeps with her ankles tucked under the quilt; asked what she fears, she only shakes her head, saying she dreams of an uncle with white hands who crouches at the foot of the bed, watches her a while, tucks the kicked-off corner back, and leaves.

The Midnight Record: water has a bottom, debt has a head. He who drags is in turn dragged; yet he who ferries may ferry a ghost across as well. The lamp burned all night, and Fu said he heard someone on the far bank put out his wick for him, gently, as if afraid to startle anyone.