The Fake Medium Hooked a Real Ghost novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Name on a Lamp

Ye Ming tests the voice with a secret he can't have known, is handed the brass lamp for every solo sitting by Master Lu, and finds the pier name engraved on it and his client's husband on the list of the dead.

The voice followed Ye Ming onto the last ferry and talked the whole way across the water.

Ye Ming sat at the back rail with the brass lamp wrapped in a scarf on his knees and did not answer it once.

A man with a dead lamp in his lap, talking to the sea, would be on somebody's phone by morning.

"Your left shoe is wet," the voice said. "You stepped in the drain at the villa gate."

Ye Ming looked at the black water.

"You go very still when a client cries," it said. "Three breaths, then you move again. You think nobody sees."

Ye Ming did not look at anyone, and nobody on the ferry looked at him.

He had learned long ago that if he refused to answer, people leaned closer.

It worked on clients, and it worked on landlords, and it appeared to work on the dead.

"You're not going to ask who I am," said the voice, almost amused.

At the Xiamen landing Ye Ming stood, tucked the lamp under his arm and spoke without moving his lips.

"Tomorrow," he said. "At the Hall. If you're real, you can prove it."

The air at his ear went still.

The next morning, in the stairwell above the tea shop on Zhongshan Road, he gave the voice its test.

"Zhuang Bo," he said, very quietly. "Tell me something about him I don't know."

"He keeps an unpaid parking fine under the manual in his glove box," said the voice at once.

"And he sleeps at the Hall two nights a week. His flatmate sold the spare bed."

Ye Ming went up one flight and found Zhuang Bo in the office, counting incense sticks.

"Have you eaten?" Ye Ming asked.

"I had a bun," said Zhuang Bo.

"Where did you sleep last night?"

Zhuang Bo's ears went red, and he dropped three sticks.

"Brother Ye, I was going to say. It's only until the first of the month."

"It's fine," said Ye Ming. "Use the sofa. Don't tell anyone I said so."

He turned and went out again, and he stood on the landing with his hand flat on the cold wall.

"A cold reader would have caught that from the shoes," he said.

"Then you'd have told me what shoes," said the voice. "You didn't know about the bed."

It was a fair point, and Ye Ming disliked it.

"Master Lu wants you," said Zhuang Bo, putting his head out. "He's in a very good mood."

The office of Master Lu, owner of Quiet Water Hall, smelled of sandalwood and expensive tea.

He sat behind a very large desk, a broad man of fifty-six in cream linen.

He had the soft hands and warm voice of a television uncle.

On the wall behind him hung photographs of himself with singers, ministers, and one famously sad actress.

"Little Ming," he said. "The widow left a red envelope for you. Twenty thousand."

He slid it across with two fingers.

"And she's told six friends, and the six friends have told me. You made her cry with relief. That is rare."

"Thank you, Master Lu," said Ye Ming.

"No, no. I should thank you. I've been keeping the lamp on the shelf for years. I think it was waiting for someone."

Lu laid a hand on the brass lamp and smiled up at Ye Ming.

The air at Ye Ming's ear went colder than the sea.

"Smile," the voice said, no louder than breath. "Don't let go of it. And don't look at his hand."

The glass chimney of the lamp had begun to sweat, and a bead of water ran down it and dropped onto the desk.

Master Lu did not notice.

"From today, the lamp goes with you to every private sitting," he said. "Your own sittings, your own fees. It likes you."

"I'll look after it," said Ye Ming.

"Good boy."

The door swung wide behind him.

"Ming-ge," said a cheerful voice. "There you are."

Sang Ruo, the Hall's other medium, came in smelling of expensive cologne, with two paper cups.

He was twenty-six and very pretty, with soft hair and a bright mouth.

A white earpiece sat in his left ear, and he never bothered to hide it from the staff.

The Hall's rising star pushed a cup into Ye Ming's hand and kept hold of his fingers too long.

"I heard about the widow," said Sang Ruo. "You must teach me your trick. You always look like you're listening to someone."

"I look like that because I am," said Ye Ming.

He took his hand back, politely and completely, and drank the coffee.

Sang Ruo laughed, delighted by the refusal, and looked at him a second longer than a colleague should.

Behind Ye Ming's collar the cold deepened, until his skin tightened.

"Sit down," Master Lu told them both. "I have a very rich guest on Friday."

Ye Ming made it to the end of the meeting without a single tremor.

That night he set the lamp on his desk in the fourth-floor room in Shapowei and turned it slowly under the light.

Around the base ran a line of small engraved characters, worn almost smooth.

HAI'AN PIER NO. 2 GANGWAY.

He typed the words into his phone, and the news came up in a column.

A gangway bridge had collapsed eight years ago on the night of the autumn spring tide, just as the last ferry was boarding.

Nine people died.

He scrolled down the list of names, past a student, a ticket clerk and a pier inspector, and stopped on the fourth.

A ferry mechanic, sixty-six.

The widow's husband had died on that pier, and the voice in his ear had known which drawer.

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