The Fake Medium Hooked a Real Ghost novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Third Drawer
Ye Ming lies to a grieving widow in a rented villa, a dry voice at his ear gives him the true detail, he repeats it and is right, and the voice says it has waited eight years for someone to listen.
Ye Ming lowered his voice until the widow had to lean in to hear it.
"He is standing by the window, Auntie," he said. "He looks happy."
It was the same sentence he gave every widow, and it worked on every one of them.
The widow pressed a folded handkerchief to her mouth and looked at the window.
The rented parlor on Gulangyu had one lamp lit, a brass lamp on a low table, with a candle burning in its glass chimney.
Ye Ming had read her in the first two minutes at the door.
She wore her wedding ring on the wrong hand.
Her new bag had never been used.
She looked at the empty chair beside her whenever she thought nobody saw.
That was all a good reading needed.
Ye Ming watched people, and then he gave them back what they were afraid to ask for.
He did not believe it was wrong.
He believed it was a service.
He was twenty-eight, with a small dark mole at the corner of his mouth.
Clients forgot their questions while they looked at him.
He had never believed in ghosts.
He believed in rent, in his sister's tuition, and in the three thousand yuan a sitting that paid for both.
"Does he say anything?" the widow whispered. "Anything about me?"
Ye Ming opened his mouth to tell her that her husband was proud of her.
"He's not there," said a man's voice at his left ear.
It was low and dry and very close.
Cold air touched the side of Ye Ming's throat, and he did not move.
His face stayed calm and pale and unreadable, the face the Hall paid him for.
Across the room Zhuang Bo, the Hall's incense boy and his one friend there, sat with his hands folded on the incense timer, where Ye Ming could see all ten fingers.
Nobody wore an earpiece, and there was nobody else in the parlor.
"He's in the third drawer," the voice went on, "under the tax papers. And he wants her to stop buying his brand of tea."
Ye Ming thought about the lie he had been about to tell.
He thought that a voice in his ear was a problem for later.
He also thought that the widow's eyes were on his mouth, and that she had already come a long way to hear something true.
So he said it.
"Auntie, I was wrong," he said. "He isn't by the window."
Her handkerchief stopped moving.
"He's in the third drawer of a desk," said Ye Ming. "Under the tax papers."
The widow stared at him.
"Does that mean something to you?" he asked.
"The desk is in my flat," she said slowly. "Third drawer. I always thought it was locked."
The widow was already fumbling her phone out of the new bag.
She called her daughter and put her on speaker.
"Go to your father's desk," said the widow. "The third drawer. Look under the tax papers."
They listened to footsteps, and a drawer sticking, and then sliding open.
The room was very quiet.
The candle in the brass lamp burned straight and still.
"Mama, it was never locked," said the daughter's small voice. "It only sticks. There's an envelope. It says Wife on it."
"Read it," said the widow.
Paper tore.
"It says, Wife, stop buying that brand of tea. It tastes of soap."
"Buy the cliff tea you like and drink it hot," the daughter read on. "I'm sorry I never said so."
Nobody spoke.
Then the widow laughed, and the laugh broke in the middle and turned into crying.
She cried openly, with her hands on her knees and her shoulders loose.
It was the crying of someone who had put down a weight, and Ye Ming had seen it many times and never once caused it.
He passed her a clean handkerchief from his sleeve, and she held on to his wrist for a moment with both hands.
"Teacher Ye," she said, "he used to hide his apologies. He hid them everywhere. Thank you."
"You're welcome, Auntie," said Ye Ming.
His voice stayed level, but his wrist was shaking inside her hands.
Zhuang Bo stood and quietly went to see her out, and Ye Ming sat alone with the lamp.
The villa had gone damp and still.
He let himself breathe, and the breath fogged in the air in front of his mouth.
Autumn in Xiamen was warm, and the parlor had been warm all evening.
"Thank you," said the voice.
It was at his throat now, soft and near, with cold fingers of air along his collar.
"Do that again," it said. "I have been waiting eight years for someone to listen."
The flame in the brass lamp bent toward Ye Ming and held there, and did not move back.
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