Ghost Stories - Lorna Bradbury [9]
I refilled our glasses and settled back. Somehow, given his hangdog expression, I expected the story to end in a request for a loan, to fund a business proposition or smooth some intractable problem with the Chinese authorities. That was an unworthy thought: it was not bankruptcy or officialdom that had driven him back west. it was something quite different – and far, far stranger.
His troubles began when a Chinese acquaintance called Jia Lei came into his showroom. Jia was a sometime business partner, and an occasional buyer of small pieces. But this time he had something to sell: a ts’ung. This was an ancient object of dark-green jade, a box carved so that a central cylinder was housed in regular, abstract shapes for its entire length.
‘It was exquisite! I had to have it. already, I was calculating what one of my clients would pay for it – one Taiwanese buyer in particular, who had a particular interest in anything with imperial connections. This was surely from the grave of some early emperor or king.
‘All my instincts told me that it was genuine – not least because I knew that Jia had contacts in an archaeological project in henan Province. and the look of the thing – the deep green of the jade – the peculiar geometry of the cuts around the cylindrical chamber – the markings on the lid: its elegance and its sheer alienness. it was an artefact found in the royal graves of two millennia ago, in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Jia’s dig in henan was almost certainly a western Zhou site.
‘I knew not to ask questions. That’s the business, i’m afraid. of course, for Jia to have got the thing off the mainland, he must have had the proper certification. of course …
‘Jia wanted a quick sale. he was anxious to get rid of the thing, he said; it made him uneasy. his certificates must not be as well forged as usual, I thought. So I paid him a relatively modest price and phoned my buyer in Taipei. he was excited – and would be in hong Kong within the week.
‘That night, I sat in my apartment and toasted my luck, the ts’ung beside me on the table. I wondered at its purpose. The Rites of Zhou, one of the Confucian classics, links these objects to the earth – but their purpose remains obscure.
‘I removed the lid and peered into the smooth chamber. it seemed to me not quite empty, and so I upturned it over my coffee table. a little dry earth fell out onto the glass surface, and I felt a strange thrill to have this ancient dust anointing my gleaming apartment.
‘That was the night it started. Before then, I hardly ever remembered dreams. But this one was so vivid, and every detail of it stayed with me. I was gazing down into the ts’ung again, but this time it was huge, a tunnel leading down into the earth. and as I watched, something came crawling up out of the darkness towards me. it moved slowly, deliberately, with a dreadful scraping sound, and I could hear its breath rattling in the jade passage as it hauled itself up.
‘I awoke then. But the dream came back the next night, and the next. My sleep was ruined – I would wake sweating and be unable to sleep again. and so it went on. I shut the ts’ungaway and waited for my buyer. and on the fourth night I drank so heavily that I didn’t dream at all. That was sweet relief.
‘The next night, the last before my buyer arrived, the dream returned. This time, I dreamed a little longer and I saw its face – vile, bloated, slack-mouthed. The face of a dead thing, but with light in its eyes. it reached over the lip of the ts’ung and grasped at me with terrible, tattered hands.
‘I thought I was going mad. You must think I ammad. But somehow, I thought that the nightmares would pass once I got rid of the ts’ung. after all, hadn’t Jia Lei been quick to get rid of it to me? and so I met the buyer and tried to disguise my relief by negotiating hard over the price. The Taiwanese was delighted, and flew back with his treasure, along with Jia Lei’s doubtless spurious certificates. and that, I thought was that.
‘I was wrong. it got worse