Candle in the Attic Window(82)

“You’re … you’re … a woman!” Bao stutters, backing away from her.

Lien won’t look at him. She clutches the tunic closed.

“I thought you knew. Xiong figured it out.”

Bao looks down to see the foreman beside him, on the ground, so bruised and battered that his face is barely recognizable. One of his arms hangs limp from the socket, twisted underneath his torso at an unnatural angle.

“What happened?” Bao asks, looking at her accusingly.

“You really think I could do that? To Xiong?” she asks.

Bao looks at the man on the ground – who groans softly and gurgles some blood onto the cave floor – and shakes his head.

“I don’t know. You’re ... you’re ....”

“Female, but not a demon – not strong enough to do that.” Lien gestures to the crumpled body of the Foreman. Tears rise to her eyes as she says, “After all this time together, you really think I’m capable of that?”

Bao starts to say something in retort, but the other workers come rushing out of the tent just then, pulling on their boots, stalling his words. The men rush over to the Foreman, taking in the scene with expressions of shock and horror, and then glance at Lien. The tableau of her sitting helpless on her cot tells them a story. She holds her shirt closed with shaking hands, her face averted in shame.

The men all look to Bao, their eyes seeking. Lien knows that Bao holds her future in his rough brown hands; with a word, he can condemn her or save her. Finally, without looking at her again, he sighs and says, “Help me,” and lifts the Foreman’s ankles.

“What are you doing?” Lien demands as the workers gather up Storbridge and begin shuffling toward the cave entrance.

“If he lives, you’ll never be safe again, Li – if that is your name,” Bao says.

When the men return from dumping Storbridge’s body in the snow, the others go to their cots in the tent and Bao feeds the fire. He makes sure Fa has slept through the adventure, and then he returns to sit beside Lien, in a meditative pose, saying nothing.

“Lien,” she says softly.

He looks at her, his eyes searching her face for the truth.

“My real name is ‘Lien’,” she repeats. “My parents called me ‘Li’ and pretended I was a boy, because I was their only child. I left to get away from them, but I don’t know how to be a woman, so I stayed Li even when I came over the ocean.”

“Did you kill Xiong?” Bao asks.

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know,” she insists and begins sobbing uncontrollably. Her careful house of lies has been demolished. Without her secrets, she feels exposed and afraid. And now her closest friend, the man she thinks she might love, can’t trust her and thinks she committed murder. “He attacked me,” she tries to explain.

To her surprise, Bao places a hand on her knee and pats it comfortingly. “I believe you. But if you didn’t kill him, who did?”

“He’s dead?” she asks.

Bao nods.

“His neck was broken. He died while we carried him outside. Unless you truly are a demon, you don’t have the strength to kill a man like that. So, I believe you, because even if you aren’t the man you claimed to be, I can’t believe that you’re a demon.”

Lien hugs him in relief, tears flowing even more freely now. “I don’t know … what happened … the fire died ...,” she says, through sobbing hiccoughs.

Bao lets her cling to him. “Did you see what happened?”

She shakes her head against his chest.

“The white men say this place is haunted.”

Lien looks up at him.

“They do?”

“A lot of the white men didn’t want to come here. About twenty years ago, some settlers moving west were trapped in this valley during the winter. They all died. The survivors … they ate their dead. They’re cursed people, now, and Donner Valley is cursed by their memory.”

Lien shudders, remembering the women and children huddled around the tiny fire. Were these the victims of the hungry, wives and children devoured by their fathers and husbands?

“How horrible,” she whispers, her dreams taking on sudden dark import.

Bao holds her close and strokes her hair.

“But not all ghosts are evil,” he says, staring out into the dark of the cavern, unafraid. “Some are just waiting.”




The sun rises to find the group of Chinese rail workers already on foot, making their way slowly up the ravine to the mountain. The small group of eight men takes turns carrying the two invalids, both of them fortunately small and hardly burdensome. In the evening, they make camp on a rocky promontory, overlooking the valley. One of them, the smallest, who has a broken leg, limps out of the tent at sunset to watch the glorious colours retreating in the sky as night settles over the ravine.

The others now know Lien’s secret, but they’ve sworn to keep it as best they can. She knows it won’t remain secret for much longer – if Shen finds out, word will be all over camp faster than a swallow flies. As she watches the sun set, she thinks with dread of returning to the camp and lying about the fate of Storbridge. But what is the truth? What difference does it make whether he fell from a cliff wall or was pummeled to death by ghostly hands?