Week 9 Story: A Ghost's Revenge

A Ghost's Revenge

Pidgeon (Moises Gonzalez on Unsplash)

Even years later, I still remember that morning when I saw things that no one should ever see.

It was back when I was still taught by my father.  I was in my room, doing arithmetic with the windows open to let in the faint breeze.  It was one of those beautiful mornings in early spring when the weather just started being friendly again, and so I'd rather be playing outside with my friends than studying.  As my mind wandered, I watched our neighbor, Wang, as he carefully watered the flowers in his yard.  After a while, a water-carrier passed by the low stone fence surrounding Wang's yard, and he stopped to chat with our neighbor.

The water-carrier and I accidentally made brief eye-contact, so I quickly glanced down at my math problems again.

When I next looked up, the scene had altered dramatically: the water-carrier and Wang were now standing on the fence, locked in a hand-to-hand fight.  Despite his old age, it seemed like Wang was holding his own against the younger man.  Before I could blink, the water-carrier lost his balance and tipped off the edge of the fence.  His head struck the ground loudly, and he didn't move again.

I had just seen a man die.  I was in shock, and it was clear that Wang was too.  I watched as he slowly dragged the body away before I closed the shutters on my windows with trembling hands.  Later that day, someone found the water-carrier's body, but no one knew how he died except Wang and me, and neither of us were telling.

--

Years passed--after my father died, I became a teacher in my own home, using my old room as a classroom during the day.  Sometimes, I would look out the window and feel guilt for keeping the murder a secret, but it was as if my tongue were glued to the roof of my mouth about it.

One day, on my way home, I passed a man who, at first glance, appeared remarkably similar to the water-carrier from all those years ago.  Doing a double-take, I was sure of it.  The dead man's face was etched in my memory.  It was the water-carrier--or at least, the ghost of him.  Although there were other people on the street, everyone else's eyes passed right over the water-carrier.  I was the only one who could see him, just like I was the only one who had seen his death.

Naturally, I was curious about why the man had returned from the grave, so I followed him.  He melted through the door of Wang's other neighbor's house, the Li's home.  Later, I learned the news: that very hour that I watched the water-carrier enter the Li's home, Mrs. Li gave birth to her son.

I had a suspicion, but it was only a hunch, so I waited and kept a close eye on the young Li boy after that.  But other than keeping a pigeon collection in his room, there was nothing strange about him, as far as I could see.

--

When the boy was about seven years old, I was in my room, grading some arithmetic examination papers from my students, when I heard a sound from outside.  Looking out my window, which was open again because of the nice weather, I spotted old Wang (who was by now the oldest man in town) watering his flowers again.  But the source of the unusual sound was obvious immediately: the Li boy was throwing rocks out of his window.  One of his pigeons had clearly escaped, and he was trying to startle it so that it would fly back to his room.

I watched the scene as if it were on the other side of a long tunnel: the boy threw wildly, and a large rock that missed the pigeon by a long distance.  And it collided with old Wang's head.

The man fell backwards without a sound, hitting the ground hard and never moving again.

I had just seen my second man die.  The boy and I made eye contact from our separate windows, his frightened eyes staring into my own shocked ones.  Simultaneously, we closed our shutter windows with trembling hands.  I couldn't get Wang's frozen expression out of my mind.

Hours later, people discovered Wang's body, but they declared his death an accident because no one saw what happened except for the boy and me.  And neither of us were telling.

But my suspicion was confirmed that day.  The water-carrier's ghost had been reborn--and it had gotten its revenge.

Author's Note:  I ended up keeping my retelling pretty close to the original story.  The Chinese story was told in third-person perspective, but I made the protagonist of the story, the boy named Ma, into the narrator of the story, and gave him more of a detective voice.  Otherwise, aside from adding some extra small details to the story, it was similar to the original.

Bibliography: "Retribution," Chinese Fairy Tales, R. Wilhelm.