99 The Island of Lost Souls (2/2)
”Give her some water,” she told Gu Sheng who, shoulders still racked with the giggles, handed Kari his bottle of water. Kari drank from it still dazed with shock.
”Okay, everybody's fine. Everybody has their drink? Okay, now begin talking,” she again looked at Hank.
”What about?” he asked, looking at her as if she was a monster.
”Do you want me to whack your head so you'll remember?” An Ning suggested.
”You're a very strange woman, do you know that?”
”Yes, I've been told that and worse. You people are obviously not from around here. You came from the same world and time where Nian Zhen and I came from. So, I guess my question is, how did that happen and why are you here with him?”
There was silence. It was not fear of An Ning this time or anxiety about Nian Zhen.It was more of the question shocking them after hearing it for the first time. As if its full impact hadn't bothered them before but now that somebody finally asked and the question was out there hanging on the air, they suddenly had no idea how to answer it.
”I..I was the first to meet, Nian Zhen,” Terri's voice was tentative and his eyes when they met An Ning's were uncertain. ”Did...did you know what happened to him?”
”You mean about his brother ejecting his soul from his body?” An Ning asked. ”Wait, you met him in his spirit form? That would mean...”
”Yes, I was a wandering soul just like him. We all are. Or were,” Terri corrected. ”In my case, I died in an accident just a few months after my wedding.I...I opened my eyes in the hospital and saw my wife crying over my body. I tried to tell her I was still alive but she...she couldn't hear me.It was then I realized that I had died.”
Terri was silent, staring inwardly at a distant image they couldn't see but could only imagine.
”They buried my body and I thought....I waited, you see. I thought something would happen. Somebody would get me, judge me then put me in either heaven or hell but nobody did. Nobody even thought to look for me. I waited and waited until years passed.I saw my wife marry one of my friends. Have his kids, turn old and die.I thought the reason I was still there was because I was waiting for her. If she dies then my wait was over. We would be together and I'll leave with her and go somewhere.”
The voice ended in a bitter sob.
”She didn't even know I was there.She didn't even see me. She took her last breath and that was it. I was alone as I had always been. I didn't want to stay there anymore. My wife was dead and I couldn't...I left and wandered around until one day when I was at the beach and I heard a voice.I saw a young man.He was lying on the sand, clutching at his stomach and crying. I thought something bad had happened. He had been attacked or something and was now lying there dying. I wanted to help but what could I do? I was a spirit.I couldn't influence the living even if I wanted to.”
Terri had been looking at An Ning with a sad smile that slowly unfolded into a genuine grin.
”And then...and then while I was standing there looking at him he spoke.At me. He asked me who I was and what I was doing there.I...I just stared at him stunned. I haven't spoken in years. Not once even when I spent all those years around my wife. What's the use? She couldn't hear me anyway.But there was this young man...he spoke to me...he can see me. I think he must have thought I was an idiot because I just broke down crying in front of him.”
Terri laughed, the memory making him tear up.
”It was...it was the first time in over fifty years that I felt I was still part of the world...part of something. I've been abandoned by god, abandoned by fate, even abandoned by the devil.And here was this young man, the first human contact I had in years.We started talking and he told me he was just like me, a wandering spirit forgotten by time.”
”He told you about his brother?” An Ning asked.
”He told me that unlike me, however, he didn't die a natural death but that his brother killed him,” Terri said. ”His brother died and stole his body, ejecting his soul until he was left to wander as a lost spirit. Maybe because I've lived the rest of my death as a living soul, I believed what he said. There were still some mysteries in the world that even science hadn't discovered or if it has had no explanation for. Why not possession and soul ejection? We've been told by the highest authority that the soul is finite. It has a once destination once the physical body rots or dies.But it was different with both Nian Zhe and me. What made us different? Were we cursed? Why were we abandoned just like that?”
”And did you find the answer?” An Ning asked.
Terri looked over at Hank, who smiled bitterly.
”Of course not. Terri here even thought it had something to do with the weight of the sins he committed when he was still alive.The only problem is that besides masturbating excessively when he was a kid, he was a good citizen to his country, a good son to his parents, a good colleague to his co-workers, and a good husband to his wife.If we use excessive masturbation as equivalent to and more serious than murder then what does it mean if you anger your neighbor by pissing in his yard?”
”Or maybe it was another way around?” An Ning suggested. ”That he didn't sin enough so his boring life wasn't too interesting to be bothered with. The angels who were monitoring him forgot about him while they were busy watching the more sinful and interesting lives led by drug-addicted actors, dirty politicians, or even serial killers.”
Her listeners gaped at her then broke into hilarious laughter.
”Why didn't I think of that?” Sumo, who looked like what his name implied: broad, fat and huge, said while wiping his streaming eyes. ”We should have committed a murder or two when we were still alive so fate and the world would remember us. As it is, we died forgotten because we were too nice to be noticed by either god or the devil himself.”
”And what were you when you were still alive?” An Ning asked him.
”Me?” Sumo asked, smiling a little. ”I lived in Japan, worked in Japan and died in America during a wrestling bout. Heart attack after winning the world title. I couldn't understand why my soul stayed in America though.My parents took my body and I thought I'd be going with them but when I tried to board the airplane, I was suck back to the same arena I died in. And I couldn't even understand English. I forgot how to speak when I met Nian Zhen. But by then, I was fluent in the English language so understood what he was saying.”
”And what did he say?”
”That there were others like me out there. Wandering souls who, for no particular reason, were abandoned by time and god.”
”Have you ever watched that popular Christmas movie about Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer?” Hank asked An Ning.
”I've seen it.Why?”
”We were like those broken toys in the Island of Toys. We were left on an island where our maker abandoned us for no particular reason other than he forgot about us. You may have been right in saying we led very boring lives so were forgotten because of it, but we stayed alone in that island for years, wondering if we were ever going to be rescued or not.”
”And Nian Zhen was that rescuer you were waiting for?”
”He certainly fit the description,” Gray, a young man who looked like a nerdy version of Rain, said.”Unlike us, he was angry, you see. Angry because he said he committed a big sin against his wife and died before he had the chance to correct it.”
”I think he was more angry in the manner in which he 'died' than the idea of dying a natural death,” Hank said. ”And the fact that it involved his brother upset him more than anything else.”
”That part of it still confuses me though,” An Ning said. ”How could something as strange as that happen? And if his brother died where did his soul go?”
”Where most souls end up. Heaven or hell,” Hank said.
”So, where did you meet, Nian Zhen?” An Ning asked him. ”In the funeral of your wife or your mother?”
Hank grinned.
”Surrounded by bodies of my victims,” he said, smiling at An Ning.
”What?”
”I was that serial killer you were talking about earlier. I met Nian Zhen when my last victim was about to take her last breath.I was walking around examining the other corpses when he showed up. Scared the hell out of me.I thought he was a ghost.But he was worse than that. Much, much worse. He was what you might call my conscience.