Chapter 18

十八

Marcoba and I met in tacit silence at the front of the cafeteria. Today he was dressed in a full dinosaur costume, a T-Rex.

Chinese teachers gazed at him, with soft warm eyes, lips stretched into smiles, while they stared at me, curiously, some condescendingly. When we sat down to the laowai corner, began our breakfast, a shifty-eyed auntie, sitting nearby, motioned, laughed to her brethren, and mimicked me eating, simultaneously perplexed and amazed that I could use chopsticks.

Terrorist Reggie or Reggie The Terrorist, or simply “The Terrorist,” was joining us. Terrorist Reggie had coined his own moniker, after his experiences with racism in the States, “taking the words back,” he’d said. Terrorist Reggie, the 45ish Arab, the math teacher, the birdman with the big bald head and big hook nose and bulging eyes that almost leapt out of his head.

Buddha-bellied and bald and with long eyelashes and man tits, his semi-feminine features made the Terrorist look sort of like a pregnant woman with cancer.

The Terrorist always brought his own fork and knife to the cafeteria. Something about hygiene, he’d mumbled.

The Terrorist, carrying his metal tray of fruit and bread, hard-boiled eggs, walked over to meet us, tracing his footsteps on the floor as if he were walking a tightrope. He didn’t look so hot. His face was pale as milk.

He sat down to the foreigner table, next to a pair of quiet, clean-cut young teachers. Chunky, and with androgynous features and haircuts, they looked like cult members. The weird Utah twosome had invited everyone to their apartment for cookies and Bible study...

The Terrorist nodded his hellos and then spoke in a soft, raspy voice, “Bro, I was having crazy dreams last night. I was trapped in a fire, in my classroom, and I couldn’t get out. All my students...

“They were in prison uniforms, and the classroom was a factory. The students were burning, they were screaming and crying and whimpering. It was the most realistic dream I’d ever had,” he paused, drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and went on, “I woke up screaming, drenched in sweat.”

Chuck the Canuck, the walrus, was there, and he also looked of shit. He’d been listening intently, and then spoke up, which was rare for him. He was usually pretty taciturn, morose. His Toronto accent colored his vowels and gave his words punching power.

“I too had a nightmare. A satanic one. I was in a plane, and after liftoff, it began to descend, fast, plunging to the ground. Everyone on the plane was shrieking and bracing for impact. I looked out the window and saw the ground was becoming bigger and bigger. Then there was a crazed man, eh, cursing in Cantonese, running and splashing petrol down the aisle of the plane, flames following behind him. The cabin was filling with smoke. Then I awoke. I was also dripping sweat like I’d just stepped out of a sauna.”

The pair looked to me, in anticipation of a similar nightmare, a tale of fire, death.

But I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to share my, uh, encounter with the ghost ... Which I wasn’t sure was a dream, hallucination, paranormal, or simply abnormal.

I did, however, horripilate, and then felt like ice water had been thrown at me when I suddenly recalled what I’d just read on the spreadsheet.

“Reg, you know why they closed the prison?” I asked. He just stared blankly at me, shrugged his shoulders.

“Because part of it was used as a factory, one part for producing Christmas lights, the other for making lighters. The side with the lighters caught fire, burned alive all the convicts in there; 50 people, at least, died...”

Reg grew a shade paler, listening to this, and appeared to lose his appetite, stopped picking at the fruit on his tray.

“Chuck,” I said, shifting in my chair to face him, “there was an incident in Guangzhou, years ago, where a guy, a disgruntled airline worker, from here in Henan, boarded a plane, with a canister of gas, set fire to the aisle, shortly after takeoff, and the plane crashed, everyone on board died. He’d told his brother of his plans, over the phone, the night before, from a payphone outside a restaurant.

“Though his brother said he didn’t believe it, thought it was just drunken ramblings. Still, the police charged him in the case, made an example of him for not telling, probably also to quell public anger, and, anyhow, he was put to death here...

“You guys must be reading into the history of this place as much as me,” I said, and slugged down a big gulp of red-hot SARS coffee. The coffee was strong, bitter, just as one would expect of something that came from an animal’s ass.

Expecting both to fill me in on their research, the pair sat with wandering, hazy eyes, and parted lips. An uneasy silence ensued.

The Terrorist shook his head, said meekly, “No, I haven’t been reading about it.”

“Me neither,” said Chuck, “and since I’ve been here, I’ve had night terrors, but none as vivid as last night.”

Marcoba slammed his fist down on the table, rattling it, and cried out, “It’s haunted, this place. The ghosts are speaking to us. Communicating through sleep. We’re on their beds, we’re walking in their graveyard. We’re shitting over their graves, our septic tanks buried in their cemetery ... And their methods, the methods the ghosts are using to communicate, it’s as if they wish to negotiate with guns pointed at our heads...”

His tone then softened, his eyes squinted, and his voice lowered to a whisper. Steam purled up from his collar.

“I’m going to sacrifice two live chickens tonight, one for you each, I’ll say your names in my spell. Let me know if you want the blood. I’ve been drinking chicken blood mixed with rum. I’ve not had a haunting in my apartment yet,” he said, clutching and kissing the silver crucifix that hung from his neck, before hurrying off, walking hastily out of the cafeteria.

Tony passed by him, and the two nodded hellos. As Tony approached, the cult members quickly excused themselves and left. They’d always avoided Tony, for whatever reason.

Tony, flashing a toothy, sinister grin, was in a far better mood than us, and he duckwalked, sat down to our table, cupping a hot coffee in his hands, humming the melody to Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days.”

Tony wasn’t much of a breakfast eater.

Tony asked, “What’s good, gentlemen? What’s the current topic of conversation?”

“Dreams...” replied The Terrorist, warily.

Tony’s posture slackened. He sipped his coffee and muttered, “Dreams, hmmm,” and fell silent, scratching his head, glancing around the room furtively. A few flakes of dandruff fell softly from his scalp, like tiny snowflakes.

“Did you have any disturbing dreams last night?” I asked, covering my mouth while I chewed on an apple slice.

“Well, actually, I did,” he said, speaking in a low, scratchy voice, “I had a wacky, wild one ... I was in the Cultural Revolution and was wearing a dunce cap and my students had used blinking Christmas lights to tie me to the podium in the front of the classroom. They were dancing circles around me, were throwing fruit and stationery at me, yelling stuff like ‘rightist’ and ‘foreign trash,’ and then I woke in a cold sweat, but was fuh-reezing in my apartment. My throat’s been killing me, too, the whole morning.

“Dammit, I’m thinking these nutty dreams are like a virus up in here, now maybe I’m catching it. Or not. I did watch a documentary about the Cultural Revolution, so that could explain it. I believe more in Freud than in ghosts.”

Tony looked us over, noticed the grim mood and inquired, “What’s with you fellas? Why the long faces? Casper, Freddy Krueger still after you bastards?”

A collective grunt amongst us could be heard. Tony’s lips parted, his mouth opening, probably to hurl more insults, but I cut him off, politely as possible, and told him, “This place housed prisoners during the Cultural Revolution. There were teachers, college professors, intellectuals given the death penalty, sent here for ‘counterrevolutionary’ crimes, ‘subverting state power’ and ‘treason’ charges. Last night, we all saw things from the place’s past. The ghosts are trying to talk to us, tell us something, but we don’t know what.”