“Give me a flint!” Qiao’s voice demanded.
“I, I don’t have one…” Hao Gao mumbled thickly, sounding half-stunned. Qiao swore again.
“It is a good thing you are pretty,” she snarled, then rose behind Yu Pao and fired a pistol in the air.
She was holding the oil-soaked head of a torch to the breech of the wheel-lock. In the flash of the spark, Yu Pao saw something gray and humanoid scrambling toward him on all fours, and he lunged to meet it, swinging his club. The torch bloomed into life and he saw more detail. The buso was a naked thing of gray flesh pulled tight around sharp bones, with a now-familiar gaping mouth of shark teeth in rows, set beneath a single, red eye in the center of its horned skull. Yu Pao swung low for its knee, thinking to cripple it, but as the creature was loping on all fours the iron-shod tetsubo crashed into its left elbow.
Bone snapped and the buso emitted a hissing roar but it pressed on, shoulder driving into Yu Pao’s side and spinning him to the ground as though he had been clipped by a passing wagon. The thing sprang at Qiao Lan, holding her torch aloft, and she whipped the creature across the face with her spent pistol even as it plowed into her. It tried to seize her but the arm Yu Pao had hit flopped useless and only one clawed hand of filth-encrusted nails snagged her tunic. Qiao shook loose of the garment and it tore the rest of the way off of her, revealing a thick vest of heavy leather from which three charged pistols still hung. Her arms were bare and the left was tattooed from wrist to shoulder, and as Yu Pao knew from fond experience, more than halfway across her back.
The buso rolled across paving stones, scrambling up to face the trio of yakuza again. Yu Pao got to his feet and dropped his club in preference of his uchi-ne, sliding the blade into his right hand from the sleeve of his coat. Qiao dropped the spent gun and drew another, but before he could throw or she could shoot, Hao Gao stood up in front of both of them.
“Get down!” Yu Pao and Qiao shouted together, but before either could have added “Jinx!” the buso sprang on its sinewy legs and crashed into Hao Gao as he struggled to shake his musket free from the shoulder sling. The big man reeled back, jerking his head away as the toothy maw snapped in front of his face and the red eye gleamed. Filthy nails tore bloody gouges down his thighs through heavy trousers as Hao Gao screamed and flailed, musket swinging loose from one arm. The stock of the long gun whipped through the air, and hit Qiao in the ear.
Her eyes fluttered and she sat down hard in the road, torch falling to the pavement. Yu Pao let the mass that was the creature raking and snapping at Hao Gao stagger past him, then stepped behind it and drove his uchi-ne hard into the buso’s armpit.
The thing made its hissing roar and sprang away, scampering across the road even as Hao Gao finally fell to the ground. It took Yu Pao’s blade with it and the cord connecting the hilt to a loop around his wrist played out, for an uchi-ne was meant to be drawn back in, if a throw missed. Thinking the blade would pull free Yu Pao dove for Hao Gao’s musket, but as the buso reached the edge of the circle of torchlight, just at the edge of the causeway itself, the creature grabbed the cord with its good hand even as it dove off the side.
Yu Pao widened his eyes and was yanked forward off his feet, knees and elbows bashing stone and his right arm shooting forward as all the creature’s plummeting weight pulled at the cord. He slid roughly after it, drawing his tantu dagger to slash the cord, but did not have time before his chin banged the curb. The world behind Yu Pao’s eyes went white and star-filled, and he seemed to be falling through space. He heard but did not really feel the splash.
The water of the swamp was awful, slicked-over with algae and tasting of corruption. It was however enough to shock Yu Pao back into the world and he jerked and spat as he sat and then stood in it, the cord to his wrist now slack. The water was only to his knees but the night was again wholly black down below the causeway bridge. There was tall stone beside him and Yu Pao put his back to it, though he did not know if it was a stanchion or a grave.
“Yu Pao?” Qiao’s voice called above him, and when he answered, “Alive,” the guttural hissing came from only a few feet in front of him.
Clouds passed by the moon. The gray light shown down on an alleyway of monuments, the names on the graves long-since scoured away by the brackish water. Yu Pao had his back to one as did the buso facing him, shattered arm hanging limp and black blood staining its side. The red eye burned and row upon row of teeth were revealed as the thing’s whole face seemed to split in a leer.
Club up on the road, two blades lost in the water somewhere. Yu Pao had nothing in his hands but his hands, and the soulless thing leapt at him.
* * *
Baojia underwent no change that night, but not surprisingly she could not sleep. She had been sealed inside her home by her friends and neighbors, shutters and doors all nailed shut, and the little house was hot and cloying. She sat in a chair in the dark kitchen, for though she had scrubbed the sleeping chamber all day after Jing-Sheng had been removed, with the windows shut the lingering smell was trapped inside with her.
Long after midnight there was a knock on the door that made Baojia jerk, then cringe away. The knocking was repeated, and her name was softly called. Baojia crept to the door and put a hand flat against the wood, answering in a whisper.
“Yu Pao?”
“Yes.”
There was the whine of iron and wood as Yu Pao used a bar to pry the nails from the doorjamb. Baojia felt her way familiarly around her own kitchen and had the lamp lit on the table by the time the door opened, and Yu Pao limped in.
His face was scratched, clothes filthy, but he seemed otherwise well. He bowed to Baojia formally.
“It is done. The buso is slain. My friends have taken its remains to the wujen.”
“Da-An, he can…he can make a cure?”
“He claims so, yes.”
Baojia stared at the man, at Jing-Sheng’s good friend, and felt the deep grief she had walked with all day erupt within her. She sobbed, hard, and threw her arms around the yakuza.
“I am so sorry, I am, I wish…I wish I had been killed by the monster, rather than this. It is not fair…”
“Very little ever is,” Yu Pao said, wincing for his aching body. Baojia noticed and released him, drawing back.
“I am sorry, you are injured…”
“Trifles,” he said. “I have had worse and surely shall again.” He looked at her tear-tracked face in the lamplight. “You need rest, Jia. Have you slept at all?”
Baojia shook her head. “I cannot. I do not know where I go when I sleep.”
“That will be remedied soon,” Yu Pao promised. “At least sit down, and let me open your windows. The air in here is…unwell.”
Baojia nodded, and allowed Yu Pao to settle her down on a chair. The man limped back to the open doorway, where he had left the heavy iron pry bar leaning.
“You are far too kind to me, Yu Pao Long,” she said. He took up the bar.
“Nothing that has happened here is your fault, Baojia. You are a good woman and a good person. A good sister to your brother, and a friend to my friend. The obligation is on me.”
Baojia did not fully understand that, but she nodded anyway as Yu Pao stepped behind her.
* * *
The tall yakuza with bloody bandages wrapped around his legs deposited the basket on Da-An’s table, and lifted the lid. The old man stared down at the terrible visage of the buso: A nightmarish thing if ever he had seen one, no less fearsome in death than it had been in the quasi-life of the dark spirit world. A black bullet wound was blasted in its forehead, just above the intact red eye.
“Good shot,” the wujen said.
“Yes it was,” the woman with the brace of pistols strapped to her chest agreed. “You say your potion will keep?”
Da-An nodded, though a trifle sadly. He looked down at the eye and sighed. The woman spoke curtly.
“Then make it, and save it should something so terrible ever happen here again.”<
br />
The yakuzas moved for the door, and Da-An looked after them.
“It is not too late,” he said. “I can still cure the woman. Her role in this was none of her doing. The cause of your Clan brother’s death is dead in this basket.”
Hao Gao and Qiao Lan stopped, the tall fellow looking at the woman almost hopefully. Her gaze was steely in return. Hao Gao sighed, and spoke the mantra of the yakuza before the two of them returned to the darkness of the night.
“All obligations will be paid. There are no exceptions.”
* * *
Thanks for reading. The preceding story is set within the world of the Norothian Cycle (by M. Edward McNally) a Musket & Magic fantasy series in which Yu Pao Long is a player.
The Sable City (Book I)
Death of a Kingdom (Book II)
The Wind from Miilark (Book III), Coming Soon
Ed McNally is unable to produce a brief bio at this time as he has been treed by a marauding pack of javelinas in the Sonoran Desert.
https://sablecity.wordpress.com/
Haunting in OR 13
Alan Nayes
The hospital corridor buzzed with activity. People wearing white lab coats dashed down the halls in both directions. Some sported Halloween regalia—Obama, Spiderman, and Wolfman zipped by. Above all the commotion, the intercom blared out loudly.
“Dr. Wilkens. Extension 2-0-1-6 stat…2-0-1-6 stat.”
Sara McCaffe blinked her pale blue eyes before looking briefly at the speaker overhead. Hmm…2016, she thought to herself. Medicine intensive care. Not her idea of fun.
While spending what seemed an eternity on the medicine service, she had grown to hate those stat pages. All of them emergencies. She was ready for a change. As a junior med student at California Medical College, she was looking forward to her next rotation—surgery. All her life she’d dreamed of being a surgeon. Now she’d get her chance. She couldn’t blow it.
Ignoring the throbbing in her head, Sara rushed down the crowded hallway, brushing by a fourth-year student in a beat-up Tiger Woods’ mask. Like her, he was in a hurry. The constant pressure was enough to drive a sane person mad. After what happened last year around this time during the surgery rotation—a student in the class ahead of her had cracked under the strain, and rumors were he’d been institutionalized—she vowed no amount of stress would ever cause her to buckle. No way.
“There,” she mumbled, staring toward the end of the corridor. A faded sign read McDermitt Building. Sara paused for a moment. It’d been two and a half years since she’d been in McDermitt building. Seemed like ages ago. Recalling what her instructor had told her, the surgery greens were kept in the basement.
Pushing the blonde bangs from her oval face, Sara walked to the entrance and shoved the dark gray door open. She ducked past a fake spider web. What was it with these people? Didn’t they realize Halloween was one big joke? Ghosts and goblins and witches and hauntings—great for kids, but not for someone serious about a career. Who really believed in that shit anyway? Not her.
She looked to her right. A flight of stairs led up to the second floor. From there it was a short walk to the operating rooms. To her left, a short ramp led down to a second door into the basement.
Descending toward her left, Sara could hear her breathing echo lightly off the narrow enclosed corridor walls. Shivering slightly, she didn’t remember it being so cold and damp in McDermitt Building. Folding both hands up under her arms, Sara neared the heavy metal door leading down below. Unexpectedly, it swung open, barely giving her enough time to step aside.
“Oh, didn’t mean to startle you.” Two women in green surgery scrubs stood in the doorway.
“No problem,” Sara lied, taking in a deep breath. Leaning against the wall, she gave the two scrub nurses some room to pass. “I’m a third-year med student. I was told to pick up my surgical greens down here.”
“Happy Halloween,” the plumper one wished.
“Halloween’s tomorrow,” Sarah corrected her. She would never understand all the fanfare associated with the day of werewolves and zombies.
“Okay,” the plump nurse replied, rolling her eyes at her skinny companion. “Oh, the greens. Keep going ’til you pass a large laundry chute. Across from the chute you’ll see a rust-colored door with disposal written on it. Just around the corner from that door they’ll be some shelves. Just pick out the size that fits,” she finished, resting her hands on her broad hips.
“Don’t I need to check them out or something?” Sarah asked.
“Na, there’s no one down there.”
“And only take what you need,” the thin nurse piped in. “If you students continue to walk off with the surgery outfits, there won’t be enough for us nurses.”
“Right,” Sara nodded, feigning concern.
Before Sara could leave, though, the plump nurse asked, “When’s your first surgery?”
“Early tomorrow morning. Supposed to be scrubbed and ready by 6:30.” Sara took a step toward the basement door.
“Where?”
“OR 13.”
“Operating Room 13?” The two nurses exchanged quizzical glances.
“Na, can’t be right,” the heavier one said. “Been no surgery in OR 13 for a long time now. How long you think, Bess?”
“Not for well…fifteen years. Who told you OR 13 anyway?” The thin one peered at Sara.
“My clinical coordinator. She gave me the schedule.”
The skinny nurse continued. “You relook your schedule, hun. Must be a typo. There’s been no surgery in OR 13 since the accident.”
“What?” Sara’s eyes widened.
“Very unfortunate. All five of ’em—just incinerated.”
“Come on, Bess,” the large nurse interrupted. “Quit making such a big deal about it to the new student. She’s gonna have enough on her mind with clamps and sutures.” Then looking back to Sara, “Hun, pick up your scrubs and don’t pay no attention to what ol’ Bess says.”
Sara watched as they began to leave.
Suddenly the plump one stopped. “Bess is right about one thing, though. Check and make sure you got the right operating room number.” Turning, the two nurses headed up the ramp out of McDermitt Building.
“You bet,” Sara nodded after them, wondering if they were just feeding her some hospital hearsay. Scrub nurses; they were probably trying to get her riled before her first case tomorrow. As if they were thinking it being Halloween wasn’t enough. Well, it didn’t work. Frowning, Sara started into the basement.
A stack of soiled surgical linen piled on the concrete floor marked the laundry chute. Most of the clothes were stained various shades of red.
Opposite the chute, she noted the door marked disposal. Now just around the corner.
“Shit,” she mumbled, clutching her knapsack tightly against one side, as a sudden metallic clang from the disposal chute caught her off guard. With her heart racing, she spun around and faced the origin of the absurd noise. A split second later, she sighed in relief. A new batch of dirty scrubs lay scattered below the chute opening.
Chuckling to herself, Sara returned to the business at hand—picking out her surgical greens and then getting back up to civilization. She didn’t like being alone in the basement.
Rounding the corner, Sara located the line of shelves. On the opposite wall, directly across from the uppermost stack of clothes, some jokester had taped a large cardboard skull. Real amusing. Grow up people.
She walked over to the uniforms and began to search. As the nurses had hinted earlier, the selection was not great. After several minutes she located what she was looking for, a medium top and a small pair of bottoms.
Stuffing the set of scrubs in her knapsack, Sara turned to leave. Around the corner she heard another load of dirty surgical scrubs hit the floor. This time, though, she reacted calmly, until the sudden wave of foul stench caused her to gag.
“Damn,” she grimaced looking about. Instinctively she began to breathe throu
gh her mouth. “What in the hell is that?”
Twisting around, she looked further down the hall leading past the scrub shelves. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it led to the freshman anatomy lab stairwell. However, this smell wasn’t of formaldehyde and cadavers. It resembled more the fetidness of decaying flesh.
Sara held her breath to avoid further gagging and started back toward the basement exit. Suddenly she stopped—dead in her tracks. The sight before her forced a breath as she gasped in surprise.
A tall emaciated figure dressed in poorly fitting faded green surgical scrubs stood silently about twenty feet in front of her. The man remained motionless in the passageway beside the stacks of dirty linen. In addition to the green scrubs, the silent figure wore an old frayed surgical mask covering his entire face except the eyes. Under one arm, he lugged an orange plastic pumpkin. It looked plastic anyway, though parts of it appeared to have been melted. And his eyes—something about the eyes.
Sara stepped back several paces. Her initial irritation turned to fear. The stranger’s eyes never blinked. She watched, trying to control her breathing. The dull, staring eyes didn’t waver; instead they remained fixed on her now perspiring face. She quivered slightly as a dribble of sweat slid down her neck. What the hell did this creep want? A fucking candle for his ugly melted pumpkin.
“Excuse me…Miss.” The emotionless voice caused Sara to jump. “I…just… needed…some…extra… surgical…gowns. Got…a…special…case… on…Halloween.”
Sara remained silent. Who the fuck was this clown? At the sound of his voice, though, her fear lessened somewhat. Stepping closer, she saw he also had on a thin blue hair net, the kind worn by personnel working around the operating rooms. Sara stood quietly while she watched him bend over, set the pumpkin down, and seize several scrubs from the basement floor. After a few seconds, she decided this stranger meant her no harm. Probably just a prankster.