When Jerry leaves his old life in London behind and travels to Beijing to take up a teaching position, at first he is enchanted by the brave new world he finds awaiting him. However, things soon take a turn for the worse. Upon his arrival he learns of the mysterious disappearance of his predecessor. Then things start going bump in the night.
Excerpt
Jerry tentatively offered his hand, and the old woman immediately grasped it in hers. She held it palm-up and lightly stroked her fingers across it as if casting a spell, her milk-white eyes looking sightlessly around the room. Then she did a most unexpected thing. She raised Jerry’s palm to her mouth, and licked at it hungrily, greedily. He could feel the hot moist roughness of her tongue probing at every contour of his hand; over his outstretched palm and between his fingers. The old woman moaned.
Jerry instinctively wanted to pull his hand away. The wetness of her tongue against his skin felt so unnatural, so wrong. It made his blood run cold and his skin crawl. He could smell the rank staleness of her breath, and now and again his palm would brush against one of the woman’s few remaining teeth which stood sentinel in her gums like tombstones in a forgotten graveyard. He closed his eyes and fought the repulsion, trying hard to think happy thoughts whilst swallowing back the bile that struggled to rise from his gurgling stomach. He had come this far, he wouldn’t allow himself to give in at this late stage. It was just an old woman licking his hand… Just an old woman licking his hand…
The ordeal seemed to last an eternity and Jerry felt by turns ridiculous, nauseous and violated. He felt the color drain from his face and struggled to keep his breakfast where it belonged as he felt the tongue flick reptile-like all over his still-outstretched hand. It was a sensation that would stay with Jerry long after he had left the blind fortune teller’s home.
Suddenly, a look of terror transformed the woman’s withered, weather-bitten face. She froze, her tongue protruding grotesquely halfway out of her mouth and moaned again, this time with more urgency. She dropped Jerry’s hand as if it were a hot rock, hawked her throat and spat mouthful thick green phlegm into a tin pan on the floor between her feet. Then she began speaking quickly, a long unbroken stream of indistinguishable words gradually rising in volume until she was shouting, her sightless eyes wide with panic.
What the hell? Was this all part of the act? If it was, hats off for dramatic effect. And a special award should go to the young helper who shot to her feet, scowling at Jerry as if he had done something wrong. She placed an arm around the old woman and made soothing sounds as if trying to calm a distraught child.
“What the hell is going on? What’s she saying?” Jerry turned to Yin Tao, who looked just as shocked as Jerry felt. For the first time he could remember, the smile had disappeared from his assistant’s face to be replaced with a look of concern which spread over his features like a shadow. That look worried Jerry more than anything else.
Copyright 2009 Christian Saunders. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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