Chapter 9: Chapter 7 — The Death God’s Net

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Jianxiang opened his right palm and stared at the fresh, crusted blood smeared there.

Four concentric circles, and between the rings the names L U C I F E R, B E L Z E B U T, A S T A R O T… Were those demonic titles? The pentagram in the center of the innermost ring had been distorted by his palm lines; tiny scabs clung to the damp skin, and the wounded edges were slightly red and swollen.

— I did knock twenty times, and I did turn the doorknob.

— It was the door of this very room.

— Not a dream. I really did it.

Only Zhimei’s even breathing filled his ears, mingled with the faint traffic noise from the street. No — not quite: the ghostly wails that had rushed from behind that iron door still reverberated in his eardrums.

Jianxiang sat up; the pink quilt slid from his bare chest. He grabbed his watch from the floor: 4:09 p. M.

— I slept more than three hours. Had he unintentionally dozed because of last night’s sleeplessness?

Zhimei slept soundly, the lovely curve of her chest rising and falling beneath the quilt. She, too, had been awake all night until they made love; only then had she relaxed and finally drifted off.

Jianxiang pulled on his trousers and crept toward the battered wooden door. He stared at the door’s knob and found there a thin film of blood — the same trace as Zhong Sizao and Xia Yongyu. After falling in love with Zhimei, he’d had the same nightmare.

The same sorcerer, the same gift, the same answer… Which meant that starting tonight, or tomorrow night, or some night to come, he would be able to see ghosts — and those fiends would begin to target him, trying to take his life.

— I must stay calm. Must stay calm.

Although the room was silent, Jianxiang felt a low breath from beyond the door.

“Jianxiang, are you awake?”

Zhimei’s voice came without her even looking at him; she seemed to sense his unease. She had already sat up and was fastening her bra.

“Meimei,”
Jianxiang approached and hugged her before she’d finished the clasp. He stroked her smooth back to borrow courage from holding his lover. “I had that dream, too.”

“Really?”
Zhimei trembled.

“Look — I have the ‘seal-breaking key’ on my hand. I’ve opened my own ‘ghost gate’ as well.”

Zhimei looked helplessly at his palm. “You agreed to the sorcerer?”

“No. Whatever our wills were,”
Jianxiang tried to keep his voice steady, “the script was already written. The line in the dream will be ‘I consent’; there is no other reply.”

“So this dream is a trap?”

His tone was flat. “Yes. A trap like quicksand.”

“Jianxiang…”
Zhimei burst into tears. “This is all my fault! I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

“It’s not your fault.”
Jianxiang exhaled heavily. “Enough — when you cry I hurt too. Meimei, now tell me: who — who designed this trap?”

Zhimei closed her eyes in pain and buried her face in Jianxiang’s chest.

“Tom Shijing.”

“That’s the name you couldn’t tell me yesterday?”
Jianxiang asked. “How dangerous is he?”

“He’s from Poland,”
Zhimei paused, “a black magician.”

“Like Xia Yongyu?”

“No,”
she said, voice trembling, “Tom Shijing has lived for five hundred years.”

For an instant the air in the room seemed to freeze. If this were the plot of a silly movie Jianxiang might have laughed — but after seeing Zhong Sizao’s rotting corpse and Xia Yongyu’s brutal death, Zhimei’s words made his hair stand on end.

“You mean… Tom Shijing is a fifteenth-century man?”

“Tom Shijing is the Chinese rendering of his name.”

Jianxiang suddenly remembered the sorcerer who appeared in Xia Yongyu’s dream: Cornelius Agrippa, the fifteenth-century European sorcerer. Could Tom Shijing be that hideous Agrippa?

“Before last December I worked at a trading company in reception,”
Zhimei continued. “I had a fiancé — a classmate from vocational school and a colleague — and we’d been planning a trip to Italy for a long time. Finally at the end of last year we took a vacation and went to Venice. My first meeting with Tom Shijing was in St. Mark’s Square.”

“My boyfriend and I planned three days in Venice. On the second day we passed through the central arch, admired the winged lion and the St. Mark sculptures, and rested at an outdoor café beside the Doge’s Palace. I was sipping a latte and idly scanning the people when I noticed a European man at a nearby table staring at me. From one look I felt my instinct say he was smitten. My boyfriend didn’t notice; he was happily studying the map.”

“As I expected, the man finally stood and approached us. I could not look away before he stopped; he was so handsome — wavy black hair, deep eyes, tall and commanding, a hooked nose like a classical Apollo. My boyfriend noticed and looked up; the foreigner ignored him entirely and nodded at me, saying his Chinese name was Tom Shijing.”

“I thought it would be a passing flirtation like admiring a work of art. I was surprised when the man actually came over and spoke. More surprising, his Chinese was fluent. He declared his love and asked me to leave with him immediately!”

“He spoke with such certainty that both my boyfriend and I were stunned. My boyfriend told him to stop joking, and the man replied coldly, ‘Do you wish to die?’ I thought he meant to hit him. My boyfriend had been on the school basketball team and was half a head taller than Tom, yet Tom’s gaze turned strange, as if with a single finger he could kill my boyfriend…”

“I felt terrified and pulled my boyfriend away and insisted we return to the hotel. Tom didn’t follow. That night, as we prepared for bed, I saw him on the roof across from our window.”

“Jianxiang, do you know our room was on the seventh floor? The opposite building was nine stories with a spired rooftop — Tom stood on that spire in a black robe! You can’t climb to that place from the outside.”

Jianxiang’s ears buzzed.

“I was stunned. He looked at me and smiled. I drew the curtains but could not sleep. I didn’t tell my boyfriend; the next morning I urged him to pack and leave Venice right away.”

“The next leg was Malta, which I’d been excited about because I love Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, but once there I could not enjoy the trip — I felt Tom following us. On our visit to the Tapsian temple ruins, Tom appeared again. My boyfriend finally lost his temper and beat Tom severely. Tom then said my boyfriend was cursed and would die in twelve hours. My boyfriend scoffed and warned him to stop following us.”

“That evening my boyfriend took out a Swiss Army knife and cut his own throat on a lane near the inn.”

Zhimei wept as if remembering the terrible scene. “Tom appeared again, lit a fire, and burned my boyfriend’s corpse before me. I couldn’t stop him. He told me he’d lived five hundred years and that anyone who stood in his way would fare badly.”

“I was so terrified I couldn’t even run. I don’t know why I had the courage to do what I did… I told Tom I would go with him, and he smiled like when I first met him.”

“For more than a week Tom and I stayed in Warsaw. He told me his past: as a young man he loved a marquise’s wife but was exiled. He apprenticed in black magic to take revenge and reclaim his love. Years later he supposedly killed the marquis; the marquise, bereft, threw herself into the water. Tom retrieved her body and watched it rot. Believing in reincarnation, he then pursued longevity and immortality.”

“The more he spoke, the more I realized he’d gone mad. He told me that he’d lived so long to find a woman named Petrissa, whom he believed to be the marquise. I felt some pity mixed with my fear.”

“But when I saw the marquise’s portrait in his collection, I realized she and I did not resemble each other at all. I finally understood — he was insane!”

“From his clippings I discovered he’d been murdering young lovers across the world with methods as grotesque as my boyfriend’s death. Many of those cases remained unsolved. I didn’t know what had become of the women he’d targeted, but I felt in danger myself. One day, when he left home, I flew back to Taiwan alone.”

Jianxiang clutched Zhimei to soothe her.

“You mean he followed you to Taiwan?”

Zhimei nodded. “Ten days after I returned I saw him at Hanshin Department Store. He threatened me: either come back to Warsaw with him or he would curse my loved ones. I fainted. I think I lost my memory then. He didn’t follow me immediately after that.”

“Although I lost my memory, the fear remained in my subconscious. I couldn’t sleep; whenever I closed my eyes I saw him on the spire staring. I met Sizao and Yongyu, and though they loved me and gave me safety, I was still afraid — and they were later killed. I finally realized Tom had placed a curse somewhere, causing the men who loved me to die; he didn’t need to follow me because he’d calculated I would seek him.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“In Fengshan,”
Zhimei said. “He’s posing as a Mormon and staying at a church.”

“I’ll find him and force him to lift the curse.”
Jianxiang checked his watch. “If we wait until sunset it will be too late.”

“You will be killed.”

“If we don’t go to him, we will both be killed.”

Zhimei gripped his hand. “Jianxiang, I’ll go with you.”

At the Mormon Fengshan branch, the young, plump brother told Jianxiang Tom wasn’t there. Jianxiang asked to wait in case he returned. The brother — under twenty and oddly formal in Chinese — did not ask questions and led them to a meeting room.

As minutes ticked by Jianxiang’s nerves tightened. Zhimei sat beside him in silence; their shoulders touched in shared anxiety.

The branch sat near the intersection of Caogong Road and Guangyuan Road, opposite the Kaohsiung County Police Department. They rode their motorcycle up to the meeting room above the Land Bank as the warm orange of sunset softened the sky.

At last they heard voices by the entrance, and Zhimei’s eyes betrayed her fear — Tom had returned.

“Brother Tom, your guests are in the room,”
the plump brother called.

A tall, imposing foreign man entered. Seeing Zhimei he inhaled sharply and said, “Close the door. Don’t interrupt my conversation.”

“Yes.”

Tom truly looked like a deity in a painting. Jianxiang felt diminished beside him, but his sixth sense warned that even a god could be a bloodstained fiend.

Tom ignored Jianxiang and sat facing Zhimei. “Will you go back to Warsaw with me?”

“No. I won’t go with you.”
Zhimei’s face showed disgust. “I don’t love you.”

“Why? Why?”
Tom snapped like an angry lion. “I’ve come to Taiwan and many girls were smitten, yet you refuse me. Am I no charm? Why can’t you love me?”

“Because — because you’re evil. You’re too evil.”

Tom fell silent, displeased by her words. But Jianxiang felt no hatred in him; something more chilling lay beneath.

“Why did you come to see me?”
Tom asked.

“I want you to lift the killing curse,”
Zhimei said.

Tom sneered. “Who is cursed?”

“That one,”
Zhimei shot Jianxiang a look; his heart overflowed with tenderness. She hadn’t mentioned that she herself was cursed.

“Your new boyfriend?”

“You have no right to harm the ones I love!”
Zhimei’s eyes brimmed with tears.

“Meimei, I can’t do it.”
Tom’s mouth still curved with a smile. “The curse cannot be undone.”

“What?”

“She’s crying too much.”
Zhimei’s tears fell to the table; she couldn’t continue.

“Tom, how exactly did you cast the curse?”
Jianxiang couldn’t hold back. “My understanding is different: my boyfriend slit his throat in front of Meimei — that I could accept as you having physical contact. But I and other men who loved her didn’t know you and had no contact with you. How can you curse them?”

As a detective Jianxiang’s instincts sought the truth of these horrific murders. He cared less for his own safety than knowing the mechanism.

“Are you really interested?”
Tom finally looked Jianxiang straight in the eye. “Very well. I’ll tell you. My master, the great mage Cornelius Agrippa…”

“Agrippa is your teacher?”

Standing before a man who’d lived five centuries, Jianxiang felt surreal.

“Yes. I am one of his direct disciples. In life he invented one of the most lethal black magics of his time, called ‘Juda’s Prison’ — a spell my master designed for a Saxon provincial governor to eliminate political enemies. Anyone cursed thus will be hunted by hellish fiends.”

“The principle is simple: carve the ‘seal-breaking key’ into the cursed hand. When the cursed person opens any door with that hand, they open the gate to the netherworld. The blood from the palm where the key is carved gives off a scent that directs the fiends’ attack. If the cursed one knocks while opening, the sound draws the listening devils more readily.”

“So ‘Juda’s Prison’ is not merely a variant of ‘the sight of ghosts.’ It can let people see ghosts, but its real purpose is murder. To relax a political foe, the spell is offered as the lure of ‘seeing ghosts’ — the curious will unwittingly accept the curse.”

“Because its goal is to kill enemies, my master never used it. ‘Juda’s Prison’ must be irreversible to guarantee the enemy’s death. It’s brilliantly destructive.”

“By theory, it’s one of the greatest inventions in occult history. The cursed have nowhere to hide; at night the fiends watch them. They cannot sleep, their lives ruin politically and personally; the only survival method is self-imprisonment. They can’t conspire or contact others and must hide until a demon eventually breaks in and ends them. Wonderful magic, isn’t it?”

“But my master abandoned it. The flaw was that not every target would consent to see ghosts, and who would have someone draw the rune on their palm willingly? Though terrible, the magic’s deception was difficult.”

Jianxiang sank into despair. If Tom’s words were true, he and Zhimei stood no chance.

He thought of how Zhong and Xia had tried everything to survive and yet died.

“Years after my master’s death I discovered his manuscript and the spell. By then I’d grasped some truth of immortality and sought higher magic to surpass my master. With eternal life I studied languages and occult texts worldwide. I strove to solve ‘Juda’s Prison’s’ flaw — I needed the curse to operate without requiring the victim’s will. In the end I found a new use in the human subconscious.”

“The human subconscious…?”

“Hypnosis, sleep-talking, and somnambulism.”

Jianxiang was speechless; a chill surged up his spine before Tom even finished. Without waiting for Tom’s explanation, he associated these terms and felt his skin prickle.

“You mean… You hypnotized Meimei first? Had her speak the spell in her sleep to her sleeping partners? Then those who heard the incantation would start sleepwalking, carve the ‘seal-breaking key’ into their own palm with a blade in their sleep, open a door — and unconsciously carry out the self-destructive spell?”

Tom’s voice was calm. “You surprise me with your comprehension. Yes. I intended all the men who loved Zhimei to perish so she would give up and return to me. No one else may have Zhimei but me.”

Zhimei stared in disbelief and shook her head desperately.

“Aren’t you afraid she might, upon returning to you, in sleep cast ‘Juda’s Prison’ on you?”

“I can undo the hypnotic suggestion. Besides, I’m not afraid of ‘Juda’s Prison’ — I am a master of great power,”
Tom said with arrogance.

Jianxiang finally pieced together the horrific truth behind the murders. He also realized why Zhimei had dreamed: Xia Yongyu’s powerful hypnosis — used to recover her memory — may have disturbed her subconscious, allowing the nightmare to pour into her sleep.

Suddenly Zhimei drew a pistol and shoved the muzzle hard against Tom’s forehead.

“Meimei!”
Jianxiang cried, too late to stop her.

“This is pointless,”
Tom said, unmoved by the weapon. “You aren’t the spellcaster — you are. Even if you kill me or kill yourself, it changes nothing. Once the curse starts, it cannot be stopped.”

Zhimei disengaged the safety.

“I hate you!”
she choked through tears. “You stole everything from me… You took the ones I love. I will kill you.”

“Meimei, calm down!”
Jianxiang shouted. “Tom, don’t you realize Meimei is cursed too?”

Tom’s braggadocio vanished at once. He seemed weakened. “That’s true?”

“Your magic will kill Meimei! Tell us how to break it!”

“I told you… ‘Juda’s Prison’ is unsolvable!”
Tom’s voice had the empty ring of a chant. “I never imagined — Zhimei, why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Is my life more important than the lives of those I love? Why… Why would you kill so many for me?”

“I have always loved you.”

“I can never love you. I am not Petrissa!”

“I love you. I love you so much.”

Tom grabbed Zhimei’s right hand holding the pistol and pulled the trigger. The room thundered with the shot; Tom’s body slumped backward. The white wall behind him was splattered with bright, viscous grey matter and blood.

Jianxiang’s motorcycle screeched to a halt before Xia Yongyu’s residence; Zhimei still trembled in his arms. Reddish-brown stains dotted her palm, arm, the front of her strap, and her pale cheek.

The echo of the explosion — the smell of gunpowder and Tom’s exploding head — clung to his senses. Jianxiang could not tell whether Tom had shot himself or whether Zhimei, in a burst of anguish, had killed him.

Ignoring traffic lights, they raced through dozens of dangerous intersections and reached Fuheng 1st Road’s residential district as darkness began to fall — there was nowhere else to go. Jianxiang could not return to the Sanmin precinct; his colleagues would not believe this tale. He couldn’t go back to his home in Lingya because there was no time to explain; he couldn’t return to Zhimei’s tiny room where he’d smashed the door — a broken door offered no protection. Only Xia Yongyu’s vacant house remained: a residence whose owner had been murdered and which the police had yet to discover.

—There was another reason too — one of life and death.

Zhimei was mute as they dismounted. She didn’t ask why they had come to this place; perhaps she lacked the strength. Jianxiang used a key to open the door and let Zhimei enter first, then followed and locked the door.

A long crack at the edge let in deep purple dusk.

Several pieces of mail and bills lay on the floor. He counted silently — more than ten days since he’d last been here. Zhimei looked around the bare walls as if reacquainting herself with a lost attachment.

Though he did not want to interrupt her reverie, his reason urged, “Meimei, go upstairs. The sun is almost down and we have business.”

She took his right little finger and followed him up the stairs.

“Why did you bring me here?”
she asked from behind. “Do you choose Yongyu’s house as the place where our lives will end?”

“No,”
Jianxiang didn’t turn. “I hope we both survive.”

“But… The killing curse is irreversible.”

“I don’t believe Tom.”

“He’s a five-hundred-year-old mage…”

“I’ll try everything to keep us alive. Trust me.”

“I do.”
Zhimei hugged him from behind.

Jianxiang rubbed his cheek against hers and they exchanged breaths. “Time is short. From now on you must obey me, okay?”

She whispered near his ear, “I will.”

He led her to the study on the third floor and told her to check every window and stay there. He carried the heavy television up from the living room and unplugged its cords and the AV cables that connected the VCR; he placed the set on the desk.

Zhimei sat on the desk with her legs swinging.

“Lock the front door for me,”
Jianxiang said.

She stepped down and shut and engaged the deadbolt, then asked, “Why did you bring the TV up?”

“I want to see the news about Tom’s death,”
he replied. Jianxiang plugged the TV into a power strip near the computer desk.

Without an antenna the picture snowed, but over the static they could make out the theme music of a Taiwanese period drama.

—It was almost six pm.

They watched the six o’clock news together, sitting close. A neat-haired anchor greeted viewers; a graphic labeled “Tonight’s Latest” rolled behind her.

“At around five this afternoon in Kaohsiung County’s Fengshan City on Caogong Road a shooting occurred. The victim is a 33-year-old Polish missionary, Tom Shijing. Because the scene was adjacent to the county police station, the deceased’s church members reported the incident immediately.”

“One of Tom’s church brothers said that a young couple had visited the deceased this afternoon and that a dispute in a private room escalated to gunfire. The suspected killers fled on a motorcycle. The church brother appeared at the scene and is in shock.”

“The county criminal division reported that the victim suffered a fatal gunshot to the forehead; the weapon appears to be a small handgun. Police are investigating the victim’s local contacts. More details on tonight’s seven o’clock news…”

The footage cut to a quiz show; the audience applauded. Jianxiang switched off the television.

“Where’s the pistol?”

“In my bag.”

“You must keep it safe.”

Jianxiang’s gaze moved over the bookshelf full of strange tomes. “Meimei, how much did Xia Yongyu know about magic?”

“I don’t know,”
Zhimei hung her head. “I only knew he was a photographer and lived freely.”

“That’s fine.”
Jianxiang did not sound disappointed. “I’ll search his collection for anything that could keep us alive.”

“And me?”

“You just stay here with me. I need you.”

Zhimei’s smile seemed to come from the edge of death. “Okay.”

Faced with a shelf of arcane books, Jianxiang felt at sea. He knew from tonight the fiends would begin hunting him like they had Zhong and Xia. He forced himself to think like a surgeon confronting a first-of-its-kind operation: calmly, clinically.

First, Cornelius Agrippa had been the sorcerer Xia Yongyu knew well. There might be records and weaknesses in this bookshelf — perhaps defeats, or accounts of how Agrippa died.

He skimmed titles and drew out a book: History of Witchcraft and Empirical Science. Opening it, he rapidly found a chapter called “Biographies of Notable Magi.”

Cornelius Agrippa (Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim), 1486–1535, a contemporary scientist, philosopher, kabbalistic mystic, and diplomat. He devoted his intellect to integrating scientific observation and occult thought. He had been a jurist, a university professor of philosophy and theology, an envoy and alleged spy, a civic advocate in Metz, and engaged in theological debates around the Reformation. He married three times and was renowned across Europe, but the German, Italian, French, and Dutch courts refused him patronage, leaving him impoverished.

Agrippa left home young for Paris to seek Emperor Maximilian. To pursue his ambitions he formed a secret society with fellow scholars and nobles who believed in mysticism and reform; the group later failed and dissolved.

In 1509 he went to Dole under the patronage of Margaret, Maximilian’s daughter. Through connections he lectured at the university on Reuchlin’s Jewish mysticism. To secure funding he wrote On the Nobility of Women and The Superiority of Women, but his attacks on certain Judaic texts angered clergy and brought his work under censorship. He toured England, Italy and elsewhere seeking patrons. In 1515 Cardinal St. Croix summoned him to Pisa to represent the city at a church council — his last chance to enjoy Pope Leo X’s favor — but the council dissolved without result.

Agrippa continued lecturing and writing while plagued by poverty. In 1529 fortune shifted: he secured royal patronage and published his important work On the Vanity of the Arts and Sciences, asserting the futility of human thought and action. The book stirred controversy, leading to imprisonment over debts for a time.

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