Chapter 1

In every big city in America, there was a small part of the city which was better known as Chinatown. London was no different at all, here also there was a city where people came to find marrow of the white tiger’s bones for the sake of increasing their virility or even might be something lamer than that. The restaurants in Chinatown were supposed to be the best and they were the main stream of income in this part of the town except the drug deals which took place when every single refugee had gone back to sleep.

And there was another thing that no one, usually the one which no one took care of but respected from afar and remained silent about it. In every Chinatown there were ghosts, and everyone knew because this was common knowledge that if not anything else spirits of dead people were supposed to be treated with reverence. They haunted the quiet Tai Tung village in China as well as the garish and loud Beach street where people didn’t have any care in the world, hovered along the Ping On Alley and sometimes flitted down the dark lane in Cambridge or might be even in the Oxford Street.

Ghosts were everywhere in these lanes and in these streets and that was at least Rick Chang’s version of the story and he was going to stick to it. Whether he believed them in not, that hardly mattered but it was his job to make people believe that it was the truth. Moreover Rick Chang knew very well that people wanted to believe in ghosts and spirits and that was the only reason that they were ready to pay such big bucks in order to stand shivering at night in a group and come on this late-night tour.

Rick’s job was to take them through the streets describing the gory tales of murder which was supposed to have happened in the very nook and corner of every single street. After he took them out of the Oxford cemetery, the people were already so spooked up from the sight of the ominous graves and the headstones and one lone owl keeping on screeching once in a while making everyone jump. When he brought them back in the dark streets of Chinatown they were waiting to listen to more stories from him.

Tonight, at this late night Chinatown Ghost Tour including two kids aged ten and twelve who should have been put to bed three hours ago. But when you need the money, you don’t turn away from paying guests, even if that meant putting up with the bratty little boys. Rick was a theatre major with no job prospects on the horizon, and tonight’s haul was a nice 135 pounds plus the tips and the dinner that they all had in the middle in one of their late Chinatown restaurants which was paid for magnanimously by the American tourists. Not a bad payday for two hours of telling tall tales, even if it came with the humiliation of wearing a satin mandarin robe and a fake pigtail in his hair.

Thankfully it was dark and he was not so visible in the pictures that they clicked.

But their attention was scattering fast. Rick held up his hands and then began in an ominous voice, drawing from the skills that he had learned from six semesters of theater classes to get their attention.

“The year in 1906!! It is a warm Friday evening in the second week of the month of July.”

His voice was deep and Rick used it to make the crescendo rise so that he could capture their interest. Like the Grim Reaper pointing out his scythe at his next victim whose soul he was supposed to collect, he pointed in the direction of the street.

“This was the place which was supposed to be beating as the heart of the Chinatown in London, teeming with refugees and immigrants. Walk with me now as I take you back to the era where the times were different from the ones we stand in. Let me take you back to the steamy night, heated from the rain that happened a couple of hours ago, and the sweating bodies of the sleeping men and the aroma of strange spices and incense wafting in the air. Come back to the night when murder was in the air!!”

With a dramatic wave of his hand, he beckoned the group to follow him to the middle of the street where they all moved closer to him and huddled in to listen more carefully to his words. Gazing at their attentive faces he thought that now would be the time to enchant them, time to weave a spell like only a fine actor can. He spread his arms again as the flapping sleeves of the manadarin robes in the slight wind and then he took a deep breath in order to begin to speak.

“Mahhhhh….mmmmmmeeeeee!!! He is kicking me!!” cried one of the brats out loud.

“Stop it Mikey,” their mother snapped,” stop it right at this minute.”

“I did not do anything at all. He is lying,” protested the other boy loudly.

“You are annoying your younger brother,” said their mother as she spoke in a contemptuous tone.

“Well he is annoying me,” he defended himself.

“Do you boys want to go back to the hotel? Do you?” asked their mother in a threatening tone.

Rick thought, Oh dear lord!! Please go back to your hotel and leave me in peace. But the two brothers just stood there glowering at each other and refusing to be entertained with their arms crossed. There was no hope at all. But the interruption had ruined his concentration and he could feel that someone had prick the balloon and the air was schmoosing out of it like the tension which was bleeding from the group.

“Like I was saying,” Rick started again but he knew that the edge that he had created was lost,” It was a steamy night in July and now there were scores of Chinamen lying here on the streets wrapped in their bed sheets and on the scraps of clothing that they owned after a hard days’ work at the local laundry places and grocery stores absolutely unaware that a war was about to take place between the two rival Chinese gangs of the Tiger Lings and the On Liongs. A battle that was going to leave the square awash with blood.”

Rick knew that the time he was speaking of he would have got no other jobs except the same ones that he was speaking about, as a laundryman or a cook or a labourer, when they were nothing more than an added burden to the already scrappy life that the English were living.

“Someone lights a firecracker and then there are bullets everywhere. The night explodes with the gunfire and everyone starts screaming in terror!! But some do not run fast enough and when the bullets are finally silent five men lay dead or dying. They were the first of the many casualties which were going to take place in the infamous Tong wars,” said Rick.

“Mommy can we go now?” asked the boy again.

“Shhshshs! Listen to the man’s story Mikey,” said his mother who was visibly caught up with his story telling skills.

“But he is so boring,” whined Mikey and Rick wanted so bad to get a grip on his tiny little throat. He threw a poisonous glance at the child however the boy was absolutely unfazed and he just shrugged. These Yankees were so damn pathetic and disrespectful.

But he did not pay any more attention to these boys any longer. Because the more he was going to let them take away his attention the more he was going to suffer at the tips. It is all about the tips he reminded himself as he drew the group to another street line nearby where he was going to rivet then with the tale of the murders in the gambling den in the 1920s.

Shivering Rick wrapped his mandarin robe tighter when he could swear that this was not the first time that he was feeling this phenomenon. He had always felt this before when he had come and ventured out in this section of the area. Even on warm summer nights, he felt cold here, like an ice which had permanently settled in the heart of this town, a chill which was never going to dissipate. His tour group seemed to notice and feel the same as well when he heard the zips of their jackets and hoodies go up and they all huddled even closer. Even the two brats had seemed to go quiet.

Rick came to a halt outside the abandoned building where a locked gate covered the door and steel bars secured the ground floor windows so that the vagrants could not break in and take illegal possession of the place.

“Welcome to the site of one of the Chinatown’s most grisliest murders which is still an enigma to most of our police force today. Even though Scotland Yard had said that this was a solved suicide murder case but no one had seemed to believe it,” said Rick and then he gestured towards the grill up on the doors and windows and then said,” The sign on this place is now gone but behind these barred windows and locked gates two decades earlier there was a small modest Chinese restaurant which specialized in seafood. It was not something very fancy, with only seven tables inside, since we consider it to be a very lucky number. But the restaurant was known for its amazing dumplings and crab-fish and the cook had a few more authentic Oriental dishes up his sleeve.”

“It was late in March, a damp and cold night. Sleet had covered the streets. A night like this one when normally the bustling streets were ominously quiet. Inside the restaurant, the Burning Dragon, two employees were at work: the waiter, one Mr. Lee and the cook was an illegal immigrant from China, the name was Wu Wesein. Three customers had come to eat that night--- a night that was going to be their last. Because in the kitchen something was very wrong and very wrong indeed. WE will never know what made the cook go and snap berserk. Maybe it was the long hard hours that he worked. Maybe it was a foreign land which had been unkind to him like the million other refugees here.”

Rick paused, his voice dropped to a chilling whisper.

“Or it is also probably true that his body was taken possession by some alien force which took hold of him. Maybe it was something different and something very evil which had made him do it. Which had made him pull out the gun and do it. An evil still lingers here, an evil like this which would have left his mark and might be lurking here in the shadows. Because something violent a crime like this could never go away. All we know that is something made him pull out his gun and he……” Rick stopped.

“And he what?” someone prompted anxiously as Rick was not there anymore.

His attention was fixed overhead, his gaze riveted to the roof, where he swore that something had just moved. It was merely a flutter of black on black, like the wing of a giant bird flapping against the sky. He strained to catch another glimpse of it but all he saw was the skeletal outline of the fire-escape hugging the skyline.

“Then what happened?” one of the brats demanded loudly and Rick was snapped back to attention as he looked at the group. All the fifteen faces staring at him expectantly and he tried to remember where he had left off. But he was still rattled by what he had seen against the sky. All at once Rick felt desperate to get out of that dark alley way and flee from the front of this building. He was feeling so desperate that it took every single ounce of his will power not to run as fast as he could towards the main streets where the lights were. He took a deep breath again and blurted,” He shot them. The cook shot them and he then he shot himself to death.”

With that Rick turned away from that blighted building and waved them on turning away from the ghosts that still lingered in the streets and the echoes from the horrors of the past. Harrison Street was a block away and it was beckoning him warmly with its lights and traffic. It was a place for the living and not the dead. He was walking so quickly that his group fell behind and he could not shake off a certain feeling that he was being followed.

Not by the group but there was someone who was looking at him which was making him ill at ease. The sense was coiling tighter around him as he suddenly turned around by a woman’s shriek. As the group burst into loud laughter. It seemed like she had stumbled on someone, probably a drunken man lying unconscious at the side of the building.

One of the men said,” Hey!! That is one nice prop!! Do you use it on all of your tours?”

“What?” asked Rick.

“Scared the crap out of us. Looks pretty damn realistic, I must admit,” said the man as he came forward.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Rick, now a cold feeling creeping close to his heart as he feared what it might be. But the man thought that it was all a part of the performance. He pointed at one of the brats and then said,” hey kid!! Why don’t you show him what you found?”

“I found it over there,” said one of the brats,” by the trash bin at the back of the street,” holding up his discovery.” Eeeewwww, it even feels so real. So gross!!!”

Rick took a few steps closer to the boy and then he suddenly could not speak, he could not move at all. He froze as he watched the inky droplets drip down the object that the boy was holding and was splattering down the sleeves of his jacket. But the boy did not seem to notice it at all.

It was the boy’s mother who started screaming at first. The others joined in all of a sudden and shrieking, gasping and backing away from what was a matter of interest just a moment ago. The baffled boy still held the object up as a prize as blood kept on dripping on his sleeve.

He was holding a severed hand which had been cut off close to the elbow. And blood was still dripping.

Rick had no idea how a desolate street in Chinatown could suddenly become the scene of active murder. He immediately made the boy drop the arm and then open his jacket and keep it aside if the police asked for discovery or any question like that. The next call was made to Scotland Yard as he ushered the tour group away from that street. Everyone was so damn scared with what had happened that Rick could not believe his luck that he had received double the money he made usually from the tips.