We're kicking off the New Year with a new tale of danger and death!
The Ghost Rises
The shaft of light fell through the skylight like a blade, cutting through the darkness of Hu Wan's private chamber to illuminate the small circle where Kam sat. The rest of the room remained in shadow—deliberate, theatrical, the way Wan preferred his fortune-telling sessions. He liked his captive psychic spotlit, vulnerable, a specimen under glass for his amusement.
Kam's wrists bore the raw marks of the chains that bound her to the heavy mahogany table. The metal links clinked softly as she moved her hands across the zodiac cards spread before her, their ancient symbols seeming to glow in the concentrated light. She wore only the thin silk slip Wan had allowed her. It was more than he sometimes let her have, so she should probably thank the gods for small favors.
"Tell me again," Wan said from the darkness beyond the light. His voice carried the rough edges of a lifetime of cigarettes and violence. "Tell me what you see."
Kam's fingers trembled as they hovered over the cards. Not from fear—she had moved beyond fear weeks ago—but from the effort of maintaining the performance. Her gift was real enough, though not in the way Wan believed. She could read people, sense their intentions, feel the currents of fate moving through the world. But she had learned to shape her visions, to guide them toward the outcome she needed.
"The Tiger prowls in darkness," she said, her voice carrying the ritualistic cadence Wan expected. "The Dragon sleeps in his mountain fortress. But the Ghost..." She paused, letting the silence stretch. "The Ghost rises from the earth to strike down a great enemy."
Wan stepped into the edge of the light, and Kam suppressed a shudder. He was a thick man, running to fat now in his fifties, but the muscle underneath remained solid. His face bore the scars of his rise through Bangkok's underworld—a knife slash across one cheek, a puckered bullet wound near his temple. He wore an expensive silk shirt open to reveal gold chains nested in graying chest hair. In his hands, he cradled an MP5 submachine gun like a lover.
"The Ghost of Hong Kong," he said, his lips pulling back in something between a smile and a snarl. "That legendary bitch thinks she can come for me. For Hu Wan." He laughed, a sound like gravel in a cement mixer. "I know why she comes. Those brothels in Chiang Mai—the ones I invested in. She thinks she's some kind of avenging angel for those whores."
He moved closer to Kam, close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath and the acrid scent of gun oil. His free hand reached out to trace the line of her collarbone, and she forced herself to remain still, to keep her breathing steady. This too was part of the performance.
"But I'm ready for her," Wan continued, his fingers trailing lower. "I've got fifty men in this compound. Motion sensors. Cameras. And when she comes through that door..." He gestured with the MP5 toward the room's single entrance. "I'll cut her in half before she can blink."
Kam's eyes remained fixed on the cards, but her awareness extended far beyond them. She could feel it now—a presence drawing near, inevitable as the tide. The Ghost was close. Very close.
"The cards say the Ghost will rise soon," Kam said softly. "Very soon."
Wan's hand moved to grip her chin, forcing her to look up at him. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated from whatever cocktail of drugs he'd been consuming. "You better hope your visions are accurate, little bird. Because if this Ghost doesn't show, if you've been wasting my time..." He let the threat hang unfinished, but his grip tightened enough to make her jaw ache.
The radio on Wan's belt crackled to life, shattering the moment. "Boss! Boss, we have an intruder! North perimeter, someone's—"
The transmission cut off, replaced by the sharp crack of gunfire. Then more shots, rapid and overlapping, the distinctive chatter of automatic weapons mixing with the deeper boom of shotguns. Wan released Kam and spun toward the door, bringing the MP5 up to his shoulder.
"All units, report!" he barked into the radio. "What's happening?"
Static answered him, punctuated by more gunfire. The sounds were moving, drawing closer to the main house. Kam could track the battle's progress by the acoustic signatures—the firefight starting at the outer wall, then moving through the courtyard, then into the house itself. Wan's men were dying, and they were dying fast.
"Second floor clear!" a voice shouted over the radio, high-pitched with panic. "She's heading for the—"
The transmission ended in a scream, a sound of pure terror that cut off with horrible abruptness. Then silence. Complete, absolute silence that seemed to press against the walls of the darkened room.
Wan's breathing had gone ragged. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the frigid air conditioning. He kept the MP5 trained on the door, his finger white-knuckled on the trigger. "Come on," he muttered. "Come on, you bitch. Come through that door."
"The Ghost rises now," Kam said, her voice carrying an otherworldly certainty. "The zodiac has spoken. The great enemy falls tonight."
"Shut up!" Wan snarled, not taking his eyes off the door. "Shut your mouth or I'll—"
He never finished the threat. His attention was completely focused on the door, on the obvious point of entry, on the place where any rational attacker would appear. Which was exactly what Kam had been counting on.
In the far corner of the room, hidden in the deep shadows beneath a side table, a section of the floor lifted silently. The trap door—an escape route Wan had installed years ago and then forgotten about—opened just wide enough to admit a human form.
The Ghost of Hong Kong emerged from the darkness below like a wraith materializing from the underworld. She moved with absolute silence, her black tactical gear rendering her nearly invisible in the unlit portions of the room. Her face was covered by a balaclava, only her eyes visible—dark, focused, utterly calm. In her hands, she carried a suppressed pistol, the weapon an extension of her body.
Wan was still talking, his voice rising with a mixture of fear and bravado. "You think I'm afraid? You think Hu Wan fears some ghost story? I've killed better than you. I've—"
He turned, perhaps sensing something, perhaps just nervous energy making him check his flanks. His eyes widened as he registered the figure standing in the shadows behind him, the pistol already rising to aim at his center mass.
"No—" he started to say, trying to swing the MP5 around.
The Ghost fired three times in rapid succession, the suppressed shots making soft coughing sounds that seemed impossibly quiet after the cacophony of the firefight outside. The first round took Wan in the chest, punching through his sternum. The second caught him in the throat as he staggered backward. The third, delivered with surgical precision as he fell, entered just above his left eye.
Hu Wan collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, the MP5 clattering from his nerveless fingers. His body hit the floor with a heavy thud, blood pooling beneath him in the shaft of light that had so recently illuminated Kam's captivity.
The Ghost moved immediately to Kam's side, holstering her pistol and producing a set of lock picks from a pouch on her tactical vest. Her hands worked with practiced efficiency on the chains binding Kam's wrists, the locks clicking open one by one.
"Thank you," Kam said softly, rubbing her freed wrists. "I knew a great enemy would fall tonight."
The Ghost paused, glancing at Kam with an expression that might have been curiosity. When she spoke, her voice was low and controlled, carrying a slight British accent that spoke of international education and careful cultivation. "Your great enemy. Not his."
"The cards don't lie," Kam said carefully.
The Ghost returned to working on the chains, her hands moving with practiced efficiency. "The brothels in Chiang Mai," she said, her tone conversational but edged with something harder. "Seventeen girls, the youngest barely thirteen. Wan's investment portfolio was quite detailed once I accessed his financial records. That's why I came for him."
"He liked to brag," Kam said, her voice hardening. "About his business ventures. About how much money there was in selling children. He thought I was just his fortune-teller, his exotic pet."
Another lock clicked open. The Ghost moved to the ankle chains. "Men like Wan always underestimate the people they cage." She glanced up. "How long did he keep you here?"
"Three months," Kam said. "Reading his fortune. Warning him about his enemies. Telling him what he wanted to hear." She paused, then added quietly, "And what he needed to hear."
The Ghost's hands stilled for just a moment, then continued their work. "What he needed to hear?"
Kam met her eyes. "I told him the Ghost would rise tonight. I told him to watch the door. I made sure he was looking in exactly the wrong direction."
The final chain fell away, and Kam was free. She swayed slightly, months of captivity and malnutrition taking their toll. The Ghost caught her, steadying her with a firm hand, then produced a dark jacket from her pack and draped it over Kam's shoulders.
"Clever," the Ghost said, studying Kam's face. "But how did you know I would come tonight? How did you know I would come at all?"
Kam took a breath, her legs trembling beneath her. "Because I called to you."
The Ghost went very still. "Called to me."
"I've been reaching out for weeks," Kam said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Sending everything I could—the layout of the compound, Wan's routines, the trap door. I knew you were hunting him. I knew you would come."
For a long moment, the Ghost simply stared at her. Then something shifted in her expression—recognition, perhaps, or confirmation of something she'd been trying to rationalize. "The visions," she said softly. " They came from you."
"Yes."
The Ghost backed away slightly, processing this revelation. Then, cool and professional again: "Can you walk?"
"How did they come through?" Kam asked.
The Ghost's expression grew distant, remembering. "At first, I thought I was losing my mind. Three weeks ago, I was doing my evening meditation—I practice yoga, helps maintain focus for the work—and suddenly I saw this room. Not imagined it. Saw it. The skylight, the cards, your face. And I heard a name: Hu Wan."
She moved toward the trap door, checking it with her flashlight, but continued speaking. "The images kept coming. Always when my mind was quiet. During savasana after a session. In that space between sleeping and waking. I'd see the compound layout, the guard rotations, the forgotten passages beneath the building. It was like watching surveillance footage, except the camera was inside my head."
"I wasn't sure you were receiving them," Kam said, following her on unsteady legs. "I just kept pushing, kept sending everything I could."
"I tried to ignore it at first," the Ghost admitted. "Thought it was stress or some kind of psychological break. But the information was too specific, too detailed. And when I cross-referenced the name Hu Wan with my existing intelligence on trafficking networks, everything aligned. You were giving me everything I needed to find him." .." She met Kam's eyes and asked again, "Can you walk?"
"Yes," Kam said, though her legs trembled. "Yes, I can walk. I can run if I have to."
"We'll take it slow," the Ghost said. She gestured toward the trap door. "
Kam looked down at Wan's body one last time. In death, he seemed smaller, less monstrous. Just another predator who had finally met something higher on the food chain.
"The zodiac was right," she said quietly. "The Ghost rose from the earth. The great enemy fell."
The Ghost glanced at her, something that might have been respect flickering in those dark eyes. "Your gift is real."
"Yes," Kam said. "Though not in the way Wan believed. I can't see the future, not exactly. But I can feel the currents of fate, the patterns of cause and effect. And I can sometimes... nudge them. Guide them toward the outcome that needs to happen."
"You guided me here."
"I called to you," Kam corrected. "You chose to answer. You chose to hunt Wan. I just... made sure you had the information you needed. Made sure he would be exactly where you needed him to be."
The Ghost nodded slowly, processing this. Then she gestured toward the trap door. "We should go. The authorities will be here soon. I made sure to trigger several alarms on my way out."
Kam moved toward the escape route, then paused. "The other girls. The ones in the brothels. Will they—"
"Already handled," the Ghost said. "I hit Wan's operations in Chiang Mai three days ago. The girls are safe, being processed through legitimate aid organizations. Wan's partners are either dead or in custody." She paused. "That's why he was so paranoid tonight. He knew I was coming for him. He just didn't know how."
"Because I told him," Kam said, a small smile playing at her lips. "I told him the Ghost would rise. I told him to watch the door. I made sure he was looking in exactly the wrong direction."
"Clever," the Ghost said, and there was genuine admiration in her voice. "You're wasted as a fortune-teller."
"Perhaps," Kam said, beginning to descend into the passage below. "But the cards don't lie. They told me a ghost would rise to strike down my enemy. They told me I would be free. They told me that justice, however delayed, would come."
The Ghost followed her down, pulling the trap door closed above them. In the darkness of the passage, lit only by the Ghost's small flashlight, they moved away from the room where Hu Wan's body lay cooling in its shaft of light.
"Where will you go?" the Ghost asked as they navigated the narrow tunnel.
"I have family in Taiwan," Kam said. "If they still remember me. If they'll take me back after..." She trailed off, the weight of her captivity settling over her.
"They'll remember you," the Ghost said with quiet certainty. "And I'll make sure you get there safely." She paused, considering her next words carefully. "What you did—reaching out to me like that—it wasn't just impressive. It was useful. Intelligence I could trust completely because it came from the source itself."
Kam glanced back at her in the dim light. "You want readings."
"I might," the Ghost admitted. "My work requires knowing things others don't. And you have a gift for seeing what's hidden." There was a beat of silence, then: "I don't usually work for free, and I suspect you don't either. But tonight... let's call it an introduction. A demonstration of what we might offer each other."
"You're proposing an arrangement," Kam said, understanding dawning.
"I'm proposing we stay in touch," the Ghost said. "You helped me tonight more than you know. Handed me Hu Wan on a silver platter. In the future, when I need to see clearly, I'll know who to ask. And when you need a ghost to rise..." She let the sentence hang.
"I'll know who to call," Kam finished softly.
They emerged from the tunnel into the humid Bangkok night, the compound behind them already alive with the wail of approaching sirens. The Ghost led Kam to a nondescript motorcycle parked in the shadows of a nearby alley, producing a second helmet and a leather jacket from the storage compartment.
As Kam settled onto the bike behind her unlikely savior, she felt the psychic currents shifting around them, the patterns of fate realigning now that Wan's dark influence had been removed from the world. She had been right to reach out, right to trust in the legend of the Ghost of Hong Kong.
The Ghost started the engine, the sound a low purr in the darkness. "Hold on," she said.
Kam wrapped her arms around the Ghost's waist, feeling the solid reality of her rescuer, this woman who had seemed like nothing more than a myth until tonight.
"Thank you," she said again, the words inadequate but sincere. "For hearing me. For coming."
The Ghost didn't respond, guiding the motorcycle out of the alley and into the flow of late-night traffic. They disappeared into the neon-lit streets of Bangkok, two women bound by violence and liberation, by psychic connection and shared purpose. Behind them, Hu Wan's compound blazed with police lights, and somewhere on the top floor of the house, in a shaft of light, on a mahogany table, ancient symbols spoke of justice delivered and debts repaid.
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If you enjoyed this story, you might also like this other Ghost of Hong Kong story that can be read here at the blog. You might even consider getting a copy of The Ghost of Hong Kong anthology, which is full of stories you can only find there!
