Betrayal

The four objects inside the case lay there quietly.

My mind played it out like a film — flashes of four ways to die: strangled with hemp rope, crushed with an iron hammer, poisoned by pesticide, or by scalpel—

The scalpel. I suddenly noticed: the manufacturer's mark engraved on the handle was a logo made of sinuous lines curving into the shape of a heart, with the characters "KANGPING" beside it. That was Dr. Xu's psychology clinic. Why would a psychology clinic have surgical scalpels?

The receipt surfaced in my mind — "Kangping Hospital," "Attending physician: Xu Mo." Who was Dr. Xu, really? And what was her connection to this skeleton-in-skin? My head was a knot of loose threads with no end to pull.

"This one?" the skeleton-in-skin spoke, picking up the scalpel. "We'll use this then. Same way Dr. Xu went."

That was right. I had watched him draw that scalpel across Dr. Xu's throat with my own eyes.

He started walking toward me. I still couldn't move. I watched the scalpel approach until it was in front of my face. In its smooth surface I caught my own reflection: my face, but with closed eyes. I was going mad — how could a person see themselves with closed eyes in a mirror?

"Ring — ring — ring!"

From behind me, a sharp ringtone. The phone on my office desk was ringing.

The skeleton-in-skin was still standing in front of me. He reached over, gripped my chair back, and turned me to face the desk, then lifted his withered hand and picked up the receiver, holding it to my ear.

Out of the phone came Ruoli's voice: "Darling! Are you still at the office? Please come home — I'm here alone, I'm scared."

"Don't be scared. I'll come right now."

Ruoli's need for me — it gave me, suddenly, a reason to live. And then: I could speak. I could move.

I turned around to face the skeleton-in-skin. But when I turned, he wasn't there. He and all the smiling, wailing strangers in the office had vanished. The hand holding the phone was my own hand now.

The call had ended. I sat there with the receiver, staring at the empty office. What had just happened? Had I dreamed it?

I rubbed my aching knees, stood up, and walked out of the office building.

Outside in the small hours, it was bitterly cold. A gust struck me in the face and I drew the cold air deep into my lungs. I pulled my coat tight and walked into the wind.

The wind moaned in my ears. I walked mechanically down the road toward home — face numbed by the cold, body losing all sensation, as though the flesh no longer belonged to me. Was I a ghost drifting through the small hours?

I passed through the empty commercial street. All the shops that were so full of noise during the day were shuttered metal now. Through the shutters and into the familiar underground tunnel: the long passage stretched into darkness, the ceiling's fluorescent tubes casting a pale white light. Wu Wei was still there, leaning against the wall, motionless. As I passed him I couldn't stop myself from reaching out and checking for breath.

Nothing. His body had gone cold. The evil spirit had a new host. When I withdrew my hand, my little finger caught something — something abnormally cold. I leaned in: Wu Wei's arms were folded around a copper box. The surface of the box was thick with green verdigris. The sides were engraved with plant patterns — sinuous stems with heart-shaped leaves. I had seen this box in my dreams. Exactly this.

I stood still for a moment. The box had no business being here. The evil spirit came from an underground chamber; the copper box was its vessel. When it left, it should have taken the box. But it hadn't. It had left the box in Wu Wei's arms, as though it had meant to.

I tried to take the box, but Wu Wei's rigid body clutched it tight. I had to pry open his fingers and pull it out.

"Clang." The instant I freed the box, his body toppled to the floor.

Holding the ice-cold copper box, I felt certain it concealed things that were not meant to be known.

I opened it anyway. It was not empty. A photograph lay inside. The moment I saw it clearly, everything in me went cold.

The photograph showed a man and a woman. The man sat in a chair, his expression blank. The woman stood behind him, arms around him, cheek pressed to his, smiling with an intimacy that seemed completely at ease. I recognised them both. The man was Wu Wei. The woman was my wife, Ruoli.

The photo must have been taken recently — Ruoli was wearing the white blazer she had bought just last month.

Ruoli knew Wu Wei. They had posed for a photo this close. I felt whatever warmth remained inside me draining away rapidly. The woman who slept beside me every night — how much had she kept from me?

At the edge of the photo, Ruoli's hand rested naturally on Wu Wei's shoulder, the gesture of someone who had done it countless times. Ruoli's brilliant smile was a knife, sliding slowly into the softest part of my heart.

I stared at the photo, my fingernails nearly pressing through the paper.

Everything I thought was love. Everything I thought was family. Everything I thought was real—

It had been a joke I had written myself, from beginning to end.

A feeling crept over me that I was close to the truth — a truth I wouldn't be able to accept.

Cold wind blew from the far end of the tunnel, like a hundred hands pulling at me.

What should I do now? Could I still go home? How would I face Ruoli?

I couldn't pretend none of it had happened. If I confronted her, I was afraid the truth would destroy me. A few minutes ago I'd thought home was my shelter from the world. Now it was an inexhaustible source of pain. And right now, facing this was worse than facing death.

Then where could I go?

The photograph offered an answer.

When I turned it over with trembling hands, there was a line of handwriting on the back — hasty, like someone scraping out a final testament with the last of their strength:

"Wake up. You have no wife or child. You're a single man. That's reality."

Below the words were two six-digit numbers.

Those numbers seemed random. Only I knew what they meant. They were the coordinates of the treasure entrance in my novel, "Desert Treasure Hunt." Where the story began. The starting point of every nightmare.