The Hour Has Come

Hui Nan went home and fell into a dreamless sleep. She didn't know how much time had passed when the pounding started — someone hammering on her door so hard the hinges rattled. She scrambled out of bed and stumbled into the hallway. A glance at her phone: past midnight. She opened the door.

Zhai Jia was standing in the corridor. Her face had been painted dead white, the powder thick and smooth as theatrical makeup. On her eyes she had drawn dark hollowed circles. Her lips were colorless. She was wearing a plain white garment Hui Nan had never seen before, like the burial clothes of the rural dead. In her hand she held a funeral candle, wax dripping, still burning.

Hui Nan's body flooded with cold.

Zhai Jia's painted face curved into a slow smile. "Hui Nan," she said, with a tone she had never used — flat, pleasant, almost sweet. "It's time."

Hui Nan gripped the doorframe. "Zhai Jia—"

"The hour has come," Zhai Jia said. "We need to go."

Hui Nan worked to keep her voice even. "It's the middle of the night. Go where?"

Zhai Jia tilted her head and regarded her. "You know where."

Hui Nan swallowed. In this moment every rational thought told her Zhai Jia was having a psychotic break — she had been pushed past the limit and was detached from reality. But the painted face and the stillness of it were doing something to Hui Nan's nerves that rationality couldn't entirely correct.

"Come inside," Hui Nan said. "You can't be outside at midnight alone like this."

Zhai Jia didn't move. "I killed him," she said.

The words fell into the corridor like a stone into water. Hui Nan went still.

"The fifth pockmark," Zhai Jia said. "It was me."

Hui Nan stared. "What?"

"I killed the fifth pockmark," Zhai Jia repeated, in the same pleasantly composed voice. "I stabbed him. I buried him. On White Stone Mountain." She paused. "That's why he's calling me back. To go with him. The hour has come."

Hui Nan's breath had become very shallow. She searched Zhai Jia's dead-white face, trying to understand whether she was recounting a delusion or confessing to actual murder.

"Zhai Jia," she said carefully. "Who is the fifth pockmark?"

Zhai Jia smiled again — the same slow smile. "You know who he is. You all know who he is." She lifted the candle between them. The flame guttered in the draft from the open door. "I have to go now, Hui Nan. He's waiting."

Then, without another word, Zhai Jia turned and walked away down the corridor, the white garment trailing behind her, the candle flame steady in her hand, growing smaller and smaller until the stairwell door swung shut and she was gone.

Hui Nan stood at her door for a long time without moving.

Then she went inside, sat on the edge of her bed, and tried to think clearly about what Zhai Jia had just told her. The fifth pockmark. According to the nursery rhyme — the one the dead girl had supposedly brought back with her — the fifth pockmark was the one who had killed Fang Chuchua. Which meant: if Zhai Jia was telling the truth, Zhai Jia had killed the person who killed the girl. She had taken a revenge killing into her own hands.

And now Zhai Jia's mind was breaking under the weight of it.

Hui Nan picked up her phone and dialed Fei Qiang.