The Killer Became the Fire

Jiang Lanpei was pinned to the ground, eyes shot through with blood, chest heaving — but her mouth twisted into a lunatic's grin. 'Ha ha ha ha... the Police Force... what good is the Police Force, the Police Force is garbage! In all these years, did a single officer notice I was trapped in this hellhole? Not one! Every last one of them — useless pustules!'

Her mind was a wreck. Catch one word and she'd burrow into it and not come out.

She cursed on, and the wind blew a tangle of loose hair into her mouth. She spat it out. Her eyes turned uglier still —

'What now — you're going to kill me, aren't you? Officer? You're going to kill me to cover up your own negligence, aren't you?'

As she said it, a languid, lurid smile surfaced on her face. She was flat on the ground and at someone's mercy, yet her eyes stayed mocking.

'I knew it. All you men are the same — useless. Nothing to show for yourselves, so you take it out on women. I was kept like livestock for twenty years... do you know how I kept track of time? By the photographs that dead thing hung on the wall. I looked at those disgusting things every day. The earliest one — I was only twenty-nine. Twenty-nine!!!'

'I'm fifty now... wait — fifty-two? Fifty-one? Or not quite fifty?' She went vague again, that smile steeping on her red lips like arsenic poured into wine — gorgeous and lethal. 'It doesn't matter. What matters is that I got out.'

'Do you know how I got out?'

'All those years I flattered him, I fawned on him — I played the helpless madwoman. He looked down on me but still came to use me, strutting around in front of me to claw back whatever was left of his pitiful male pride... ha ha ha ha... I stroked his ego until it swelled so big it rotted his judgment. As the years went on he grew careless around me, and one time when he was pulling down his trousers he actually left the key to my room in the hidden chamber.'

She dropped her voice as if sharing a secret, then could not hold back a triumphant laugh. 'But I didn't take it.'

'That night I handed the key back to him and asked what it was. The moment he saw it the color drained from his face — but then he saw how vacant I looked, and he relaxed. He decided I really was that far gone... that I couldn't even recognize a key anymore. Ha!' Her gaze sharpened suddenly, and her voice with it. 'Who in the world could live like that for twenty years and not go mad!'

'He held that key up and mocked me with it, as if he thought I was some dead dog who wouldn't know what to do with an escape route even if it fell into my hands. He didn't know I could see every flicker of smugness in his eyes — it turned my stomach. But I could perform. Who says a lunatic can't put on an act? I performed so well I fooled him completely. After that he grew more and more relaxed, more and more careless. Every time he left the key behind I would slip out quietly... I felt my way along every brick in that asylum. But I didn't leave. I wanted all those men to rot in hell first.'

'Finally I had everything planned. Yesterday — I waited for him to leave the key again. I took it. I waited until night. I went out... and quietly stole a knife.'

She was still gripping that knife. The blood on the bright blade had dried to an ugly burnt umber.

Xie Qingcheng knew that the moment he eased his weight she would explode back to life and drive the blade into his chest.

The savagery in her face was overwhelming.

Sky, ground — all of it was hatred.

Twenty years had turned her from a simple patient into a caged animal with ground-down teeth and a taste for blood.

'I hid the knife under the mattress. He came again — rubbing that greasy mouth all over me. I played along. I reached my hand under the bedding, and then...'

Something erupted in her pupils — the blood-spray of the moment she had killed Liang Jicheng, and his screams.

'Ha ha ha... ha ha ha ha ha... such hot blood...'

'Tell me — a heart that cold, how does it carry blood so hot? That can't be right...!'

'Afterward I dragged him to the office... I wanted to dismember him. But I heard something outside the door — I looked through the crack and saw a young woman I didn't know, as if she was looking for something. I wasn't about to let her ruin my plans. I had waited so many years. So I stuffed the body back into the cabinet, pinned on his name badge, and walked out... to talk to your sister...'

Her face was contorted — she seemed to be speaking to Xie Qingcheng, and yet also to herself.

'That girl was pretty. Even looked a little like the one who had been brought back years ago — the one who bashed her head against the wall until she died, my little Little Snack. I thought... hee hee, must be Little Snack reincarnated. Even if not, it didn't matter — I barely remembered what that girl looked like anyway. About the same age though, and I felt it was fate. I lured her to the office, and when she wasn't paying attention I slipped sedatives into what she drank. Of course I know which ones are sedatives — looking down on the mentally ill is the funniest thing you so-called normal people do. I know that special-formula sedative all too well. Every time I stepped out of line the Liang man would pour it down my throat by the cup.'

'She went under. I dragged her to the hidden chamber. I thought — once I had my revenge, when her family came looking for her, they would... they would tear this place apart to find her. Not like me... not like me... I...'

Here she trailed off, her eyes going dim. An expression crossed her face that looked, unexpectedly, like loneliness.

Xie Qingcheng fixed her with a sharp look. 'So your original intention was that when it was over and someone came searching for her, they would find that chamber as well?'

The woman said nothing. She smiled — stiff, twisted. 'None of that matters anymore.'

'After I locked your sister in the hidden chamber, I dragged Liang Jicheng back out of that cabinet — I wanted to do it there, in that place, the place where I first laid eyes on him. Die together, just the two of us, the way it was the first time we met. No one else. Cry out to heaven and heaven won't answer; scream at the earth and the earth won't move. I wanted to do it myself — to take him apart piece by piece —'

She stopped. The look she fixed on Xie Qingcheng carried something new — a hatred that had carved itself into the bone.

'And then you came.'

'You interrupted me. You kept me from giving him the last vengeance he deserved — in that place.'

'You interrupted me... you're a cop, aren't you? You're a cop. The Police Force always sides with the guilty. Kill me then. Kill me, and sooner or later I'll come back for you —!'

Hatred. Resolve. Savagery. Wild laughter.

All of it looked ready to tear straight through her face and become long, gleaming fangs — to run the man in front of her through.

But Xie Qingcheng held her gaze and said, one word at a time: 'I'm not a police officer. And I have no intention of killing you.'

The woman flinched — she hadn't expected that. She bared her teeth, eyes bulging:

'Then what do you want?'

'He wants to take you to file a report.' He Yu had handed Xie Xue off to a nearby nurse and crossed to Xie Qingcheng's side. In the dark it was hard to read his expression.

'To tell the Police Force everything.'

'I won't go!' Jiang Lanpei screamed, hysterical. 'I won't go! No one will believe me! I won't go! Liars — you're all liars!'

But He Yu walked slowly toward her.

Xie Qingcheng turned his head and snapped, 'What are you doing? Stay back!'

He Yu said, 'Xie Qingcheng, you don't understand her.'

'You've been talking to her all this time. Apart from the abuse, has she listened to a word you said?'

The young man stepped in close, shouldered Xie Qingcheng aside, and helped Jiang Lanpei up from the ground. In that instant she erupted with terrifying force — she lunged with the knife, straight for He Yu.

But He Yu looked her dead in the eye and said one sentence, and her hand froze.

He said: 'Jiang Lanpei, I'm mentally ill too.'

The young man's face was less than a fist's width from hers, his clear eyes level with the eyes of this unraveled woman.

His voice was low enough that only Xie Qingcheng, standing nearest, could catch it. He slowly raised his hand — eyes locked on Jiang Lanpei's — and, quietly, without a flicker of visible effort, closed his fingers around the cold blade.

If she snapped back to herself and yanked the knife free right then, he would be cut. But He Yu looked utterly calm — every muscle in his body coiled tight yet his face carrying no trace of it — as if he were having a conversation with a perfectly ordinary woman, a mother, a sane person.

'You know that, don't you? I'm mentally ill too.'

The knife passed into his hand without a sound.

Only when she felt the blade gone did Jiang Lanpei jerk into awareness of the danger. She stared at He Yu, face drained white. 'You —'

But he made no move to hurt her.

He bent his knuckles and slowly swept the loose strands of hair from her forehead, tucking them behind her ear. His eyes stayed on hers. 'I have Solitary Case Syndrome. Look into my eyes. You're mad — can you spot your own kind?'

Jiang Lanpei still wore a face full of wariness, but she was looking at He Yu with real attention — studying him. Even, it seemed, scenting him.

He Yu bore it without any expression, perfectly still, and let her examine him like an animal using the oldest method available — because perhaps each kind of person has their own way of confirming safety, and perhaps the feral instinct and sixth sense of the mad really are sharper than those of the sane.

Finally Jiang Lanpei said, quietly: 'You are.'

'I am.'

'Who hurt you?'

'No one. I was born this way.'

He Yu, evenly: 'I don't even have a target to take revenge on.'

Jiang Lanpei: '...'

'But even though I'm a patient, they believe every word I say.'

'Why?'

He Yu smiled. The clouds shifted, and in the pale, wasted moonlight his eyes seemed to catch a layer of frost-bright silver — the edge of a side tooth showing, cold and sharp.

He leaned in close, the way you'd lean in to share some tried-and-true method for beating down your illness with a fellow patient, and murmured gently against her ear: 'Because, like you, I know how to perform.'

'You performed stupidity. I perform sanity.'

That frost pooled in the depths of his eyes as he smiled. 'Nineteen years of it, and almost no one has ever caught on that I'm ill. We both need our camouflage, don't we?'

For a moment Jiang Lanpei's expression went blank — and then she surfaced again.

'No... I've already killed someone. My disguise is finished —'

'If you can't trust them, maybe you can trust me. Let me tell you a secret first.'

Jiang Lanpei's eyes widened, listening.

He Yu raised one finger and pressed it lightly to his lips. 'The Police Force is coming. Very soon now.'

Jiang Lanpei's pupils contracted to a point. 'What does that mean? They called the Police Force?! They still went and called the Police Force! Treacherous —'

'I called them.' He Yu's voice was perfectly even.

'Why would you... we're the same kind... why are you taking their side, you should... you should...' The woman lost the thread of her own words.

'I am on your side.'

He Yu said.

'But don't you want more than just Liang Jicheng's death? After twenty years, you let him die just like that — and in death he stays unblemished. He'll probably be mourned as a pillar of the community, his grave heaped with flowers, patients' families who never knew a thing coming to weep for him — while you become the killer. Notorious. The ugliest photograph they have of you plastered on the front page of every paper, everyone calling you an ungrateful animal. No one will ever know what was done to you. In death you'd still rank below him and be spat on for it. Think about whether that's worth it.'

'...'

'Tell the Police Force everything, and death is not your only road. Liang Jicheng's name dies with his body — you can kill the man and the reputation twice over.' He Yu tilted his head and spoke close against her ear, soft, almost like a spell. 'How much more you'd get out of it. Why wouldn't you?'

For just a moment, something in Jiang Lanpei flickered — as if she was almost persuaded.

And it was then that the sirens arrived — like a distant tide rising, rolling in from every direction toward the psychiatric hospital standing alone in the dark.

'Out of the vehicles!'

'Everybody out!!'

Jiang Lanpei's gaze shifted. She struggled to her feet. The security guards, reading the moment, all moved to restrain her — but He Yu gently took her arm and helped her up.

'I'll go with you to look.'

'Come and see for yourself — maybe there's still a way out with some light left in it.'

As if under a spell, Jiang Lanpei walked forward, trembling, to the railing at the edge of the rooftop. She grabbed the cold, rust-pitted iron bar and craned her neck to look down.

In her blurred field of vision she saw the police cars, their red and blue lights blazing — a blaze of light unlike anything she had laid eyes on in all her years of captivity.

It was as though every wrong she had suffered, every humiliation, every degradation, could be illuminated at last — that chamber dark for twenty years could be dragged out and laid bare under an open sky.

She stared and stared, and something in her broke loose. Tears spilled from her eyes.

She turned slowly. There in the night wind, her long red dress — the dress Liang Jicheng had bought her under the pretense of caring for an unclaimed patient, to satisfy his own tastes, the dress he had so often lewdly stripped from her body — billowed and snapped in the darkness.

'...So bright,' she murmured. 'Like dawn breaking.'

'Thank you.'

'But...'

Overlapping with the last few syllables from her lips came the amplified voice of the officers below —

'All persons trapped inside, please remain calm! All persons trapped inside, please remain calm! Do not use the elevators! Find any available water source! Soak cloth and cover your nose and mouth! Stay low! Firefighters are on the scene! If possible, use any visible object to signal your location! Rescue operations are commencing immediately!!'

Jiang Lanpei's eyes went dim. 'It's too late now.'

'Twenty years — enough to make me hate everyone.'

'The moment you broke into that office, my plan was already at its last step.'

'Young man, I can't turn back anymore.'

As if to confirm her words, without warning —

'BOOM!!'

An explosion tore the night apart.

The staff trapped on the roof surged to the edges in panic — near the linen room, a sealed door and window frame were blown apart by a surge of fire and superheated air forcing through from inside.

In the firelight, Jiang Lanpei said slowly, 'Chengkang Psychiatric Hospital has a great many things it cannot let into the light. Liang Jicheng had a number of hidden chambers built throughout the hospital — stocked with petrol, and incendiary devices. He never dared speak of it in front of anyone; he only liked to show off in front of me, his fool. He said all he had to do was press a hidden switch in his office and the place would be burning within ten minutes...'

'He had a guilty conscience, so the smoke detectors and security cameras in this place had been broken for years. He was doing things to me in my bed and still carried on phone calls discussing this — I heard every word. Over the years I came to know Chengkang better than anyone.'

'...I hadn't meant to go this far. But you had to come barging in while I was in the middle of things... I had no intention of ending up in the hands of the Police Force. While you were heading down to the chamber to rescue the others, I had already pressed that switch.'

Xie Qingcheng: 'You —!'

'Yes. I brought you all up here to buy time. Once the fire spreads, none of us can leave. We all die together. Death puts an end to all this pain... and now there is no going back.' Jiang Lanpei gave a desolate smile. Two words, quiet as stones dropping: 'Too late.'

'Too late...'

'Too late for me, too late for all of you...'

'It is not too late!!!!'

A stranger's rough, hoarse voice bellowing through the wind. Jiang Lanpei spun around — a specially trained firefighter had climbed up in the shortest possible time, working his way up an unburned section of the outer wall on a safety line.

The firefighter was a bear of a man in full protective gear. He'd probably missed most of what had been said before he got up, and the first thing he caught was this trapped woman going on about being too late, too late.

Was she questioning his performance on the job?

The big bear would not stand for it. He bellowed: 'It is not too late! I got here fast! Come on, everyone over here! Move now while you still can! The fire's going to hit the north face any minute! Let's go let's go! Women and children first!!'

'Me!! Me first!!!'

The young nurse was in a blind panic; she looked at the firefighter the way you'd look at a god descended from heaven, and ran toward him in tears. One by one the rest followed — more firefighters were climbing the rope ladder to the roof, and they began bringing people down before the fire could spiral beyond control.

Xie Xue and the other female staff members were in the first group evacuated. The firefighter yelled at Jiang Lanpei: 'Hey! Come on!! Why are you standing so far away by yourself?! Get over here! We'll get you down safely, don't be afraid!! We're taking you home! Hurry!!'

Jiang Lanpei's whole body convulsed, as if jolted by a current. She stood in the shadow of the tall water tower as the wind drove her blood-red dress around her.

But where was home?

And who was she?

She was saved — but where could she go? She had been mad for so long. She no longer remembered the world outside. Her world was a narrow chamber, thousands of photographs, a heart full of hatred, and a grief that had no bottom.

She was going down to hell with all of it.

She was waiting for the fire to climb to her — waiting for it to spread and take all this darkness up with it, to become the first thread of dawn at the end of the long night.

'Hey — come on —!'

Once the windows below gave way to the pressure and blew out, the fire was no longer a thing that crept in silence. It became a dragon — raging, roaring, belching black smoke. The firelight blazed across the dark sky.

Jiang Lanpei walked one trembling step forward.

Then she stopped.

She lifted her head and looked back at the water tower behind her. It was a reserve tank, rarely used, not much inside — but no. That was not water.

A cold, bleak smile touched the corner of her mouth.

It was petrol — gathered over countless nights when Liang Jicheng was unaware, when she had stolen the key and slipped out to the supply point, trip by trip, over years. And tucked against her chest, inside her dress, was the last thing she needed to take herself back to the sky.

...

'He Yu, get over here!!!'

Xie Qingcheng's body reacted before his mind caught up. He seized He Yu by the arm and ran — hard, in the other direction.

And at the same moment they were running, Jiang Lanpei smiled, drew something from inside her dress — a steel lighter — flicked it open, and flung it toward the water tower that was already weeping petrol in slow drops —

'— CLANG!!'

Fire erupted. A wall of it, instantaneous, swallowing Jiang Lanpei whole.

Xie Qingcheng threw himself and He Yu flat against the ground. Behind them: rolling, blistering heat. The firefighters stood frozen, staring helplessly as the woman spread her arms wide, raised her face to the sky — arms open as if awaiting the salvation of some god, as if about to take flight — and the fire took her in.

Xie Qingcheng and He Yu turned back. '...'

Sparks cascading in every direction. The fire roaring out its thick, scorched-black smoke. A column of twisting darkness rose and coiled upward, and it seemed to carry within it the woman's long, broken cry, and a life left to rot — the fire raving and stamping its wild dance, splitting sky and earth, the enraged fire and smoke hammering together against the night sky torn open by the blaze, heavy and relentless, tearing at the vault of heaven, surging forward in an overwhelming, unstoppable flood —

'Twenty years. I trust no one anymore.'

'There is no way back for me.'

'Someone from the sky will come for me. I am going up to the sky.'

She never looked back.