AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Bund, she thought absently. What a strange way of translating it. In Chinese, it was wàitan, which should have lent itself to being called the outer bank in English. That was what it was: a strip of land that touched the part of the Huangpu River farthest downstream. By calling it the Bund instead, it became an embankment. It became a place to come and go, ships crowding in for a chance of the life inside the banks, for trading houses and foreign consulates buzzing with power.
It was here that wealth gathered most densely, amid the decadent, Beaux Arts–inspired, Western-funded buildings that only produced more wealth in a self-sustained cycle. Many of the structures were not yet finished, letting the sea breeze blow through its open beams of scaffolding. The clanging of builders working intensely rang frantic even at this late hour. They were not allowed to build up along the height-restricted Bund, so they could only build well.
Even half-constructed, everything here was beautiful. It was like every project was a competition to outshine the previous. Kathleen’s favorite was the HSBC building—a huge, six-floor neoclassical thing housing the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, glimmering on the outside as much as it did on the inside. It was hard to believe that such a colossal collection of marble and Monel managed to come together like this: in columns and lattices and a single roaring dome. It made the whole structure look like it belonged among ancient Grecian temples rather than the epicenter of Shanghai’s financial golden age.
It was too bad that the people who worked in such welcoming buildings were about as welcoming as moldy rice.
Kathleen exited the HSBC building begrudgingly, emitting a long groan under her breath. Weary to her bones, she leaned against one of the exterior arches, taking a minute to consider her next steps.
I haven’t a clue what you mean was the number one phrase that had been thrown at her today, and Kathleen hated failing at her tasks. As soon as these bankers realized Kathleen had not come to query about her credit account, but rather to ask whether they had seen any monsters on their way to work, they shut down immediately, rolling their eyes and asking her to please move along. Within these granite walls and thick, roaring vaults, she supposed the people who spent day after day here thought themselves safe from the madness, from rumors of the monster that brought it by.
Kathleen could tell. It was in the patient wave of their hands as they gestured for the next client, the leisurely manner of shrugging off Kathleen’s question like it was simply beneath them. The rich and the foreign, they didn’t truly believe it. To them, this madness sweeping the city was nothing except Chinese nonsense—only to affect the doomed poor, only to touch the believers caught in their tradition. They thought their glistening marble could keep out contagion because the contagion was nothing save the hysteria of savages.
When the madness comes through these columns, Kathleen thought to herself, the people here won’t know what hit them.
And then, cruelly, she a
lmost thought: Good.
“You, there! Xiao guniáng!”
Kathleen swiveled around at the voice, her heart lifting in the hopes that a banker had come out to tell her that they recalled something. Only as she turned, her eyes landed on an elderly woman with a thick crop of white hair, shuffling nearer with both her hands clutching a large purse.
“Yes?” Kathleen asked.
The elderly woman stopped in front of her, eyes sweeping across the jade pendant pressed to her throat. Kathleen’s arms prickled with goose bumps. She resisted the urge to touch her hair.
“I heard you asking”—the woman leaned in, her voice taking on a conspiratorial tone—“after a monster?”
Kathleen grimaced, shaking her goose bumps away with a small exhale. “I’m sorry,” she replied. “I don’t have any information, either—”
“Ah, but I do,” the woman interrupted. “You won’t get anywhere with these bankers. They hardly look up from their books and desks. But I was here three days ago. I saw it.”
“You—” Kathleen looked over her shoulder, then leaned in, lowering her voice. “You saw it here? With your own eyes?”
The woman waved for Kathleen to follow her, and she did, looking both ways before they crossed the road. They walked up to the water, near the wharves that swept out into the river. When the elderly woman stopped, she set her bag down, then used both her arms to gesture.
“Right here,” the woman said. “I was coming out of the bank with my son. Darling thing—but a complete bèndàn when it comes to his finances. Anyway, while he went to fetch a rickshaw, I stood by the bank to wait, and from the street there”—she moved her arms to gesture toward one of the roads that moved inward into the city—“this thing… came running out.”
“A thing,” Kathleen echoed. “You mean the monster?”
“Yes…” The woman trailed off. She had started this story with vigor, with the sort of energy that came with holding a rapt audience. Now it was fading, suddenly striking the woman with what she had truly seen. “The monster. Horrific, undying thing.”
“But are you sure?” Kathleen urged. One part of her wanted to run home with this information immediately, tell Juliette so her cousin could gather the Scarlet forces and their pitchforks. Another part, the sensible part, knew this was not enough. They needed more. “Are you certain it was the monster, not a shadow or—”
“I am certain,” the woman said firmly. “I am certain because a fisherman docking his boat tried to shoot at it as it lumbered along this very wharf.” She pointed forward, to the wharf that extended out into the wide, wide river, currently rumbling with activity from the docked ships. “I am certain because the bullets merely bounced off its back, clinking to the ground as if it were not a being standing upright but a god. It was a monster. I am sure of it.”
“What happened?” Kathleen whispered. A chill swept up her neck and down her arms. She did not think it was the sea breeze. It was something far ghastlier. “What happened next?”
The woman blinked. She seemed to come out of a slight daze, as if she had not quite noticed how intently she had gotten lost in her memory.
“Well, that’s the thing,” she replied, frowning. “My eyesight, you see. It’s not the best. I watched the creature leap into the water and then…”
Kathleen leaned forward. “And then…?”
The old woman shook her head. “I do not know. Everything got a little hazy. I thought I heard skittering. It looked like the darkness out there”—she extended her arm—“was moving. Like little things were being shot into the darkness.” She shook her head again, more intensely this time. It did not look to do much, because the woman’s voice had lost all of her initial energy. “My son had returned by then with the rickshaw. I told him to go look. I told him that I thought I saw a monster in the water. He ran along the wharf to go catch it.”
Kathleen gasped. “And… did he?”
