Wallace broke the seal on the chest and lifted the lid. Inside were carefully arranged two score of palm-sized rounds, blackened and pungent. He breathed deeply the smell, one familiar to him after many hours lost in the opium dens of China.

“We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,” he muttered. “Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth…”

Lost as Wallace was staring at the unrefined finery brought from Bengal, it took several moments before he realized that Captain Downing waited for his services.

“Fine foreign mud, Master Ji. You will be pleased.” Even after two years speaking Chinese, Wallace’s tongue felt awkward with the language’s tones with being born to the Scot’s burrs.

He lifted up one of the opium balls, marveling that if he so chose, he could squeeze it in his fist, crack the inch layer of dark poppy leaves plastered by inferior juice and feel the heavy crude leak between his fingers. Would he lick his hand clean?

He turned around. Ji Xiao-bin, the Hong, stood rigid in his embroidered silk robe. His dark eyes never stared directly into Wallace’s own, but still the young man was aware of the merchant’s gaze. He walked over to Ji and offered the round.

The merchant accepted the ball with open palms. Ji’s hands were feminine, soft and slender. Mother would envy such hands, Wallace thought. Except for the long fingernails which would interfere with her embroidery.

Ji brought the opium up to his face and turned the ball to and fro a moment. “It is so. Good black earth, Muir.”

Wallace nodded at Downing. The man’s lower face became lost to a graying beard that ended with an upward curl, which looked unruly compared to the Hong’s slender trailing mustache. Downing balanced a lit pipe between lip and teeth. The retired Navy officer knew that Ji found the smell of his tobacco offensive. He made sure to smoke at least two pipefuls before the Hong arrived. The small room stank of stale cherries.

“Tell him six hundred taels for every chest. No less.”

“For such good black earth six hundred taels is a small price.”

The Hong merchant frowned and returned the opium ball to the chest. “No, Muir, I cannot bear that picul. I doubt the red fan-jen,” Ji said, eyeing in the direction of Downing with evident distaste, “would wish to deal with other families.”

Wallace’s employer did not wait for the translation. “You murrain little coolie,” Downing shouted at Ji who remained utterly composed. “Backing and filling about.”

“We could always do business with another Hong,” offered Wallace.

“That’s just what he wants us to do so he won’t have to worry about paying bribes to the Mandarins and Triads.” Downing slammed the lid of the chest down. “Fine. I’ll go as low as five hundred but you make him beg for that.”

Wallace nodded and immediately suggested to the merchant the lower price. Ji readily agreed and they spent the next ten minutes arguing over the merits of British wool compared to the homespun cloth of the Chinese. When the Hong merchant had grown flushed at the suggestion that the sheep in Canton had grown bald by drinking the cast-off water from Ji’s very own opium refinery, Wallace turned and told Downing the deal was finished.

The man grunted.

“We thank you for this fairest of trades.” Wallace said and bowed respectfully.

The Hong bowed low to Wallace and then a slight bow to Downing before leaving.

“Bloody China.” The captain sat down and let his boots rest on the edge of the desk. “India, now that was grand. The Empire should treat this lot the same way.” He stabbed the stem of his pipe towards the window.

Wallace shrugged. May yet happen with all the growing strife, he thought but hoped against. He enjoyed his current dealings with Ji. The Oriental mindset, one locked into a narrow corridor of tradition and law proved comforting when compared to the pudder of the West.

He had left London five years ago, barely a man, after the pain of his best friend Bastion’s spurning his heart, an ache that would not be drowned with pints of gin. He had walked up the gangplank of the first merchant vessel he had come across on the docks and offered his sweat and labors for passage. He had known little of the Orient, of Macao, until the ship pulled into port.

The Manchus had decried that teaching a Westerner Chinese a crime punishable with death. Yet, Wallace had managed to cajole one local servant to tutor him in return for raw opium obtained after trysts with Downing. The Canton man had been publicly executed six months ago. Wallace had refused to utter a word for more than a week, knowing where the blame laid.

Now spending days without hearing so much as a word of the Queen’s English served as a panacea, letting him forget what had happened back home. If the British took China, if the Middle Kingdom fell before the Crown, he would find himself even more useful for his linguistic talent and yet the more miserable for it.

“So will I be seeing you tonight?” Downing walked over to Wallace and laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder, fingers lightly pressing down through the cloth.

Wallace slipped out from the officer’s touch. “No. I’ll be sailing back to Macao.”

“Again? I am beginning to believe you no longer care for the Factory’s holdings.” Downing lightly brushed his fingers through his beard a moment, a nervous habit.

Inwardly, Wallace shuddered. He remembered the rough feeling of the man’s beard against his skin, the way the grunts sounded like the hogs penned in Macao. Unless in dire need, he had no urge to suffer him again. “On the contrary, where would my wallet be without this place?”

He was halfway out the door when Downing called out to him. “Be wary of ghosts.”

“What?” Wallace turned quickly on his heels.

He caught Downing in the midst of rekindling his pipe. “I would have thought you knew. It’s the season; these savages believe their seventh month is haunted.”

Wallace shook his head and left. As he walked through the halls of the Factory—the compound outside the walls of Canton where the ruling Manchus confined all Westerners seeking to trade with China—Wallace tried not to dwell on thoughts of ghosts. He had seen more than enough for his liking.

His room was small, almost a monastic cell. He pulled out from under the bed his worn leather satchel that accompanied him during every sea voyage. He packed a few clothes and toiletries. Before he could leave though, he found himself staring at a small bottle of amber glass sitting next to the washbasin on the bedside table. Acriedel's Laudanum. He picked up the remedy sent over on the last shipment of English goods. His mother swore by Acriedel’s for everything from an evening cough to gout.

He put it back down but his fingers remained atop the cork. In Macao, he would not need the medicament as a sleeping aid; a visit to the Emperor’s Den would solve insomnia. Yet, the trip would take half a day. He lifted the bottle once more, hesitating a while before adding it to the satchel.

Outside a fine mist of rain drifted down but it did little to alleviate the humid warmth of the region. Feeling rather than seeing the droplets in the air troubled him. Talk of spirits always raised his hackles.

Macao. Born a Portuguese settlement on a spot of land off the coast of southern China, the 1830’s transformed it into Wallace’s ideal city: a living Babel, a crowded realm of so many tongues and words waiting to be heard. Even after midnight, when the small schooner he sailed had arrived, the city fitfully slumbered with scattered calls along the docks. A blend of harsh and soft smells greeted him as he walked off the ship.

His mind felt tired, muffled by drops from the amber bottle, even after the tea the captain had been so good to offer. His limbs ached to stretch and so he began walking through the dark and narrow streets. Now and then he caught glimpses of figures standing or lying along the edges, in doorways and alleyways. He no longer worried for purse or life. His dark clothes had been patched many a time by his own hand and only the most desperate would bother with a gaunt young man. Besides, most of the desperate would soon be relaxing besides him in the Emperor’s Den.

His awakened legs carried him to that very establishment. He promised himself come morning he’d secure lodgings, but for now, he deserved the distraction of the pipe and hopefully sight of Amaro.

A single lit lantern illuminated the opening to the Den, a small doorway besides the shop that did a brisk business selling tatuagens. Had it only been last month he spent hours watching the beautiful Amaro’s left arm embellished with a harpoon? Even when the blood flowed under the wizened artist’s needle, the Portuguese sailor only grinned, a sight that quickened Wallace’s heart.

He walked through the crumbling passage, his nose taking the lead, breathing in whiffs of the distinctive aroma of opium. His stomach thought roasting ground nuts, fooling his mouth into salivating slightly.

Bunks and pallets lined the walls of the Emperor’s Den’s dark court. Weak oil lamps burned along niches in the old mortar. Wallace glanced about hoping to catch sight of Amaro, but none of the bodies lying on the bunks came close to resembling the sailor. An edge of panic worried at Wallace’s thoughts. Perhaps he had been wrong. The Letitia might not have even docked yet.

He inhaled the den’s fumes, allowing his needy lungs to take comfort in the minute traces of the drug in the air. He would find out more come afternoon, for he had no intention on walking out of the Emperor’s Den until near supper.

Wallace knelt down on the floor and koutoued to the Tartar that ruled the den. Since he took up chasing the dragon, he had never heard any patron refer to the ancient man who ran the opium parlor as anything other than “the Emperor.”

A trembling hand opened the lid of a lacquered tin. The dark ooze of refined opium taunted him. From his jacket pocket Wallace withdrew several taels, the silver of the coins dark from handling. The Emperor nodded languidly and grinned, his parchment-fine skin stretched to reveal an empty smile.

From the soiled rug in front of the man’s slippered feet, Wallace chose a cane pipe, one blackened from long use. Meanwhile, the Emperor dipped the tip of a long needle into the tin, lifting out a dollop. He passed it over a flame of a nearby spirit lamp to dry.

The Den’s ritual demanded that the Emperor prepare the first pipe for every penitent. Wallace placed his lips around the smooth horn mouthpiece, tasting a slight bitterness perhaps left behind from the last smoker. The old man lowered the needle with the ball of opium into the claw bowl near the base of the pipe. He thrust the tip into a small hole, expertly depositing the drug with a twist of the hand.

Wallace leaned forward, inverting the bowel slightly as he brought the pipe to warm over the lamp flame. He counted five heartbeats and then took a slow, deep breath. The vapors eased into him. He wished he could so easily capture the indolent rapture felt the very first time he had smoked, but it took well over an hour at the den to produce the tranquility he craved. He gave more coins and the Emperor gave him a smaller tin and lamp to take to a corner of the chamber.

After his fifth pipe or perhaps his sixth, he noticed the scratching sound. He only paid attention because it began to annoy the edges of the bliss he sought. He turned his head away from the noise but then soft gasps and moans began to follow the scritch-scratch.

Frustrated, he lifted his lamp up to see the culprit. The weak light settled on a gaunt man lying only a yard away, who, though lost to the opium, stirred as if caught in a bad dream. His fingers clutched and gripped the matting beneath, producing that awful scratching.

As his arm rose higher, the light revealed what lay at the man’s feet. The sight shook Wallace’s hand and a bit of hot oil spilt onto his trousers. He cursed out loud, in English.

The ghost looked up, the poor man’s ankles stuffed into its mouth, and let loose a hiss like a tea kettle. It wore a vaguely human face with a large mouth gaping wide. A thick wooden collar somehow stayed put on a neck as slender as a reed that made every movement of the thing’s head bob like some children’s toy. The ghost’s body was mostly a wide gut that reached the dirt floor.

Feeling the bite of the hot oil seeping through to his skin, Wallace curled up his legs underneath him and pressed against the wall. The top of his head banged against the base of the bunk above him.

The ghost returned to trying to force more of the addict’s legs into its mouth. There seemed no way that its spindle throat could swallow a man, yet as Wallace watched, the ghost had managed to pull up to the shins.

He tried waking the man. Cautiously, Wallace reached out to shake him by the shoulder, feeling the bones beneath a worn shirt. The ghost hissed again but continued eating. Then, the burn on his leg brought to mind again the lamp he still held. By its light he could see the waxy cast to whatever served as the ghost’s flesh. Its neck had begun undulating like a serpent’s and along its back were the deep welts from a scourge.

He poured just a little oil out. He aimed for a hand but when the ghost shook its head to and fro suddenly, trying to devour the knees, a startled Wallace spilt oil on the man’s cheek and rolled down into an eye.

The addict cried out weakly. He lifted up his head from the mat and his moans of pain were terrible. He began thrashing about, but his legs never left the ghost’s maw.

No one else in the den stirred.

Wallace put the lamp down and crawled over to the man. He grabbed him beneath the shoulders and tried to pull him free. The addict had begun cursing in Dutch in-between gasps for breath.

Wallace could feel a tremble course through the man. He went still after that, and with one good eye looked up at Wallace’s face before muttering something unintelligible. Then, with the same gentleness that every one of them allowed a lungful of opium vapor to escape, he breathed his last.

A forceful tug pulled the dead addict from Wallace’s grip. He stared down to see the hungry ghost’s maw had reached past the man’s waist. Its red gaze glared at him as its lips worked over wool.

Wallace ran, banging his shoulder against the cramped walls of the passage out. The horizon showed a pink underbelly against the night sky. He ran until out of breath and found himself bent over by a water trough for horses, dunking his head again and again.

Lying on the cobblestone street, he realized he had left his satchel back at the den. He wiped his wet face and worried over should he ever go back.

Curses and the smack of a bristles to his head woke Wallace from a troubled sleep. He looked up to see the heavy-set matron raising her broom again. Though every limb seemed stiff and sore from sleeping on the shop’s uneven porch, he managed to rise quickly and avoid the second blow. He heard a comment that may his next nap be among dogs leveled at his back.

Trying to improve his appearance amounted to brushing the dirt off his clothes and moving the hair from his eyes. His empty stomach rumbled. He spurned the nearby market’s offerings to head down towards the docks, where Amaro had a penchant for one hole that deemed itself a tavern.

The smell of fresh fish stewing on the stove filled the establishment. A small number of men sat around the room at long, scarred wooden tables. He felt vast relief at seeing the familiar dark-skinned sailor drinking and eating.

He went over and sat down across from the sailor. Amaro nodded at him as he chewed some hard bread and washed it down with ale. “You look as if you been dragged all over town, Corvo.”

Wallace chuckled despite his embarrassment. “That would have been preferable.”

A dark haired woman came over to him. He barely glanced up at her when he spoke. “Caldo verdo and ale.” He noticed with a measure of jealousy that Amaro’s eyes followed her as she walked off.

The woman returned with bowl filled with an oily soup of limp vegetables and boiled meat. He had tasted worse and began devouring it in great gulps.

“How long are you in Macao?”

Amaro shrugged. “A few days.”

With the spoon, Wallace scraped the last of the soup up. “I have time to spare.”

The man said nothing seeming more intent in his drink.

Wallace felt bile rise at the back of his throat as well as the urge to retch. Why did he have to bother with insinuation and innuendo? Why could he simply not state his desires and have them not only met but appreciated? Back in London the same façades had tormented him with dear sweet yet damnable Bastion. Wallace had traveled across the globe and found himself faced with another of the same ilk.

“I thought,” he stammered, “that we might…” Wallace hated himself for even thinking that he could beg the sailor’s favors.

“Oh? So like last time, you’ll be wanting to follow me around?”

Wallace looked away. “I don’t recall complaints last time.” He chose to hide his shame the only way he knew how, with words. He took Amaro’s cup and mock-sniffed the contents. “Or have you been drinking sea water?”

“Paneleiro,” Amaro hissed under a breath and grabbed the cup back. “You think you are the only one that I’ve given favors too?” He lifted his gaze up to the serving woman passing by.

Wallace noted where the man’s eyes went. “If she’s the latest berth, I’d be wary. Bang and Biff, two French sailors laid port there last week.” He began to chuckle.

Amaro grabbed him by the collar and pulled his face close. The forcefulness, even the suggestion of violence, made Wallace’s heart race and excited him so even with the indignity of so many eyes upon him. “She’s from Portimão and would never let a dirty Fronck touch her.”

Wallace could smell the spices from the soup on the sailor’s breath. His mouth was only a few inches, and the urge to kiss Amaro felt very real, even though the man would strike him down if he did so with others watching. Instead, he offered a weak smile at Amaro’s misunderstanding his jest. “Why would she,” he whispered. “When she could have you.” He added in Cantonese, knowing full well he’d likely be the only one there who could understand, “we all want you.”

Amaro grunted and let him go. He called out for another drink.

Struggling to maintain his composure, Wallace stood up and dropped some taels to pay for his meal. “I’ll leave you alone with the locals then.”

The sailor’s face softened. “Ahh, Corvo, you make things so difficult. I am not ashore to fight. Come to the Emperor’s tonight.”

Wallace stiffened remembering last night. “There are other dens. I grow tired of that one.”

The sailor waved aside his remark. “The rest mix theirs with ghoor and dung.” He scratched a moment at the stubble along his cheeks and chin. “I’ll treat you to the best pipe in Macao,” he said with a smirk.

Feeling empty even after the drink and food, Wallace found himself nodding.

Outside, thick clouds kept the sun at bay. He chided himself for being a wretch and agreeing to meet Amaro at the Emperor’s Den. The thought of the place frightened him. But whether he went there or not, Amaro would go lured by the opium. Wallace refused to believe that yesterday’s haunting would be the last. Was it not the season, as Downing has been so pleased to tell? He hated his mind which treacherously began envisioning the handsome sailor lying blissfully unaware as a hungry ghost crept up to him, its slack jaws eager for the prey.

He needed some means to fend the thing off for as long as Amaro stayed in Macao. He had no choice but to recover the accursed gun.

When he had arrived in Macao from England, Wallace had relented, sending word to his family of his whereabouts. A package of his personal effects arrived latter by ship. His father had included two items: a letter stating that he “hoped this life abroad would toughen your spirit as well as earn you valuable business contacts with likes of Jardine” and a case with his old pistol.

Hefting the flintlock had brought back bitter memories of the night spent in the boneyard keeping watch over his great-uncle’s grave. Scotland in 1831 had been infested with resurrectionists seeking to sell fresh cadavers until Parliament killed their trade. Two of their ilk had come to unearth his uncle and, though a youth, he had shot them down in cold blood. Only later had he wondered how the pistol had fired the second round; he never remembered reloading.

He took to keeping the pistol on his person while walking through Macao. Soon after, he started spying things out of the corner of his eyes. Indistinct shadows that troubled him. At night, before he fell asleep, he would see a vague figure standing across the room, sometimes male, other times a woman. Taking up the opium pipe altered his perception, obscuring the rest of the world while allowing him to best regard whatever stalked him at the fringes.

He had recognized them as the resurrectionist and his trollop helper. Mute yet certainly resentful spirits. The lull of the drug had suppressed the fear of being haunted.

Almost a month later, Wallace had the misfortune of turning down the wrong alleyway after showing too much coin at a pub. The Chinaman who had stepped out wielded a large knife. Wallace had only intended to raise a hand in submission but found himself holding the heavy pistol. The shot echoed in his ears well after the thief hit the ground. While sipping laudanum to calm his nerves, a new spirit had appeared to him. A blackened hole had cracked and marred the Oriental forehead and empty eyes glared at Wallace.

So the answer had been the flintlock. Had discharging it in the graveyard given it a sense of dominion over those it killed? Perhaps like a hunter savors his trophies, the firearm reveled in having the ghosts of its victim nearby.

He had briefly considered selling or simply abandoning it in the marketplace. But a sense of guilt over what he had done, even by accident, creating the malignance possessed by the thing had kept him from loosing it out into the world. Not wanting to be harangued by spirits or risk creating new ones, Wallace had decided to hide the pistol down an old dried well in the city.

But now, more than three years since had secreted the pistol away, he needed it back. The only sure way to defeat something otherworldly—and Wallace felt sure that the ghost was not satisfied with a single helping at the Den—would be to combat it with the same.

Rain fell once more, only this time a downpour that left him soaked to the bone. He had not walked through the streets leading to the well in so long and the squalor he had witnessed before had only furthered its decline. The buildings on either side leaned inward, as if ready to collapse under the weight of dismay and neglect. Whoever dwelt among them must have been glad for the rainfall as it sluiced away the piles of refuse and offal he saw everywhere.

Wooden boards covered the well’s stone mouth. The sound of the rainfall against the plank created a staccato. Wallace gripped the edge of a plank and pulled it free. The darkness below greeted him. He told himself he imagined the sudden scent of hot metal and spent gunpowder. He scraped the skin off one hand moving more boards to allow himself space to slip through.

Climbing down this time would be far worse even though a measure of light from the cloudy skies lit the hole. The walls would become coated with rain and if he should slip… well, the fall might not kill him but he doubted there’d be any rescue. It would be a slow death. For all his misgiving, he slowly moved himself over the lip of the well and down the shaft. He knew what would happen to Amaro if he let fear stop him.

The stonework felt damp to the touch. Crumbling mortar fell aside to his fingers. He clutched tightly with his left hand, bracing himself with his feet, and began running his right palm along the stones. He had stowed the pistol within a niche.

His fingers finally felt a wide enough space and slid in. Something crawled over his hand and he all but screamed out, nearly dislodging himself from the wall as he pulled the searching arm free. His heart pounded, and even though inside the well the air was very cool, he sweated.

Wallace assured himself that it might only be some snake or spider. Nothing too poisonous. Perhaps only his imagination. He dared try again, his fingertips slowly explored and eventually brushed against metal. He slid the gun out and the curved handle felt natural to hold. He had to struggle to tuck the barrel into the waistband of his trousers. The warm metal kissed the edge of his crotch like a welcome lover.

Never before had the passage into the Den looked so foreboding. Wallace stood in the dark entranceway, tapping fingers against the wall. He shivered in his damp clothes as a slight breeze slipped past him, to and fro, as if he lurked on the edge of some great maw.

He could feel the pistol waiting. It rested for now in a hidden pocket he had ripped and fashioned in the inside of his black jacket. Every time he breathed in, his chest bushed against the handle.

Wallace found Amaro relaxing inside on a lower tier bunk. The sailor caught sight of him and motioned to step closer.

“Corvo,” he muttered. His face wore the innocent grin that shaped new addicts before they drifted off to sleep.

Wallace sat down on the bunk beside him though there was little room. Amaro did not complain and lifted up the battered tin from off his chest. A needle rested along the edge, its tip sunk into less than an inch of opium.

Wallace shook his head. He needed to remain alert. The last attack had happened well after midnight, hours to go. “Later.” He wrapped his arms about himself and wished that the nearby spirit lamp yielded a warmer flame.

Amaro chuckled and lit a fresh pipe. He began singing a shanty, one well-known enough for others in the Den to weakly add a refrain here and there. Wallace found himself unable to ignore the smell of opium that saturated everything around him. He fought to stay alert. The plumes of smoke rising from so many pipes, the pistol spirits lurking like mendicants in the corners of the room, the pleasant sound of the sailor’s voice, all served to distract him from his task over the next hour or so.

Amaro tugged at his sleeve and offered him the pipe. His other hand held the needle with its cooked dab of opium. Wallace took one last look around and saw no sign of the hungry ghost. Perhaps it had sought a meal elsewhere that night.

He took up the pipe and deposited the opium in the small hole of the bowl. His first inhale brought about a warmth to his chest that made him forget how cold he had been. Whatever fears remained began to loosen and leave him.

Amaro reached up and languidly pulled at Wallace’s neck, bringing him down close to whisper in his ear. “Eat me, Corvo.” Wallace saw how the sailor fumbled with the tarnished buttons on his trousers.

“You want?” Wallace asked softly, his lips inches above the sailor’s mouth.

“I always want.”

Wallace inhaled deeply on the pipe before breathing out wisps directly over Amaro’s lips, then moved down the sailor’s body towards his waist.

He heard the man suck in a breath and he glanced up from his efforts. Amaro’s mouth gaped open, the opium pipe they shared laying forgotten on his chest for the moment. Wallace felt pleased with himself, knowing that he finally had some power over the man, even if short-lived. He felt the man’s rough fingers roam through his black hair, pinching the locks towards the end, when Amaro nearly convulsed beneath him.

He rewarded himself with more of Amaro’s sweet opium and relaxed back against the sailor’s body, feeling his heat. Wallace closed his eyes.

Later, he felt colder, his hands uncomfortably so. A shiver roamed his body as he tried to move and found himself unable as something had hold of his wrists and a leg. He finally opened his eyes.

He lay on the floor with the spirits from the flintlock hovering around him. The men had taken hold of each hand, their touch like frost. The strumpet lay across his right leg, her phantom dress riding up to reveal an ethereal thigh.

He thrashed about but their grip remained iron. Each stared in the direction of the doorway and Wallace followed their gaze. At first the gloom remained intact, but he could slowly make out the dim presence of the hungry ghost shuffling forward. It moved past the other patrons of the Den, did not head to where Amaro lay, but came towards him.

Wallace cried out. The spirit of the resurrectionist leered down at him with bad teeth and dead eyes. The Chinaman laughed silently as black blood leaked from the old head wound.

His struggles intensified as the ghost lurched forward but he could not release himself. He called out but no one so much as stirred. His fingers twitched, reaching the pallet above him where Amaro slept. They brushed the metal needle that must have slipped from the sailor’s hand.

Wallace strained his hand, feeling the pain of twisting joints as he sought the needle. It fell out of his grasp and for a moment he thought all was lost, sure that it would roll down to the floor, but it came to rest on the edge. He tried again, cursing loudly, and managed to pinch it between his fingers. The hungry ghost had settled down before him. Its mouth stretched open. Wallace could see a dark tongue rolling in anticipation.

He jabbed upwards, striking Amaro deep in the upper arm. The sailor woke suddenly with a cry. His arms flailed out and one caught the resurrectionist’s spirit, passing through whatever nightmare gave it substance. The blow weakened the spirit enough for Wallace to pull his hand free.

Just as the ghost lowered its head to engulf his worn shoes, Wallace reached into his jacket and took out the cursed pistol. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed the other pistol spirits back away, frightened by the presence of their maker.

He pulled the trigger. A thunderclap sounded in the Den, and the next moment the hungry ghost’s lower jaw tore apart, ectoplasm trailing like frayed tendons. A stench filled the den, of something long-dead recently unearthed. The thing howled and fell back.

“What the hell is going on?” shouted Amaro, who rose from the bunk holding his arm.

Wallace watched as the ghost began to fragment and fade, leaving no trace. The pistol spirits had fled to the dimmest corners of the room. Instinctively, he turned to the sailor, aiming the pistol at Amaro’s thick chest. His hand shook slightly. A voice in his head, one he had never heard before, whispered to him. Shoot him. Then he’ll be with us forever. You’ll always have him to watch over.

Amaro stared wide-eyed at the smoldering barrel.

“Leave.” Wallace found his voice hoarse, his mouth bone-dry. “Get out of here, now, and don’t come back.” He could not find the will to lower his aim.

The other denizens, including the Emperor himself were rousing, their voices a fresh Babel. For once, Wallace could not focus his thoughts well enough to understand any of them.

Amaro’s face twisted with anger and he spat words at him, no doubt swearing, before he rushed out of the Den. Wallace watched him leave, sadly wishing he could have understood what the man had said, for he knew that they would be the last he ever heard from the sailor.

He rose up, the arm that held the flintlock still rigid. He saw his satchel lying near the personal effects of the Emperor and grabbed the straps, lifting it up. By the heft, he judged himself not to have been robbed.

Wallace left without allowance or apology, sure that he too would never again set foot in the den. He noted that the pistol spirits followed him out at a healthy distance while glaring at him. Would they always be stalking him? No doubt the season must have emboldened them to plot revenge. He yelled and waved the gun barrel at them, to which they shuddered and grew less distinct.

He walked through the dark streets of Macao, worrying over his life. Wallace wanted nothing more to do with ghosts and low spirits, whether created from the pistol or the sweet syrup of the poppy. Or born from the weaknesses of his heart.

He eventually found himself along the path to the well, guided by the paltry moonlight that slipped through the clouds. The wooden boards still lay askew. He placed the pistol on the stone ledge. His fingers ached, looking bloodless from how tightly they had clutched the handle.

From the satchel he took the bottle of laudanum and set it next to the flintlock. He stared down at both his burdens. He could be rid of both curses with the sweep of his arm.

Yet he hesitated, worried that one rash decision would leave him with nothing. He had been abandoned by so many. Perhaps only one deserved being cast aside. He stumbled forward, kneeling down besides the old well, eyes moving back and forth between amber glass and black metal. Would it be better to be haunted or lost?

“Perhaps,” Wallace said softly while tapping first the bottle and then the pistol towards the hole, “if you both made your case I would be able to judge.”

He rested his face against the cold mortar and waited for them, and his conscience, to begin pleading.

 

© 2004 Steve Berman - Contributor's Bio

"The Eater of Elevation" was selected for the Million Writers Award for top online short stories of 2004.