“Al, no! Please, tell me what’s happening?”

But when Hannah looked in Al’s face, she no longer saw him in there.

She saw Mei instead.

Mei’s cruel, malicious eyes were what was looking back at her.

In total control over Al’s body again, the evil spirit made him raise the knife and point it at Hannah. Mei made him grab her by the throat and shove her against the dining room wall.

Shaking, she gasped, “Al…Al…” through what little voice Mei allowed her to let out.

Mei had Al bare hateful teeth, like a wolf’s fangs, as the knife came slowly closer to Hannah’s chest. Though Al was trying desperately to keep the blade from getting any closer to the woman he loved, she saw only Mei in his eyes–her malevolence, her single-minded wish to stab Hannah to death.

“It’s your…turn…to die, Hannah,” Mei’s feminine voice said through Al’s mouth.

“This…isn’t you, Al,” Hannah gasped, her one hand on the wrist of Al’s knife-gripping hand, her other trying to loosen Mei’s grip on her neck. “Fight it.”

The hand holding the knife was shaking, but for the moment not getting any closer.

“Of course…this isn’t…Al,” Mei said. “It’s Mei.”

“You’re a…split…personality?”

“No. I’m…one of…Al’s…ancestors.”

“That’s…nonsense. Al, you’re ill. You need…help.”

“Al needs…to die. As soon…as I’m finished…with you.”

The shaking knife was getting closer to her chest.

Hannah kept searching for Al in his eyes.

She still saw only Mei in them.

Al was feeling a splitting headache in his efforts to regain control over his body.

No, Mei, he thought. I won’t let you kill Hannah.

The tip of the blade was now a millimetre or two away from Hannah’s skin, just above the top button of her dress. The knife shook a bit, and the blade cut off the button, exposing more of her skin to the sharp tip.

“Al…please!”

A slight scrape of the tip let out a little red.

She looked in his eyes…and she saw Al again.

He was pulling the shaking knife away from her, with all of his strength, his headache killing him, and the soreness in his arms–from Mei’s attempt to keep control–adding to his agony.

Finally, with the knife-gripping arm safely away from Hannah, he started regaining control of his other hand, which loosened its grip on her neck. She pulled free and got away from the wall.

He turned to face her, having most of his control back. He was bent over, panting.

“Al? Are you OK? Are you back?”

“Yeah, I’m back, for the moment. Mei just left me, completely.”

“As soon as we call the police and explain what happened, we’ll find a therapist for you, and you can tell them all about this ‘Mei.'”

“No, Hannah. This can’t go on. I have to die.”

He was looking at that knife in his hand.

“What do you mean, you ‘have to die’? You won’t go to jail, Al. You’ll be found not guilty by reason of…no offence…insanity. We’ll get you the psychiatric help you need. I won’t abandon you.”

“You don’t understand, Hannah. My problem isn’t mental illness, though I’m sure it must look that way to you. The spirit of Mei, one of the family ancestors, is still inside my body. She relinquished control…I don’t know why, but she’ll come back and take control of me again. Then she’ll try to kill you again. I can’t fight her off forever. She will succeed, sooner or later. I can’t let that happen. To save you, I must kill myself.” Sobbing, he pointed the sharp end of the blade at his chest.

“Al, no! What are you talking about? There’s no evil spirit inside you. Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of. We’ll get help for you. I still love you. I’m sorry I said we were through. I still want us to be together.” Now she was sobbing.

“Hannah, I’m not insane.” His arms were shaking as he brought the tip of the blade to his chest. “I know full well what I’m doing. I know now that we cannot be together. I’m doing this, though, because I love you. Either Mei makes me kill you, or I kill myself. There is no other way out of this.”

“Al! Please, no! It’s just a delusion you’re having. Don’t stab yourself! I love you!”

She reached forward to take the knife from him.

“I love you, Hannah. Never forget that.”

He held the knife with the tip of the blade firmly against his chest, ready to push it in.

“God, no! Al, don’t!“

“Oh, no, NO!“

She saw no more Al in his eyes. She saw Mei’s cruel grin.

“Al, no!“

He shook a bit, then raised the knife, as if to stab her.

“NOOOO!!!” he yelled.

Then the blade swung down in an arc…

…and it went deep in his gut.

“NOOOO!!!” she screamed.

He buckled and fell to the floor, his blood gushing out and staining his shirt.

She put her arms around him and kept screaming. She welcomed his blood on her dress, wanting the stains to stay there so she’d still have at least some of him with her.

I came to this house having everyone, she thought as she kept bawling. Now I have no one.

As she wept and wailed, holding his bloody body tightly against herself and practically bathing in the red, she’d had her eyes squeezed shut, as tight as her hold on his body. Then she opened them.

With her tears obstructing her vision, what she saw was blurry and distorted. In that blurry haze, she saw what at first seemed a hallucination.

She wiped away her tears for a clearer look.

No, it was still there.

And it made no sense.

A glowing vision of three old Chinese in traditional clothes–two women and a man.

In my grief, Hannah thought, I’m truly going crazy.

Thank you, Hannah, for helping us achieve our aim, Po said. You are free to go.

“I’m seeing things,” Hannah gasped. “This isn’t real.”

Oh, we are very real, Hannah, Meng said.

“Wait a minute: your voices sound familiar.”

That’s right, Mei said. You heard me from Al.

And me from Emily, Meng said.

And me from Freddie, Po said.

“I’m imagining this,” Hannah said. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. I’m going crazy.”

If you were going crazy, you wouldn’t think you were going crazy, Meng said. We’re real, we assure you.

Al wasn’t going crazy, either, Mei said. We really were possessing him and his family, and now that our work is done here, we can thank you and say goodbye.

“And what was ‘your work’ that had to be done?”

The destruction of the entire Dan family, Po said.

“Why did they, and the man I loved, have to be killed?”

For failing to pray to us, their ancestors, Mei said.

“I thought Al continued praying to you. He told me so. Why wasn’t that good enough for you?”

Because the snubbing of us by the rest of his family…our family…was already bad enough. We felt too dishonoured to forgive them, Meng said.

And when we aren’t sufficiently prayed to, we spirits turn into demons, Po said. The Dan family is almost an anomaly when it comes to Chinese culture. Most Chinese families are close and loving; this is because they pray to their ancestors. An impious attitude took hold of your boyfriend’s parents, in their adopting of Western secularism.

In rejecting belief in spiritual matters, like most of you in the West, their family unity broke down, and they came apart, Mei said. So many social and family problems that you see in Western society come from rejecting spirituality. This is why Chinese families, on average, hold together far better than your Western families.

“I call bullshit on all of that! My family wasn’t religious in any way, and we were always loving and happy. You destroyed Al’s whole family, and you murdered mine!” She was sobbing again.

She looked through her teary eyes and saw wicked grins on Po, Meng, and Mei.

“Why did you kill my family? Why did you make Al kill himself? What did they do to you?”

Oh, we did that for the sheer fun of it, Meng said. We even put the idea in your mind to have your family meet the Dans for dinner…we prodded you to insist on it, never taking ‘no’ for an answer.

The three spirits were still grinning malevolently at her. Her jaw dropped.

“You’re evil, pure evil, far worse than Al’s family!”

What do you expect? Po asked. We’re devils. Thank you for your help, and goodbye.

The three grinning spirits faded away before her eyes.

Hannah let out a loud, ear-splitting scream.

Her screaming and bawling continued over a period of several minutes. A patrol car was going by the house, and the two police in it heard her. They stopped, got out of their car, and ran up to the house.

They looked in a window that revealed the dining room and saw Hannah, still on her knees and holding Al’s bloody body, always sobbing and shaking. They also saw Freddie’s and Emily’s bodies.

“Holy shit!” the male cop said.

“What the hell happened here?” the female cop said.

They went in the house and ran over to Hannah.

“Officer Wong calling,” the male cop said on his cellphone to the local precinct. “We have…what looks like..a triple homicide in the house at…just a minute, I need to take a look…137 Washington Street. We need an ambulance and stretchers.”

The female cop took Hannah in her arms.

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” she said, trying to soothe Hannah.

“No! It’s not OK!” Hannah screamed.

“What happened here? Who killed these people?”

Hannah’s words came out like a frantic firing of machine gun bullets, much too fast for the cops to process. “The ancestors did it! Three demons, two old women and an old man! They killed all of my family, too, up in the attic! They lured us all into a trap! They…”

“What is she raving about?” Officer Wong asked, sneering. “Three demons? Ancestors? This Chinese family may have believed in ancestors and evil spirits, but why would a white woman believe in that nonsense? My family never believed in that old tradition, and I’m glad they didn’t.”

“I have no answers for your questions, Officer Wong,” his partner said, rocking Hannah back and forth gently. “But I guess we’d better check the attic, too.”

“Alright,” he said. “You stay here with her, and I’ll go up there.” He went searching for the stairs.

The three spirits were waiting in the attic.

I don’t like Officer Wong’s lack of faith in us spirits, Po said to Meng and Mei. Maybe we can go after his family, too…just for fun.

All three spirits were grinning.

THE END