Chapter 3: The Wall
The cold of the shears’ tip pressed just below his sternum, a point of impossible sharpness against the damp cotton of his shirt. Wei froze, one bloody hand on the wall’s crest, the other gripping a shard of glass. Mr. Huang knelt above him, balanced on the narrow stone like a bird of prey, his face a mask of polite interest.
“Porcelain is so fragile,” Mr. Huang whispered, leaning close. The scent of his cologne was obscene here, a lavender and sandalwood veil over the rot. “It shatters in such unique patterns. The impact… it writes a story in the breaks.”
The shears moved. A swift, delicate snick.
Wei felt a slight tug at his chest, then heard the faint tap-tap of something hitting the stone far below. His first shirt button. It had been sliced clean off.
Panic wasn’t a thought; it was a chemical fire in his veins. Letting go of the glass, he shoved himself backward, not up and over, but down. He pushed off with his feet, sacrificing his precarious hold to fall back into the maze, away from the shears and the drop onto the courtyard stones.
He fell ten feet, landing in a patch of sickly, thorn-covered ivy. The air punched out of him. Thorns ripped through his clothes, scoring lines of fire across his back and ribs. He rolled, gasping, scrambling to his feet.
Above, Mr. Huang watched, head tilted. “An interesting choice. The interior finale does lack a certain… dramatic scale.”
Wei didn’t listen. He ran. Not with a plan, but with the single-cell instinct to put distance between himself and the wall. The maze seemed to recoil from his passage, the whispering faces in the hedges wailing as he passed. He took turns at random, his breath sobbing in his throat, the taste of blood and iron thick on his tongue.
He burst into a familiar circular clearing. The half-finished duplicate of Jian was still there, its one human eye tracking his entrance with a fresh, desperate gleam. The rasp from its half-stone throat hitched. It was trying to speak.
Wei staggered past it, then stopped. He looked at the empty plinth, then back at the thing that wasn’t Jian. He remembered Mr. Huang’s words. The process was… interrupted.
He looked at his own bloody hands. At the shears he didn’t have.
The creature’s living hand twitched, the fingers curling just slightly, scraping against the gravel.
No.
He couldn’t. It wasn’t a person anymore, it was a nightmare. But the eye held him, a void of pure, silent pleading.
From the path he’d just come, the steady, soft click-click of the shears resumed. Closer.
Wei made a sound that was half a whimper, half a curse. He turned his back on the duplicate and faced the hedge opposite the entrance. It was solid, impenetrable. But above, where two hedges met, there was a narrow gap, a darkness where the blood-red leaves didn’t quite knit together.
He took three running steps and jumped. His fingers, slick with blood, grabbed at the tangled branches. They held. He hauled himself up, the thorns biting deep into his palms. He kicked, wedging a foot into the foliage, and pushed, squeezing his body into the gap. It was a brutal, tearing effort. The hedge swallowed him with a sound like tearing meat.
He tumbled out the other side, landing hard on a gravel path that looked no different from any other.
But the air was different. Cooler. It smelled of pine and damp earth, not copper and decay. He was in a different part of the garden, older, less cultivated. The manicured hedges gave way to a tangle of ancient, gnarled trees. He could see, through their skeletal branches, the dark, looming shape of the manor, its windows glowing with a soft, terrible warmth.
Between him and the house lay an open stretch of overgrown lawn, and beyond that, a line of dark, dense forest.
The forest.
It was the unknown, pitch black and swallowing. But the house was death. The forest was a maybe.
Click-click.
The sound was in the maze behind him, but closing fast.
Wei sprinted across the open ground. Every shadow was a pursuing hand, every rustle of the high grass the snip of a blade. His body was a map of pain—his shredded hands, the deep scratches on his back, the ache in his lungs.
He hit the tree line and plunged into the darkness. It was like diving into cold water. The world went silent, the distant sounds of the manor and the maze cut off by a thick blanket of pine needles and dead leaves. Moonlight filtered down in fragmented slivers, illuminating nothing useful.
He ran until a stitch stabbed his side so fiercely he doubled over, vomiting a thin stream of bile onto the forest floor. He listened, his own heartbeat a frantic drum in his ears.
Silence.
No shears. No footsteps. Just the creak of branches and the distant, lonely call of an owl.
He slumped against a thick pine tree, sliding down its rough bark to sit. He was shivering uncontrollably. He looked at his hands in a sliver of moonlight. They were a mess of dirt, blood, and swollen, pulped flesh. He tried to wipe them on his ruined trousers, but it just smeared the mess.
He needed to get out, find a road, find people. He had to tell someone about Jian. About the others.
He pushed himself up, using the tree for support. He had to keep moving. Deeper into the woods, away from the house.
A twig snapped.
To his left.
He froze, every muscle locking.
“The problem with forests,” Mr. Huang’s voice floated from the darkness, calm and conversational, as if they were strolling together, “is the lack of composition. So much chaos. So little form.”
Wei didn’t wait for the philosophy lesson. He bolted again, crashing through underbrush, ignoring the branches that whipped his face. He wasn’t running on a path anymore, just away from the voice. His foot caught on a root and he went down hard, his chin slamming into the ground, his teeth clacking together.
He spat out dirt and blood, scrambling to his knees.
And he saw it. Through the trees, maybe fifty yards ahead: a break in the woods. A flat, grey strip. A road.
Hope, sharp and painful, lanced through him. He got to his feet and ran toward it, his exhausted body finding one last reserve of strength.
The road was narrow, poorly paved. It looked like a service road. But it was a road. To the left, it curved back toward the glow of the manor. To the right, it descended into deeper darkness.
He went right.
After a hundred yards, he saw a shape pulled off onto the shoulder. A vehicle. An old, boxy delivery truck, painted a dirty white. Its back doors were open, revealing an empty cargo space. The cab was dark.
Wei stumbled toward it, his breath hiccuping in ragged sobs. He grabbed the handle of the passenger door. Locked. He ran around to the driver’s side. Also locked. He hammered on the window with the heel of his bloody hand. “Hello?!”
No answer.
He peered inside. The keys were not in the ignition. He cursed, a raw, broken sound. He looked back down the road, toward the woods he’d just escaped. Nothing moved.
Then he looked at the open back of the truck. It was a risk. A trap waiting to be sprung. But it was shelter. It was concealment. He could rest, just for a minute, until he could think.
He clambered up into the cargo hold. The metal floor was cold and gritted with sand. It smelled of old vegetables and engine oil. He crawled into the farthest corner, pressing his back against the cold wall, pulling his knees to his chest. The darkness inside was almost total. He was a shadow among shadows.
He listened. The wind. The trees.
No shears.
His head slumped forward. The adrenaline was bleeding away, leaving a void filled only with throbbing pain and the image of Jian’s stone eyes. He closed his own. Just for a second.
The sound of the truck’s engine turning over was so sudden, so impossible, that for a second Wei thought he was dreaming.
The vehicle lurched. The back doors swung shut with a heavy, final clang, plunging him into absolute blackness.
The truck began to move, rolling smoothly down the road.
From the cab, turned up just loud enough to be heard over the engine, a piece of elegant chamber music began to play. It was the same music that had filled the manor’s ballroom.
Wei threw himself at the doors, beating his fists against the metal. It was useless. Solid. Locked from the outside.
He slid down the door, defeated, as the truck carried him forward into the dark. The music swelled, a beautiful, cruel accompaniment to the gentle rocking of the vehicle.
After a few minutes, the truck slowed, then made a slow, careful turn. It crunched over gravel for a moment, then stopped.
The engine cut off.
The music stopped.
Silence, more complete than any in the forest.
Then, the driver’s door opened and closed with a soft click.
Footsteps on gravel, walking slowly around the side of the truck.
A key slid into the lock of the back doors.
Wei backed into his corner again, his hands searching blindly for anything—a tool, a loose piece of metal. He found nothing.
The doors swung open.
Mr. Huang stood silhouetted against the night sky. Behind him, Wei could see the familiar, hated outline of the manor, its front door wide open, spilling golden light onto the driveway. They were back. He’d driven him right back.
Mr. Huang held the shears loosely in one hand. With the other, he brushed a stray leaf from the lapel of his still-immaculate suit.
“Welcome back,” he said, his voice gentle. “I do hope you didn’t find the ride too jarring. I wanted to give you a moment to compose yourself. It’s so much better for the process if the subject arrives… collected.”
He reached into the truck, his hand open, not threatening, inviting. “The studio is ready. The plaster is just reaching the perfect consistency.”