Death Day

An eagle floated in the clear blue sky. It screamed into the canyon, screeches reverberated off the sandstone walls. Samuel opened his eyes and stared up past the leafless trees. He squinted and focused on the brown speck floating above him.

Rays of sunlight found their way down into the stream bed, slowly reheating the boulders after the cold, wet night.

Samuel heard hooves crackling over pebbles. Beyond the boulders. Two sika deer were creeping out of the forest for a morning drink. The stag bent down over the water first to have a sip, his antlers reflected in the water and meshed with the overhead branches. The doe stood in the warmth of the sun watching, guarding him, waiting for her turn at the stream. Clouds of warm breath floated out from her mouth into the crisp mountain air.

Samuel was drawn to the towering precipices that surrounded him. He sat up and looked around. The rock he had been sleeping on jutted out into a fast-moving stream. The rushing water gurgled and splashed, past boulders and broken tree limbs. Bouncing from bank to bank, relentlessly searching for a path down the mountain, traveling onward to a place it had not been.

“What an unusual place to sleep,” Samuel whispered. He wondered why he had laid down and gone to sleep in that particular spot.

The man opened his backpack and pulled out his green and orange wool cap, put it on, and pulled it down over his ears. Beth, his fiancée, had knitted it for him last month. She would still be sleeping, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. Their collie Heidi would be lying at her feet guarding her from any strange visitors.

How lucky he was to have Beth. She was a wonderful partner and would soon be his beloved wife. They had been together for two years, and were finally getting tying the know next spring.

When they first met, Beth would hike with him. Nowadays, she wasn’t as keen on being outdoors as he was; she rarely went with him into the mountains. Beth’s idea of the great outdoors was a white sand beach next to a five-star hotel. On this trip, she’d stayed home to spend the weekend with her sister, who had come to the city for a visit. They'd be spending the next two days getting lost in their own world of talk about people he didn't know.

Samuel continued walking along the trail. An owl flew past him, a mouse dangling from its beak. Returning back to it's hollowed tree nest after a night of hunting. The bird completely ignored Samuel, as if it hadn’t seen him at all.

In the distance, Samuel heard the low rumbling of Alawanchua Waterfall. With each step, the roar grew louder. Samuel had never hiked the stream trail. He had always taken the trail people called the high path, it ran along the ridge, at the top of the canyon that wound through the trees along the cliffs.

A squirrel ran out in front of him, it completely ignored Samuel, as if it hadn’t seen him at all. The squirrel hopped over his foot and scampered up a vine, stopping only when it had reached an outstretched branch in a wild fig tree.

Samuel stopped... were those voices he heard coming from inside the forest. Were there others on the trail with him? He wondered to himself. The ranger had warned him that he would be alone on the trail.

As he went on, the voices became more clear. There were voices, but they weren't coming from the trail. It sounded like they were coming from somewhere inside the bamboo forest. The roar of the waterfall in the background made it difficult to pinpoint exactly where the voices were coming from. Samuel called out, “Yo! Who’s there?”

The forest went silent. There was no answer. The voices stopped for a bit but soon continued in a back and forth chatter as if they hadn’t heard him at all. Samuel stopped, peered into the forest. Staring past the myriad bamboo stalks, he saw something he did not expect. Samuel stepped off the trail and walked into the forest. As he went deeper into the stalks, he made out what looked like an ancient bamboo pavilion. Sixteen large stalks of bamboo, two of them lashed together to make eight strong pillars that stuck up out of the forest floor. Each pillar supported a corner of an octagonal structure with a bamboo roof hanging over it. In the middle of the pavilion, a flat stone table, and around the table, there were four large stones, each one the right height for sitting.

Sitting on three of the stones were three figures. Samuel crouched down and hid behind a stand of elephant ear ferns. There was something strange about the three beings: their bodies were translucent, like reflections in a mountain stream. Samuel could see right through them. A yellow butterfly fluttered right through one of the men’s arms. Not behind it or under it. It fluttered in the air for a second and then passed through another one of the beings' head. Samuel fell to his knees, terrified by what he was seeing.

These beings are not of this world, Samuel thought to himself. The reflections of the shapes faded in and out of the rays of the sun; Samuel crouched down further, trying to hide beneath the palms. “Ghosts,” he gasped.

The three spectral beings sitting at the table took little notice of what was going on around them. They were chatting with each other as if they were old friends sitting together in a neighborhood park playing checkers. On the table, there were two piles of small stones, one white, the other black. The two males, were engaged in some kind of game. The female spirit sat between them, watching them. Samuel decided he’d try to crawl closer to hear what they were saying.

The female cheered as one of the men captured the other’s stones. “What a wonderful move, Shao Ma,” she said to the spirit to her right. Shao Ma was wearing an old-style khaki military uniform. It was an outdated uniform, Samuel had seen ones like them in his grandfather's photo album. Shao Ma sat straight and upright, presenting himself as an obedient soldier would---a man of honor and dignity.

“I’ve got you on the run, Su Su.” Shao Ma said to the other spirit, who looked like he must be a farmer.

Su Su, wore the sort of clothes a local farmer would wear: a faded black, baggy, stretched-out t-shirt, and a fairly normal but old pair of trousers rolled up to his calves. On his feet were a pair of blue rubber flip-flops, and a wide-brimmed bamboo hat sat on his head.

The farmer plopped a white stone down on the table and whined. “I’m already beaten, what’s the point? Inra, do you want to play him? I’m done.”

Inra laughed and shook her head. She had long black hair that flowed down to the middle of her back. Samuel recognized her as being of the local, indigenous people. “She must have been very beautiful when she was alive,” he whispered to himself. Inra wore a red and black headband, a white decorated woven dress, and a red cloak that looked like a blanket wrapped around her body. The cloak was tied over her left shoulder, indicating that she was a married woman. On her face, there was an intricate tattoo that ran from her mouth up to her temples on both sides of her face.

“For over fifty years we three have met here on our death day and I’ve never once defeated Shao Ma in stones,” Inra said. “What chance do I have of defeating him today?”

“Perhaps this time, you will get lucky,” Shao Ma laughed.

A forest mouse ran directly in front of Samuel. It startled him, he jumped away from it. The noticed him.

“Who’s there?” Su Su called out from the pavilion.

“Show yourself,” shouted Shao Ma.

“Don’t be afraid, come sit with us. We don’t often get visitors,” Inra joined the men in beckoning Samuel to come forward.

Samuel realized he had been discovered. He lifted his head up until his whole face was above the ferns. “Hello, my name’s Samuel,” he spluttered. “I was hiking the stream when I heard you talking. I thought I’d come over and introduce myself, but when I saw that you were ghosts, I was frightened and decided to hide instead.”

Inra smiled at Samuel. “Please join us, there is a fourth seat, it was put here for you.” She pointed to the empty stone opposite her at the table.

“Today is our death day,” Shao Ma said. “Though we each may have died in different years, we all have died on the same day, the third day of the eleventh moon.”

“Each year we gather here and recall our lives and the circumstances of our deaths.”

Shao Ma spoke first. “I was a soldier,” he said. His voice was strong and he spoke with the confidence. “I was a loyal soldier to my country and followed my general into these mountains. We were here to push out the foreign invaders from the north. One day while I was out on patrol with my brothers, we were ambushed by the enemy. The enemy were everywhere, and on us in seconds; we didn’t even have time to ready our rifles. When I was hit and injured, I tried to run away but I couldn’t move. I lay on the ground and watched as my friends ran away. One-by-one they disappeared into the trees. When it was over, they dragged my body to the edge of the precipice and pushed it over the cliff. It didn’t matter to them if I was dead or alive. They didn't care that I had a wife and three young children back home. Their laughter echoing off the canyon walls as I tumbled down bouncing of boulders into the stream.”

Inra and Su Su nodded their heads as they listened to Shao Ma’s story.

Next the farmer spoke. “I was a poor farmer. I had a wife and a son that I loved very much. They depended on me to take care of them. One day I was here in the bamboo forest collecting bamboo shoots to sell at the morning market. A green flash exploded in front of my face; a serpent lurched at me, it came from somewhere within the stalks. The Bamboo Viper latched onto my shoulder right here.” He pointed to two fang marks on his right shoulder near his neck. “I immediately pulled the snake away and started to go for help, but to no avail. It didn’t take long before the venom brought me down. I lay on the ground, right over there, alone, all day and into the night, not able to move. I could only think of my wife and son as I slowly succumbed to the snake's venom. I yearned to see them one more time, but nobody came for me, nobody even knew where I was.

The last to tell her story was the woman, Inra. She looked at the men; they could still see terror in her eyes. Every time she told her story, it was there. “When I was a mere child of ten and two years, my father married me off to a vile man from another village. The man was thrice my age. Our family was poor and I was to be sacrificed so that my mother and brothers might survive. As a girl, I was considered useless---only good for making babies.

My husband was a brutal man, always beating me and telling me how worthless I was. One day, I discovered that I was with child. My husband told me that if the child I bore wasn’t a male he’d throw me and the baby girl off the cliffs. ‘I won’t waste food on two females,’ he said.

When the baby came, I rejoiced that it was a boy, but my husband wasn't satisfied. He continued to abuse and degrade me, even in front of my child. I could not bear to have my son grow up seeing his mother treated in such a way. I did not want him thinking that treating women the way my husband treated me was okay. One moonless night, I slipped out from our hut, and threw myself off the cliff’s edge.” She pointed up to a cliff high above them.

“Now Samuel, you have heard our death stories, please tell us yours. How did you die?” Inra asked him.

“Yes Samuel,” Shao Ma said. “Tell us how you died.”

Samuel stood up; he backed away from the ghosts. “I was only out hiking, how is it that you think I am dead?”

“It’ll be refreshing to hear something new. We’ve gotten bored listening to the same stories year after year.”

Samuel didn’t know what to say to the ghosts. He looked around; a grasshopper had just hopped through his leg.

Samuel's mind went back to the morning when he woke up on top of the boulder. He remembered the deer, the squirrel, and the mouse. None of them had seen him. And why had he woken up on that boulder? He had never slept in such a place before. Gradually, his memory of the night before returned.

Samuel’s mouth cracked. He searched for the words to explain what had happened to him. “Yesterday while hiking up on the cliffs, it began to rain. Even though I was dressed warmly, the wet cold began to slowly creep into my bones. I began drinking whiskey from a flask I carry to warm myself up.” He showed the three spirits his flask. “The colder I became the more I drank. It wasn’t long before darkness was upon me. I searched for a dry place to shelter for the night. There was a ledge under a cliff that had not yet been soaked by the rain. I tried to climb down to it, but the rocks were mossy and I slipped. I grabbed a small sapling to hold onto but it broke and I fell from the cliff. I landed on a boulder that jutted out into the stream.”

“Welcome to your death day,” Inra said. Samuel stood looking at the ghosts in silence.

“Might I interest you in a game of stones,” asked Shao Ma