Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

“Something,” Cora echoes. “You mean my sister.” Harvey goes quiet. A sudden silence expands across the line and Cora realizes Harvey was typing, that his fingers have stopped moving. “Cora,” he says, “a hungry ghost isn’t your sister anymore. You know that, right?” But Cora doesn’t know that, doesn’t agree. Because maybe a hungry ghost has

changed, but it is still her sister’s soul somewhere deep inside of it, suffering.

Delilah is rotting in the shadows, and Cora is too cowardly to look her in the eyes, but that doesn’t mean she’s not there.

But Cora thinks of running alone in the dark subway tunnel, and she’s starting to think that maybe it doesn’t matter which direction she runs as long as she goes somewhere.

Cora still sees pockets of darkness, places where the city closes its eyes just for a single, defenseless moment.

Cora’s mind flashes through memories of crime scenes, gallons of blood spilling through floorboards and raining down on the apartment below, women being unmade, piece by piece. She pictures Harvey and Yifei being called to the park to clean up her blood, wondering why she isn’t answering her phone.

something changing in his expression, like clouds rolling

over the sun.

It’s that you’re asking me to believe in folktales when I don’t believe in anything at all,

Harvey looks at her, expression pained. “Then why did you come?” Cora crinkles the plastic in her lap. “It seemed like you thought it would work,” she says. “But you didn’t think so?” “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Cora

says.

Thoughts are nothing at all, they come from nowhere and disappear into nothing and you can’t wade in thei...

that’s what her therapist said. But Cora knows that her therapist means Cora’s thoughts...

Because she knows Harvey Chen may be a hot-air balloon on a loose tether most days, but he knows when to come back down to earth.

Cora knows he wanted this to work as much as she does, maybe even more because Harvey lets himself believe in things.

“Yes,” Cora says, though probably not for the reasons Harvey thinks.

happy pigeons.”

“Happy pigeons it is,”

Cora grimaces, holding up the mirror half-heartedly, feeling childish. Harvey rolls his eyes, then sticks his arms out in front of him. His tongue lolls out of his mouth and he lets out a grunt that Cora assumes is supposed to sound like a zombie. Cora waves the mirror at him again, but he breaks character and swats it away. “That won’t work—my reflection isn’t ugly,” he says. Cora smirks and jabs him in the stomach with the end of the broom.

“Okay, so I’ll avoid your stomach,” Cora says, jamming the end of the broom into his cheek. “Ow, Jesus, I’d like to keep my teeth too!” he says, laughing and smacking the broom away. “A real ghost wouldn’t complain this much.”

Cora can’t help but laugh, can’t help but wonder if, under different circumstances, Harvey could be her friend and not her designated corpse-finder.

because both of them are too strange for anyone else.

There’s no hard thump against rigid wood, no trembling branches overhead. Harvey falls against the tree with only a whisper of a sound, like it’s pillow-soft, yielding against Harvey’s spine.

Cora knows that Delilah would never hurt her, but Delilah has no idea who Harvey is.

Fear is a sin, she hears Auntie Lois say, and it certainly feels like one as Cora stands here, waiting for Delilah to take a bite out of Harvey,

Cora is not the kind of person who can save someone’s life—she has known this since Delilah died three feet away from her. Even when all she has to do is take a single step, say a single word, all Cora can do is watch other people die.

She must truly be starving to lick uncooked rice off New York City pavement, and seeing Delilah this debased is somehow even worse than seeing her in this twisted, unnatural body.

They begin to cross the park, coming closer, and Harvey tries to back up into Cora but there are more behind her, there’s nowhere for her to go.

It’s so much like Cora imagined Harvey would look with his throat ripped out—that raw fear, begging for Cora to do something, to be someone else.

“You fed them,” Cora whispers. “You told them to come.” “Shit,” Harvey says. “They were supposed to count it, not eat it.”

she thinks he’s going to run away without her and she can’t even blame him, but instead he kicks over the rest of his bag of rice. It pours out across the pavement and the hungry ghost descends on it, forgetting about Harvey. “Let’s get out of here,” he says, grabbing Cora’s arm, not waiting for her answer.

He starts rifling through his bag before she can answer, and Cora wonders what it must be like to be Harvey, to switch in and out of realities so easily, to think about pineapple cakes after escaping a flock of hungry ghosts. Cora is perpetually trapped in her one broken world.

Cora grimaces. It’s not really about deserving. “I want to sleep,” she says, which isn’t a lie, even though she’s not tired. She wants to be unconscious.

Cora lets out a tense breath. Some asylums have decorations, but of course Harvey Chen doesn’t know that.

“Can you?” Cora says, not trying to sound mean but realizing belatedly that she failed. Harvey snorts, pulling up his blanket.