She grinned. “That was always your destiny. We knew from the first time you came into the shop that you were the one.”
“We?”
“Sand.” She pointed to herself. “Monkey.” She pointed to him. “Maybe Pigsy will go into him.” She pointed at Bing.
Oh hell no. “You leave him alone.” He said the words, but inside his body, he could feel Monkey stirring to life. The energy was thinking about Bing and feeling joy at the idea of his old friend coming to life. But while Walter was reeling from that, Bing helped him focus.
“Start at the beginning,” he suggested.
Right. He pitched his voice loud and hard. “Auntie Sand, for the record, what exactly is your relationship to my family?”
She clapped her hands in apparent delight. “I am your father’s second cousin, of course.”
There wasn’t anything “of course” about it. Not with the way her face seemed to change before his eyes. First she was the aunt he remembered from his childhood, but there was something more to her. Something other, as her face seemed to morph again. Her hair tightened around her face into a beard, and her nose lengthened as her body became male. But then her expression softened.
Oh hell. “Auntie, are you possessed by Monkey’s companion General Sand?” He swallowed. “Did Aunt Sandra give herself to you, Demon Sand? Did Sandra….” He grappled with the possibilities and went with what he knew. “Did she worship an egg?”
The woman grinned. “Six hundred years ago, I was put away. My story was finished. I went to heaven, and I was on Earth no more. Then a monk found a way to talk to me.” She lifted off the necklace and held it out to him. They looked like shrunken skulls strung on old leather finished with a rusty clasp.
“No, thanks,” he murmured, and she shrugged as she put it back on.
“For six hundred years, someone talked to me. A monk, then another monk, then another, strung throughout the years. I shared the secrets of the universe with them, and they let me feel—for a moment—what it was like to live again.”
“How did this get to my aunt?”
“Temples fall. The last monk gave it to his nephew, who passed it to his daughter. I helped. I told them who would be best in the family. Sandra got my necklace from her uncle, and then we picked you.”
Was that why his aunt had always insisted he learn the tales of the Monkey King? Because she intended to give him that disgusting thing when he was older? So he could speak with the spirit of General Sand? One week ago he wouldn’t have believed it. But today? He’d seen things that were crazier.
“Why me?” he asked.
“Because you have magic,” Sand answered. “Because you are a fitting host for Monkey. And because you said yes.”
His rejection was immediate. “No, I didn’t. I….” Honesty forced him to stop his words. He had worshipped the damn egg. He’d agreed because he hadn’t believed her. And he was letting Monkey hang out inside him even now. So he had said yes, and he was still saying yes.
Wasn’t that a kick in the ass? Walter gripped the edge of the table, trying to get a mental hold on just what he’d done to himself, while Bing watched with a worried frown.
A moment later, Bing turned and asked the next question. “Demon Sand, is there any part of Sandra left?”
She smiled, the expression practically beatific. “The cancer was severe. She would have died the very day I took over her body.” Then she gestured down at herself. “Sandra is gone. I became her, and my life continues to bring Monkey out in you.”
Walter shuddered at the implication, even as Monkey rose up inside him in joy. “My aunt is gone?” he rasped. “And I… I’m going to become Monkey?”
She frowned at him. “You make it sound so distasteful. It is a grand honor to become the Monkey King. You embody his qualities, and that is rare indeed.”
“No….”
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “You are playful and loyal to a fault. You can seize opportunities with a cunning mind. But most of all, you tell stories. Silly fantasies or exciting games. Your mind wanders, and the games you play are constant and unending. And now I have built up your vanity until you are Monkey. You should be honored that he has chosen you.”
He’d been called distractible and vain—all the faults his parents had constantly punished him for when he hadn’t planned ahead with his homework or he’d coped by losing himself in video games. He wasn’t doctor material because he couldn’t concentrate. He was too busy creating stories in his head and thinking of ways to become a superhero, if not in reality, at least in a story. These were the things that made him a failure in his parents’ eyes.
But not to his Auntie Sandra. He’d loved her because she’d seemed to understand him. Better yet, she’d seemed to see something in him that his parents had missed. And she had.
He’d been ripe for possession.
The thought froze him in place, his mind locked on an endless loop of wondering if she’d loved him at all. This aunt who had done everything for him, who had loaned him a million dollars…. Had she done it because she wanted the Monkey King to live in him?
“You don’t care about me, do you?” He didn’t want to believe it, so he stated it as a question.
