57 pages • 1-hour read
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
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Chapters 13-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, death, mental illness, and graphic violence.
Chapter 13 Summary
Cora returns to her apartment building to find it swarming with cops. She is escorted to her floor by a cop when she tells him she lives there, and she smells blood as she passes the third floor on the way up. Outside her apartment, she discovers that her doormat is askew and there is a footprint on her door, as if someone tried to kick it down. Cora enters, trying to reassure herself that at least they didn’t make it in, and that the inside is still safe.
The next job the crew works at is a slightly different one—it is still a Chinatown murder, but a male cop named Wang is the victim. He was shot dead with a machine gun while asleep in his bed. Cora and Harvey begin cleaning up, as Yifei is running late. While she is working, a skeletal hand with a jade bracelet on suddenly grabs Cora’s ankle from underneath the bed and gestures for her to look. There is no one there, but Cora finds a thumb drive.
Yifei arrives in a rage, showing the others a newspaper article about how crime in Chinatown has gone down since Mayor Webb increased the police budget. Cora reflects on how more police has always been Mayor Webb’s answer, despite the atrocities committed by the NYPD, including shooting innocent Black people and unleashing violence on peaceful protesters. Mayor Webb himself is less than credible, as he was caught having an affair with a Korean international student whom he claimed “charmed” him, causing her to leave the city after receiving numerous death threats. Yifei reveals the reporter they spoke to is the one who penned the article. When Yifei confronted him, he claimed he would have been arrested if he had written what Yifei and the others told him.
The crew are interrupted by a police photographer who is livid that they are cleaning, as the place is a crime scene that has not yet been secured by the police. He accuses them of tampering, and the three of them leave immediately. Harvey calls his uncle, who swears the phone call about the job was a legitimate one. Cora wonders how they were allowed in at all with all the police outside if they hadn’t yet secured the place.
At night, Cora, Yifei, and Harvey visit the subway station where Delilah was killed to search for her head. They head into the tunnels, where they suddenly hear footsteps approaching them. The three of them take off when they hear the footsteps begin to run towards them. Yifei and Harvey make it back onto the platform, but a hand grabs the back of Cora’s shirt, tugging her backwards. With great effort she manages to break free, and the other two haul her onto the platform. When they shine their torches in the direction of the hand, they discover no one there.
Spooked, the three of them decide to leave. However, Yifei has another idea: She suggests throwing a feast for the dead on the 15th day of the month, which is in three days, as per Chinese tradition.
Chapter 14 Summary
Finally back at her apartment, Cora inserts the thumb drive into her laptop to survey its contents. She hits a road block when the folder on the thumb drive requires a password.
The next morning, after spotting a greying hand reaching for her from inside her fridge, Cora decides to go grocery shopping. She avoids every shadow and spot of darkness in the bright daylight so Delilah cannot reappear; however, Cora spots her amongst the shadows of the subway entrance. She considers walking to the store, but she remembers the thumb drive and wonders if Delilah has something more to show her.
Cora follows Delilah, who disappears the moment there is light, and takes the train. She gets off at the station, where Delilah appears again in the shadow of a pillar. Cora follows the trail that the disappearing and re-appearing Delilah leaves behind to the police station located at the exit of the subway station.
Inside, Cora tells the secretary that she is there about Officer Wang. She lies about being his wife and asks to clear out his office, but the secretary reveals that the authorities have already done that, not wanting to leave confidential paperwork lying around. Cora begs the secretary to check if there’s anything at all she can take back.
As the secretary leaves, Delilah appears and animatedly gesticulates towards the paper shredder behind the secretary’s desk. Cora manages to empty its contents into her own bag just as the secretary reappears with a photograph of Officer Wang as a young boy. Moved to tears, Cora takes the photograph and leaves.
Chapter 15 Summary
Two days after their subway expedition, which are followed by two more back-to-back clean-up jobs featuring murdered East Asian women, Harvey calls Cora late Tuesday night with an idea. He thinks the “hungry ghosts” are like “Jiangshi,” creatures from Chinese folktales that are a cross between zombies and vampires, as they are hopping corpses that drink blood. Harvey suggests they try getting rid of them using information from old folk tales but doesn’t want to involve Yifei. From what he has heard from her, he believes that her entire family is dead, and her experience with “hungry ghosts” is too personal for her to be objective.
Cora relents and agrees to meet Harvey at Foley Square in half an hour’s time. Harvey is late, and while Cora is waiting, she senses that she is being watched. The figure disappears when Harvey arrives. Harvey is less sure about his methods working than he seemed on the phone, but Cora is willing to try them anyway. They pour out grains of rice so that the jiangshi will stop and count them, and Cora holds a mirror to ward them away from her, as the jiangshi hate their own reflection.
While they are waiting for something to happen, Harvey begins to goof around, and Cora playfully knocks him into the trunk of a birch tree. When Harvey softly sinks against it, however, the two of them discover that it isn’t a tree at all—the face at the top of it and the talons at the end of the branches become visible in the moonlight, and Cora realizes that it is “what’s left of Delilah Zeng” (186).
Chapter 16 Summary
Cora and Harvey freeze in horror, with Cora wondering whether Delilah will eat Harvey. However, she begins to lick the uncooked grains of rice they have scattered on the ground instead. As Harvey marvels at his plan working, more “hungry ghosts” suddenly emerge from the trees and surround them, all of them scraping the rice up with their tongues. Terrified, Harvey knocks over the bag of rice he brought to distract the ghosts while he and Cora flee the scene.
They head back to Cora’s apartment, where Harvey takes the floor beside Cora’s bed and the two try to fall asleep. Cora asks Harvey about the ghost he once saw in his father’s basement and how he made it go away; Harvey reveals he didn’t, and the ghost is probably still there. Harvey describes how the ghost just lay in the basement with her head seemingly smashed in and never did anything to him, but disappeared as soon as Harvey’s father opened the basement door. Cora realizes that Harvey knows who she is and how and why she died in the basement, but she doesn’t ask any further questions.
Cora finally falls asleep and is woken up an hour later, just before sunrise, by hands pinning her down. She notices multiple sets of grey hands wriggling through the smaller patches of darkness around her room like the shadow next to her bookshelf and beneath her picture frames. When Cora feels teeth next to her ribcage, she finally jumps off the bed and shines her phone flashlight around, causing the multiple hands to disappear. Harvey wakes up in the process, and they realize the ghosts they summoned earlier are still hungry. They decide to talk to Yifei.
Chapter 17 Summary
Yifei is furious when Cora and Harvey call her with the news of what they tried to do. She instructs them to meet her later that day to shop for supplies, as they will be cooking the feast that she has been planning that very same night. While they are waiting until it is time to meet Yifei, Auntie Zeng calls; Cora mentions “hungry ghosts,” and Auntie Zeng arrives at Cora’s apartment shortly after with dumplings and talismans.
Auntie Zeng gives Cora and Harvey a list of things to avoid, including swimming, hiking, picking coins off the ground, and turning around for strange sounds or noises. Auntie Zeng then fashions a piece of joss paper into the shape of a house before burning it. Cora has a brief experience of witnessing what hell must look like, as she stares into the burning flames. She wonders why the things she didn’t believe in earlier, like gods and ghosts, seem more real now.
Before leaving, Auntie Zeng asks Cora to put on the jade bracelet she once gave her, and never take it off. Cora does so, admiring the Chinese character spelling “love” on it. She remembers how it was once a matching set with Delilah’s, but the latter’s is now buried with her.
Chapter 18 Summary
Later that night, Yifei cooks up a feast in her kitchen while Cora and Harvey attempt to put together the shredded paper from the police station that she has finally told them about.
As they work, they piece together photographs of 10 white men and Officer Wang’s notes about each of them. Most of the men seem to belong to neo-Nazi groups, and Cora notices a handwritten note underneath one of them revealing that he was Zihan Huang’s neighbor. Harvey theorizes that one of these men is potentially the serial killer. Cora, who remembers Delilah never did anything that was not in her own interest, believes that he is also possibly Delilah’s killer.
Cora is fired up with a fresh need to find Delilah’s killer, but Yifei warns her that it is not good to keep a “hungry ghost” around, hence the feast they are preparing. Cora pretends to agree, and she sets up an altar for Delilah at Yifei’s suggestion. After Yifei lays out the feast, Cora holds out some food as an offering, just as she once fed Delilah before.
Before anything happens, Paisley and Ryan unexpectedly arrive. Thrilled to see the spread Yifei has prepared, they decide to help themselves to some food, especially since Yifei has no excuse to stop them. As they begin to eat, the power suddenly goes out. The darkness in the room gathers to form Delilah’s “hungry ghost” figure behind Ryan, and she unexpectedly bites his head off whole, before swallowing that and the rest of his body after.
Other ghosts begin to emerge out of Delilah’s shadow, but she is the only one standing. Before a terrified Paisley can escape, Delilah devours her whole too, and then turns to the trio. Cora places a dumpling on the plate they have set for Delilah at the table, asking her to eat. Delilah eats it, along with everything spread out on the table including the crockery, candles, and table linens.
As soon as she is done, the lights turn back on again. Delilah and the other ghosts disappear, leaving the kitchen in disarray and soaked in blood. Cora feels like the shadows around them have suddenly gotten softer; she doesn’t sense Delilah in them anymore. The trio decide to clean up the place with supplies from Harvey’s uncle, and to not tell anyone else about what just happened.
Interlude 3 Summary: “The Return”
Auntie Zeng describes how the door between the living and the dead closes on the last day of the seventh month and will not open again until a year later; if one knocks on it after it is closed, no one will answer.
Chapters 13-18 Analysis
The narrative tension rises rapidly in these chapters, with the element of mystery now clearly outlined by the different discoveries that Cora and the crew make. To begin with, there is the atypical murder of Officer Wang, who is East Asian, but not a woman, and actually a law enforcement official. The crime scene of his murder is also the site where Cora discovers the thumb drive courtesy of the ghost, as well as where the crew are driven away for supposedly tampering with an active crime scene. All these elements appear suspicious, implying that there is more happening with the murders than is currently evident.
Concurrently, the supernatural element intensifies, deepening the text’s exploration of The Parallels Between Supernatural Horror and Societal Violence. While the hate crimes rise in number, the trio encounters more than one ghost in both the subway and in the park, and the ghosts also seem to be getting hungrier, as they follow Cora and Harvey back to Cora’s apartment. Suspense and horror intertwine more closely in how the narrative now unfolds, especially through Cora’s experiences. The “hungry ghost” makes more frequent appearances and is also more active than passive, directing Cora towards the thumb drive, for instance. As the supernatural draws closer, so too does the threat of societal violence: Cora discovers that not only has a murder taken place in her building, but someone has seemingly tried to knock down her apartment door as well.
The novel reinforces the idea that societal violence can be surreptitious and insidious—and far more widespread than one expects—by the lack of success that the trio have in getting information about the murders into the press. This points to The Invisibility and Erasure of Marginalized Victims that is enabled not only by societal attitudes, but also by bureaucratic power and a media that can determine which stories are told. Despite the mounting number of murders of East Asian people, conversations about these crimes are continually silenced. Yifei reveals that instead of writing about what they told him, the reporter has instead penned an article on the reduced crime rates after Mayor Webb’s expansion of the police budget. He claims that he would be “arrested” if he wrote what the crew told him, not just lose his job, which indicates that there is some bureaucratic pressure preventing him from exposing the truth.
Significantly, the article comes out on the same day that the trio are called in to clean up Officer Wang’s murder. The lack of attention the murders beget despite even a law enforcement official being targeted now underscores how easily crimes against marginalized communities are ignored and erased. People in positions of power can order such silencing, and there are no further questions asked about it.
Multiple other scenarios in these chapters further highlight this power imbalance. For instance, despite Mayor Webb having had an affair with a Korean student, it is she who is chased out of town with threats while the mayor continues to hold office and suffer no negative consequences in his life. With the Korean student having been both a woman and East Asian, not only was her victimhood ignored altogether, but the blame was shifted entirely onto her, as Mayor Webb is a white man with substantial social and political power.
What takes place at the feast that the crew prepares for the “hungry ghosts” is a symbolic and almost ironic reversal of what usually takes place in society: Those who go unseen and exist in the shadows (the ghosts) get to mete out just punishment to those who are entitled and exploitative because of their social power: Paisley and Ryan try to eat the food without Yifei’s permission, and are in turn eaten by the ghost themselves.
The jade bracelet makes a reappearance here and speaks to Folk Ritual as Pathway to Healing from Grief, with Auntie Zeng advising Cora to wear hers at all times. The reader also learns that Cora and Delilah had a matching set, which explains why Cora has identified her “hungry ghost” as Delilah based on the jade bracelet it wears. Cora’s acquiescence to wear the bracelet now indicates a growing acceptance that her experiences are not the products of her imagination or personal trauma—she is beginning to believe that the supernatural experiences are real and valid outside of her mind. This is mirrored by her reflection that the things she didn’t use to believe in, like Auntie Zeng’s explanations about gods and ghosts, feel more real to her now. Cora beginning to wear the jade bracelet thus symbolizes the movement her character is slowly making from loneliness, isolation, and self-doubt to more reliance on the community around her and deeper integration into the folk rituals and beliefs of her Chinese heritage.
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