Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

Cora pulls back Yifei, who unsuccessfully attempts to yank open the machine. Cora explains that Harvey is already dead, as it is not water but a powerful cleaning solvent inside the machine, which has likely already dissolved his skin and organs. Cora insists they leave right away, not wanting to deal with the cops directly. Yifei switches on the fire alarm before they leave, hoping that it will eventually attract the cops’ attention.

Cora and Yifei head back to Yifei’s apartment to grab whatever knives they can as weapons, after which they intend to drive to Staten Island where Aunt Lois lives. At Yifei’s, Cora’s growing fear intensifies when she discovers muddy footprints inside leading up to the closet in the living room. She signals this to Yifei, but before they can make a break for it, the closet door falls open and a bat flies out; there is no one else inside.

Yifei and Cora run to Paisley’s car and Yifei starts driving, but her panic causes her to drive too erratically. After they almost collide with another car, Cora yells at a sobbing Yifei to pull over. Yifei abruptly stops crying after a while and insists on telling Cora the truth about her family.

“Yifei” is not her actual name, as she was never given one: She adopted it from an actress she once saw on television with the same name. Since she was born a girl in a village in China, Yifei’s parents never bothered to name her and kept trying for a second child. With China’s one-child policy, they were planning on giving Yifei away after having a son. However, Yifei’s parents ended up having a second girl, and Yifei’s father took her down to the river, presumably to drown the baby.

However, something went wrong and it didn’t work, and Yifei’s father returned with a crying baby who seemed changed somehow. From that day on, Yifei’s sister was kept locked up in a closet and kept out of sight for the entirety of her life, only being let out in the house at night sometimes. The half-drowning had done something to her—she never spoke, and Yifei was terrified of her.

One day, when Yifei was 10 years old, she came home from the market to discover her parents’ corpses floating in the river, with her sister standing and watching them. Her skin looked unreal, like she was already dead, and when she opened her mouth, Yifei could hear the ocean. Yifei ran for her life, chased by her sister, who attempted to lock her up in her old closet. Yifei managed to lock her sister in instead, and escaped to the city immediately with what little money was left in the house.

Yifei admits that she thinks of herself as a terrible person for doing what she did because she has no regrets: She is too scared of dying, and if not her sister, it would have been her. Cora tries to reassure her that she will not die, but Yifei is too agitated to listen—she reminds Cora of Harvey’s death, convinced that the killer will eventually find them, too.

Yifei begins driving again, speeding faster and faster, despite Cora’s suggestion that they stop for gas as the tank is almost empty. Yifei ignores her, but out of nowhere a torrent of bats explodes against the car, and Yifei crashes the car.

The car smashes into something and spins out before eventually coming to a halt. Cora realizes that a tree branch has pierced through the car, breaking her jade bracelet in two and killing Yifei, who is crushed against it. In shock and with all hope lost, Cora manages to free herself from the seat belt and exit the car. She hears footsteps following her and braces herself for the killer to find her; instead, she discovers that it is Delilah.

Cora hugs Delilah’s skeletal figure and sobs before her sadness dissolves into anger over how everyone is now dead. She also feels hatred towards Delilah for having attempted to leave her while she was alive. Cora asks what Delilah wants from her now, and Delilah extracts Cora’s phone from the wreckage of the car and directs her to keep walking.

Cora makes her way to a distant light on the road which turns out to be a Taco Bell outlet. As she walks, she contemplates how she is not safe anywhere anymore, whether inside her apartment or out in the world—she could be killed and the police would do nothing about it.

After reaching the parking lot, Cora calls Auntie Zeng and tells her everything that has happened. She asks Cora to come over, but wonders about Delilah eating Paisley and Ryan, as it seems uncharacteristic. Cora explains that she believes the “hungry ghost” haunting her is Delilah because of the jade bracelet she wears, with the Chinese character for “hope.” Auntie Zeng immediately instructs Cora to run, as the ghost is not Delilah.

Auntie Zeng explains that Delilah’s jade bracelet read “strength,” not “hope.” Auntie Zeng has also burned so much joss paper for Delilah that she is sure she cannot be hungry. Cora spots the figure of the ghost still watching her from nearby and wonders who it could be. Terrified, she jumps into a circle of light just as “Not Delilah” grabs her leg; Cora watches as the ghost eats Cora’s shoe whole.

Cora tells Auntie Zeng her location and rushes inside the brightly lit Taco Bell, waiting for Auntie Zeng to come collect her. Auntie Zeng arrives with lights and lanterns and takes Cora home, where she instructs her to bathe while Auntie Zeng finds her some jade.

While Cora is showering, she hears the rhythmic knock again and wonders what the ghost is trying to communicate. She realizes that it is the password to the folder on Officer Wang’s thumb drive—three knocks, followed by two, then five. Cora borrows Auntie Zeng’s laptop and inserts the thumb drive, finally accessing the folder using the password “325.”

Auntie Zeng notes that while people think death is the end of all want and suffering, it is the living who move on while the dead do not forget.

Cora is sickened to discover the folder filled with graphic images of Asian women who have been murdered in gory and grotesque manners with bats positioned over their corpses somehow; there are 374 different victims in total.

She finds another folder titled “Correspondence.” There are some emails from Officer Wang to other officers asking for more people to be assigned to these cases, as well as voice recordings of conversations between him and an officer. In these conversations, the other officer berates Wang for pursuing the murders so relentlessly and insinuates that they have to drop the investigation as an unnamed “he” doesn’t want to funnel more money into it.

Cora finds the pictures of the same 10 men she had pieced together at Yifei’s, titled “Copy1,” “Copy2,” and so on. She also finds a photograph of a note on the Mayor’s office letterhead addressed to “Antoni” with a request to keep things quiet and to do what needs to be done. Cora remembers that Antoni Mezzasalma was the name of the unempathetic officer who interrogated her after Delilah’s death. She also realizes that what Mayor Webb wants kept quiet is this string of murders—with the election coming up the following year and his stance being aggressively pro-police, the unsolved murders would diminish his popularity. She wonders if things would have been different if the victims had been Caucasian instead.

The last folder Cora opens contains screenshots from a chat forum titled “American Dreamers” alongside the picture of a Confederate flag. The conversations are racist and xenophobic, and Cora skims them until she reaches a picture of one of the murdered Asian women she saw earlier. The woman has been harpooned, and the poster, with the handle “yellowdeath,” has captioned it “I <3 lamb skewers” (278). Cora scours through more pictures like these posted by “yellowdeath” and realizes that the user has been posting proof of his murders to much applause and congratulations from the others on the forum.

As Cora runs through more screenshots, she sees that other users began posting photographs of their own murders as “homages” to “yellowdeath.” The final screenshot is of a conversation in which a user declares that he has inside information from the NYPD that the police are sweeping “yellowdeath’s” murders under the rug because of “bad publicity.” They don’t even seem to know that there are multiple murderers at work. Cora realizes that Wang has saved the profiles of the 10 men because they are all copycat killers—an entire movement is at work.

Cora remembers who pointed her towards the thumb drive, and when she switches off the lights, the ghost appears. Upon Cora wondering who she is, the ghost taps one of the images of murdered Asian women on the laptop screen: Yuxi He, the doctor who was shot dead in her bathroom, and the clean-up scene where Cora first encountered a bat.

Cora cries, thinking of the end women like Yuxi He and Delilah met, and of all the hateful, racist encounters people like her have endured over the past months. She decides what she needs to do next and tells her aunt she is going out, armed with a jade necklace, joss paper, and matches.

Cora heads to the crypt, with Yuxi He walking beside her. From inside, she takes some of the propane tanks she had previously seen stored in the closet. As she walks down the street, she is accosted by a white man who calls her “pretty” and tries to grab her. Cora shoves him into the street where a car hits him, but he is uninjured. He yells at Cora, calling her “crazy” and a “bat eater.” Cora yells back, stunning the man into silence.

Cora heads to the East Broadway subway station where Delilah was killed and walks into the tunnel. As she walks, she is joined by hundreds of other “hungry ghosts” in addition to Yuxi He. Rather than feel scared, Cora aches for all these forgotten souls. Through the tunnels, she eventually reaches her destination: Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence. There is no one outside, and Cora walks through the gates; she then empties out the propane tanks all over the premises and lights it on fire, telling the ghosts this is for them. They pull her back and deposit her on the sidewalk as the flames take hold, and Cora watches the house go up in flames.

When Cora arrives back at Auntie Zeng’s, her aunt takes her down to East River where they light and set afloat paper lanterns to guide the ghosts home—it is the last day of ghost month. They watch as ghosts rise to the surface and chase after the floating lanterns, and Cora lights the final one, thinking of Delilah.

The police take two days to find Harvey’s body, and after the media attention dies down, his uncle closes the shop and moves away, supposedly to China. Cora stays with Auntie Zeng for weeks after ghost month, officially moving in once the lease on her old apartment expires. Cora regrets how Yifei was left dead on the side of the road with no follow- up or funeral, but she does manage to go back to her apartment and collect her things. Most of it she gives away, but she keeps a couple of things in a box alongside some items that belonged to Delilah.

Following the mayor’s death in an unexplained house fire, a New York Times reporter receives a thumb drive with evidence of the hundreds of murders. With the mayor gone, the paper runs an extensive piece on the NYPD cover-ups.

In April 2021, Cora works for a deep cleaning service that does apartment turnovers, which Cora finds just as satisfying as her previous job. She has stopped attending church with Aunt Lois after the latter and her friends claimed that the “China virus” is a factual term, not an offensive one. Cora receives the first dose of a COVID vaccine, which makes her feel “akin to resurfacing from dark waters” (298). Auntie Zeng makes her pray every night, and although Cora is still unconvinced, the ritual is comforting, and she is beginning to see her life more positively over time.

One afternoon, Cora peels an orange on her bed. She draws the blind, struck by an idea, and holds half an orange out, saying, “For you.” A hand appears from the darkness behind the blinds and snatches the orange half to eat it, while Cora eats a piece from her own half.