by Tom Abrahams
“When?” asked the boy.
“You saw it?” asked the girl.
The grandmother opened her arms and motioned for the children to move to her. They quickly slid to her side and wrapped their arms around her. All three of them were crying. Linh felt sweat suddenly blooming on his brow and on his upper lip. He averted his eyes from the family hug, but an invisible magnet pulled him back to it. He was at once compelled to leave the house and delve more deeply into what the woman had experienced. Despite his misgivings, the reporter in Linh took hold. He checked the recorder to insure the device was still on, and he stepped to the woman. He put one hand on her shoulder and rubbed back and forth with his thumb.
“When did this happen?” he asked. “When did you see the White—it?”
Due, whose face was drawn with disbelief, translated his nephew’s question. The woman, her eyes squeezed shut as she held tight to her grandchildren, licked her lips and spoke deliberately. It was as if she were relaying a fairy tale.
“This was years ago, before my son and his wife were killed. It was early morning,” she said. “The sun was barely visible through the trees. Birds were chirping. The mist was steaming from the river. I needed a bucket of water to cook. Our plumbing wasn’t working. In the days after the war, our plumbing didn’t work many days.”
“It’s still not good,” said the girl.
The woman chuckled through her tears. “You’re right,” she said and kissed the girl’s head. She stopped for a moment and took a deep breath, her nose buried in the girl’s thick black hair. She exhaled with a loud sigh.
“You were alone?” Linh asked.
The woman nodded. “I was alone. My husband died in the war with the French. That was a long time ago. So I have done many things alone since then. Getting water from the river is just one of them. I’ve done it so many times.”
Linh wiped his brow clean of sweat and waited for the translation. “What happened?”
“I was walking through the grass to the water,” she said. “I had the bucket in one hand and was swinging it back and forth. It made a squeaking sound. So at first, I didn’t notice the noise coming from the riverbank.”
“What noise?”
“It sounded like the bucket squeak at first. Then it was more like a cry or a whimper. I stopped swinging the bucket as I got closer. Then I saw it. It was the back of the monster. It was crouched low. Its elbows were moving back and forth and back and forth. I couldn’t tell at first what it was or what it was doing.”
Linh glanced over at Due. His uncle’s face was ashen. He uttered the translation softly and with hesitation, as though he wasn’t certain he was using the right words to describe what the woman was saying.
“I thought it was a fisherman,” she explained. “But its joints didn’t look right. Its knees and elbows were bent at odd angles. Then I saw its skin. It was so white, I could almost see through it. I knew I should turn and run back to the house, but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t stop looking at the monster.”
Linh checked his recorder again. It was still working. “What was it doing?”
“It was eating something,” she said. “I mean, it was eating someone. I could see it holding an arm. It was eating it. It was chewing and slurping and making awful sounds.”
“That was the squeaking you heard?”
The woman shook her head, tears again filling her eyes. “No,” she said. “The squeaking was coming from the person it was eating. The person was still alive. He was trying to scream but couldn’t. I can still hear the sound in my mind. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.”
The boy leaned away from the woman’s hold and put his hand on her cheek. “What did you do, Grandmother?”
She didn’t look at the boy when she spoke. Instead, her gaze was distant. Her mind was trapped on the riverbank, feet from the feasting Ma Trang. “Squeak. Squeak,” she said above a whisper. “Squeak. Squeak.”
The boy moved his other hand to her face, holding it gently on both sides. “Grandmother,” he said, “Grandmother.”
The woman blinked from the vision and returned her focus to the boy. “It saw me,” she said. “I gasped when I realized it was eating a man. It turned. There was blood on its face. It had small sharp teeth and a sucker mouth stained with blood.”
Linh swallowed then spoke. “It saw you?”
The woman nodded. “It growled at me and I ran,” she said. “I ran through the grass, carrying the bucket. I tripped and fell. I was sure it would catch me and kill me. It didn’t. It didn’t chase me.”
“Did Father know?” asked the girl. “Did Mother know?”
The woman’s lips and chin quivered and she hung her head before shaking it back and forth. “No,” she said. “I never told anyone. I was afraid people wouldn’t believe me. I was afraid they would say I was crazy.” The woman drew her hands to her face and sobbed.
Due interjected. “That doesn’t make sense. Everybody knows about it. People would believe you.”
The woman dropped her hands and looked at Due, the years of anguish carved into the lines along her brow and cheeks. “This was almost twelve years ago,” she said. “Nobody had heard of the monster then. Nobody.”
Due pressed. “Then why didn’t you tell people later, once there were sightings and people started dying.”
The woman nodded. “I should have,” she admitted, “but then people would ask me why I kept silent. They would blame me for the deaths. They would punish me. Instead, the heavens punished me for being silent. The heavens forsook me and took my son and his wife.”
The children looked up at their grandmother with confusion and then hurt. Both turned from her and moved to each other. The boy and girl embraced one another, both of them convulsed with emotion.
Linh felt a thick lump in his throat. His breathing was hard to control. He blinked back tears. “Why are you telling us now?” he choked.
The woman took a deep breath, filling her lungs with air, and exhaled through pursed lips. “I am telling you because I want everyone to know the monster is not a ghost. That man, that thing, whatever he was or is, is not a ghost. It is not human, but it is alive. It is alive.”
— 18 —
Hòa Bình, Vietnam
April 20, 1980
Lieutenant Brett was crouched low in the high grass, waiting for dusk. The voice in his head had suggested he wait for the sun to drop. Men and women would be tired; they’d be focused on nightly chores and wouldn’t be aware of their surroundings.
Easy pickings, she’d said.
His ears pricked and he pulled the necklace from his mouth and held a nose between his fingers. There were feet trudging along the dirt. There were four feet. They were distinct. It wasn’t an animal. There was no rhythm to the rise and fall. Brett was certain the steps belonged to two people. His ears filtered out the ambient sounds of the river and the wind in the trees.
It was two men. The steps were too heavy and too far apart to be women.
Brett raised himself from his crouch, his knees clicking as he shifted his weight. He scanned the horizon just above the grass. Nothing. He turned his body, using his fists to balance himself on the damp ground as he pivoted. Still nothing.
He blinked and refocused and then drew in a deep breath through his flared nostrils. A cacophony of odors threatened to overwhelm his sense of smell. The earlier rains had dulled some odors and freshened others, making them particularly acute. Mixed with dung and jungle rot, he sensed fish and soap. A large cat was close. A tree infected with termites was dying. Brett sucked in another waft of humid air, and there it was. Sweat. Sweat mixed with a fragrant cologne or deodorant. It was men all right. No doubt. And they were getting closer.
Brett picked his way through the grass, sliding his calloused hands along the thin blades as he moved. The click and pop of his joints was masked by a sudden gust of wind that blew directly at him and then swirled before dissipating. The trees above swayed, their leaves rustling against one another
.
He reached a clearing and stopped. Lifting himself up, he again scanned his surroundings. This time he saw the men. They were on the road now, maybe a hundred yards from the clearing. They were walking toward him. Neither man was speaking.
One of the men was older and walked with a hunch. His steps were heavier. He was squatty with thick fingers and favored his right side. He was the weaker one. The other man was taller and thinner. His gate was even and quick despite his long legs. He carried a brown satchel on his left side. Brett could smell the wet leather.
Go now, urged the voice in his head. Kill them both. Attack the taller one. Get him out of the way. The older one won’t have the strength to fight.
Brett popped his lips and dug in his heels. The men were walking toward a car parked on the road. The car was empty. He closed his eyes and listened.
Keys jingled in the older man’s pocket. It was his car. Brett judged the distance between the men and the car. He could cut them off on the road. They’d have nowhere to run. To one side was a steep incline leading toward the mountains. On the other side of the road was a drop toward the river.
Go, urged the voice. Go now.
Brett leapt forward on his hands and galloped across the grass. His joints snapped and clicked as he raced to the road. Saliva pooled in his mouth.
The older one will be tough and fatty, said the voice. The younger one, though. Lots of juicy, fresh muscle. Warm, lean meat. It’s been so long since we’ve had two meals at once.
Brett lunged with his powerful legs and then pushed forward with his hands and arms, moving swiftly to the road. It was a clear shot to the narrowing gap between the men and the car. The only hindrance was the occasional pool of mud that sucked at his hands and feet as he moved. Brett was getting closer, advancing on his prey, as he’d done so many countless times before.
He could still taste the flesh of the first person he’d killed after the VX-99 had taken hold and his fellow Marines were dead. He could smell the man’s fear.
It had been weeks after injecting the VX-99. Aside from manifesting the omnipresent voice, the one that wouldn’t let him rest, the drug had amplified all of his senses. It had started with shimmering arcs of colored light clouding his vision. Then his body had caught fire. The sensation of thousands of stinging bees had spread across his skin from the inside. As quickly as the pain had enveloped him, it was over. And the world became remarkably, impossibly vivid. From the sound of bugs crawling to the stink of his pit-stained uniformed, he’d been born again. The taste of coffee had filtered across his tongue. He could feel the throbbing pulse of blood through his veins.
It had been liberating and debilitating. For the first few days, the newly invincible VX-99 version of Lieutenant Trevor Brett had wandered aimlessly through the jungle, up and down peaks, and at the edge of rivers, trying to cope with the sensory overload. Without a direct threat, as he’d found in his fellow Marines immediately following the VX-99 injections, Brett was able to ignore the urges of the voice and the demands of his hunger.
You must hunt, she’d growled.
What was left of pre-VX-99 Brett, that part of him that clung perilously to human morality, fought the more primal, single-minded tendencies as valiantly as it could. When he finally succumbed to his voracious appetite, he’d chosen to ignore the voice’s command to find a human. Instead, he’d pounced on a Vu Quang ox, a bovine and one of the world’s rarest large mammals.
It had been chewing on underbrush in a heavily wooded area, using its long tongue to pull the broad green leaves into its mouth. It was oblivious to Brett’s presence. He, however, could smell the musk emanating from its long straight hair that thickened on the insides of its forelegs and belly.
Brett had focused on the thick pulse at the side of its neck, just beneath its jaw, and he pounced. The animal had seen him at the last moment, its round pupils reacting to the oncoming threat. Its brown irises had appeared almost orange as it froze in fear, a leaf hanging from its mouth. It had squealed as Brett grabbed it along the thick stripe that ran across its back from its neck to its tail. Brett had dug in with his fingers, feeling the pop as they punctured the animal’s skin. He’d done the rest of the deadly damage with his teeth.
The animal, however, had not satiated his hunger. The pangs had grown worse, more consuming, more mind-altering, until he could think of nothing but killing and feeding on a human.
Brett had found the man near the village of Hòa Bình. Of course, he hadn’t known the name of the village. He’d only known there were a lot of people from which to choose. He’d smelled them: men, women, children, infants, a veritable fresh meat buffet. He’d clung to the trees near the Da River, resisting the urge for as long as he could. Early one morning, as the fog lifted from the Da, he’d had enough. He’d needed to kill.
The voice had purred in his head. It’s time, she’d said. You’ve waited long enough.
Then it had begun.
Each successive kill was easier than the one before. Countless times he’d attacked, slaughtered, and fed. Now he raced toward his newest targets, a pair of unsuspecting travelers walking into a trap. He was yards from intercepting them.
***
Uncle Due saw it first. It was a flash of white amidst the tall grasses off the side of the road. A gust of hot wind blew toward the grass, sending a whoosh past his ears. Underneath the fanning of the blades and the rustling tree branches, Due thought he heard a sound that resembled knuckles cracking. The sound, and not the wind, produced a chill on the back of his neck.
The white flash was bolting through the grass straight toward them. He could hear it grunting as it advanced. Due stopped on the road, short of the mudslide that had stranded his car. His instincts told him to run, to turn and run as fast as he could. Instead he was frozen from a strange mixture of curiosity and fear.
Is this the White Ghost? Have we found it? Has it found us? How is that possible?
Due considered his options. He had none. The White Ghost was too fast, too big, too strong. He’d never be able to outrun the beast if it were coming for him.
If it were coming for him…
From the corner of his eyes, he could see Linh was oblivious. The reporter was deep in thought. His heavy leather satchel was draped across his body like a messenger bag and bounced on the small of his back as he moved. His Nikon was still around his neck. Linh had insisted on taking photographs of the woman and her two grandchildren. He’d gotten a close-up of the claw before they left.
Linh was such a disappointment. He was a smart boy, did well in school, and was the perfect person to inherit his father’s business. It was preordained his nephew would finish his studies at university and then join the company. He would work in every job. He would learn the trade inside and out. His father, Due’s brother, could retire. He could travel. He could enjoy a life that had not been easy.
Instead, the boy chose to tell stories, to be an observer of other people living their lives. That wasn’t work. That wasn’t a trade. It was a weak excuse for a hobby, let alone a job. And here it was, this storytelling, this ridiculous storytelling, had landed them both far from real civilization and in the clutches of a fabled predator.
Due caught a glimpse of the monster’s face as it leapt above the grass line. He opened his mouth to say something, to warn his nephew. He didn’t. In that split second, he thought it better to stay quiet. Linh was closer to the monster, standing off the edge of the road at the mudslide.
If the beast attacks Linh, it will give me time to—
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t sacrifice his nephew to save himself.
As the monster leapt toward Linh, Due called to him, his own feet still cemented to the road. “Linh! Behind you!”
Linh turned to look at his uncle, his face screwed tight with confusion. “Wha—”
As he spun, Ma Trang descended on top of him, knocking him to the mud. The two of them slipped into the soft brown mound, tumbling over one another. Limbs fl
ailed, splattering mud against the nearby rocks and spraying it into the air. Due couldn’t move. His legs, and his conscience, wouldn’t let him. He watched in horror as the Ma Trang rose from the mud, its ghastly sucker lips drawn back, revealing piranha-like rows of teeth. The monster’s pale skin almost glowed in contrast to the black mud.
Linh slipped beneath the mud. Due couldn’t see him. He couldn’t see him at all as the Ma Trang took a violent swipe downward with his clawed hand.
***
It all happened too fast. Linh had heard his uncle call his name in the same instant he felt a sudden jolt on his right side. Something or someone had tackled him, knocking him into the thick, pasty mud covering the road. The shock of the hit had knocked the wind from his lungs, and despite landing in the mud, his shoulder and head hit something hard. A burst of stars had exploded in his vision.
At first, Linh had thought it was an animal that attacked him. Maybe a tiger? Whatever it was, the beast was feral. It was dense with muscles and had fetid, hot breath Linh could smell despite the foul aroma of the mud.
But he’d instantly dismissed the tiger theory when he felt the grip of a man’s hand around his arm, twisting and pulling, as the two struggled to gain traction in the mud pit. The animal was grunting and growling. Linh could hear pops and clicks and what sounded like teeth snapping as he kicked and squirmed deeper into the mud.
That mud was initially his savior. The animal couldn’t grip Linh. It couldn’t gain its footing. Instead it was nearly as helpless as Linh.
Linh sucked in a deep breath and threw himself backward into the mud, pulled his knees into his chest, and mule kicked the beast in the square of its chest as it tried to pounce on top of him. It was in that moment, as Linh slipped beneath the mud, that he knew what it was he was fighting.
Ma Trang.
Linh hoped his blurry vision was the culprit, that he wasn’t truly struggling against an invincible monster. He knew that wasn’t the case. He tried squirming backward from the Ma Trang, but it caught the strap of his satchel and yanked it with such force that it flipped Linh onto his stomach, facedown in the mud. As he struggled to breathe, a sudden force of pressure hit him squarely in the back, and a burst of white-hot pain stung his right shoulder. Linh surfaced long enough to gulp another swallow of air before he sank beneath the mud again. The animal was grappling for his feet. Linh kicked and danced free of its grasp, and as he tried pulling himself away, his hand wrapped around the thick shard of a tree branch caught in the mudslide. Linh pivoted to his back and used his elbows to push himself above the mud. Once he was sitting upright, he quickly raised his right arm and forcefully drove the shard downward toward the Ma Trang.