The Hungry Ghost

by H. S. Norup

  As I follow the trail back to the underpass and walk down the road, I don’t need to concentrate so much, and my mind starts whirling.

  The girl seems more and more strange. I’m not sure what to make of her. If only I’d taken a photo of her, so I could prove to Dad that she’s real. And the graveyard… it’s such a magical place, but I can’t quite shake the spooky feeling that there was something else there… Something more than trees and wildlife and old gravestones. I’m half-hoping the boy will still be outside, so I can ask him about those hungry ghosts.

  Just before I reach the boy’s house, his grandmother comes out of the gate. She squats and lights the long sticks stuck into the pumpkin pieces. I stop to watch her set fire to a bundle of paper. The edges of the sheets smoulder before they curl around, erupting blue-yellow flames which cast uncanny shadows up on her face.

  When she stands up, she looks directly at me.

  “What you doing outside, girl?” she asks. “The spirits are restless.”

  “I’m on my way home.” I walk around her and the offerings in a wide circle. There’s a prickling sensation on the back of my neck and that same feeling of being watched as I had yesterday in the pool. Without glancing back, I run the rest of the way to Dad’s house.

  —11—

  After I’ve showered, I can hear through the wall that Clementine and the twins are back. Maya’s giving one of the boys a bath, while Clementine tries to calm the other one down. Everything’s so normal.

  The photo of the gravestone on my phone is blurry, so I’m glad I have the rubbing, where the sign of the running ‘E’ is clear. While I nibble at the sandwiches, I copy it onto a loose sheet of paper. Perhaps Clementine knows what it means.

  Lizzie watches my drawing from her upside-down position on the window frame, then sprints up behind the curtains, showing me how fast she can run on her four legs.

  When the front door closes, I spring downstairs.

  I can’t wait to tell Dad about the graveyard, so I follow him into his office, on the other side of the lounge area. He’s on the phone, saying “Yes” a lot while he takes his laptop out and connects it to his monitor. He sends me a brief smile and holds up a hand, indicating that I should wait.

  One wall of his office is covered by a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Between the boring law and business volumes is a shelf with books about Asia and Singapore. I read their titles: Singapore: A Biography, A Life in the Colonies—from Singapore to the West Indies, A History of Modern Singapore… Then I pull out an A4-sized hardback called Singapore from the Air and sit down on the floor to flick through aerial photos of the island. A double page shows the MacRitchie Reservoir Park, with its sprawling reservoir lakes. On the next page, both Botanic Gardens and Bukit Brown can be seen. The cemetery is even bigger than the fancy gardens.

  As soon as Dad has finished talking, he comes over and gives me a big hug. I show him the aerial photo and tell him I’ve found the most amazing place.

  “It’s this wilderness, right here in the city. You need hiking boots and a compass. Have you been up there? It’s literally five minutes away.”

  Dad shakes his head and sits back down at his desk, but I continue. I talk and talk, because that keeps his gaze focused on me. I tell him everything about the graveyard: the lush greenness, the crumbling headstones, the overgrown paths, how the rainforest has taken over the place. I tell him about everything, except what brought me there in the first place. The girl.

  “You have to come. Can we go tomorrow?”

  “Sure. I’ve taken the day off. First, though, we should get you your school uniform and books, and I need to drop this contract off at the office.”

  I want to keep talking to Dad, and I have an idea. “Could we make a bonfire in the garden?”

  “A bonfire? In the garden?” he says, as if it’s the most outrageous thing he’s ever heard. As if we didn’t use to make bonfires in the garden all the time, before.

  “Can we? Just a small one.”

  “Why on earth would you want a bonfire, when it’s so hot outside?”

  “So we can sit and talk and watch the stars,” I say, before I remember that the stars are invisible here. “Or the flames.”

  The laptop pings and Dad’s eyes flick towards the screen. “I have to answer this. Why don’t we do it another night?”

  “Okay.” My voice shakes, but he doesn’t notice. “Does CQD mean anything to you, Dad?” I ask, in a desperate attempt to keep his attention.

  “Do you mean QED? That’s Latin for when you’ve proven something mathematically.” He’s still looking at the screen.

  “No! C, Q, D,” I say, with emphasis on each letter.

  Clementine saunters into the office with a cup of tea for Dad. “Do you need help, Freja?”

  I shake my head.

  “Then why did you say ‘CQD’?”

  “That means help? In Chinese?”

  “Not Chinese.” Clementine chuckles. “It’s an old maritime distress signal, from before SOS became the international standard.”

  “How do you know that?” A distress signal makes sense. Since the first time I saw her, I’ve had a feeling the girl needed help.

  “My father was a bit of an amateur radio enthusiast. He taught me SOS and CQD and always said that even though CQD has hardly been used since the Titanic sank, I ought to be familiar with both.” She sighs. “I miss him every single day.”

  I’m staring at Clementine. It’s like she’s becoming a different person right before my eyes. An interesting person who knows useful things, not only how to plan a party and blowdry hair. But why didn’t the girl write Help or SOS? Why use a signal that hasn’t been in use for the last hundred years?

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Er…” I can’t tell her I saw the letters in Bukit Brown, because I want the graveyard to be something Dad and I can have to ourselves.

  Dad isn’t even listening. His eyes are glued to his screen.

  “Let’s leave your daddy alone. D’you want a cup of tea, Freja? It’s peppermint. Nice and soothing.”

  I follow her to the dining table, where she has her laptop set up next to a teapot and two cups.

  “I’m doing my social media updates,” she says, while she pours me a cup.

  My newfound interest in her is gone again. Social media updates!

  “It’s so important for this party, and the sponsors—”

  “Can you tell me how I pronounce this?” I interrupt and unfold the sheet of paper.

  She glances at it, before she answers, “Ling. Rhymes with ‘sing’.”

  “Ling,” I repeat. “Is that a girl’s name?”

  “It can be,” she says. “It also means ‘spirit’.”

  Spirit. I shudder involuntarily.

  “Are you okay, Freja? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Yes. It’s… I’m really tired. Can I take my tea upstairs?”

  “Of course.” She hands me the teacup. “Sleep well.”

  In a daze, I go up to my room. The teacup rattles on the saucer. Suddenly, it all makes sense. The way the girl moves and vanishes. Her stamina. Her clean white dress. That she appears at dusk or during the night. That she’s sent me a distress signal, last used a hundred years ago. Perhaps that’s when she was alive.

  Staring out into the dark garden, I’m hoping to catch sight of the girl. The spirit. Ling.

  I’m not scared—she seems friendly—but I’m almost certain that she’s some kind of spirit. A restless spirit who needs my help.

  Above me, Lizzie nods.

  Why me? Is it just because I can see her? I don’t have any ancestors here. No one would expect me to remember them with offerings. But perhaps she’s another kind of ghost.

  I’m almost asleep, when one of t
he twins starts crying. The sound plucks at my memory. I have an odd sense of having experienced this before—like I’m used to lying in my bed, falling asleep to the sound of crying toddlers.

  —12—

  Dad keeps his promise, and in the morning we drive up to my new school. It’s at the top of a hill in a residential area and bordered by rainforest on two sides. The thought of excursions into the wilderness in Biology and perhaps PE lessons gives me a tickle of anticipation, but the good feeling fades at the sight of the playground. It’s full of children. I’d forgotten that I’ll be starting school after everyone else, because Clementine thought I needed a few days to adjust.

  When a bell rings, the playground empties.

  “We’re not meeting my new class today,” I say, before we get out of the car. I’m afraid that if we go into the class, the teacher will ask me to stay, and then Dad will go to work, and we won’t make it to the cemetery. And I have to make it to the cemetery today. I have to find out if Ling has answered my message.

  Last night, I was convinced she was a restless spirit, but now it’s hot and sunny and difficult to believe in ghosts. Besides, who has ever heard of a ghost that sends Morse messages?

  I like the school uniforms. The green of the polo shirts is a bit lighter than my favourite colour, and the lady in the shop tells me I can get combat shorts with nice big pockets instead of a skirt. Afterwards, while Dad’s paying for the uniforms and books and pens and folders, I wait outside.

  An expansive tarpaulin is spanned out between the school’s buildings, covering a round amphitheatre. On the opposite side of the amphitheatre, a monkey appears on the topmost railing. It scuttles down the steps, across the round flat area in the centre and grasps a forgotten lunchbox. With the lunchbox under one arm, the monkey hops back to the railing, where it sits, fiddling with the snaps of the lid. It’s the cutest thing ever.

  When Dad comes out, I pull his sleeve and point at the monkey.

  “Oh yes, the monkeys are a real pest in certain areas of Singapore,” he says, before he strides to the car.

  Does he mean that they are being exterminated by the pest control people, like cockroaches and mosquitoes? I’m afraid to ask.

  On the way to the city, Dad’s on the phone, wearing earphones. He’s weaving through the traffic, overtaking swarms of scooters and small lorries with rows of workers sitting on the open carriage deck. We drive through a street lined with colourful houses, which have small shops on the ground floor with their names written in Chinese. I search for the running E sign.

  “Did anyone from our family ever live here in Singapore?” I ask, as soon as Dad hangs up.

  “Don’t think so. One of my great-great-grandfathers worked for the foreign office somewhere in the Caribbean. Other than him, everyone in the family stayed inside the M25… Except me, of course, when I moved to Denmark.”

  He follows the flow of blue and yellow taxis past Buddhist and Hindu temples, a mosque and a church, into a forest of skyscrapers.

  “We’re almost there. I’ll just drop off this contract and show you my million-dollar view.”

  Inside Dad’s building, everything is marble and massive.

  “It smells of money here, doesn’t it?” he asks with a grin, and he presses the button in the lift for the 33rd floor.

  I sniff, but I can only smell lemony disinfectant and my apple shampoo.

  By the coffee machine in the office, a group of women croon over me. “So tall, so handsome,” they say, “like her daddy” and wink at him. One of them wears skyscraper heels, which make her my height. She frowns at my combat shorts.

  “She’d look so pretty in a dress,” she says to Dad. Her eyes flick from my fingertips to her own long, manicured nails. “I’m sure your Clementine will take care of that.”

  When a thickset man with a beetroot-red nose barges through the glass doors, they all scurry back to their desks and tap away on their computers.

  “Morning Mr. Henderson,” the women chirp.

  He steers towards us, while he mops his sweaty forehead with a large handkerchief.

  “Jim, this is my daughter, Freja,” Dad says. “I told you she’s coming to stay with us.”

  The man encloses my hand in his. It feels like I’m being wrung inside a soaked tea-towel.

  “Welcome to Singapore, young lady. How do you like it so far? A bit warmer here than in good old Blighty, eh? You don’t mind if I borrow Daddy for a little while, do you?”

  Without giving me the opportunity to answer any of his questions or tell him that I came from Denmark, Mr. Henderson strides away, calling over his shoulder, “And bring the Manila file, Will.”

  One of the women springs up and hands Dad a thick folder.

  As soon as the door closes behind Dad, the women start talking very fast, in abrupt cryptic sentences, saying things like: “That one in Manila is blur like sotong,” and, “Last time, he catch no ball”. I guess these must be Singlish expressions.

  “You can wait in there,” one of them says to me. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  I shake my head and follow her into an office that I know is Dad’s right away. On his desk, there’s a Lego model of a Volkswagen minibus, which he got for Christmas years ago. Two framed photos lean against it: one of Clementine with Billy and Eddie—all three in matching baby-blue outfits—and my latest school photo.

  Through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk, the view really is amazing. All the extraordinary buildings seem to be competing to be the weirdest. I decide the runners-up are a gigantic white flower, two golden-brownish hedgehog-like domes, and a row of long, flat arches. The winner in the weird-building competition, though, is a set of three tilting skyscrapers held together on top by a ginormous surfboard. The whole thing looks like the first layer in a curving house of giant cards.

  I sink down on Dad’s swivel chair to take it all in. The water in the bay below is almost as green as the trees in the park beyond it. The ocean is a pale blue and littered with hundreds of container ships. Only two of them are moving. From here, the rest resemble abandoned Lego bricks.

  After a while, I wish I’d said yes to a drink, because I’m getting hungry. The snack bar I packed, just in case, is in my school bag in the car. I glance at the door, before I slide Dad’s top drawer open, but there’s nothing to eat, only pens and sticky notes.

  The next drawer’s empty except for two photos. They’re crinkled along the edges, as if they get handled a lot. I carefully take them out. The one on top is of me as a smiling, kicking baby—Mum has the exact same photo in a frame in her bedroom.

  In the other photo, we’re on a beach. I’m four or five. Dad has thrown me high in the air. We’re both laughing, our arms stretched towards each other. Mum’s smiling at the camera. Strands of her hair are blowing across her face, but they don’t hide that her eyes are smiling, too. Next to her, a little girl with blonde flyaway hair looks up from the bucket she’s filling with sand. Perhaps the girl’s Lulu. She’s eight now and the daughter of Mum’s photographer friend, who I guess took the photo. I stare at it for a long time. It’s making me feel funny, like I’m falling in real life, not just in the picture.

  At the sound of steps outside, I hurry to hide the photos, but it isn’t Dad who opens the door. It’s the woman from before. She smiles with an apology in her eyes, so I can guess she’s not bringing good news.

  “They’re about to start a conference call with the company in Manila,” she says. “I promised Will to send you home in a taxi.”

  In the taxi, I keep thinking about the beach photo. I don’t remember that day. I don’t remember seeing the snapshot. And I don’t remember us ever being so happy.

  —13—

  Outside the house, when I’m paying with the twenty-dollar note the woman gave me, the taxi-driver says, “Never go that way at nig
ht.” He points up the road towards the cemetery. His hand, in its smudged fingerless glove, shakes. “Last time, almost pick up a pontianak.”

  “Is that like a pangolin?” I ask. I’d love to see a pangolin in the wild.

  “No. That one is a scary vampire ghost.”

  Another ghost story. But who’s ever heard of a vampire ghost?

  Until yesterday, I had never thought ghosts might be real. I still half-expect Ling will tell me she’s in the local girl-guide troop, when I meet her. We’ll laugh about how I almost believed she was a spirit.

  “Frej-ja,” one of the twins calls, as soon as I step through the door. They both come running with wooden blocks in their hands. I stay by the front door, clutching the door handle.

  “Billy, Eddie, come here.” Clementine catches them before they reach me. “You can play with Freja after your nap.”

  I’m scoffing the sandwich Maya has prepared for me, when Clementine comes downstairs again. She tells me that Mrs Lim’s grandson might be coming over in the afternoon.

  “Perhaps you and Jason can play a board game first, and then Maya can arrange a lovely little tea party for the four of you.”

  “Can’t I go to his house?” I ask. That’s bound to be better than Clementine’s idea of a play date, and then I can just pop by on my way to the graveyard. She won’t know how long I stay there.

  While I’m listening, Clementine calls Mrs Lim to change the arrangement, telling her how good it will be for me to get out of the house.

  But when I leave, a thunderstorm is brewing, so I give up on sneaking off to Bukit Brown. The large umbrella Clementine has lent me keeps my upper body dry. In Denmark, it’s always windy, so horizontal drizzles hit you even if your umbrella doesn’t pop inside-out. Here, the rain falls with the force of a shower.

  The drops bounce off the ground up onto my bare legs. Water runs down the street, soaking my trainers. In the trench-like drain next to the pavement, a river carries dead leaves and bits of offerings.