The Hungry Ghost

by H. S. Norup

  Hidden by a cluster of banana trees, I watch them. Their dresses cling to their legs, and, with every step they take, water sprays out of their sandals. Despite that and the torrential rain, they’re chatting and laughing and pausing to read a small sign next to the path.

  After they’re gone, I study the sign. The Paupers’ Section, 1922–73, it says at the top. Below, a text explains that the poor, or people without families, were buried in this lowlying area, which has bad feng shui because water flows there and stagnates.

  1922. That’s the earliest Ling could’ve been buried here. If she was my age when she died, she must’ve been born after 1910. The Titanic sank in 1912—I looked it up—and used CQD. It could fit. But why would a pauper girl from that time know a maritime distress signal and Morse code?

  I’m trying to figure all this out, when it strikes me that perhaps it’s not only that Ling doesn’t remember who she was or her family. Perhaps it’s worse. Perhaps she didn’t even have a family and died all alone.

  Sadness stabs inside my stomach. Because what could be worse than dying and no one remembering that you ever existed?

  —16—

  Instead of following the path out of the cemetery, I make my way back to Ling’s grave. I want her to know that I won’t abandon her. When I saw her in the garden last night, she was so very sad. Perhaps she thought I’d break my promise to help her. Perhaps she thought I’d forget about her, too.

  The moment I stand up after squeezing through the bushes around the little grove, I glance over at the flat gravestone. My long message has already been replaced by a much shorter one.

  Rushing to get closer, I slip on the swampy ground. While I get up and wipe my muddy hands on my trousers, I decode the pattern:

  COME WITH ME

  I’m about to take a picture of the message, when a tingle down my spine makes me look up. Ling stands by the edge of the grove, waving me towards her. It only takes a flip of my hand to turn the lens in her direction, but, before I can snap a photo, she’s disappeared between the shrubs.

  “Wait,” I call, slipping my phone back in the side pocket of my combats. Without caring about the scratching thorns, I crash through the bushes.

  Outside the grove, I chase after her. Like the time she led me to the gravestone, Ling waits for me whenever I can’t keep up. While I’m running, I wonder where she’ll lead me. Perhaps she has a treasure trove somewhere in the graveyard, filled with keepsakes that’ll give me clues to who she was.

  From the low-lying paupers’ section, we run uphill past impressive graves with decorated tiles and statues of turbanwearing, armed guards. The ground in front of some of them is littered with mushed burnt paper and soggy food offerings.

  An old man shuffles along an asphalt pathway in too-big plastic sandals, too-short trousers and a faded football shirt. Just before I reach him, he starts yelling in Chinese.

  He grabs the sleeve of my T-shirt and switches to English, shouting, “Stop, girl!” Scattered, yellow teeth stick out of his gaping mouth in odd directions. His head turns to look after Ling, as if he can actually see her, then back at me.

  Further uphill, Ling stops.

  “Cannot follow this one ghost,” he says. “Bad. Bad, bad!”

  “Why?” Jason’s ah ma said the exact same thing yesterday. But her talk of ghosts creeped me out. Now I wish I’d asked her what she meant. “Why can’t I follow her?”

  He repeats, “Bad, bad,” and speaks on urgently in a mix of Singlish and Chinese that I wish I could understand, while shaking his head.

  When I glance back uphill, Ling’s gone. I pull away, mumbling, “Sorry.” The seam of my T-shirt tears. I’m not scared of Ling, and I promised her I’d help.

  With the man yelling after me, I race up to where she stood and continue through a tunnel of elephant ear-like leaves. On the other side, the rainforest becomes less dense.

  I emerge on a grassy hill. At its top, an enormous banyan tree rises from the ground. Its branches, with their curtains of hanging roots, spread out above me, like a gigantic parasol with floor-length fringes. Close to the trunk, the aerial roots have matured into slender trunks themselves and surround the tree like prison bars. In an opening between them, I catch sight of Ling’s white dress and long black hair.

  I slow to a walk and circle the tree, searching for an entrance between the stiffened roots. On the inside, Ling’s matching my pace, walking around the trunk of the host tree, so that she is framed by roots when we reach an opening at the same time.

  “Hi Ling,” I say.

  “Frej-y-a?” she whispers tentatively.

  “Freja, rhymes with Maya.” I smile to show her she pronounced it almost right, then ask, “Do you speak English?”

  She nods and reaches for my hand. All I feel is a wave of cool air, like when you stick your hand in the freezer to take an ice lolly. A shiver runs up my arm.

  Turned sideways, I edge myself gingerly through the narrow gap and behind the wall of roots. The ground in the hushed space is dry, despite the rain. Above, the branches of the tree are so high up, I can’t even touch them with my arms stretched out. Together, we walk around the massive trunk, inside the cage of banyan tree roots. Brown leaves crackle under my feet. Stripes of weak light fall through the bars. It’s the most magical hiding place I’ve ever seen. I wish I could live in a den just like this—perhaps weave grass between the roots to shield against the wind—and stay in the wilderness.

  When we’re back at the opening, I turn towards Ling. Even though my clothes are soaked and dirty, her white dress is clean and dry. She’s as tall as me, but skeletally thin. On her neck, every sinew and every bone are visible, and it’s twice as long as my rather long neck; that wasn’t a trick of light.

  “I want to help you,” I say. “If you tell me what you remember, then I’m sure we can figure out who you were… Are, I mean.” Does she even realize she’s dead?

  “I… I do not remember anything.” Her voice is hoarse, like she hasn’t used it in a long time. “I do not even know when I died.”

  I exhale with relief, glad I won’t have to explain that she’s a ghost. “Why did you come to our garden?”

  She shakes her head. “It felt like coming home.”

  “So you think you used to live there?”

  “No. I…” She hesitates. “Last time, and all the times before, when they let us out, I never knew where to go… But this time, I did. I saw him. The man with yellow hair—”

  “My dad?”

  She nods. “And you. Your eyes… their blue colour… they remind me of someone… Someone from long before I was forgotten. I thought you would remember me. More than anything, I wish to be remembered.”

  “But I don’t know who you are,” I say, then see the tears gathering in her dark eyes. “Not yet. I’ll help you find out. I promise. I’ll start by asking you loads of questions to jog your memory, okay?”

  I try to take her hand, but my fingers pass through hers, until they’re making a fist.

  “D’you know when you were born? And how old you were when you died?”

  She shakes her head.

  I can’t even tell if she’s younger or older than me.

  “Open your mouth wide, like this.” I gape. “And say, ‘Ahhh’.”

  When she copies me, I count her teeth. She has fourteen lower teeth, but only thirteen upper teeth. I smile, thinking it’s handy to have a dentist mum, before I remember that Mum isn’t a dentist at the moment. She’s the one being treated for something far worse than a toothache.

  “You don’t have all your twelve-year molars yet, so you must’ve been around twelve years old. Like me. Could that be right?”

  She shrugs.

  “How come you know Morse code? Were you a scout?”

  “What is a scout?”

&
nbsp; “It’s… That doesn’t matter. ‘CQD’ hasn’t been used in about one hundred years. D’you also know ‘SOS’?” I ask, hoping she doesn’t.

  Instead, she nods.

  I sigh. The Titanic could’ve sunk in Ling’s lifetime if she were among the first people buried here. But she could just as well have lived much later, if someone like Clementine’s father taught her both distress signals.

  I’m not sure what else to ask her, and I’m starting to realize how difficult it will be to find out who she was, if she doesn’t remember anything at all. Perhaps we have to do this differently. Take things a bit slower. If I get to know her better, perhaps something she says or does will give me clues.

  —17—

  “Why don’t we play a game?” I suggest, although I should be getting back before Clementine discovers I’m gone. It’s almost five o’clock. “Let’s pretend that we’ve travelled back in time to when you were alive. Without thinking too much about it, you show me the way to where you used to live. Okay?”

  Ling nods. But when we emerge from the tree, she begins to cry, saying, “I don’t know where to go.”

  “Don’t cry. That never helps…”

  It’s still raining, so we go back into the den under the banyan tree. I’m trying to find a way to trigger her memory. Ling has stopped crying.

  “Let’s say… Let’s say we’re still in your time. What would you be doing on a Saturday afternoon?”

  “Doing?”

  “I mean, would you read or play or work or…” What did girls do a hundred years ago? “Perhaps sew, or write letters?”

  Ling shrugs and shakes her head.

  But I’m not giving up. “Did you like to play outside? With a ball? Or hide-and-seek or tag or hopscotch?”

  “I liked chasing someone in the garden,” Ling says with a big smile.

  “Good. Tag, it is.” I set off at a run around the massive trunk, yelling, “Catch me!” She’s so fast I need every advantage I can get.

  Although I can’t hear her, I know she’s gaining on me. I’ve passed the narrow opening to the outside for the third time, when I feel a breath of cool air on my neck and she cries, “Tag!”

  Ling pirouettes and floats in the other direction. I scramble to follow, chasing after her. The roots and the stripes of light blur together. After three rounds, she’s so far ahead, she’s on the opposite side of the trunk. Hoping that I can tag her when she catches up, I stop abruptly. But the circle of stiffened roots continues to rotate. With a hand on the tree, I try to steady myself. A moment later, Ling is next to me, but I’m too light-headed to tag her.

  The root cage turns faster. It’s spinning round and round like on the meteorite fair-ground ride I tried once with my cousins. To avoid being pushed outward, I hold on to a gnarl on the trunk. Brown leaves whirl around me. What’s happening?

  The light dims. Flickering in and out of sight, overlaying the trunk, towering double doors, with golden handles, appear in the gloom. The sight of them fills me with dread. I tear my hand away from the trunk, as if I’ve been burnt.

  Immediately, the centrifugal force throws me against the bars of the cage. Ling lands next to me with a yelp. She’s asking me why she can feel pain, but I’m winded and trying to listen to the sounds from behind the towering doors. There are whispers. Sighs. A small child crying.

  I never ever want to see what’s behind those doors. But who’s crying? I have to find out. Pushing off from the root bars, I fling myself through the whirlwind, towards the trunk. As I touch one of the golden handles, the doors begin to open.

  Behind me, Ling yells, “No!”

  Dark-grey light, the colour of thunderclouds, spills out of the crack. The child cries again. The sound cuts through me, piercing my heart.

  Ling yanks my arm back, and we both slam against the roots. The sounds mute. The doors disappear. We’re still spinning.

  After a while, the darkness fades and the turning slows. Glimmers of light from outside change from dots to dashes, until we stop. The flurry of dead leaves settles on the ground. Then all is still.

  “What just happened?” I whisper. Whatever it was felt too real to be pretend. I could never have imagined those towering doors or that heart-wrenching cry.

  Ling takes my hand. I feel a jolt at her cool, firm touch. There’s nothing ghostlike about her grip now.

  “Freja, you are not supposed to enter the realm of the dead, while you are still alive.”

  “Was that… behind the doors…?” I ask, shuddering.

  “Yes,” she says, and leads me through the opening between the roots.

  Outside, it isn’t raining any more. The sunlight’s so bright it makes me blink. Then I blink again and rub my eyes, because the cemetery’s gone.

  We’re still on a peak under the branches of the enormous banyan tree. Around us, everything’s green, like before, but the hill seems to somehow have grown higher. Apart from the banyan tree, there’s only sparse vegetation up here, so we have a clear view of the landscape. Below, mist rises from a rainforest that stretches all the way to the ocean.

  It’s as if we’ve travelled to a different world beyond my wildest dreams.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “Singapore?” Ling says hesitantly.

  In the distance, green bumps pop out of the empty sea. They resemble the small islands I saw from Dad’s office. But if this is Singapore, then where are the container ships? The buildings? The people?

  “When? Are we in your time? Can you find the way to your house?” But even as I’m asking, I realize Singapore couldn’t have been this uninhabited wilderness a hundred years ago.

  “I think…” Ling gazes at me with her dark eyes. “I think, we are at the beginning. When the universe was in balance.”

  I take it all in again. The beginning of what? ‘In balance’? If she means undisturbed by humans, then we’ve come to the right place. It’s so very peaceful. I can’t even hear the noisy birds or cicadas. Except for the rising mist, there’s no movement anywhere.

  I’ve hardly finished the thought, when I see glints of brightness out in the ocean. Could it be a Morse code signal from a heliograph? I squint, trying to decode the sequence. But there are no breaks between the blinking dots, and they’re not all coming from the exact same spot. Something shiny’s floating in the sea, but it isn’t someone holding a mirror and trying to send a message by reflecting the sunlight. Before I can point it out to Ling, the brightness vanishes below the surface.

  “I don’t understand how we got here, Ling.”

  “This banyan tree is magical,” she says. “I have heard other spirits call it the wishing tree. I always hide in there and wish to remember. To be remembered. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  “Then why aren’t we where you lived? Why would the tree send us to this wild—” Suddenly, I remember wishing that I could stay and live in the tree den for ever. Is this my wish coming true? Have I accidentally taken us here? And how will we get back to the real world?

  What’s Dad going to do if I never return? Or Mum?

  Calm down, Freja, I try to tell myself. But no matter how many deep breaths I take, they don’t help. I’m prepared for wilderness, but not for this… this…

  “Perhaps we can find my memories somewhere.” Ling wanders out of the banyan tree’s shade.

  I stay rooted to the ground. Think, Freja! What are you supposed to do if you get lost in the wilderness? Find landmarks to orient yourself.

  While scanning the horizon for anything familiar, I reach into both side pockets. My trousers are dry. I pull my phone out first, but it’s dead. From the other pocket, I extract my compass and the map. It has gone white along the folds, as if it’s been through both a washing machine and a tumbler. The needle on my compass spins like the long arm of a
clock in a time-lapse video, before it stops.

  I’m facing south-east, in the direction where the city centre with the skyscrapers and weird buildings would be, if this was Singapore. But all I see are treetops, bordered by the vast ocean.

  Practical tasks calm me down, so I try to compare the coastline with the map. There’s an island straight south that could be Sentosa.

  “Freja, nooo!” Ling screams from somewhere on the other side of the tree.

  I run to her and gasp at the sight that meets me.

  Beyond our grassy hill, and for as far as I can see, red, high-rise flames shoot up into billowing, black smoke. The rainforest is burning.

  “Not in balance,” Ling says.

  For a while, we stand in silence, watching the forest-eating wildfire. The sight’s mesmerizing. The blaze is north-west of where we’re standing. Red in the north-west. I remember Clementine saying something about that. What was it again? Something her feng shui guru had told her. Something about the lounge being all white because it was in the north-western corner of the house.

  Something about red in that corner causing memory loss.

  —18—

  A large bird rises out of the flames. From here, its wings appear to be on fire. I squint, trying to recognize the bird, and wish I’d brought binoculars. Its wingbeats are slow, like those of a bird of prey. If we’ve somehow gone far back in time, perhaps it a Pterosaur.

  The bird swoops down into the sea of flames again.

  “Oh! We have to help it,” I say, although it’s too far away for us to do anything.

  Moments later, the bird reappears out of the smoke much closer to us. It flies over the banyan tree, leaving a charcoal trail in the sky. When it’s right above us, its long narrow beak opens and it lets out a burst of orange light and a cry that sounds almost human.