The Hungry Ghost

by H. S. Norup

  “Nasty beasts,” Pontiana hisses. “They want me to remember every single tortured moment.”

  Ling gasps.

  As if she realizes something has changed, Pontiana glares at Ling with narrowed eyes. She puts her hands together and holds them up to her chin. The talons of her fore-fingers touch her red lips. I suddenly remember her nails stroking me and the drop of blood on my fingers. I raise a hand to my cheek. The three parallel scratches faded days ago, but it feels like they’re burning. I shiver. Could Ling be right?

  Pontiana catches me staring at her hands.

  “Did you really capture those nasty beasts all by yourself?” I ask, trying to divert her attention. “That’s amazing!” I twist my mouth into a grin. It’s lucky that I’m a good liar.

  Behind my back, I release the corkscrew on the knife in my hand. I hold it hidden in my fist, with the tool sticking out between two fingers. It’s too short. It’ll never work.

  She comes so close, I’m enveloped in her peachy scent.

  “You are a sweet girl,” she says. “Exactly what I need.” When she strokes my cheek with those sharp nails, it takes an immense effort not to flinch.

  But then she gazes at me with Mum’s grey-green eyes, and I can’t believe she’s bad. I just want her to hold me tight.

  I forget what I’d planned, and say, “I miss my mum.”

  Pontiana giggles softly and puts her arms around me. Closing my eyes and inhaling her cloying scent, I relax into the embrace. Something melts inside me. Ling must be wrong.

  “Freja!” Ling shrieks.

  Pontiana’s giggles become shrilly cackles. A stench of rotten meat surrounds me. I gag. When I look up, Pontiana’s eyes have turned red.

  She holds me in outstretched arms, gripping my shoulders so hard her nails are boring into my flesh. Her open mouth, full of pointed canine teeth, gapes. Her dress is in tatters, splattered with blood. There’s absolutely nothing human about her.

  At the same time as she swivels me sideways, she pulls one of her claw-like hands back, letting go of my right shoulder. It happens so fast; my reaction is a reflex. Before she can plunge her talons into my stomach, I thrust the corkscrew into the soft hollow in her neck.

  The transformation is immediate. Pontiana shrinks until she isn’t much taller than me. Her hair loses its shine and her skin darkens to light brown. She’s still pretty, but she seems exhausted.

  “I did not mean to harm the creatures.” Tears run down Pontiana’s cheeks and over her chapped lips. Her coarse, grey dress is tight over her round belly. She holds her hands as if they’re cradling an unborn child. “I could not bear to think about my baby any more. I wanted to forget. I hoped if I upset the balance, all the world would disappear in oblivion.”

  “Shhh…” I press my hand against the red handle of the knife, so it doesn’t fall out. Together, Ling and I guide Pontiana up into the banyan tree. I want both of them out of the way.

  “Don’t let go of the knife! She might become a pontianak again, if you do,” I tell Ling, before I go back outside to wait.

  When the azure dragon arrives, he hovers above the pit. His serpentine body rolls like endless waves, while I tell him my plan.

  Afterwards, the dragon twists up a thunderstorm above the banyan tree. With precision, lighting strikes the tree exactly where the branch over the pit is attached to the trunk. The clap of thunder is still ringing in my ears, when there’s a creak and the branch tumbles down. It hits the ground with a thump. Earth rains into the pit from the wall where the thickest part of the branch lands. On the opposite side of the pit, twigs break off, popping like pine cones in a bonfire.

  The end of the branch only reaches halfway down the hole, but it’s enough for the white tiger. It leaps up onto the gangplank and climbs out of the pit. At the top, its head turns towards me. The pale-blue eyes blink once, before the tiger bounds off to the west.

  Although I can hardly see anything through the rain, I tie a hanging root around the top of the branch, and clamber down the slippery bark. When I drop to the ground, my hiking boots sink into the mud. Near the far wall of the pit, the tortoise is nothing more than a dark shape. Next to me, the vermillion bird struggles against the tight net. It takes a while to calm it down and loosen the knots without a knife. By the time it flies away, the water has risen above my knees.

  The black tortoise paddles towards me. Coiled around its shell three times, like a climbing rope, is a snake as thick as my thigh. The geometrical net of its black-brown skin almost makes it blend in with the shapes on the tortoise shell. Perhaps that’s the reason I hadn’t noticed it earlier. It’s a python. A monstrous python.

  The lowest part of the branch is out of reach, but my root rope hangs close by. I grab it and start climbing. The moment the tortoise floats below me, the python’s head lifts from the shell. Higher and higher it rises, matching my speed, right next to the rope.

  It’s not venomous, I tell myself. It might bite, though, or strangle me. I stop moving, clutching the root rope, and hold my breath.

  The snake sways. Its mouth gapes, revealing a hundred sharp, back-turned teeth. The forked tongue flickers out. It licks the back of my hand. Then the snake drops back onto the shell of the tortoise.

  I scramble up the rope, while watching them drift in the rising water.

  When the pit is full, the rain stops. The black tortoise, with its rider, climbs out and lumbers towards the north of the island. At the bottom of the hill, they vanish between the naked, charred trees.

  I turn towards the banyan tree where the azure dragon hovers. After I rub his ears in farewell, he flies east.

  The four mythical creatures have returned to their own corners of the world.

  —42—

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The bonfire-smoke scent from the charred wound where the lighting struck the tree calms me. But only for a second. In my mind, one of the two monkeys unlocks the memory box. With unchanged, unhappy grins, the monkeys start dancing to trumpet music, while the alligator taps out a rhythm with its sharp teeth.

  “What now?” I ask Ling, shaking my head to get rid of the bizarre image. “We can’t take her with us back to Bukit Brown.”

  Next to Ling, Pontiana sits slumped against the trunk. She might be sleeping. Below Ling’s hand, my knife handle is still sticking out from her neck.

  “We must bring her back to the realm of the dead. The Hell Guards will make sure she does not escape.”

  I shudder at the memory of the statues I saw at Har Paw Villa.

  While I hold the handle of the knife in place, we drag Pontiana to her feet. We each take one of her hands, before we start running.

  The spinning stops when I touch one of the golden handles. The moment the towering gates open to the thundercloud greyness, I hear the crying child.

  “Goodbye,” Ling says, as we shove Pontiana inside.

  Pontiana clings to my arm, pleading to come with us. I want to extract my knife and don’t even think about what might happen when she becomes a pontianak again, but it’s stuck. Turning the corkscrew, I get the knife free. Pontiana’s nails grow and bite into my wrist.

  I’m trying to prise her talons off my arm, when she stumbles. She falls, pulling me with her. The knife slips out of my grip. I land on hands and knees next to Pontiana.

  She shrieks and scrambles away from me. While I search for my knife, I struggle to get up. But it’s as if gravity has changed. I’m weighed down by a thousand stones.

  After giving up finding the knife, I finally manage to stand. That’s when I discover that I’m inside the gates.

  Pontiana has pulled me into the realm of the dead.

  The child cries again. It doesn’t sound like Pontiana’s baby; this one’s older. There are real words in its wailing babble. It must be scared.

 
I want to find it. Help it. Hold it tight.

  The flaps on the memory box lift.

  I can’t move my feet. A grey, swirling, mumbling mass flows past me, tugging at me like a river before a waterfall. If it wasn’t for the thousand stones weighing me down, I couldn’t stay standing. In slow-motion, I raise a heavy arm towards Ling.

  “Help me,” I yell.

  Ling holds on to one of the golden door handles and stretches her other hand towards me, but I’m too far away.

  Behind me, the child wails louder. I can understand what it’s saying. It keeps repeating the same syllable: “Fei-fei, Fei-fei.”

  “You must want to remember,” Ling shouts.

  And I do.

  And I remember.

  All this time, there have been two forgotten lives. One Ling wanted to remember and one I wanted to forget.

  Light floods my memory loft. I can see the animal letters clearly. An elephant, twin monkeys and the gloomy alligator. Images float out of the open box. Like early morning mist rising from a swamp, they glimmer in and out of focus. In every one of them, a little girl with yellow flyaway hair reaches her arms towards me, calling, “Fei-fei.”

  I know exactly who she is. And I know I can’t leave her here alone.

  I give up fighting the grey river. It carries me to the precipice of a waterfall.

  Far below, the little girl’s crying. She needs me. I can stay here with her, if I leap.

  But before I jump, a hand closes around my wrist. I twist to escape Ling’s grip, but she holds on tight.

  “Remembering is enough!” Ling yanks at my arm and shouts my name.

  There’s another noise, like rusty bells chiming. It’s blocking the cries. Ling’s hair brushes against my cheek and covers my eyes, hindering my view of the little girl.

  I realize Ling’s right. Now, that I remember, I can bring the little girl with me. She will always live on in my memories and in my heart.

  And I can’t stay in here. I have to get back to Mum and Dad and Clementine and Billy and Eddie. They need me, too.

  “Come on, Freja!” Ling says. Somewhere far away, outside the gates, a whole chorus echoes Ling, calling my name.

  Together, we fight a current that’s neither water nor wind back towards the gates. Here two figures loom above us, blocking the exit with their spears. The Hell Guards: Ox-head and Horse-face. They resemble the Haw Par Villa statues as much as an attacking lion resembles a sleepy kitten.

  “You cannot pass,” they say with one voice.

  “It is not the end of the festival yet,” Ling argues.

  All around us, spirits murmur. We spin through layers of time and space in complete darkness. There are no stars. Then a white-hot brightness tears us apart, and I’m falling.

  And falling.

  My ears are ringing with the sound of clanking keys.

  But I remember Emma.

  —43—

  “Freja! Freja!”

  The round yellow brightness of a torch is bouncing towards me, accompanied by a rhythmic jangle of keys.

  “I’m here, Jason.” I try to get up, but I can’t. Something’s holding me down. “Ling!” I call.

  “Aiyoh!” Jason blinds me with his lamp, before he sweeps it around and up and down. “The tree must’ve been hit by lightning. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I look around, trying to spot Ling. “Ling! Where are you?”

  “Who’s Ling?” someone asks. It sounds like Sunitha. What’s she doing here?

  Jason throws light on the trunk and the scorched, ragged area where the branch used to be. It has stopped raining. The normal sounds of the rainforest have returned.

  “Oh my goodness,” Kiera squeals. “You’re sooo lucky that didn’t land on you or you’d be flat as a waffle.”

  The branch is right next to my legs, which are tangled into a web of hanging roots. I tear at them to get free, stopping midway to check the pockets of my soaked pants for my knife. It isn’t there.

  “What are you doing here?” Sunitha asks.

  “In a graveyard. At night. During the seventh month?” Cheryl Yi continues. She jangles a bunch of keys even bigger than Jason’s.

  “What happened? Why were you just lying there?” Jason asks. The flashlight makes it impossible to see any of their faces.

  “I fell down. Can you see my knife anywhere? It’s red.” I don’t need it to cut through the roots, because I’ve untangled the last one from the laces of my soaked hiking boots. Even my socks are wet. But I can’t remember if I picked the knife up after I dropped it or not.

  The beam from Jason’s torch is shining on the ground, drawing spirals around me, while I’m tying my bootlaces.

  Suddenly, Sunitha yells, “Snake! Freja, get away from there.”

  Jason shrieks as loudly as the three girls. His light beam shakes on the fallen branch.

  Like a crab, I scramble backwards, away from the danger. “Hold the torch still, Jason. I need to check what it is,” I say when I’m standing.

  For one long moment, I’m worried. Snake venom can cause hallucinations. What if my visit to the underworld was just that? A feverish dream. But already before I see the snake, I know that isn’t the case, because I remember every little detail. Even the memories I’d locked away.

  The snake is curled around the branch and rolled up like a monster cinnamon bun. It appears to be fast asleep.

  “It’s only a python,” I say. “They’re not venomous.”

  “I know, it’s a constrictor.” Jason backs further away. “But it’s massive!”

  “It’s like… It’s sooo… I don’t even…”

  “As thick as Jason’s upper arm,” Sunitha says, while Kiera for once is speechless.

  “And pythons have teeth.” Jason adds.

  “I know,” I say. I want to tell them I’ve seen the teeth up close and that this one isn’t massive, but I don’t. “My knife might be up by the trunk. Can I borrow your torch, Jason?”

  Jason goes with me, throwing the light where I tell him, into the cage around the trunk. “There’s probably snakes in here too,” he mumbles.

  The girls are right behind us. None of them want to stay near the python. They’re badgering me to get out the graveyard.

  “Just give me five minutes.”

  Like a scout patrol with me as the leader, we walk in single file around the trunk inside the ring of banyan tree roots.

  “Cool hidey-hole,” Kiera says, “There’s just one problem: location, location, location.”

  “Completely agree.” Jason nods so much the light beam see-saws.

  I kick dead leaves aside and scrape debris out of gaps between roots with a stick, until the others persuade me to give up. The knife’s gone. For ever.

  “Thank you, kiddie knife,” I whisper under my breath.

  Without speaking, we make our way down to the asphalt pathway. From there, the three girls walk in front, with Kiera swinging the torch and Cheryl Yi jangling her keys. Kiera and Sunitha are chatting as if they were out on a normal daytime walk, and not a midnight hike. They’re all wearing flip-flops, which isn’t ideal. And pyjamas, I notice, that at least are long and cover their legs and arms.

  “What happened?” Jason whispers. “Where’s Ling?”

  “I don’t know. I hope she’s waiting for me at home.”

  “And your knife?” he asks.

  “I used it to vanquish a pontianak.”

  “Don’t joke about pontianaks!” Jason jangles his keys furiously, then glances sideways at me and says, “You’re not joking, are you?”

  We stop outside his house. In the glow from the tea lights on the offering plates, both Cheryl Yi and Kiera stare at me.

  “Gosh, you look like you’ve been dragged
through the mud.” Kiera starts picking leaves and twigs out of my wet hair. I must’ve set a new grubbiness record. My clothes are soaked. My trousers are caked in mud up to my knees, and my T-shirt up to the elbows.

  “How come you’re actually here?” I ask the girls. “Did Jason call you?”

  “No, no.” Sunitha titters. “We were at Kiera’s house and—”

  “We thought you’d be lonely as a church mouse,” Kiera interrupts. “And perhaps we could persuade your wicked stepmother to let you come over, so we sneaked out. To distract Mum, I told Cillian that Liam had eaten the whole tub of ice cream. Big brothers can be quite useful…”

  “But when we got there, Jason was lurking around your house, trying to peep through the fence.” Sunitha raises one eyebrow and winks at me.

  “I wanted to make sure she’d made it back home okay. I was worried, okay!”

  “I’d be worried, too,” Cheryl Yi says.

  “Anyway, your day-curtains were fluttering outside the window and the rope hanging down. You said you always hid it after using it, so I guessed you still weren’t home. And then they came walking down the street… in their… pyjamas…” Jason waves a hand at the three girls.

  “Jason told us where’re you’d gone.” Cheryl Yi shakes her head.

  “I knew I’d never find the gravestone, but I remembered the big tomb with the ant-covered offerings, and I thought I might be able to find the banyan tree.”

  Sunitha smiles. “And, of course, we wanted to help find you, because—”

  “A friend in need is a friend in deep. And look at you…” Kiera gives me another up-down-up scan. “You were obviously in really deep water.”

  Outside the dark house, we all hug, even though I’m so filthy. I hug Jason and Cheryl Yi extra hard, because I understand how scared they must’ve been. I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened if my friends hadn’t found me. If they hadn’t called me back from the realm of the dead.

  When I come out of a long shower, Ling’s sitting on my window seat. It’s after midnight. The last day of the Hungry Ghost Festival has begun.