by Zen Cho
For you are with me. The image of the Black Water Sister’s face rose before Jess, the sweat gleaming on her upper lip. She shuddered.
Mr. Sim’s assistant brought him a thronelike red chair, highly decorated with gilt. He placed squares of paper beneath Mr. Sim’s feet. They looked like the yellow paper people folded into ingots to burn when praying to Ti Kong on the ninth day of Chinese New Year. But when Jess whispered, “What are they doing? What are those?” Mom shook her head.
“Better not ask so much,” she said.
Mr. Sim sat with his eyes shut for what felt like a long time. He looked like he was meditating. Jess was wondering if it would be rude to take out her phone when he started convulsing.
Mom clutched Jess’s hand. Kor Kor chanted louder, her voice high and frightened.
The medium slumped over, eyes closed, and retched. A thin white liquid dripped onto the concrete floor. His head started turning round and round, his arms swinging. His body was vibrating as though shaken by some overpowering force.
The contrast between the gentle, serious Mr. Sim and the shuddering, senseless creature he had transformed into was profoundly unsettling. It was like something out of The Exorcist. Only here Mr. Sim was both exorcist and possessed, victim and avenger.
Mr. Sim’s body seized. He sprang to his feet, standing on the chair with one leg uplifted and crossed over the other, his arms curved as though he was preparing to attack. It looked like a kung fu stance, something you might find Bruce Lee doing in a movie still. Leashed power thrummed in his limbs.
Then he scratched himself.
Jess grinned involuntarily. The Monkey God turned and looked right at her. Out of Mr. Sim’s narrow sunflower-seed eyes shone an inhuman consciousness.
The grin dropped off Jess’s face.
The Monkey God bounded over to her, Mr. Sim’s middle-aged body moving with an implausible fluidity. The assistant cried out, running after him.
But the god in the medium was already bending over Jess, inspecting her, hot breath gusting on her skin. He picked up a lock of Jess’s hair, sniffing it.
There was no ill will in the Monkey God’s bright animal gaze, but there was no mercy either. If Jess made the wrong move—startled or annoyed him—it would not be much to the god to break her neck. She almost wouldn’t blame him. You might put down a grizzly bear that had killed a hiker, but you wouldn’t fault it.
She stayed very still, barely breathing, tense with dread.
Ah Huat spoke to the Monkey God, drawing him away. Jess’s hair slipped through his fingers. She sat shivering, feeling like a prison escapee over whom the searchlight had passed.
Ah Huat tied a headdress to the Monkey God’s head and bound his waist with a belt. He pried open the god’s mouth and put a piece of yellow paper on his tongue. It looked a lot like the charms Mom had used to burn and make Jess drink.
The Monkey God said something to Ah Huat. His voice was deep and rusty, as though it didn’t get used often. He sounded nothing like Mr. Sim.
Kor Kor was holding her Bible before her like a shield, but she looked interested despite herself.
“What’s he saying?” she said to Ah Huat. “What language is that? Never heard before one.”
“Tai Seng Ia speaks deep Mandarin,” said Ah Huat. “They spoke in China back then. Not like today’s version.”
Kor Kor looked skeptical. “If it’s so deep, you can understand meh?”
“It’s part of our training,” said Ah Huat with dignity. “So we can translate for the devotees.”
“He’s saying what?”
Ah Huat didn’t go quite so far as to say, If you must know, but the sentiment infused his voice as he said, “Tai Seng Ia asked why does your niece smell like that.”
“Like what?” Kor Kor sniffed Jess. “She smells OK what. You showered this morning, right, Min?”
“It’s fine, Kor Kor,” Jess muttered, but she should have kept her mouth shut. The searchlight of the Monkey God’s attention veered back to her. He said something to Ah Huat, sounding agitated. Ah Huat answered, his voice placating, holding up his hands.
Primed by fear, Jess’s body knew that the Monkey God was coming toward her before her mind caught on. She bolted out of her chair, but she only made it halfway across the room before the Monkey God caught her.
The room went sideways.
I’m going to die, thought Jess. The hand that had grasped her was Mr. Sim’s hand, wide and calloused, but the power in it was beyond nature, more than muscle and sinew and bone alone could muster.
Jess struggled, resisting the god, making herself as heavy as possible. She was distantly conscious that Mom and Kor Kor were screaming bloody murder.
The Monkey God swung her around like she was a rag doll. His strength was unbelievable. Mr. Sim was Mom’s age, there was no way this was all coming from him—
Out of the corner of Jess’s eye, she saw that Mom and Kor Kor had rushed Ah Huat. Kor Kor seemed to be bashing at Ah Huat with her cross. Jess opened her mouth, about to do something reckless, like swear at the Monkey God or bite him or—
“Ah Ma!” she gasped. “Help!”
No one answered. The Monkey God dropped her on the floor. She hit the concrete, rolled over and sat up, her head ringing like a bell. She was in front of the altar. A blow on her back forced her down again.
She heard Ah Huat shouting unintelligibly. His feet in flip-flops appeared beside her. He knelt, helping Jess up and pressing something into her hand.
It was a bundle of joss sticks.
“You light,” he said, gesturing at the incense urn.
The Monkey God grabbed her arm, growling, but Ah Huat made him release Jess. The assistant turned back to Jess.
“Don’t worry. You light and pray to Tai Seng Ia. If you show him respect, he’ll see you are OK one.”
“Where got my daughter disrespect him?” said Mom. Her voice was quivering, but she looked more angry than scared. “We came to ask for help and my daughter is being treated like this. What kind of temple is this?”
“It’s a misunderstanding, auntie,” said Ah Huat. “Tai Seng Ia is confused. He thought your daughter was a spirit, a bad spirit.”
Kor Kor was equally outraged. “Let’s go,” she said to Mom. “I told you we should see my pastor. When you are a Christian, you don’t have to be bullied.”
Ah Huat said to Jess, “I told Tai Seng Ia you are human. The bad spirit is bothering you only. But you must pray. Then he’ll believe.”
The Monkey God glared at her, twitching and scratching, looking like he was half a second away from pouncing on her again. He didn’t look like he’d be propitiated by prayer, but Jess wasn’t in the mood to argue.
She edged toward the incense urn and touched the ends of her joss sticks to the burning joss sticks in the urn till they blackened and started to smoke. She turned back, ready to wave the joss sticks at the statue of the Monkey God on the altar, when the Monkey God–in–Mr. Sim snarled and broke past Ah Huat.
Kor Kor darted before him, waving her cross, but the god knocked her over. Mom was next, armed with her handbag—but Jess had had enough.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she roared. The sound of her own voice broke through her terror. Beyond it, she found rage—and in its blazing heart, power.
The power coursed through her veins, making her feel reckless, invulnerable. The back of her neck throbbed with a dull ache, but she barely noticed it. She pushed between her mom and the Monkey God. “Leave her alone!”
The Monkey God grabbed Jess’s hair, pulling it so hard it felt like he might peel her scalp off her skull. Jess jabbed her fistful of joss sticks up at him and felt the tips smash against his face before she remembered that face belonged to Mr. Sim.
The Monkey God let her go, eyelids fluttering, but he didn’t seem to feel any pain. He knoc
ked the joss sticks from Jess’s hand, scattering them. Jess ducked before he could hit her, landing on the floor.
The scent of incense was joined by the smell of something burning. Her clothes were getting singed where they caught on the red-hot ends of the joss sticks on the floor. As she pushed herself off the ground, her palm came down on a burning joss stick. She felt the sensation of heat against her skin and knew it should hurt, but it didn’t. It was like the power surging inside her had thickened her skin, numbing her to sensation.
The Monkey God loomed over her. His face was distorted with berserker fury, no longer recognizable as Mr. Sim’s.
Jess’s fear was like a physical reflex, a leg bouncing at the tap of a kneecap. The power drowned it out, spilling out of her like a white light shining out of a lamp. It rushed out in the unfamiliar accents of a language she didn’t speak:
“Don’t fucking touch me!”
She smashed her head against the Monkey God’s chest. He staggered back, letting out a winded breath.
But in a moment he had recovered. He raised his hand, snarling. She could hear Ah Huat expostulating with the Monkey God from a safe distance.
Jess thought, If I die, you die first. The thought wasn’t in English or Hokkien; the language was one she had never learned. She seized the Monkey God’s arm, twisting—
But then the Monkey God froze. His arm went limp in Jess’s grasp. His mouth fell open.
The animal intelligence animating Mr. Sim’s face fell away, leaving his eyes vacant, his body a shell. The medium’s eyes rolled back in his head, showing the whites. His body trembled all over.
Mom came up behind him and thumped him on the back of the head with her handbag.
“Stop, stop!” cried Ah Huat.
Jess released Mr. Sim’s arm. It took her a moment to find the words in English.
“Don’t, Mom,” she said. “Something’s happening.”
“What’s that? What’s happening?” said Kor Kor. Her hair was disheveled, but otherwise she didn’t look any the worse for having been bowled over by the Monkey God. She turned to Ah Huat. “He’s having a fit or what?”
But it was evident from Ah Huat’s expression that he didn’t have any answers. He looked like he was having the worst day at work ever.
“Better you all stay back,” he said. He beckoned to Jess. “Miss, come here!”
The medium’s eyes snapped open. He looked around.
“Master?” said Ah Huat.
“Ah Paut?” said Mom.
“No,” said Jess. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the medium. “It’s someone else.”
“Sorry, Big Sister,” said the god in the medium. He spoke in a light baritone with a creak in it, an old man’s voice. His gaze as he squinted at Jess was an old man’s, too, shortsighted and mild. “I came as fast as I could. What brings you here?”
* * *
• • •
THE MEDIUM SPOKE the tongue of the Black Water Sister—the same language in which Jess had sworn at the Monkey God.
“He’s speaking what? Hakka?” said Kor Kor, agog. “Tai Seng Ia got speak Hakka meh?”
“It’s not Tai Seng Ia,” said Jess. “It’s a different spirit.”
“What do you mean, it’s a different spirit?” said Mom. “How do you know?”
Jess couldn’t believe she couldn’t see the difference. The medium even looked shorter than he had been a few moments ago.
“You can’t tell?” she said. “For one thing, he’s not trying to murder me!”
Ah Huat said tentatively, “Master Yap?”
“Why you didn’t call me in the first place?” said the new god. “I am the one who knows Big Sister. This is not Tai Seng Ia’s business. He knows how to fight and chase demons only. He doesn’t know how to layan people.”
“What’s happening? What spirit is this?” said Kor Kor to Ah Huat. “What did you call him, ‘Master Yap’?”
“He’s the founder of the temple,” said Jess.
“How do you know that?” said Mom, wide-eyed.
She was clearly in a mood to read signs and portents in everything. Jess could hardly blame her.
“I mean, it’s called Master Yap’s temple. Plus I read the sign out front,” said Jess. “But I thought he was—” just some guy, she was going to say, before it struck her that this might come off as disrespectful.
“A human being,” she said instead. “Why is he possessing Mr. Sim?”
“Ti Kong, the Jade Emperor, promoted Master Yap to become a god after he died,” explained Ah Huat. “Master Sim is the medium for Master Yap also. A lot of people come to ask him for advice.”
Master Yap was staring intently at Jess.
“Eh? But she’s just a girl,” he said to Ah Huat. “I’m wrong already. I thought she was someone else.” He squinted at Jess, as though trying to make out her features. “She has the same aura as Big Sister, that’s why. She is the medium?”
“No, no,” said Ah Huat. “She collided with a spirit, a god. That’s why Master Sim invoked Tai Seng Ia. But something went wrong. Tai Seng Ia thought she was a demon. He got very angry, until he wanted to attack her.”
Master Yap nodded. “A big god like him, whether it’s a small god or a demon, it’s hard for him to distinguish. The medium should have prayed when she entered the temple. If she greeted Tai Seng Ia properly, he won’t be angry. You should know what, when different gods meet each other, they can end up fighting.”
“But the girl is not a medium,” said Ah Huat patiently.
“At least this god is not violent,” said Mom to Kor Kor. “Maybe should have asked to see him in the first place. The other one”—she meant the Monkey God, but she didn’t want to say the name—“is too unpredictable.” She turned to the assistant. “Can Master Yap help my daughter?”
Ah Huat translated the question for the god’s benefit.
“What is the trouble?” said Master Yap, Ah Huat interpreting.
Jess told the story she had workshopped with Mom and Kor Kor before they’d left the house. “My uncle brought me to a temple to pray, but there was an accident and I damaged a shrine.”
“She tripped,” said Kor Kor. “The path wasn’t even. Dangerous, you know! They should maintain the place properly.”
“The altar was very old already,” said Mom. “My daughter fell and it went just like that. Maybe got termites in the wood?”
Jess intervened before her relatives could make Master Yap suspicious with all this helpful over-elaboration of detail.
“I offended the god,” she said, “so now she’s stalking me. She appeared in my dream and threatened me, but now she’s showing up even in the day. Is there a way to make her stop?”
Master Yap looked thoughtful.
“Usually if this kind of thing happen, you must propitiate the god,” he said. “Pray to them. But in this case, I’m not sure . . . You said the god came to you in a dream. What happened in the dream?”
Jess hesitated, but Ah Huat nodded at her encouragingly, and Mom said, “Tell him, Min. If you don’t tell, how can Master Yap help?”
It was like being a kid at the doctor’s. Reluctantly, Jess said, “I was in a wild place. A jungle.”
It was hard to talk about it. The words fell lifeless from her mouth, stripped of the dark mystery of the dream.
“It was nighttime and I was running. A man was chasing me. He caught me and he—” Embarrassingly, Jess’s voice broke. She cleared her throat. “He killed me.”
Master Yap’s gaze was intent, judgment suspended behind it. “How did he kill you?”
Mom made a movement as though she wanted to stuff the question back in his mouth. Jess twined her hand around Mom’s.
The way Master Yap was listening steadied her. He seemed to have no doubt of the dream’s significance.
&n
bsp; “He cut my throat,” said Jess.
Master Yap let out a triumphant exhalation. “And then?”
“I saw the god and she spoke to me.” Jess swallowed. “She said, ‘Now you know. You think you can run from me?’”
“You didn’t tell me that!” said Mom reproachfully.
Jess bit back the honest response that she never told Mom anything worrying if she could help it. “Uh, yeah. I guess I forgot to mention it.”
“I thought so,” said Master Yap, before Mom could start haranguing her. “I will tell you the meaning of your dream. The god didn’t threaten you. She was blessing you.”
“What?” said Jess.
“This god, her temple is at Air Itam there, right?” said Master Yap. “The temple in the garden.”
Kor Kor murmured, “How did he know that? We didn’t tell him also.”
Mom shushed her. “Isn’t he a god? Of course he knows. Don’t talk so much, I want to hear.”
“This deity, you know who is she?” said Master Yap.
Jess’s throat was dry. It was hard to get the words out.
“Black Water Sister,” she said.
Mom flinched.
“That’s what people call her, because they don’t know her name,” said Master Yap. “When she was alive, she had a name. But by the time I came to Penang, nobody remembered already, even though she died not many years ago.
“She used to be a woman who lived in that area. Her husband chased her into the jungle and killed her. She was young—twenty, twenty-one years old only.”
The man standing over her, murder in his face. Jess made a faint affirmative noise, conscious of Mom and Kor Kor’s eyes on her. She wasn’t going to throw up. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut, her teeth together.
“Where she died, where her blood spilled, a tree grew,” said Master Yap. “Her ghost haunted the tree. The ghost was fierce, but if you gave her face, she would help you. People prayed to her, left offerings at the tree. She helped a poor man become rich and he built a temple for her there, cleared the jungle and planted a garden. The tree is still there. A big tree, very old. True or not?”