Dead Scared

by Ivan Blake

  “Of course.” As Mallory rose from her desk, she looked back at Chris with a devilish smirk.

  She stepped forward, turned to face the class, and said, “Hi,” with the sweetest smile. The sycophantic girls at the front of the class and the ogling boys at the rear all grinned. Then to Chris’s amazement, she said, “I’m grateful to Chris Chandler for his presentation yesterday and for bringing up the painful topic of funerals because that’s what I want to talk about as well.”

  Chris beamed and glanced across at Floyd. With his swollen face and blackened eyes, Floyd looked horrified and bewildered at the same time, like he was watching two cars careening toward each other and was powerless to prevent the inevitable.

  “As I told you, Mr. Duncan, I’d like to talk about funeral ceremonies among the mountain people of Indonesia, the Torajans.”

  “Of course, Miss Dahlman.” Mr. Duncan had been an anthropologist, so maybe he had some idea who the Torajans were. You’d hope he had some inkling of what was about to happen.

  “Now please,” Mallory said to the whole class in her little-girl singsong, “you must tell me if my presentation upsets you.”

  Doubtless, everyone had the same reaction. How could anything Mallory Dahlman said ever be upsetting?

  “....because some of my slides may be a little graphic.”

  Where was she going with this?

  “All right then,” and she began. “Would it be okay if we closed the curtains?”

  Several boys near the windows hopped out of their desks and pulled down the shades.

  “I think most of you know my father’s Dutch, and captains an oil tanker. He wasn’t born in Holland, however. He was born in Indonesia on the Island of Sulawesi.” She walked to the map of the world hanging on the side wall of the classroom and pointed out Indonesia and the island of Sulawesi. “His parents and grandparents were Dutch Reform missionaries among the people of Tana Toraja.”

  Mallory returned to the front of the room and put a large map of the island of Sulawesi on the teacher’s easel. “This is the Torajan region. It’s a kind of separate state in the centre of Sulawesi.

  “My father was born a few years before the Japanese invaded Indonesia in 1939. His parents and grandfather were killed by the Japanese when they occupied Sulawesi, but his grandmother, with the help of the locals, managed to hide my father in the jungle during the occupation. After the war, she raised my father almost like a native Torajan. As a young man, my father wasn’t content to remain on Sulawesi, however. He wanted to see the world. When he was old enough, he left Tana Toraja to join the British merchant navy. In 1968, while his ship was docked in Boston for a refit, he met and married my mother who was working there at the time. He never lost touch with his beloved Tana Toraja, and as the years passed, he once again longed for its beauty and its people.

  “My great grandmother remained there, in the same small village and in the same tiny house among the people she loved, until she died at ninety-four. My father visited her whenever his ship docked in Makassar. When I was born, he even tried to move us all back to Indonesia, but my mother wouldn’t go.” Was that irritation in Mallory’s voice?

  “Then in 1976, when my great grandmother died, my father took us all to Sulawesi for her funeral. Even though I was only eight years old, I still remember how beautiful Tana Toraja was. I also remember the amazing funeral. Today I want to tell you about funerals in Tana Toraja and their importance for Torajan culture.

  “Tana Toraja is isolated and mountainous and so beautiful. We flew into Makassar, here.” She pointed to a port city on the map. “Then we drove north along the coast for a couple of hours before we turned inland toward the mountains. That’s what Tana Toraja means, ‘men of the mountains.’ Mebali is the first Torajan settlement you come to. Here.”

  Mallory switched off the classroom lights and switched on the slide projector. Her first slide was of enormous, brightly-colored wooden houses with huge, boat-shaped roofs. “This is Mebali. The first Torajans came to Sulawesi by sea, and their houses are supposed to look like ships.

  “After Mebali, the road climbs through steep mountain canyons terraced for farming.” She paused to let the class admire her slides of mountains and lush valleys.

  Mallory’s next slide was of strange gods dancing on the firmament.

  “Torajans believe the universe is divided into three parts: the upper world, the world of man, and the underworld, and that their gods inhabit all three. The most important gods in the Torajan religion are Puang Matua, the god of heaven, and Pong Banggai di Rante, the god of earth.”

  The class giggled at the strange names.

  “Oh, grow up, all of you!” Mr. Duncan said. He was determined Mallory’s presentation would not deteriorate the way the others had. He need not have worried. Mallory gave the class a withering look, and the room fell silent.

  “Then there is Pong Lalondong, the god who judges the dead.” She put up a slide of a god with a huge phallus.

  There were gasps and embarrassed giggles. The teacher shhh-ed the room, and Mallory continued as if she’d heard nothing.

  “The Torajans believe their purpose on earth is to maintain the balance between the upper world and the underworld. And to do that, they have to perform a cycle of rituals throughout the year, of which there are just two kinds: rituals of the rising sun and rituals of the setting sun. And the two kinds must be kept absolutely separate or the gods will cause earthquakes and illness and starvation.

  “Rising sun ceremonies celebrate birth and marriage and health and food. Setting Sun rituals are all about night, darkness, and death.

  “For example, during one rising sun ceremony a hermaphrodite priest asks the god of heaven to look after the community.”

  “What’s a hermadite, Mr. Duncan?” someone asked. Mallory didn’t give the teacher a chance to respond.

  “A Hermaphrodite,” she said with no hint of embarrassment, “is a person who has both male and female genitals.”

  The girls twittered, the boys laughed, and Floyd Balzer shouted from the back of the room, “Like Dinky Doyle.” The whole class erupted in hoots, everyone except skinny little Donny Doyle, who slumped back in his chair.

  Mr. Duncan had had enough. “All right, Mr. Balzer, out! Wait for me in the corridor.”

  Floyd wasn’t having a good day.

  Balzer grabbed his books and shuffled to the classroom door. He gave Mallory the strangest look. A threat? An apology? Mallory’s face remained hard and unforgiving. Balzer slammed the door behind him. Mr. Duncan struggled to silence the whispers. When Mallory asked, “Shall I stop?” quiet was restored immediately.

  “The most important setting sun ritual is the funeral feast. The purpose of the funeral is to help the dead person reach Puya, the land of souls. That’s where Pong Lalondong decides if their spirit will be allowed to climb the mountains into heaven to rejoin its ancestors.

  “Funerals are exceedingly expensive because a lot of buffalo must be slaughtered as part of the ceremony. When my great grandmother died, my father had to pay for ten buffalo.”

  Mallory’s next slide, of several eviscerated buffalo piled in a heap with blood running in the dirt like a river, caught everyone off guard. Several girls gasped and turned away. The boys were silent until one whispered, “Cool” and then others sniggered. Now that was graphic.

  “Sometimes a body has to be stored for months until the family can afford the funeral. Usually they store it on the roof of their home.”

  Up came a slide of a badly weathered and decomposing corpse in tattered wrappings laid out on a roof top. The darkened classroom was silent save for one girl’s whimpering.

  “Before the funeral, family members of the deceased build a tall tower in the middle of the village with a tiny hut on top. Beneath the tower, they array gifts on tables, and tie the buffalo to stakes.

  “On the first day of the funeral, villagers go to the home of the deceased to collect the body and carry it around the t
ower to show the corpse the gifts and the buffalo. Then they lift the body up onto the tower and put it in the little hut. That’s my great grandmother, and that’s my father lifting her up.”

  The slide showed a small, thin, white bundle dangling by its feet at the end of a heavy rope from the top of a great tower.

  “On the second day of the funeral, a Christian minister conducts a brief service, then turns the ceremony over to a Torajan priest who leads the ancient ritual. First, a committee of elders inspects the gifts and decides how the meat and the gifts will be distributed to the mourners present, and to the poor in neighboring villages.

  “On the third day, the buffalo are slaughtered as villagers and guests watch. The carcasses are carved up, and the meat is given away.

  “Finally, on the fourth day of the funeral, the body is taken down from the tower and carried in a procession out through the rice fields to a tomb carved into the rocky walls around the village. This is the tomb of my family.”

  Clearly visible in the next slide were the bones of Mallory’s great-grandfather protruding through tattered winding cloth, and shoved on top of him were the newly interred remains of her great-grandmother. Both corpses stuck out a foot or more from their small niche in the cliff.

  “Mr. Duncan, may I please wait outside?” asked the whimpering girl, all teary-eyed and pale, “It’s just…my grandmother died last year, and...”

  “Go, go,” said Mr. Duncan who appeared somewhat rattled by the strange turn the class had taken. Mallory barrelled on even as the small girl left the room.

  Chris marvelled at Mallory’s performance. She’d known everyone was going to be shocked, and she’d done it anyway. All innocence and light, she’d set out to poke everyone in the eye just for the hell of it.

  “Some of the priests of Tana Toraja practice a kind of magic. They have spells for love and good crops and fine weather. Perhaps the strangest magic they practice is hypnotising the dead.

  “Torajans believe a corpse must be buried with its family or it will not be able to find heaven. Until recently, Torajan villages were isolated and people were afraid to travel for fear they might die far away from family. If a person died far from their village, then family members had to carry the body home over difficult mountain trails. Then some Torajan priests discovered how to make the dead walk to their own funerals.”

  Mallory’s next slide horrified even Chris. A black, leathery, shrunken face smeared with dirt, sparse matted filthy hair, dead eyes, and rotted teeth, a skeletal figure draped in soiled rags, blood, and mud-smeared legs, standing—if it could be called standing—on a narrow path alongside a rice paddy.

  “Is she dead?” someone asked.

  “Yes,” Mallory said with a look of satisfaction, “and she’s walking home.”

  Mallory turned off the slide projector and turned on her small super 8 projector. The screen filled with the face of another corpse—for what else could such a rotting creature be? The camera drew back to show the pathetic creature staggering down a dusty road under its own power.

  “To make the dead walk, the priest asks the gods to return the spirit to its corpse. When the corpse comes to life, the priest speaks to it in the language of the gods and instructs it to walk to its funeral.”

  Several girls covered their faces. The boys seemed stunned.

  “Then, when the corpse reaches home, the priest asks the gods to set the spirit free once again—like a second death. The corpse is then buried according to the proper Torajan funeral rite, and the family says guiding prayers to help the spirit of their loved one go in search of Puya, the Land of Souls.”

  “Uh, Mallory,” someone called out from the back of the darkened room, “if the priest doesn’t ask the gods to release the spirit—say because he forgot the prayer, or he got killed—then would that mean the corpse would just keep walking around forever?”

  And then someone else asked, “Or say the corpse got buried before its spirit could be released, then would the corpse keep trying to get out of its grave for like years?”

  “How awful! Can you imagine?” said Mallory. “Trapped forever in a decomposing corpse? Yes, I guess that’s what would happen…if for some reason the prayer for the second death couldn’t be said.” On the screen, the decaying creature staggered on.

  The bell rang. Mallory turned off the projector. The darkened room was silent, save for a few sniffling girls. Finally, Mr. Duncan gathered his wits, turned on the lights, and said, “Thank you Mallory…for your...uh.” People began collecting their books. One girl asked if she could go to the nurse’s office, and several others asked to do the same. Someone came into the room to report that the girl who’d been excused earlier had fainted in the corridor.

  Mallory asked Mr. Duncan, “I hope I haven’t upset people.”

  “It’ll be all right, I’m sure,” he said, and rushed out the door. Mallory followed, her eyes filled with concern. For an instant, however, she turned to look at Chris with a self-satisfied smirk.

  Amazing! What she’d done! And what an idiot he’d been! He’d put on a stupid little performance to shock people and got away with nothing. Mallory had played the innocent and pulled off a coup! He’d made himself look like an ass, while she’d given the whole class a right royal kick in the butt, and would probably get an A.

  Mallory waltzed back into the room. “Well?”

  They were alone and Chris was still slumped in his seat. Mallory walked slowly toward him, showing off, like a model on a catwalk, hips swaying from side to side.

  “That was...incredible.”

  She stopped immediately in front of Chris’s desk. “Not too shocking?”

  “Oh yeah!”

  “That’s what I thought.” She grinned from ear to ear.

  “But do you believe all that stuff about magic?”

  “Sure, why not? I do it all the time.”

  “Do what?”

  “Cast spells.”

  “Spells? Like witches spells?”

  “Like Torajan spells, spells for good health, for nice weather, like I said...and for love.”

  Whoa, where was this going? Chris’s cheeks burned. “And that movie, that was so amazing. Was it real?”

  “My father took it.”

  “You really believe the dead can be made to walk?”

  “Of course I do. I wasn’t going to show the film. Then you inspired me, and I’m glad I did.”

  That shadow behind the mask again. “We...we have to catch the bus,” he said nervously, “but maybe we could sit together?”

  “How sweet,” Mallory replied, touching his cheek. His face burned and his heart almost leapt from his chest. “But my mother is picking me up.”

  “Oh sure...”

  “Perhaps you could come over to my house some time, and we could…talk.”

  “What about your boyfriend?”

  “Let me worry about Floyd.” Her face became hard.

  “Then yeah, sure, that would be great.”

  She turned, and left the room, hips swaying from side to side as she walked away. Chris sat for a moment, almost breathless, then collected his books and headed outside.

  No sooner had he left the classroom than Floyd Balzer jumped in front of him and bellowed, “You son of a bitch, I should rip your guts out!”

  Chris stumbled back in surprise.

  “I heard everything you said,” Floyd screamed. “You’re a dead man! I don’t care what your fucking father says.”

  Chris regained his balance, pushed back hard against Floyd, and said in a low growl, “Yeah, but you do care what your dad will do...to you!”

  Floyd paled and backed away. “What do you know about my dad?”

  Kids up and down the corridor were watching the confrontation. Chris moved toward Floyd, and in a low voice not to be heard by their audience, said, “I know he’ll beat the crap out of you if you so much as ruffle my hair.”

  Floyd stumbled backward and almost fell.

  Time to
drive the lesson home. Chris grabbed the front of Floyd’s shirt and pulled him close, then pressed his cheek to Floyd’s and whispered, “Leave me the hell alone, Balzer....or I’ll get your daddy to spank your little yellow ass, you coward.”

  Floyd twisted away from Chris’s grasp, and ran. “You’re dead, Chandler!” he tried to scream, but his voice broke, and he burst into tears as he disappeared down the stairs.

  “Well, that went well,” Chris said to himself, a little stunned by the outcome. He wasn’t out of danger yet, though. The school bus was bound to be packed with Balzer’s buddies, raving lunatics with nothing to lose, all out for Chandler blood.

  So, a long walk it had to be.

  * * * *

  Chris was a half mile out of town when the big, old Buick Roadmaster rolled to a stop beside him. He pulled open the heavy door and bent to speak to the driver.

  “Mrs. Holcomb.”

  “Nice to see you again, young man,” said the old lady with the bright red lipstick and the ratty fur coat. “You’re going home, I presume? Like a ride?”

  He climbed in without a word. Chris was reluctant to say much for fear the old lady would take any pleasantry as an invitation to talk incessantly.

  “Look, we could make this a regular thing if you’d like, on Tuesdays and Fridays anyway. That’s when I visit my friend at the Adinack Nursing Home. We could arrange to meet somewhere.”

  “Maybe,” Chris replied.

  “So, thrown off the bus again?”

  “No.”

  “Rough day?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Trouble at school? Teachers or girls?”

  “Both, I guess. Nobody’s too pleased with me these days.”

  “Now why’s that?”

  “Probably because of my dad.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Yeah, he’s Richard Chandler....”

  “Who?”

  “He runs the carton plant in town?”

  “Oh yes, and he might close it down. So you’re his boy. Don’t suppose that makes you popular with people in town.”

  “You want me to get out?”

  “No,” the old lady said with a look of surprise. “Why should I care what happens to the plant...or to the town for that matter? What’s this town ever done for me?”