by Derek Hansen
‘All fixeded,’ said Charlie. His smile was as wide as the gaps between some of the floorboards. According to Charlie, this was a deliberate feature, allowing cool air to waft up into the house. I’d always thought that cool air sank and hot air rose but the system seemed to work nonetheless. Our bedroom, where the gaps were widest, was the coolest room in the house. I couldn’t help wonder at the kind of air that wafted up when livestock sheltered beneath.
Charlie took me on a tour of inspection. Some shutters were held closed by a horizontal bar slipped between twine loops. Others had wooden pegs. I could have opened any one of them with a good pocket knife but bit my tongue.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay. How about a guard out front?’
‘Why guard out front? I sleep out front.’
It was true. Charlie did sleep out front, had slept out front every single night. It seemed churlish to point out that his presence there had not proved to be much of a deterrent the previous night.
‘Okay,’ I said and tried to figure out some convincing reassurance for Abby.
That night I tucked my wallet under my pillow once more. Perhaps it showed a lack of imagination on my part but there weren’t exactly a million alternatives. There were no wardrobes or dressing tables in our bedroom, just a couple of chairs and a bench festooned with clothes. I couldn’t see the sense in hiding my wallet in a bag when somebody could simply walk off with it. Besides, I figured my new level of alertness would make me more sensitive to any movement beneath my pillow. Somebody could steal from the chairs or from our pockets but I couldn’t imagine how anybody could steal from beneath my head. Not twice at any rate. And always assuming they could find a way in past our new security measures.
That night we sat outside with our neighbours, filling in the hours with gossip, Charlie interpreting. I think he was fairly liberal in his translations judging by the laughs he got. They sang songs for us and I strummed and picked and sang songs for them. They loved it when I played Taj Mahal’s ‘Fishin’ Blues’, but Abby doing Linda Ronstadt was their favourite.‘Feels like home to me,’ she sang.
There was one refrigerator in the entire village, which was used to keep bottled drinks cold. The shop was actually the front room of a house and the power was pirated from power lines that ran overhead. Everywhere I’d been in Indonesia I’d seen villagers stealing power this way.
Abby and I had our bottle of icy comforter, vodka laced with fresh limes and fiery wheels of sliced chilli, and barbecued sweetcorn to gnaw on. The night was pleasant, almost mild, even though the equator was so close we could lean on it. By the time we turned in we felt no pain, weren’t the least bit apprehensive or concerned. I did a quick check to ensure that all shutters and doors were secure and felt foolish doing it. We were among friends, weren’t we?
‘Mr Wallace, Mr Wallace!’ Charlie was back at the door. Banging. Overhead Luke Skywalker’s laser sword held still, waiting to do battle with Darth Vader’s. Abby groaned. I slipped my hand under my pillow. It came up empty.
My turn to groan.
‘Who founded it?’
Charlie looked over his shoulder to where Jack Palance and Handlebars rested on an old bicycle that had to have seen service with the Dutch East Indies constabulary.
‘Where?’
‘Up there, John. One hundred metres past mosque.’ Charlie pronounced mosque ‘mos-kee’. That usually brought a smile but not this morning.
Handlebars looked at me apologetically. Handlebars was a monkey who climbed coconut palms and harvested green coconuts. He threw them down to Jack Palance — or JP, as he was better known — who collected them in string bags which he hung off his old bike. When the monkey wasn’t climbing palms he sat on the handlebars of JP’s bike, but that wasn’t why I’d nicknamed him Handlebars. He had a moustache that any ex-RAF pilot would be proud of. JP was called JP because he was a dead ringer for Jack Palance, the Hollywood actor. Abby always gave Handlebars a treat. I let her know he’d come to visit and turned back to Charlie.
‘Charlie, this is getting beyond a joke.’
‘This time he throwded it in the ditch. Passport throwded this way. Wallet throwded that way. Business cards throwded everywhere, John.’
I groaned for the second time that morning. My licence was laminated. No problem. Credit cards ditto. The plastic cover on my traveller’s cheques was muddy but the contents had come through unscathed. My cash was still intact in the zipped-up section. My passport, however, had been for a bit of a paddle. My business cards were history. Could have been worse, though. Everything from nightsoil to dead animals flowed through that ditch.
‘Hello, Handlebars,’ said Abby. She gave him a banana. She also held a piece of papaya behind her back. As if Handlebars couldn’t smell it.
‘How did he get past you, Charlie, how did he get into the house? How did he steal my wallet?’
‘Have you checkeded all the shutters, John?’
Don’t you hate obvious questions? I turned back into the house, Charlie hard on my heels. We began in our bedroom, found nothing suspicious, and worked our way through each of the rooms. In every case the bars or pegs were still in place, the twine uncut. Whoever had come in had not entered via any of the shutters or the back door. That left the front door, which Charlie was supposed to be guarding.
‘How did he get past you, Charlie?’
‘No! Nobody getted past me! I tieded string to door and to my hand.’
I’d wondered about that. The twine was still tied to the door-handle.
‘What have you discovered?’ Abby had given Handlebars the papaya but the monkey was still expecting more. Abby’s voice was brittle with tension.
‘It appears that West Sumatran burglars can walk through walls,’ I said irritably.‘Either that or they can squeeze through the gaps in the wall and floorboards. Possible, I suppose, but I’ve never met anyone less than ten centimetres thick before.’
‘Maybe there’s a trapdoor,’ said Abby.
Maybe there’s a trapdoor. You have to hand it to Abby, she’s the master of the bleeding obvious.
‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘do Minang houses have trapdoors in the floor?’
‘Of course,’ said Charlie.
‘And ladders?’
‘Of course.’
‘Charlie, did you make sure the trapdoors were locked?’
‘No, John. But I think good idea. We fix them too.’
Indonesians are very literal people. I remembered telling Charlie and the deputation from the village to make sure all the shutters and doors were securely fastened from the inside. I never once mentioned anything about trapdoors. Of course it was inconceivable to them that Abby and I didn’t know about the trapdoors. Everyone knew about trapdoors. But I didn’t mention them so they didn’t fasten them. Rule one in Indonesia: cover all your bases. If you want the right answer, you have to ask the right question.
‘He’s holding out for a toffee,’ I said to Abby.
Handlebars loved Macintosh’s toffees. He drooled at the prospect. Handlebars always looked mildly bored with proceedings until there were toffees in the offing. JP didn’t like us giving Handlebars toffees because he considered them far too great a luxury to be wasted on a monkey; better we wasted them on him. Abby compromised with a toffee each.
‘I think the mystery is solved, Charlie. Could you fasten the trapdoors and take the ladder away, please?’
‘Right away, John.’
‘Hang on.’ I held out two one-thousand-rupiah notes.‘For JP. Tell him thank you. And tell him we’d like to buy two green coconuts this evening.’
JP smiled his tough gunslinger smile and graciously accepted his reward. One thousand rupiahs is a lot of money to a coconut-harvesting team. One works for peanuts and the other for not much more.
‘Paradise regained.’
Abby sniggered. She liked literary allusions. When we’d dabbled with dope we’d toyed with the poets. Milton and Coleridge were two favourites. More tha
n anything, she was enjoying the feeling of relief. We both were. Bloody trapdoors! I must say the tour of inspection with Charlie had spooked me. Every closed, untouched shutter had filled me with dread and liquefied the contents of my bowels. How had the bastard got in? What kind of psycho were we dealing with? I’d actually started wondering whether the house was haunted. How else to explain the inexplicable?
Trust Abby to think of trapdoors. There again, I never was very good at lateral thinking.
‘God, this is beautiful.’
God, she was right. Charlie had driven us down to Lake Sinkarak near Padangpanjang so we could check on progress at a commercial Nile tilapia farm we were nursing into production. Our greatest concern was the security of the breeding and growing tanks. Nile tilapia are omnivores and predators, and would literally have the indigenous species for breakfast if they broke out into the waterways. But in truth, the real reason for our trip was to have some time to chill out and Lake Sinkarak was the ideal place to do it.
We’d picked up half a dozen bottles of Bintang beer on the way down and swallowed four of them. We lay flat on our backs, floating on top of the warm, comforting water, our faces, bellies and legs smeared white with blockout. We roasted like two well-basted ducks adrift in warm gravy. Paradise regained in spades. Charlie was asleep in the van to save himself the inconvenience of having to sleep at night. He’d promised to stay awake and guard the front door after we’d gone to bed.
We’d driven down to the lake via Payakumbuh and Batusankar. The only reason for telling you this is so you’ll understand why I gave everyone nicknames. To the untrained ear, Bahasa sounds like an empty jerry can rolling down a flight of wooden steps, or a convoy of jeeps backfiring. Unfortunately, the local Minang and Batak dialects aren’t much better and I have trouble with all of them. So rather than call people by names I mispronounced, I gave them nicknames. It began as a bit of fun but then caught on. Everyone we renamed seemed to feel a bit special. Everyone wanted a nickname.
We arrived back in the village just before sundown and sat out on the steps to watch our friends straggle in from the fields. We sat, sipped our voddies and said a cheery ‘Salamat sore!’ to everyone who passed by. Good evening! Good evening! And it was. Not a cloud in the sky and none hovering over us. Women set aside their looms, stretched cramped limbs and rubbed sore eyes. Tombstone wandered past with his freshly washed water buffalo, man and beast as inseparable as best friends. He treated us to his dazzling smile. Women walked arm in arm and nobody accused them of being lesbians. Men sometimes held hands but that didn’t mean they were gay. The Minang are just touchy-feely people and more than normally affectionate. Abby and I were proud to be in their company. Then JP and Handlebars pedalled up and dropped off our green coconuts. JP refused to let me pay for them. They accepted a toffee each.
Yes, paradise was well and truly regained.
‘Mr Wallace! Mr Wallace!’
Pitch black. The air electric. The thumping on the door incessant. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I reached under my pillow. Skin touched leather. So why was Charlie so excited? Cold sweat. Bowels I couldn’t trust. I reached over to Abby’s side of the bed.
‘Mr Wallace! Mr Wallace!’
Abby sat up. Bolt upright. Silhouetted in a blinding moment of blue. Mosquito net billowing.
‘It’s still there.’ I didn’t wait for the question.
‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. She felt around, found the torch, shone it into every corner of the room and up into the high arch of the roof. We made our way to the door, opened it. The house shook, rattled and . . .
And Charlie stood there with Abby’s Polaroid.
He looked like he’d seen a ghost.
Hammer Films could not have set the scene better. Three-hundred-year-old house. Violent electric storm. Three terrified mortals clutching scalding-hot tea around a flickering kerosene lamp, far from home and rational explanations. Charlie was more frightened than us, but then he had more reason to be. He was convinced he’d seen the spectral figure of one of the old-time Minangkabau gods. And the god wasn’t happy.
‘He throwded lightning,’ said Charlie. ‘He throwded lightning at me!’
Poor Charlie. He was unsure who to pray to. He was nominally Islamic though his commitment was perhaps a touch casual. Like most Minangkabau, particularly those who still tilled the fields in isolated communities, he hadn’t completely abandoned the old gods, a legacy from ancient Indian and Javan overlords. If you’ve ever witnessed a performance of the Ramayana or a kecak dance you’ll have some idea of the sort of demons whirling around inside his head.
‘He wasn’t much of a shot,’ I said. But Charlie wasn’t listening. Abby had eyes like an owl’s. I wondered how long she could go without blinking. We sat wrapped in blankets. Whether the cold was external or internal didn’t matter.
‘Are you certain you left your camera in your bag?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You didn’t drop it taking a shot of Shirley Temple?’
Shirley Temple was a gorgeous little tot who lived next door. We’d tried to take her photo for weeks but she was too shy. Abby had finally succeeded.
‘Give me a break,’ said Abby. ‘I put it on top of my bag by the bed. I even checked to see if it needed new film.’
Whenever we went out Abby threw one of those little backpacks over her shoulders. She carried a bottle of mineral water, tissues, toffees, wallet, camera, sunscreen and lippy in it. And mangosteens, which I adored, and rambutans, which she adored. She always left her bag right by her bed. This wasn’t sloppiness on her part. Like I said before, there weren’t an awful lot of places to put things.
‘So somebody somehow found their way into our bedroom, despite the fact that all the shutters, doors and trapdoors are still securely fastened, stole your camera and then dropped it for Charlie to find. Where’s the sense in that?’
‘Spirit god,’ said Charlie. His dark face was quite pale, green-tinged, sort of verdigris. ‘Throwded lightning. Droppeded camera.’
I was hoping Abby would come up with one of her statements of the bleeding obvious. I was drifting closer and closer towards Charlie’s explanation for lack of any other.
‘Interesting,’ said Abby.
Good old Abby. Knew she’d come through.
‘The camera’s open. I’m certain I’d closed it.’
Abby’s Polaroid was one of those that folded flat into itself, which made it ideal for travelling. But when Charlie had given it back it was open. Abby and I looked at each other. That could explain the lightning.
‘Charlie,’ said Abby, ‘did the spirit god drop the camera before or after it throwded lightning at you?’
‘Before! No, after! I don’t know.’
‘The question is,’ said Abby, ‘did it accidentally take a picture of itself when it set off the flash? I’ve only got one shot left. I’m sure I had two.’ Abby gave me her don’t-be-a-wimp look.
‘Shot in the dark,’ I said, borrowed her torch and opened the door. If I’d had my nerves reasonably under control, the door squeak set them off again. It had the same effect on me as fingernails on a blackboard. Where was Lon Chaney? Where was Vincent Price? Outside, waiting for me of course. With an axe in each hand. My hair was standing on end and I couldn’t blame the static-charged air or the wind. What if Charlie was right? What if the ancient gods still presided over this primitive country? Animism is alive and well in West Sumatra. I admit I hadn’t got very deeply into Minang folklore and legend, but all the gods I’d encountered in other parts of Indonesia seemed to have spilled a heap of blood on their way to the top. Warrior gods were all the go here.
There was a three-metre corridor between our house and our neighbour’s, or, more accurately, a corridor between the carved pillars that both houses rested upon. Think of a lane between under-building car parks and you’ve got the picture. The ground was worn bare by animals, playing kids and foot traffic. Three scrubby fig-like trees a
nd the odd weed were all that grew there. But there were still plenty of shadows, sinister dark places, moving and flickering in the wind. Abby expected me to look under the house, the darkest, most sinister place of all. Forget it! Sumatran tigers are also alive and well and still roam the forests just north of Bukittinggi. Perhaps one had strolled south.
‘Got it.’
I’d figured my chances of finding a Polaroid photo in the middle of the darkest of nights with a high wind blowing were somewhere between laughable and non-existent. But the wind had jammed it up against some palings of the house next door where they’d once tried to box in the undersides. Other rubbish had also caught there — plastic and foil wrappers. It’s amazing the detail you can pick up in the brief instant of a lightning flash. I grabbed the Polaroid and raced back inside. Well, I’d found what I was looking for. Why be brave unnecessarily?
‘Oh shit,’ said Abby.
Charlie just gasped, buried his head in his hands and whimpered.
I didn’t know what to say. A wise man would have checked the photo first. Unfortunately wisdom had surrendered to fear. The focus was hopeless and the image badly blurred. But the eyes that stared back at us from the photo weren’t any we recognised.
They weren’t even human.
Charlie didn’t want to go back outside and sleep in his van so we made him up a bed on the wooden bench in the main room. He went straight to sleep which seemed a bit unjust. After all, they were his demons not ours. Abby claimed she never slept a wink but she did. I was witness to it. I was witness to every lightning flash, every trick of wind and light, every squeaking bat, every errant mosquito, every scurrying mouse in the thatch, every erratic beat of my heart.
I have a good Bachelor of Science degree. I don’t believe in ghosts or demons. And I don’t believe my eyes closed for more than a second in total throughout the rest of that interminable night. I tried to find some rational explanation. At best, someone was having a huge laugh at our expense. Perhaps the whole village was in on it. Perhaps we were the local sport and substitute for soap operas. Perhaps there was another secret entrance to the house, a secret shared by everyone except us. But that explanation didn’t sit very well. Charlie wasn’t pretending to be scared out of his wits. And the photo wasn’t pretending to be anything other than what it was. Photos can lie, but this one seemed determined to tell the truth. It was the stumbling block. I could reason around a lot of things but kept coming up empty whenever I thought of the photo.