The Minorities

by Suffian Hakim

  We were about to slide the door open, when the sound of an approaching car stopped us. It was a shiny black Audi with a Singaporean car plate. We watched curiously as it stopped barely a metre from us. A tall, well-built man in a polo tee and a pair of slacks stepped out—he did not even kill the engine—and pointed a sleek black pistol at us.

  “Stop where you are!” he commanded. There was something very familiar about this man, and it had nothing to do with how he looked like every other visitor at a golf club.

  “Put the log down, Chinaman, and put your hands up in the air,” he commanded Tights. I was sure I’d had a conversation with this burly newcomer. “All of you!”

  “Superintendent Jared Lee?” I couldn’t hide the disbelief in my voice. After our encounter at the graveyard, I never thought I’d see his face again. Yet here he was, in the outskirts of Malacca, with a gun pointed at me.

  “You think you’re so clever, hiding these damned illegals? Where’s the Bangla?”

  I stared back at the ICA officer, mentally calculating our chances of getting shot in the back if we ignored him and made our way into the sawmill. For a man determined to bring back two illegals, and the person who had been harbouring them, he had nevertheless chosen to come to this confrontation alone. I decided to take my chances.

  “Jared, I commend you for really going out of your way to do your duty, but we don’t have time for this.” With that, I signalled to Diyanah to open the sliding doors, which she slid aside with ease. Tights took one long look at Jared and turned for the door, his wooden club ready to swing.

  “I said, stop!” Jared barked, his voice accompanied by a loud gunshot that reverberated into the night. Without turning back, I walked through the doors, half expecting a bullet to lodge itself into my back. None came.

  The air inside the sawmill smelled of wet earth and dry rot. The entrance led to a long, dark corridor. I could only just make out the silhouette of Tights ahead of me, running towards a sliver of light, with Diyanah’s thin frame next to him. Behind me, footsteps pounded the ground. Jared was still after us.

  Up ahead, Tights was standing at another door. He took a step back and kicked it open. Blue fluorescent light spilled into the corridor and I picked up my pace. Tights, meanwhile, crossed the threshold into the adjoining room.

  The room was massive and bare. Its windows were boarded up, but rusty lamps illuminated the space. Dark figures stood along the walls, wearing blood red robes.

  “And here come our guests just in time,” said a familiar, distinguished voice. The speaker stepped forward from the line of robed figures and pulled back his cowl.

  Behind me, Jared came to a surprised halt and lowered his gun.

  Addressing us was Pupus Tan, the President of Singapore.

  “Mr President? Sir, what an honour!” exclaimed Jared, snapping to attention and saluting. Pupus Tan approached us with long, sprightly strides and saluted back. In the other hand he held a short length of wood sharpened at one end.

  Bringing his hand back down, Jared introduced himself. “Superintendent Jared Tan of the Immigration and Customs Authority, sir.”

  “Good on you,” Pupus Tan said in a voice smooth as silk. Tights and I exchanged glances. Why would the President of Singapore be in an abandoned sawmill off Malacca?

  “Are you here to round up these illegals?” Jared asked, visibly confused.

  Pupus Tan answered languidly, “Of course not” and, with unexpected strength and dexterity, drove the length of wood into Jared’s forehead. We staggered backwards in shock. The President then pulled out the stake, and a mangled twist of cerebral matter and blood squelched out after it. Jared’s eyes were locked upwards and his mouth was wide open in a death knell that never escaped his throat.

  The President then walked into the middle of the room. “Please, do come in,” he said, his back towards us. He added with thinly veiled menace, “It’s good to see you, Diyanah.”

  Diyanah looked genuinely frightened. It reminded me of what Shanti was like around Devas.

  We obliged the President, simply because we needed to find Shanti and Cantona, and also because we were keen to find out why Pupus Tan was here, of all places. We didn’t have to wait long. At the other end of the vast hall were Shanti and Cantona, bound to wooden chairs and gagged. In front of them were two wendigoes, Gyava, a toyol and a slick orang minyak.

  “Cantona, Shanti, your friends are here!” said Pupus Tan.

  My two friends struggled against their binds, their eyes wide with fear. We were in the middle of the hall now, flanked by robed figures. I did not know if they were human like the President, or something much more monstrous, like Gyava.

  Tights voiced my exact thoughts, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “My friends,” said Pupus Tan with practised charisma, “you have been fighting the tide, forgetting that you’re doomed to drown in the icy ocean. You are powerless against legion!”

  Gyava hissed. The wendigoes howled. The orang minyak chittered. The toyol—the same one we had encountered near the beach—snarled. It was a fearsome, albeit unintelligible and disjointed, chorus of voices.

  “But let it be known that I am not without mercy. You can still get out of here alive,” Pupus Tan continued, “if Diyanah stands trial.”

  I turned to Diyanah. Her features distinctively spelled out her fear.

  “And what exactly is she being accused of?” I asked.

  “Undermining the supernatural community and our mandate,” Pupus Tan replied.

  “I see two issues with that, Pupus,” I said loudly and clearly. “Firstly, it is the assumption that you, fellow human being, speak for the supernatural community. And secondly, what mandate are you talking about?”

  Something peculiar happened in response; Pupus Tan crumpled to the floor. As a heap of cumbersome flesh and bone on the floor, he began mumbling and babbling deliriously.

  A shadow crossed my face, and I looked up to see a spherical shape descending slowly from the high ceiling.

  “You show contempt to my familiar,” rasped a voice from above. “Your life will be shortened for it.” It was a declaration, not a threat.

  Around us, the robed figures fell to their knees in veneration.

  The thing eventually lowered itself into the light. I saw the dried-out, black-purple entrails first and the clipped spine. The mangled flesh led to a grotesque head. It was a large, mostly bald thing, its leathery skin grey with patches of brown. Its nose was broken and bent at an unnatural angle, as though it had been hit incessantly with a hammer. The mutilated nose hung precariously under bloated, protruding eyes, blood cascading from its corners like tears.

  “It’s Durshirah,” Diyanah whispered in fear.

  Durshirah began circling above us in a wide arc. “Rise,” he rasped, and the knelt figures around us got to their feet. Durshirah’s voice had a rather unique quality of always teetering on the brink of maniacal laughter. Still addressing them, he added, “Our sister Diyanah has come back to us. In a perfect world, this would be a celebration. It would be a family reunion. But she comes to us with human companions. Gyava!”

  The vampire snapped to attention. “Durshirah!”

  “How many attempts on your life have there been in the past year?”

  “Thirteen,” Gyava called back.

  “An unlucky number indeed,” rasped Durshirah. “Were all of them by humans?”

  “Yes. Self-styled vampire hunters. They managed to kill three from my coven before I could finish them off.” Gyava’s voice had dropped to a soft lament, and some of the robed figures began growling and grunting in contempt. Some made rude and threatening gestures at us.

  “Yap Eng Hoon!” Durshirah shouted.

  One of the robed figures stepped forward and pulled back its cowl, revealing a translucent figure that glowed purple. The ghost said in an echoing moan, “Durshirah!”

  “When your family discovered that you had returned to your own home as a ghost, w
hat did they do?”

  “They asked me to give them winning lottery numbers.”

  “And what did they do after they won their riches?”

  “They hired a medium to exorcise me.”

  The jeers grew even louder. They were peppered with hisses now. I looked at Diyanah. She looked absolutely frightened. This would be very difficult to get out of.

  Durshirah was addressing me directly. “So, human, you ask me what mandate my familiar spoke of. It is the mandate of Severitas.”

  Diyanah gasped. “You cannot possi—”

  Durshirah cut her off. “You see, my family? Do you see what she wishes to withhold from us? Our own freedom, she who claims to be one of us.” He turned his form to her and rasped, “We just want to be free, Diyanah, just like you. Why would you deny us this?”

  “I want us to be free, too, but I will not kill the living. That will just make more of us: angry, bitter, dead souls.”

  “She called us angry and bitter!” rasped Durshirah. “You think you can come here to judge us? We judge you!” He had whipped the others into a frenzy now.

  Next to me, Tights assumed swinging position with his length of wood. Diyanah whispered to us, “Prepare to run.”

  “There’s only so far we can run,” I said to her flatly. “We’re going to fight.” My words, of course, were fuelled by bravado rather than actual belief that I could outfight a group of supernatural entities.

  “I deem you guilty, Diyanah. Guilty of sabotage against your own kind,” Durshirah said in the manner one might say the Pope is a Catholic Caucasian. “Gyava!”

  The vampire snapped to attention again.

  Durshirah, his voice cool as frozen-over hell, commanded, “Kill them.”

  “Well, that wasn’t much of a trial,” I said to Diyanah, as she, Tights and I went back-to-back, preparing for an attack from all sides.

  Not far from us, Pupus Tan made to move. With Durshirah hovering above him, the President of Singapore proceeded to the sliding door behind Shanti and Cantona. The robed figures followed him. One of them opened the door and outside, there were three large coaches. Each was packed with humans and supernatural beings. I saw Durshirah and Pupus Tan boarding one of the buses before the chunky metal sliding door behind Shanti and Cantona shut again.

  Now, the only ones standing between us and our friends were Gyava, two wendigoes, a toyol and an orang minyak. I liked these odds much better than before, but they were not good nevertheless.

  Diyanah morphed into her pontianak form. The three of us stood in a line. With snarls that seemed to shake the very foundations of the sawmill, Gyava and his four companions stalked towards us like predators closing in for the kill.

  I reached into my bag and quickly pulled out a Swiss Army knife. I handed it to Tights. “When Diyanah and I have them engaged, I want you to save Shanti and Cantona.”

  “But—”

  “Now, Tights!”

  One of the wendigoes had come within striking distance, and it lowered its antlers in preparation to gorge us. I fended off its attack with my plank.

  Diyanah dived claws-first into the sea of enemies. She managed to jab the wendigo in the side of its torso, and as it crashed to the floor—hurt but not defeated—it caught Gyava’s legs and a great tumble of vampire, pontianak and wendigo ensued.

  Tights made a break towards our friends, sprinting as fast as his thin legs could carry him. I did not have time to see how far he got. The orang minyak had jumped towards me, its hands outstretched. Holding my plank like a bat, I swung—with my eyes closed, leaving it to luck rather than skill.

  My plank did not connect with the orang minyak. I had swung too low. Instead, a sickeningly slick foot connected with the side of my face, and I stumbled and fell painfully onto my back. I wiped my face with my black T-shirt and the sludge came off, but I could not shake the feeling of being tainted.

  I got up, took off my backpack and picked up my plank again. Without my bag hindering my movement, I poised myself with growing confidence. The orang minyak was snarling unintelligibly, taunting me, I think, judging by its tone. I swung and hit it awkwardly in the neck. The hit served its purpose—for a few moments, the orang minyak faltered.

  It gave me enough time to search for Tights—he had already freed Shanti and was cutting the ropes that bound Cantona. The orang minyak turned to see what I was looking at.

  With a panicked howl, it began sprinting towards my friends.

  “No!” I cried, to an expected lack of avail.

  But Shanti had spotted the orang minyak. Her jaws clenched, she reached into her pocket and drew out a lighter. Shanti lit it, held it in her right hand and poised herself. When the orang minyak was close enough, she extended her hand in a fluid right hook. The flame caught the slick on the orang minyak’s torso; it was enough to engulf the entire being in flames. It screamed in agony, a sound that filled me with morbid satisfaction.

  The orang minyak began crawling up the wall, trying to find some way to leave the vast, non-flame-retardant hall. It began to punch the wooden panels that boarded up the high windows. It eventually punched through the wood, and a spot of sunlight poured in. Then, against these static beams of light, a more disorderly, dancing illumination joined the fray. A fire had spread under the struggles of the orang minyak, its cavorting flames curving and cresting through the building.

  The orang minyak’s exertion was not enough, however, and it eventually fell back to the sawdust-covered floor, still burning but otherwise unmoving and lifeless.

  Under the trinity of light, I saw that Diyanah had already dispatched a wendigo, its mangled, decapitated head was lying on the dusty floor, broken pieces of its antlers around it. The other wendigo was on its knees next to its kin, howling miserably.

  That left Diyanah fending off a clearly stronger Gyava.

  It was then that I spotted the toyol. “Diyanah, behind you!”

  Holding Gyava off with her left hand, she swung her right hand in an impressive 180-degree arc. The toyol had jumped, its tiny razor teeth ready for the kill, and her claws were perfectly positioned to meet the toyol. There was a whisper like knives arcing in the dark. The toyol then fell to the ground as six slices of cold, lifeless supernatural flesh, bits of its greenish gristle still hanging loosely on Diyanah’s claws.

  Meanwhile, the conflagration had already consumed most of the sawmill. Its structure began to come undone, as support beams and portions of the roof crashed around us. Sunlight began to stream in, causing Gyava to scramble away from Diyanah and run past me towards the shadows.

  The collapse had cordoned off a small section of the hall. The shadowed section, bathed in the light of a fluorescent lamp that had fallen over, was occupied by only two beings: myself and Gyava.

  I held up my plank, ready for the vampire. My heart was palpitating now. Dust and bits of wood stuck to my skin, my manic perspiration its inadvertent adhesive. But he ignored me, standing by the barrier of flaming wood and metal and plaster, and stared at Diyanah.

  I rushed at him and swung the plank at his back. The piece of wood splintered while Gyava remained unmoved. Without even bothering to turn, he kicked backwards and caught me in the stomach. I toppled backwards, winded and gasping for air.

  “Diyanah!” Gyava yelled, above the crepitating fire.

  Diyanah floated towards the barrier, the second wendigo hanging limply from her claws. She flung it into the flaming barrier, and the smell of cooked carcass filled the air. The flames cackled and grew. Both Gyava and Diyanah stepped backwards as this accidental pyre, this impeding firewall, blazed with growing ferocity.

  “I’m going to kill him, Diyanah,” Gyava said. “I’m going to savour every drop of blood in him until he’s dry as a bone, because that’s what he is: food. Nothing more than that.”

  “You have nowhere to go, Gyava! This place is falling apart and nothing but the sun is waiting for you outside.”

  “Then I’ll take as many of your friends with me!”


  With a roar of anger, Diyanah flew over the flames and descended upon Gyava, claws first. Gyava sidestepped her and as she stumbled past, he grabbed the back of her dress and threw her into the flames.

  I shrieked—Diyanah did not. She flew into the air, surging ever higher, through the gap in the roof. As she did so, the flames dissipated, leaving her dress sooty, but her skin generally unscathed.

  She came back down, but this time, she stood slightly farther from the flames. She was joined by my friends. Above the crackle of burning wood, I heard them calling for me, and coughing slightly under the gathering smoke.

  I looked at the burning barrier. It was too jagged, too uneven for me to climb. Shanti was studying it too, looking for a gap. The growing consternation on her face suggested I needed to find another way out of this.

  “Durshirah will perform Severitas anytime soon,” Gyava was saying, “and when he and our brethren are free to take this world from the living, my coming oblivion will be avenged.”

  “What the fuck is Severitas?” I coughed out.

  “It is a means of freeing ourselves from our covenant,” Diyanah replied.

  “By destroying the humans we haunt in a ritual sacrifice,” Gyava finished. His deep, Hungarian accent truly captured the gravity of Durshirah’s plan. “When we are free from our covenant, we will liberate every vampire, every ghost, every once-living being under the yoke of humanity, and we will kill every last one of you!”

  “So all those people in the buses…” Shanti could not finish her sentence.

  “Will be fodder for the advancement of my race,” Gyava declared proudly.

  I stood up.

  “Diyanah, Shanti, Tights, Cantona,” I shouted angrily, “go find them.”

  “We’re not leaving you here,” Cantona said, eyeing Gyava nervously. The vampire, with exquisite nonchalance, simply watched us as we shouted over the flames.

  “I think I can jump over fire,” Tights offered, coughing.

  Shanti put a hand against Tights’ chest, holding him back. Shielding her eyes from the smoke and the glare of the flames, she kept searching for a way through to me.