by Unknown
As they walked down the wide steps, Wong pointed to the ground-floor corridor on the left. ‘That secret room also caused me a problem. Wasted one-two hours trying to work it out. Not on floor map of house. Very clever. Should have told me first. But then I guess you are paying for my service, hour by hour.’ Wong laughed.
Tambi looked uncomfortable. ‘What secret room?’
‘The one that is between your room there and the west room.’
‘Oh.’ The man was uncomfortable. ‘That’s a security device. Keep the money and stuff in there. The main safe, for the takings. When we get some takings, that is. After all, there will be thousands of strangers wandering around the park.’
‘I didn’t see a safe in there,’ said Wong. ‘Just papers and all that muddy equipment.’
‘You went in? But how . . . ?’
‘The door was locked but I could open. Hope you don’t mind. You told me to do detailed feng shui reading. Whole house. Every inch.’
‘Yes, I did, of course. Obviously, I don’t mind. It concerns me a bit that the room with the safe can be broken into so easily, that’s all.’
‘I saw no safe.’
‘The safe hasn’t arrived yet,’ said Tambi. ‘Anyway, it’s time to get us all into the jungle. Why don’t you go and collect the others—I think they are still in the breakfast room—and I’ll meet you around the back of the house in twenty minutes.’
Wong blinked at him, a little nervous.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Tambi. ‘We’ll all go in together.’
Tambi led the party from Singapore around one side of the house where their hired car and a large multi-terrain vehicle were standing next to a tall wire fence with barbed wire on the top. ‘This entrance is only for staff. It will get us to the east side of the lake much faster than going the normal way. It will also take us right over the section where my unfortunate friends were killed. You said you wanted to see that, right, Mr Wong? Give you a feel for the gruesome events of three weeks ago. I think the blood has all been washed away by now, but for me, the stain will always be there. I can never forget it.’ He shook his head slowly.
Abruptly brightening, he gestured to the vehicle on the left. ‘You go in your car. Dubeya and me, we’ll go in this one.’
‘Why not we all go together in one car?’ said Wong. ‘It will be better if we are all together. You can answer my questions.’
‘Are you kidding?’ said Tambi. ‘I would never get my fat gut into that little car. I’ve had this vehicle specially adapted for me—you see the special double-sized seat? But don’t worry. We’ll drive in front, and we’ll go really slowly. There’s no chance of getting lost. No danger, that’s the Tambi’s Trek guarantee.’
‘This car, will it be okay in the mud?’ asked Wong.
‘It will be okay. It’s a bit muddy just here, but once we get past those trees we get onto a proper path. There’ll be no problem, I assure you.’ He picked up a dark camera bag. ‘I’ve brought my video camera. I’ll give you a souvenir tape of yourselves in the jungle. It’s a service we are planning to offer to our best customers.’ He climbed with some difficulty into the car with some help from his cousin.
Wong took the driver’s seat in the Proton, with Joyce next to him and Sinha in the back.
The young woman was complaining about the breakfast. ‘I rang Melissa. I’m like, “Hi, Melissa, guess what I’ve had for breakfast?” And she’s like, “Blueberry pop-tarts?” And I’m like, “Rice and chilli and salty fish.” And she’s like, “That is sooo weird.” I mean, I don’t mind a bit of spice now and then, but for breakfast? Who can eat that for breakfast? I asked the boy if he had any toast but he didn’t understand English.’
‘ Nasi lemak you had,’ said Wong. ‘Good Malay breakfast. Very delicious.’
Dubeya, having heaved his cousin into the back of the jeep, hopped down, and opened, one at a time, each of the two sets of double gates for the cars to drive into the park.
The four-wheel-drive car climbed smoothly over the rocks and headed at a sedate 15 kilometres an hour towards an opening in a line of trees.
The Proton at first jerked and swayed around on the uneven, rutted area of stones and mud close to the gate, but Wong steered the car into the ruts left by the larger vehicle, and the two cars were soon moving steadily forwards in tandem. The gates closed automatically behind them.
Swinging to the right beyond the trees, they found a narrow concrete road and soon picked up speed to a leisurely 20 kilometres an hour.
‘Funny how Tambi does not know names of animals,’ said the geomancer.
‘I noticed that too,’ the old astrologer said. ‘ “Some strange cow that you only get in this part of the world.” You’d think he’d know the name of it.’
‘Maybe the dead guys were the animal experts,’ said Joyce. ‘He’s just the money. They’ve written a fab guidebook.’ She was leafing through the Tambi’s Trek Spotter’s Guide, which the Legges had prepared before their deaths. ‘There are three, four, five things I wouldn’t mind seeing. There’s a kind of checklist thing here in this book.’
She flipped through the pages. ‘I wanna see the lions of course. Then there’s the binturong, which is also known as a bear-cat. Looks like a bear, but the size of a cat. Then we’ve got to see the colugo, which is a flying lemur, whatever that is. Looks like a cross between a squirrel and a bat. Then I wanna see a pangolin: “A scaly armour-plated mammal which rolls into a tight ball when threatened.” Oh yeah, and this must be the cow he mentioned, this thing called the banteng.’
Joyce scanned the trees around them for interesting animals, but it was the sounds that really marked off the area as jungle. The humming and buzzing became loud and seemed to form a dense aural wall around them. A distant bird gave a plaintive cry. ‘A-why? A-why? A-why?’ it seemed to be saying.
‘Peacock,’ Wong explained. ‘Mating call.’
There was a flash in front of them as a red bird swooped over the car and disappeared into a canopy of trees. There appeared to be a second bird, following about 60 centimetres behind it, but Joyce realised after a moment that the first bird had a cluster of feathers on the end of a long thin tail.
‘Paradise bird,’ said Wong.
‘This is kinda cool,’ said Joyce. ‘Wish I had a proper camera with a zoom thing. I hope we get close up to the animals.’
She lapsed into silence as they entered the rainforest proper. On some parts of the road, the trees met overhead, and they found themselves in an arboreal tunnel, with flickering shadows running the length of the car. The woody canopy was heavily festooned with epiphytes, giving the impression of having been decorated. Giant mushrooms sprouted from trunks supported by immensely thick root buttresses. The air inside the car quickly turned humid, and there was a pungent, earthy smell.
After ten minutes, their eyes became accustomed to the shadows under the thick, leafy canopies, and they started to spot animals in the trees: Bulwer’s pheasants, Bornean gibbons, white-bellied woodpeckers and other curious climbing beasts that none of them could name. A huge variety of large, colourful butterflies and birds seemed to fill the gap between the bushes and the canopy.
‘Listen. What’s that? What’s that sound? Can you hear something?’ asked Sinha.
‘What? You mean lions or what? Where? I can’t see them,’ said Joyce, looking around.
‘No. Some noise in the car. Sssss, like air coming out of a balloon.’
‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘CF?’
‘Don’t hear.’
There was a sudden intake of breath from Sinha in the back seat. ‘Wong,’ he said, quietly. ‘Wong,’ he breathed again in a high-pitched whisper.
Wong was preoccupied with the road, leaning over his steering wheel as if he could see better that way. ‘Have a bad feeling,’ he said to himself. ‘Tambi driving too fast.’
‘Joyce,’ said Sinha, louder and more urgently.
‘You okay?’ Joyce turned around.
She noticed that his face was set, his eyes were wide open and he was barely moving his lips.
‘I think I’ve found out why Martha and Gerald Legge got out of the car in the jungle,’ he said, very quietly. ‘It wasn’t to pet the lions. It was because they were not alone in the car. Joyce, I don’t want you to move a muscle. Stay calm when I tell you this. There’s a large snake in the footwell just under your seat. It is coiled up. At the moment its head is facing to the back of the car and it is looking at me.’
The young woman gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.
‘Wong, did you hear what I said?’ asked the astrologer.
Wong gave a single nod. He had a deep-rooted fear of snakes, and appeared to have stopped breathing. ‘Will turn around. Drive back to the gate.’ The geomancer peered out of the window. The path was only as wide as a single vehicle, and he would have to drive onto rough ground to change the direction of the car.
‘No,’ spat Sinha. ‘Don’t bump it around. It may get annoyed. I think just try and drive as smoothly as you can.’
‘But I must go out of this jungle. Then we can leave the car. We cannot leave the car if we stay here,’ said the geomancer, driving slowly and craning his neck forwards to find a flat section of ground where he could turn the car around. ‘There are hungry lions.’
‘Oooooh,’ yelped Joyce. ‘What’s it doing now? Can’t we get it out of the car? Is it still under me? Eeeeeeee.’
‘Bump is here,’ warned Wong, as the car approached a small pothole in the road.
Joyce lifted her legs off the ground as the car jerked slightly and righted itself.
‘It didn’t like that,’ whispered Sinha. ‘It hit its head on the underside of the seat. It’s looking ahead at where your feet were, Joyce. I think you had better just stop the car, Wong, as carefully as you can.’
‘Ooooooh,’ Joyce squealed. ‘Can you get rid of it? Ask Tambi. He’ll know how to get rid of it.’
‘Unless he put it here,’ said Wong, bringing the car to a gradual halt. ‘Aiyeeeya.’
‘We really, really have to get out of the car. This is a highly dangerous snake. It’s a king cobra,’ said Sinha. ‘It looks highly irritable, too. I think it has dyspepsia.’
Dubeya had also stopped his car, ahead of them. He started pressing his horn in a repeating two-beat pattern.
‘Why is he doing that?’ asked Joyce, her legs still in the air. ‘It’s not feeding time . . . is it?’
‘He has not put any fresh meat out,’ said Wong, with a gulp. ‘I think . . . maybe we are the fresh meat.’
Three adult lions appeared in the bushes and started to move directly towards the Proton.
‘Oh, why are they coming over here?’ Joyce squealed.
Their muscles rippling under their lean skin, the big cats padded calmly towards the car. They were large and heavy-looking, the stockiest one about 2 metres long. His head seemed huge. One had its tongue, a pink, rough-surfaced thing as long as a child’s arm, lolling out of its mouth.
‘They are coming here. Don’t know why,’ said the geomancer, a tremble in his voice.
The lions stopped, 3 or 4 metres from the car, looking with curiosity at the vehicle’s inhabitants. A large male lion licked its lips, and flicked his head to one side.
‘Oh dear God,’ prayed Joyce.
‘They’ve probably sprinkled our car with some blood or something. Maybe stuck some raw meat in the tyre wells,’ whispered Sinha.
‘Ooooooh, someone do something. Can you get rid of the snake, please? Can you call Tambi?’
‘He’s busy,’ said Wong, squinting at the multi-terrain vehicle ahead. ‘He is making videotape of us.’
There was a slight scraping sound from under Joyce’s seat as the snake moved.
She gave off a thin, high-pitched squeal like a badly tuned television.
‘The snake is moving, looking for something,’ said Sinha. ‘I don’t think it has had its dinner. We really cannot stay in the car. We have to leave. We have to get out. It’s in a bad mood, I can tell. I know snakes.’
‘Maybe I can drive slow-slow and we get out of the jungle?’ suggested Wong.
But looking around, he realised that it might be impossible. Tambi’s large car was blocking the path in front of them. The ground was uneven on both sides of the road, and there was no way to spin the car around without throwing the snake from side to side.
‘Maybe I drive backwards, very carefully,’ said the geomancer.
‘No. Just stay as you are,’ said Sinha. ‘The snake may calm down. At the moment it is moving forwards, very slowly.’
There was silence in the car. One of the lions gave a small roar, more a throat-clearing really. The snake could be heard shuffling slightly.
The young woman, who was breathing in short, sharp bursts like a galloping dog, turned pleading eyes to Wong. She whispered: ‘I really, really don’t like snakes. Do something. Please!’
Wong leaned over to the passenger seat. ‘Joyce. Take your music-thing out of your music machine. Put it in the car player.’
‘What?’ She reached into her handbag and fumbled with the CD player, eventually extracting its contents. She then tried to stretch over with the disc in her hand, but she lost her grip and it tumbled down into the footwell. ‘Ooops.’
‘Careful! You just missed its head,’ snapped Sinha.
‘You have any other disc? Loud one? Bad noise? Screaming, that sort of thing?’ asked Wong.
‘Yeah. Here, take this.’ She pulled another CD out of her bag and snapped its case open.
The geomancer reached over to take the shiny disc. He said to Sinha: ‘This music it makes me uncomfortable. I think it will make the lions mm-shu-fook too. But the snake. What will happen?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said the astrologer. ‘Snakes don’t have ears, really. Not like ours. But they do feel rhythms. They rather like them, I think. You know, this gives me an idea. Put the music on, Wong, loud as you can. It might scare the lions, but it will probably have a different effect on the snake.’
Wong pushed the disc into the car audio unit and wound the windows of the car down a few inches.
Joyce leaned forwards. ‘Erm, track three. Press that button with the arrow on and then press number three. That’s a real screamer.’
‘Like this?’ said Wong.
‘Yes. And that’s the vol—let me do it.’ She reached over with some difficulty, since her legs were still in the air, and slid the volume slider to maximum.
Seconds later, the harsh, jangly crash of a power chord from a rock guitar shook the car. This was followed by an unearthly scream which went on for four seconds. There was a thunderous explosion of drums. Then the other musicians jumped into the fray, and the car throbbed and shook with the sound of pounding drums, shrieking voices and fuzzy, wailing guitars.
‘Good, good,’ shouted Wong, as he saw the surprised lions suddenly spring away, moving some 25 or 30 metres from the car. ‘They don’t like it either. Have good taste.’
‘Never mind about that. What’s the snake under my chair doing?’ yelled Joyce, curling her legs tightly to her.
‘I think it likes it. It’s interested,’ shouted Sinha over the sound of the music. ‘Unfortunately it is moving towards you. I think there must be a speaker near you.’
‘Waaaaaaa,’ wailed Joyce as she saw the snake’s head for the first time, appearing in her footwell and sliding upwards.
She had her legs in the air, angled to the centre of the car. The snake slowly rose to the other side, heading towards the thudding bass speaker in the door.
‘It feels the rhythm,’ said Sinha. He suddenly opened his door, stepped out, snapped the radio aerial off the rear car wing, and started waving it in a figure of eight, trying to catch the attention of the snake. ‘Wong, lower the window. And tell me if the lions come back,’ he shouted.
‘You’re all right,’ hollared Joyce. ‘They’re miles away.’
Wong lowered the window on the y
oung woman’s side.
The dancing aerial eventually attracted the snake’s attention. Sinha gradually moved away from Joyce’s window, coaxing the snake to follow. Its head followed the movement of the aerial and then it started to move out of the car through the window. The young woman stopped breathing, frozen in a mixture of joy and terror as the snake’s long body wriggled past her.
Wong was gripped so tightly with horror that he could barely breathe. After a long and strained minute, the snake was partly out of the window. The music continued to shake the car.
‘Wong. Wait till I get its head higher, then shut the window,’ shouted Sinha. ‘It has been years since I even saw a snake charmer. I never imagined I would be doing it myself. Come on, baby. Come on, little serpent. That’s right. A bit more. A bit more. Keep on coming, that’s right. Ha!’
Joyce suddenly stiffened and pointed. The lions had started to move back towards the car.
‘Sinha. Lions are coming. You need to come in the car quickly please,’ said Wong.
‘I understand. Just a second or two more.’
He made pulling motions with the thin metal rod and several more centimetres of the snake flowed out of the window.
The lions were moving faster. Wong knew he couldn’t wait any longer. About half of the snake’s long body was out of the window. He pressed the ‘window up’ button. The glass started to slide upwards, its whirring sound masked by the harsh music. As it touched the snake’s body, the beast tried to withdraw at high speed back into the car.
Joyce screamed, seeing the cobra withdrawing sharply backwards, visualising it heading right into her lap. But the window continued rising, and caught the snake by a curve of its body behind its head. It struggled, but the glass kept rising, and it failed to get its head back through the gap. As its skull was crushed by the rising glass, its mid-section and tail suddenly started flailing backwards, slapping the young woman across her arms. Joyce shrieked again. Sinha jumped back into the car and slammed his door shut just as the lions reached the car in a few huge leaps.