Curse of the Pogo Stick

by Colin Cotterill

  The couple turned their heads to see Ajan Ming framed in the doorway like an old master with a Beretta. He nodded politely.

  “—we shall call person D.”

  The door to the maid’s room off the kitchen opened and through it walked Mrs. Bounlan and the worker from the cemetery. They bowed and seemed disappointed not to receive a round of applause.

  “Our final two cast members,” the Lizard said. “And I think we’ll use their stage names, Mr. C and Miss B. And of course there’s me, A—scriptwriter and extra. You know, it is terribly hard to remain humble when you’re as good as we are.”

  She strutted around her grounded fish, close enough for them to see the madness in her beady eyes.

  “You’ll notice how we were able to lure you just a little bit farther and farther from your allies, checking at each stage that you’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. Making certain that you hadn’t contacted anyone to pass on the information you’d learned.”

  B and C came to sit at the kitchen table while D held his position at the rear.

  “You were interesting adversaries for a little while— very well done with the bomb thing, by the way—but enough’s enough. All that’s left is to decide how unpleasantly you’re going to meet your respective ends. Of course, it will have to be something so terrible your super Dr. Siri turns somersaults when he sees your remains. An angry foe doesn’t think straight and we need him at his most vulnerable. We have something very special planned for him. It’s rather a pity that you won’t be around to see it.”

  She turned her back on them and reached into a drawer. When she turned around she was holding a rusty fish gutter in her gnarled hand.

  “Now, who’s first?”

  Dr. Siri had become very fond of his captors as they sang and joked and prepared for the burial of Mrs. Zhong. Given the amount of preparation involved and the serious absence of men who normally bore the brunt of the heavy work, it was reluctantly decided that the search for weak-minded Assistant Haeng would have to wait till late afternoon, perhaps even the following day. Siri was concerned for the life of his boss but there was nothing he could do. He knew his own lab assistant, Mr. Geung, had survived several nights alone in the jungle, but Mr. Geung was only mentally handicapped. He wasn’t a high-court judge, a man trained to interpret and assess and deliberate. Haeng had nothing practical in his arsenal. Every dictum in the world lined up one after the next wouldn’t stop a man from being eaten by a tiger. Geung would climb a tree. Even down to the last gulp, Haeng would be citing how unconstitutional it was to consume a government official. Heavens, the man had even managed to run away from his own soldiers. If he’d survived these last few days, Siri would be astonished. But death? That’s life.

  And death was the business of the morning. Much of that business was dedicated to shaking off the evil spirits that, given free access, would have made off with Auntie Zhong’s soul as soon as look at it. With the dark forces milling around the front door of the house like annoying press photographers, the girls surreptitiously cut a hole in the side wall and sneaked her out on a stretcher. The four bearers were dressed as men in hopes the gods wouldn’t notice the digression from tradition. They bore down the hill at a cracking pace, Siri hot on their heels, hard-pressed to keep up.

  The transvestite stretcher bearers would jog off in one direction, giving the impression they were heading directly for the grave. Then, Nhia, the head pallbearer, would shout, “Left” or “Right” in a basso voice and the team would suddenly change direction. In soccer, this tactic was known as “throwing a dummy.” Any pursuing spirit not fooled back at the house would be going so fast that the change of tack would hopefully send it careening on down the hillside like a puppy on waxed parquet. Just to make sure, the tactic was repeated six or seven times before they finally headed west—the ultimate direction of every burial.

  By the time he’d worked out this ruse, Siri was so out of breath he sat on the hillside and watched the entourage zigzag down the hill. With a little common sense he was able to work out their final destination and arrived there at roughly the same time as Auntie Zhong. Dia was there playing the departing dirge on a kwee. She performed with such skill her manly face assumed an air of divine beauty. The other women stood around in their finest costumes, each wearing a tiara of silver coins. A buffalo was tethered to a post near the grave and Elder Long crouched, rattling the divining horns in a large Christmas Special Hershey Bar jar. As soon as the body arrived and was lowered onto a temporary platform, he emptied the horns onto the ground. Their positioning would tell the assembled guests whether Auntie Zhong accepted the buffalo as a parting gift. As it was too dangerous to travel between villages at this time, the assembled guests amounted to the women, Siri, and a few goats.

  Eight times Long cast the horns and eight times his wife rejected the buffalo. He walked over to the body, which was dressed in its very best costume—a pleated skirt that had taken six months to weave, dye, and embroider, a skirt that would be worn only once.

  “You old bat,” he said playfully. “Cantankerous to the last. It’s all we have. You know I’d love to sacrifice you a whole herd of cattle but we’re at the end of the livestock. Perhaps you’d like us to bring your father over and offer him to the gods?”

  Siri turned to Bao. “Her father?”

  “The white dog,” she said. “It arrived in the village one day. Hmong women are naturally suspicious of strange dogs but Zhong was certain the animal was her dead father returned from heaven. He’d been cruel to dogs all his life so she believed the gods had punished him like this. From that day till her death she spoiled the animal rotten.”

  On the ninth cast of the horns, the old lady relented and the buffalo was condemned to death. Chia walked over to Siri carrying an enormous ax and handed it to him. His heart stopped. Siri, for all his faults, could not kill. Since he’d become so well acquainted with the afterlife, he’d found it impossible—mosquitoes and small underfoot insects not included—to take a life. He couldn’t even bring himself to strangle a chicken or allow a fish to drown in air. But he was the only male guest and the heavens and the middle earth were counting on him to make Zhong’s transition complete. He looked at the proud old beast. He really didn’t want to be haunted for all eternity by a vengeful buffalo.

  With the ax behind his back, he walked to the tethered animal, who chomped happily on the fresh grass around her hooves. She was probably thinking what a pleasant day out this was—music, a show, and a meal. She couldn’t wait to tell the pigs when she got back. Siri knew he had no choice. He prayed to the ancestors for a way out but nothing was immediately forthcoming. So he lofted his ax and stood before the buffalo, who suddenly realized all eyes were on her. With a beard of grass hanging from her mouth she looked up at the old man in front of her. In his hand she saw the hoisted ax and, through whatever process an ox makes connections to past events, something seemed to register in her slow brain. And when she realized what was about to happen, her heart, already heavy with hay, gave out. She keeled to one side, took one more chew of her grass, and passed away. To Elder Long it was confirmation. One more miracle. Yeh Ming had felled a buffalo with his mind. He became even more convinced that the trouble that haunted their village could be cured.

  The interment that followed went according to plan. Yer, playing a pipe, and Phia, carrying a burning brand, led the bearers to the grave site. When the pipe ceased its lament, all the women screamed, laughed, and ran as fast as they could back to the hut, leaving Long and Siri alone with the body.

  “What happened?” Siri asked.

  “Women aren’t allowed to see what happens next,” Long told him. “How’s your back?”

  The two old men lifted Zhong’s stretcher and carried her to an open coffin embedded in the ground. They laid her inside, broke up the bier, and put it on top of the body. While Siri burned incense and set light to the spirit papers, Long fired an arrow from a consecrated crossbow across his dead wife. He s
aid the final prayers, they put the lid on the coffin, and covered it with earth. Siri was feeling appropriately solemn until Long smiled and slapped him on the back.

  “One down, three more to go,” he said. “Let’s hope the others outlast me.”

  “The other what?”

  “I’m married to three more of those girls, Yeh Ming. I only wish I had the energy and the years to enjoy them all.”

  Siri laughed. “I assume Auntie Zhong knew about that.”

  “It was her idea. She would have had me marry all of them but the rest share our surname. They’d lost their men. I was the only bull left in the herd. Zhong was only too pleased at the thought of having me out of her nest for a few nights a week. But I wouldn’t go. Refused point-blank. Not while she was alive. We’d been together fifty years. Fifty years, Yeh Ming. You can’t suddenly be unfaithful after all that time, can you now?”

  Siri dwelled for a moment on his lifetime marriage to Boua. He’d felt the same way. “You can’t,” he said. “I’ll miss her.” “She’ll be glad to hear that.” “But, now she’s gone …”

  Betrothed to a Devil

  There had been a swine genocide that morning. Every pig in the village had been sacrificed to the spirit of Auntie Zhong. That meant pork for lunch, and buffalo which was chewy but it was packed with a lot of vitamins and life-enhancing minerals. The funeral lunch was subdued, but more from the exhaustion of the preparations than out of sadness. There was nothing to be somber about. Assuming the gods hadn’t noticed the female pallbearers, all the steps had been laid for Zhong’s journey to the afterlife. She’d had a good send-off and everyone was happy, not to mention a little envious that she was on her way to a better place.

  After the meal, Dia and Chia dressed in their prettiest clothes and set off in search of weak-minded Assistant Haeng. General Bao explained that there were many PL troops out looking for the abductees and if the women were to run into a patrol dressed in army fatigues and carrying weapons, they’d be shot on sight. But in their costumes, searching for roots and twigs, they had a slightly better chance. The two scouts knew the hills far better than the soldiers so they weren’t expecting to be caught by surprise. Siri and Bao watched them climb onto two sprightly ponies and waved them off.

  “And you won’t be going with them?” Siri asked.

  The little general hadn’t changed out of her man’s clothes from the funeral but the sight of her still filled his heart.

  “No, Yeh Ming. I have a lot to tell you. Come.”

  They began to walk toward the trail that led up the mountain. “We thought the jumping stick was on our side at last but it didn’t protect us from this new evil. There were fifteen families here in the village. Three different clans but we were one unit. All friends. All caring for each other like one family. We lost our men and then we lost our war. There wasn’t much hope for us to stay here. Women and children and old people aren’t going to survive in an exposed place like this. The Hmong scouts told us your army will soon be getting new helicopters and bombers from the Soviets. Once that happens, even the most secluded village will be overrun. Most of our friends have left already.”

  “On the big march?”

  “Yes, but the strongest of us stayed behind to help Long and Zhong. They refused to leave without their daughter.”

  “She’s one of you seven?”

  “No. You haven’t seen her. She doesn’t show herself to many.”

  “The house beside the trail?”

  Bao nodded. “My father used to tell me of some evil presence beyond the peak of this mountain. It allowed us access to the water but we were advised to keep away from the hut and the jungle behind it. That’s why we were upset when Chamee moved up here. She stays there alone. Her story is more tragic than any other. She was fourteen, quite beautiful, and untouched by any man. Long and his wife had ensured that much. They wanted her to have a special marriage, but, above all, they wanted her to wait till the war was over so she didn’t end up marrying a corpse. But we think it was because she was unspoiled that she was such a target. A beautiful virgin. What spirit could resist that?”

  “She was possessed?”

  “Much worse than that, Yeh Ming. She’s betrothed.”

  “To?”

  “I cannot say.”

  They were nearing the lonely house and all of Siri’s instincts began to twang just as they had on his first trip up to the spring. He stopped and took Bao’s hand.

  “You know?” he said. “That old ‘we can’t speak its name’ routine doesn’t work at all. That was all made up by storytellers to scare little children. Let’s assume that I can take the pressure—spiritually. If it’s a curse I know I can pretty much handle it. You have to tell me everything.”

  She looked into his eyes and knew he was sincere. She lowered her voice and a tremble ran through her words.

  “It is Moo’er. He is the illegitimate nephew of Xor, the thunder demon. He keeps a harem on earth and seeds them all.”

  “Long’s daughter’s expecting a demon?”

  He obviously sounded cynical because Bao cut him in half with her evil eye.

  “Shame on you, Yeh Ming, for doubting such a thing.”

  “It’s not that I doubt, sweet general. It’s only that I’ve never heard of a devil having the … equipment to achieve such a feat.”

  “Then see with your own eyes.”

  She paced off ahead leaving Siri no choice but to scurry after. There was no doubt in his mind that some discontent haunted the area around the old house yet he would have expected demonic impregnation to register more violently on his senses. The closer they came to the house, the warmer his amulet felt against the skin of his chest, but even as they stood no more than five yards from the lattice fence everything seemed calm.

  Bao called out, “Chamee, a great shaman has come to see you.”

  There was no response.

  “How do you know it’s actually Moo’er and not just some other randy demon?” Siri asked.

  “He told us who he was when he first came.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll see.” She shouted again. “Yeh Ming has come all the way from the past to exorcise your demon, Chamee.”

  They stood waiting for some reaction but heard only the civets laughing in the trees overhead and the distant sound of explosions. Siri was beginning to wonder whether even Chamee was a figment of Bao’s imagination when the door to the house opened slowly and a vision appeared. A young girl, even more beautiful than Bao, walked from the shadow of the house and stood in the sunlight that filtered through the leaves above. Her hair was in wild Rastafarian knots, and insomnia had char-coaled black rings around her eyes. The effect was exotic and mysteriously frightening. She wore a sheer white slip, no more than a woven cobweb, and her enormous stomach heaved against the cloth. Siri was astounded at the size of it. There were no hidden cushions to magnify the condition. The shift clung to her like lint and left no secrets. She carried the largest child he’d ever seen in his life.

  “This is what frightens Long,” Bao whispered. “If the demon child is born, his daughter will be split in two. And then Moo’er will claim his offspring and the spirit of his bride and drag them down to his world. This is why Long went to so much trouble to bring you. She hasn’t eaten for a month. We bring her food but she ignores it.”

  Siri had seen a good many inexplicable phenomena of late, but in spite of his spiritual afflictions, he was still a logical, scientific man—not to mention a cynic. He’d had dealings with the Phibob, the malevolent spirits of the forest who hounded him. And he’d realized, all too late, that the only real damage they could inflict was on his mind. That didn’t make them any less dangerous but it did give him an advantage. Evil, he had come to believe, was controllable as long as man had the strength of will to believe in himself. He had never actually run across demons before but he was prepared to put his theory to the test.

  He walked to the fence and, by working it bac
k and forth, began to loosen the central post that held it up.

  “Yeh Ming, I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bao said.

  “Don’t worry, my general. So far, it’s no more than a fence.”

  Chamee stood still in front of her door, a small fixed smile on her face. She seemed to be urging him on. Her hands caressed her huge belly like a fortune-teller with a glass globe. The fence, being symbolic, wasn’t hard to pull down. It fell in front of Siri and he stepped over it. He heard a low growl from inside the house, neither human nor animal.

  “I’m just a doctor,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. I want to take a wee look at that baby of yours.”

  He stepped into the tunnel of vines and roots that hung down from the old trees on either side of the path and as he did so he felt a kind of force. The area seemed to be alive. A strange tingle ran through his skeleton like ant bites, not painful but uncomfortable. He continued forward, swimming his arms through the vines, but he was disoriented. He stood still for a moment to clear his head but the pins and needles made his legs numb and turned into a dull ache.

  He looked up at the round-bellied virgin in time to hear her speak. She was still eight yards away but her voice was loud.

  “Keep coming, old man.”

  He watched her lovely lips move but the sounds they uttered were deep—not possibly the voice of a teenaged Hmong girl.

  “Keep coming,” she said again. The voice shocked Siri and put him on the defensive.

  “You obviously don’t realize who I am,” he said with more bravado than real confidence. “I am Yeh Ming, the shaman.”

  His body was shaking like a tin roof in a monsoon. His toes curled. He clenched his fists and took another step. He tried to calm her with his words.

  “Come on, dear. I’ll just take a look at you and then I’ll leave you alone. You need a doctor. Look at the size of you.”

  “Then come on,” she said, curling her finger toward him. “I’m waiting.” Her voice was even deeper now, a frightening double-bass-string twang.