Candle in the Attic Window

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Who told you?” she asked, in her slightly nosey, high tone. “I didn’t hear anyone mention it at lunch.”

  “You know how I walked in and had the driver drop off my stuff?” I nodded towards the small bags crowding a corner. “I saw the witch on the road and she told me. Probably couldn’t believe her luck to deliver some bad news.”

  “That poor woman.” My grandmother suddenly looked her age, thin, silver hair clinging to her sweaty forehead like spider silk.

  “She –” I began to say, when something the witch had said finally sank through my heat and emotion-clouded consciousness. “The witch said something to me about tonight, about a patient she had that wouldn’t last until dawn. And two men, city-men, shared the car in with me and didn’t say a word, and then I saw them waiting at her hut.”

  Grandmother clicked her teeth and reached for my glass, but I snatched it up and drained the last of the bright-orange, fibrous juice. “You shouldn’t meddle in her business.”

  “Who’s meddling? She invited me herself, to watch whatever mummery she’s got planned, and there’s no chance I’m going to sit here while she cooks another patient. I’ve got some aspirin in my bag and I’ll bet my magic little pills will do more than her exorcism, regardless of the malady.”

  I offered her my empty glass and she snatched it; her eyes narrowed in the angry expression I had missed so much.

  “You’re not going, and that is that. I saw those men who got out of the cab, and I saw them yesterday when they brought in their sick friend. They’re Rouge, girl, and you are minding your business under this roof tonight.”

  “How do you know they’re Rouge?” I asked, knowing full well she would not have said as much if it were not true. You do not lose a daughter and son-in-law to monsters and then invoke their title flippantly. Grandmother turned away, rather than answering my question, and looked out the screened window into the dense greenery swelling up behind our house.

  “Pho thinks it may storm later,” she said, eventually, and although the obedient part of me willed my churlish mouth to be silent, I would not let it rest.

  “A sick man is a sick man,” I said evenly. “No matter who he is or what he’s done, it’s my duty to help. That witch said whoever it was wouldn’t live the night and, unless I examine him, I don’t doubt it. I didn’t spend all those years away from you to shirk the very responsibilities I have accepted.”

  “Please,” she whispered, sitting back down across from me and taking my hands in her own gnarled fingers. I winced at the sight of the arthritis-swollen digits, realizing how much agony writing me all those letters had been. “You’re old enough I won’t try ordering you about, but listen to me – she will do everything in her power to save him and if she can’t, then I know what will come next. They brought a black cat, didn’t they?”

  At this, my scorching skin went Pacific and my mouth became dry and clammy. One of the men had an occasionally purring pet carrier between his legs on the long drive, a detail I had found curious and then forgotten. I felt her sweaty palms shaking against the backs of my hands, and her tongue flicked nervously over her teeth. I had never seen her look so uncomfortable in all my life, and this unnerved me even more than her comment about the cat.

  “I don’t know if it was black,” I said, suddenly curious as to the speed of my pulse. “But they brought one, yes ... is she going to sacrifice it or something?”

  “Bah,” Grandmother released my hands with a smile. “The cat will be fine and they’ll get exactly what they deserve, Rouge bastards.”

  “I’m going,” I said again, although my voice did not sound so steady, anymore. “I told you; it’s my responsibility. I can’t start my residency knowing I ignored an ailing person, even if he’s Pol Pot.”

  She spit at the hated name and cursed quietly, immediately cleaning up the smear of spittle with the hem of her skirt. “I won’t tell you again, Malis; stay away from that hut. She’s half-ghost, herself, and those men are all-demon. What can a doctor do for devils and ghosts?”

  “I’m going,” I whispered resolutely, growing ever more nervous at the superstitious turn the conversation had taken. This was the woman who had chastised me a thousand times for calling the witch a witch, after all. “I don’t have a choice, Grandmother. This is who I am.”

  “Why won’t you listen to me? That sick man, he came from here. He’s the one who took your mother and father! And you want to help him?” Grandmother trembled all over and wagged her finger at me. “A good doctor, yes, but what kind of daughter, then?”

  “I –” had nothing to say to that, nothing at all. Never in my life had I dreamed a face could be attached to the end my unremembered parents had come to. That I would be put in such a melodramatic moral quandary struck me then, as it does now, as a contrivance more fit for a Thai soap opera than a life. Maybe that is why I recovered so quickly and told her, “I’m still going.”

  “It’ll be all right,” I heard my grandfather say. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  Grandmother wearily closed her eyes. I snapped my head around and there he was in the doorway, smiling softly like he always did when we were having a spat and he interrupted. Light-headed and wondering why everyone had tricked me into thinking he had died, it took me an instant to notice that his left arm terminated in a wide-palmed hand instead of a knotted stump. Then I did what any grounded, logical young doctor would do in my situation – I screamed and fainted.

  When I came back around, they were arguing quietly and rain rattled the house. Most of the details of that afternoon are lost to me, but, somehow, I made peace with the impossibility of the situation. When I recovered, I inspected my grandfather with the sort of stoic practicality that only absolute shock could grant to one in my position. He appeared identical to how he had in life, khaki pants and a wide-brimmed hat his only attire. With a slight grimace of effort, he could pass through solid objects, clothes and all, but my trembling fingers were able to settle on his frigid skin. At this realization, I threw my arms around him and cried.

  The rain slowed and finally withdrew, fog and twilight conspiring to provide a more appropriate atmosphere for the evening. Grandfather ate bowl after bowl of rice, and both Grandmother and I politely pretended not to notice that he kept a larger bowl underneath him as he ate to catch the food that fell through him onto the floor, so that only the same two bowls of rice were consumed over and over. Grandfather eventually set down his bowl and Grandmother joked that the reason for his insatiable appetite was his extraction – Grandfather had fled Southern China when Mao’s followers descended on his family farm like locusts, and emigrated to Cambodia to avoid the brewing war and famine in his homeland. He often lamented his ill luck in that regard, and now was no exception. Finally, the happy, surreal reunion came to a close, as the fog blotted out the setting sun, and Grandfather and I rose to leave.

  My grandfather pecked my grandmother on the cheek as we descended to the bog of a road. When I later realized they both suspected they were seeing one another for the last time, I marveled at the brevity of their goodbye. Then again, few couples are afforded the reprieve that they were and they surely knew this. The jungle inhaled us into its misty belly, and I would have lost both my way and my grandfather had he not taken my hand in his. My fingers crept reflexively to his wrist, even though I knew nothing pulsed there.

  “Malis,” he said, as we walked, “while you were asleep, Jorani told me you were planning on interfering tonight.”

  “Not interfering,” I said defensively. “Helping. There’s a difference.”

  “You think you can do more than Theary?”

  “Theary?” I had forgotten the witch’s real name. “Oh, yes. I hear she rubbed you down with a nice chili oil liniment.”

  “That didn’t burn as bad as the coals,” he laughed. “But look at me now! I owe my current condition to her skill. I approve of your work, but can the medicine you learned perform as well as hers?”

  He had m
e there and he knew it. The damp, cold mud filled the sneakers I had foolishly forgotten to leave behind, but otherwise, the evening walk was as pleasant as any we had taken before ... before he died, I made myself think. The ethereal road vanished before us. I nearly panicked at the thought that I had somehow died and he was escorting me to whatever lay beyond.

  “The sick man,” Grandfather said, his voice low and sad, “Jorani’s told you who he is?”

  “She said he was the one who sent my parents to Tuol Sleng.”

  “I went there, after the Viets took over.” His voice sounded harsh in the way it always did after he had been looking at my mother’s pictures. “They called it a prison. We knew then, but to see it – oh, Malis, can you imagine? To do such things to other people? And for what?”

  I knew of no answer, nor did he expect one. I squeezed his hand and we came to a stop, the miasma thinning around the mouth of the trail to the witch’s hut. He rubbed his eyes and then squeezed my shoulder; I felt his phantasmal tears dampen my neck.

  “He grew up here,” Grandfather went on. “That man and your mother played together, like you and Phirun. I never cared for him – he was cruel and cowardly. After the war, when your father came here and met your mother, I knew that little coward would cause a stink. But how could I know? How? We all deserved peace. The coward joined up right away, gone from the village overnight. Your father returned to Phnom with your mother and then you were born. By then, things were getting bad ....”

  He stared past me into the mist, haunted by his own ghosts. When he finally continued, his voice had steadied. “They were going to come and stay with us, rather than risk being sent to a farm, risk being separated. Then he showed up at their apartment, and I know it was him because your uncle was visiting, recognized him through the window and knew enough to go out the backdoor with you. Then they took your mother and father to that hell, and your uncle took you to us. That is why I could not leave, yet, Malis.”

  “What?” My own eyes were blurry, as much from confusion as from the details of the story I had never before heard in its entirety. “Why can’t you leave?”

  “I can,” he corrected himself, his voice harder, sharper, “but I won’t. Not until I see what happens to that monster who took my daughter.”

  “But how could you know he’d come back? And so soon?”

  “Soon? I died over a year ago, Malis.” He smiled at my guilty frown. “And I knew he’d be back because he’s a coward and, no matter what faith they might profess, all cowards fear death. I knew he’d do everything to stave off his end and that would mean coming home. He knows how powerful Theary is; everyone who lives here does.”

  This last seemed to have the air of reproach in it, but I felt far too unnerved to defend my beliefs. Perhaps sensing this reluctance on my part to acknowledge the witch’s prowess, he adopted a different strategy. As he spoke, he again took my hand and we began threading our way between the hazy trees towards our destination.

  “You know I’m not some traditionalist stooge,” Grandfather said. “I’ve always respected your decision to practice the new medicine. But don’t you have a responsibility to respect the wishes of your patient?”

  “Of course,” I allowed. “But if they don’t know what’s best for them, sometimes a doctor must make a decision for them.”

  “The coward’s dying,” Grandfather said, almost happily. “Like most of his compatriots – like those two lackeys who came here with him – he’s been taken into the fold of the new government. No arrest, no tribunal. Don’t you think a man in such a position, if he desired it, could receive better western treatment than a young doctor without her tools in the middle of the jungle?”

  “I suppose ....”

  “Those folk at the clinic helped me enough that I know the good your stuff can do. But the Rouge spit on your learning. Many less might have died had they not outlawed any but Theary’s way, for hers is a special sort of medicine and requires more skill than you might think. So this patient, if you must call him such, this dying, murdering coward, he has come all the way out here to receive treatment far different from any you might provide. And yet, you insist you must interfere?”

  I stayed quiet, the only sound my sneakers pulling in the mud and slipping on roots. I wanted to tell him how badly I had wished for such an excuse not to even look at this man, to stay inside my warm childhood home and bore my grandmother, and have her bore me, until we both passed out from exhaustion. But I was prouder then and, even believing as I must have that I either dreamt or hallucinated the ghost leading me deeper into the jungle, I did not give him the satisfaction of an answer. We both knew, though, and as the lights of her hut appeared like the eyes of a smoke-wreathed demon, we approached the side window instead of the front door.

  A stool waited for us in the mud beneath the window. From within came the chanting of the witch. I slipped out of my filthy sneakers and socks, rather than risk slipping from my perch, and stepped onto the stool. Grandfather floated higher off the ground to watch beside me. I felt a strange giddiness, as though I were a child peeking in on a secret adult activity.

  The heat, the stink, and the light pouring out of the room blinded me, but when my eyes adjusted, I almost laughed at the ridiculous sight before me. Prostrate and still on a bed, in the centre of the one-room hut, lay a man swaddled in damp bandages from head to toe. Three other figures danced around him in pursuit of a trotting black cat. They followed it around the room, but my attention shifted to the patient, who was not breathing. The witch and the two men from my car-ride goaded the cat towards the patient, but the cat seemed intent on avoiding the man and made for our window. Before I could duck out of sight, Grandfather leaned forward and the cat jumped backwards, preferring the chase to confronting a ghost in the window. The witch saw us, even though the men did not, and she smiled.

  Then one of the men startled the cat from the other direction, and it deftly leapt onto a chair, only to have the other man direct it back towards the bed. At this, the cat dived over what I now took to be a corpse and the two men cheered, their faces bright and sweaty. Glancing with confusion at Grandfather, I saw him grinning. After another few minutes, the cat again found itself on a chair and again pounced over the corpse, and at this, Grandfather floated behind me and gripped my shoulders tightly.

  The two men exchanged wary looks and cautiously approached the corpse, and the witch put herself between them and the door. I leaned closer, as did Grandfather, as did the two men. Then the corpse sat upright on the bed and I jumped, falling backwards off the stool. Grandfather smiled even wider and beckoned me back up, whispering, “You’ll miss it; look quick!”

  Inside the house, the men were shouting and I quickly righted the stool, my legs trembling and my brow drenched at the knowledge that all my childhood fears of the witch were justified. I clambered back up, soaked in mud and puddle-water, and saw one of the men on the floor, the risen corpse squatting over him. The other man had a machete and wrestled with the witch in the doorway. I realized he must have cut her when blood began soaking the neck of her dress. I was so transfixed by the sight that it took the corpse bellowing a wordless, terrible cry to startle me into action.

  Even if my grandfather’s presence beside me had left any doubts that the dead can return, the scream of that bandaged corpse now straddling his fellow would have dispelled them. I had put in several eighteen-hour shifts in the emergency room, and heard every manner of sound the human body can produce, and that shriek dwarfed them all in its fury and pain. The sound made me sick to my stomach. Then the man underneath the crouched corpse gave a very human scream of his own. Before I could move to help, the corpse brought its mouth down on the pinned man’s throat and ended the wail by biting through every major artery in his neck. Blood jetted over them both, Grandfather cackling with glee beside me.

  The cast-iron stomach I thought I possessed revolted at the sight and I stumbled down from the stool just as the bile rushed up. I hunched o
ver in the shadow of the witch’s hut and vomited as I heard the second man scream from within, Grandfather now taunting them through the open window. Then Grandfather went quiet and I felt his chill touch on my neck, even as my stomach projected more mango and acid into the widening puddle.

  “Malis,” Grandfather said, his mirth suddenly replaced with an edgy desperation. “Run home, now!”

  Shuddering from my convulsing stomach and the scene repeating itself in my head, I somehow managed to stand up. Instead of fleeing, however, I shakily got back onto the stool. That idiot pride in my recent graduation would not allow me to leave without first ensuring none could benefit from my ministrations, the fractured state of my psyche such that the horrors of the night paled beside the thought of failing to uphold my convictions. Or so I told myself; perhaps I was just too scared or fascinated to run.

  The man the corpse had bitten bled out on the floor next to a toppled chair, his head nearly severed from his vicious neck wound. The witch – Theary, I corrected myself – lay twitching in her doorway. Beside her, the man with the machete she had fought lay sprawled, his head snapped all the way around. The risen corpse had vanished and then I heard footsteps in the mud rounding the hut to my left.

  I slowly turned, fear bringing my nausea back with renewed vigour, and then Grandfather’s frigid fingers slapped my cheek and passed partially through, saliva freezing to my teeth. The blow invigourated me to flight, just as the murderous corpse rounded the hut and saw me. Then it and I screamed together as I tumbled from the stool and ran. Grandfather was shouting, and before focusing on the mist-masked trees blocking my way, I saw him drift between me and the pursuing corpse. My bare feet sank to the ankles with each step, but I propelled myself faster and faster through the mist, wet leaves slicing and slapping as I ran into the night jungle.