More Short Fuses

by Stephen Leather

  I thought she was crazy, because she admitted that she’d never seen the children or heard them. But sometimes they would tickle her and often last thing at night she would feel them kiss her neck just before she fell asleep.

  It all sounded bloody weird, truth be told, but then the Thais can be funny about the supernatural. All the bars have little shrines in them and the girls also do the wai thing where they put their hands together as if they’re praying whenever they pass it. They’re always telling stories about seeing ghosts in their dreams and the ghosts giving them lottery numbers and stuff. Anyway, I ate my McMuffin and then gave Nid another seeing to and then I went back to my hotel.

  I couldn’t get Nid out of my head and so for the next three nights I went back to her bar and paid her barfine. Took her out to dinner, went to a movie once, took her to a Thai disco, and each time we ended up back at her place. She said she didn’t want me wasting my money on a short-time hotel. To be honest, the sex was never as good as it had been on the first night, but it was still pretty darn good.

  I didn’t get pinched again, and I never heard the ghost kids laugh, but every now and then I’d get a tickling sensation on my ear or on the back of my neck. Sometimes, on the way to her room, Nid would get me to stop off at the 7-11 to buy some sweets to put on the shrine. She said that would keep the kids happy and make them like me. Bloody ridiculous, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  The day before I was due to fly back to London with Jules, I barfined Nid and took her to see a movie at Terminal 21 and then for dinner at an Italian restaurant. We drank a bottle of red wine between us and then we went and hung out at her bar for a couple of hours and I was spending money like there was no tomorrow, knocking back shots with Nid and three of her mates. I must have blown the best part of two hundred quid but I had a ball. I was more than a bit drunk when we got back to Nid’s place. I don’t remember having sex but I guess we must have. I do remember our conversation, though, as we lay in her little bed with our arms around each other. ‘They want to go with you,’ she said.

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘Nok and Som. They want you to be their dad.’

  I remember laughing. ‘You said they didn’t talk to you,’ I said.

  ‘I know what they want,’ she said. ‘They want to go to England with you. Can they?’

  It was crazy, right? Two ghost kids wanted to come and live with me? I remember laughing and saying of course and she asked me if I was sure and I said yes. I think I passed out then.

  I woke up to find Nid sitting on the bed with a warm McMuffin and a hot coffee. I asked her if she wanted to go to the airport with me but she said that she’d be too sad to say goodbye which I thought was sweet. Anyway, I had my breakfast, had another roll on the bed with Nid, then headed back to the hotel to pack. Fifteen hours later, I was getting my bags at Heathrow. Jules had said he was off to Pattaya but I made him promise not to barfine Nid.

  That was a Sunday and on Monday I was working, my adventures in Thailand already feeling like a dream. I called Nid but her phone was off.

  It was Monday night when things started to get a bit weird. I was watching TV when books started falling off my shelves. And the tap kept turning on and off in the kitchen. And I started to hear laughing. At first I thought the laughing was coming from next door but I pressed my ear against the party wall and couldn’t hear anything. I thought I was imagining things but when I went to bed something kept pulling the duvet off me. It was the kids, I realised. Som and Nok. I know it sounds crazy, but they were in the flat, I was sure. I got up, switched on the lights, and phoned Nid. Her phone was still off. I went back to bed but I didn’t get much sleep because the duvet was constantly pulled off me.

  The next day I phoned Nid but, you’ve guessed it, her phone was off. She hadn’t set up a voicemail, it just rang out. That lunchtime I went to a toy shop and bought a small teddy bear and a soldier, then I went to a newsagents and bought a couple of chocolate bars. Back at the flat, I put them on the bed in the spare bedroom. ‘They’re for you,’ I said, feeling like an idiot because I was talking to myself. Except it worked – that night I slept like a log. In fact everything was fine for the next three nights, but then the duvet-pulling started again. I bought some more toys and sweets and it stopped.

  The following Saturday I picked up a girl in my local pub, a fit blonde hairdresser called Dawn. Cute as a button but not very bright, which is just how I like my English birds. She’d downed half a dozen Bacardi Breezers, most of which I’d paid for, and I’d to pretty much carry her the last few yards to my flat. Dawn was well up for it, and as soon as I’d shut the front door she had her top off and she left a trail of clothes down the hallway on the way to the bedroom. We kissed and cuddled for a few minutes then she stripped off my clothes and climbed on top of me. I was just reaching for the condoms when she screamed like a banshee and jumped off the bed. ‘Something pinched me!’ she shouted.

  ‘You’ve had a bit to drink,’ I said.

  She twisted around and showed me red marks on her backside. ‘Something bloody well pinched me, I’m not making it up,’ she said.

  I tried to hold her but she wouldn’t have it, she put her clothes back on and rushed out. I was fairly drunk so I just hit the sack and was asleep within minutes. It was only the next day that I realised what had happened. It was the kids. They’d obviously taken a dislike to Dawn and made their feelings known. I went out and bought them some more toys and sweets and stood in the middle of the spare room and said that it was my flat and that if I wanted to bring a girl back they would have to bloody well behave themselves.

  The following week I was out with some mates and after a few drinks we hit a curry place and there were four really fit girls at the next table. One of them was a student, Jemma her name was, and she was high on something, ecstasy probably. We paid our bills at the same time and somehow we ended up back in my flat. I’d had a fair bit to drink so I’m not sure what my chat-up line was, but to be honest she was so high I don’t think it mattered what I said. We had a few beers in the flat and then she starts snogging me on the couch. She was just about to take off my jeans when she screamed and leapt to her feet. ‘What the hell was that?’ she asked.

  I asked her what had happened, but I already knew. Something had pinched her backside, she said. Pinched her hard. And as both my hands were on her breasts, she was sure it wasn’t me. She looked under the bed, and while she was bent over she screamed again. The second pinch had been harder, so hard that it left a red mark. She demanded to know what was going on and I lied and said I didn’t know, and with that she stormed out of the flat.

  It was the ghost kids, I was sure of that. I gave them a piece of my mind, cursing them for messing with my life, but I didn’t get a reaction. But later that night, when I was asleep, the duvet kept slipping off me and falling onto the floor. Every time it happened I woke up and so the following morning I was dog-tired. I realised I had to do something because the ghost kids were making my life a misery. I needed to talk to Nid. I needed her to take the kids back.

  I called up a guy I knew who lived in Thailand. Robin, his name was, he used to be manager in the NHS but he’d taken early retirement and now he runs a couple of ladyboy bars in Nana Plaza. Bit of a funny bugger, I have to say, but he spoke reasonable Thai and I couldn’t think of anyone else who could help. I gave him Nid’s address and he went around to talk to her. Except that she wasn’t there. Apparently she’d moved out the day after I’d flown back to London. Robin spoke to the neighbours but no one seemed to know for sure where she’d gone. One said Phuket, another said Singapore. It looked to me as if she’d done a runner. She’d dumped the ghost kids on me and gone somewhere where they couldn’t find her.

  I needed advice on what to do. I Googled “How to deal with ghost kids” but didn’t find anything helpful, but I did turn up a Thai monastery in, off all places, Wimbledon. I got the Tube to Wimbledon station and a bus and then walked half a mile or so through
suburban streets until I reached the wat. That’s what they call a temple, the Thais. A wat. I thought it was funny the first time I heard it. What’s a wat? What? Yeah, I guess it’s not really funny.

  You walk down a narrow lane to get to the temple, and it’s a little piece of Thailand, a genuine Thai temple with lots of monks wearing saffron robes. It’s known as the Buddhapadipa Temple, pristine white walls with a red and gold arched roof, and set in four acres of gardens with ponds and trees.

  There were a couple of young monks sitting on a bench talking and I went over and introduced myself. One of them spoke fairly good English and once I’d told him what my problem was. He had me take off my shoes and then he took me inside and down a corridor to a small windowless room where an old monk was sitting on the floor. I say old, he was ancient, more than eighty, probably more than ninety, totally bald and his skin so thin that you could practically see through it. The young monk knelt down on the floor and motioned for me to do the same. I’ve never been a fan of sitting on the floor, but the Thais seem to prefer it to chairs and sofas. The old monk’s arms and legs were stick thin and his fingernails and teeth had yellowed with age, but his eyes were bright and his thin bloodless lips curled into a smile as the young monk explained in Thai why I had come to the temple. When the young monk had finished, the old monk nodded and said something in Thai. I heard the phrase ‘Phi Dek’ several times.

  ‘They are ghost children,’ said the young monk eventually. ‘In Thai we say Phi Dek.’

  ‘They’re real?’

  The young monk nodded. ‘Oh yes. Very real. And they like you. They like you a lot.’

  ‘I’m sure they do,’ I said.

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ said the young monk. He nodded at the old monk. ‘Phra Sarawut has spoken to them.’

  ‘Spoken to them? What do you mean?’

  The young monk smiled patiently. ‘Phra Sarawut says that the children are here with you and that they are very happy to come to the temple.’

  My knees were burning but I was barely aware of the pain. ‘He can see them?’

  The young monk nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can you?’

  The monk smiled and shook his head. ‘No. But I am sure they are with you. Phra Sarawut says the girl is called Nok. She is eight years old. Her brother is Som. He is two years younger.’

  That knocked me for six. I hadn’t mentioned their names or their ages, but the old monk knew. ‘Ask Phra Sarawut what they want,’ I said.

  The young monk spoke to the older monk and then listened intently as he replied.

  ‘They want to be with you,’ said the young monk. ‘You are their father now.’

  ‘I’m not their father. I just met their mum a few times in Thailand. Their parents are dead.’

  The young monk smiled patiently. ‘Yes, but so long as they remain on this earth, they can choose who they live with. And they have chosen you.’

  ‘They’re making my life a misery,’ I said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Every time I get close to a girl, they start throwing things around and pinching me.’

  The young monk laughed. He translated for the benefit of the old monk and the old monk laughed too.

  ‘They are jealous,’ said the young monk. ‘You are their father, the lady in Thailand is their mother. They do not want you to be unfaithful to their mother.’

  I shook my head in disbelief. This was crazy, absolutely crazy. ‘Look, can you get Phra Sarawut to explain to them that I’m not their father and that they need to leave me alone?’

  The two monks spoke to each other in Thai for a couple of minutes, then the young monk looked at me and shrugged. ‘Phra Sarawut says that there is nothing you can do. You are their father and you are responsible for them. You need to take care of them until they are adults. They are your responsibility now.’

  The old monk closed his eyes, which I took as a sign that he had nothing more to say. I got up, my knees making loud cracking noises, and I walked unsteadily out of the room. The young monk followed me and he took me back to the road. Just before he left, he put a hand on my arm and whispered that I should be careful. I asked him what he meant and he put his mouth close to my ear. ‘Phi dek can be dangerous if they are unhappy,’ he whispered. ‘When they are angry, then can hurt you. Best you don’t make them angry.’ Then he hurried away.

  So that was that. I went back to my flat over the next few days I installed a small shrine in the hall, similar to the one that I’d seen in Nid’s room. I put a small teddy bear and a doll in the shrine, along with some sweets and miniature bars of chocolate. I left some bigger toys in the bedroom and in the living room. It seems to have done the trick. Sometimes I see that the toys have moved but nothing gets thrown about and I haven’t been pinched awake. So that’s it. No sex for me for another twelve years or so. Unless I can persuade the ghost kids to go and stay with their mum. But according to the old monk, they’re more than happy to live with me. They like me. I make them laugh.

  I’m working lots of overtime and I’m saving every penny I can so that I can go back to Thailand. I’m going to look for Nid. That’s my plan, anyway. If I can find her then maybe I can persuade the kids to stay with her. I know it’s not much of a plan, but it’s all I’ve got.

  If you enjoy supernatural stories, why not try Stephen Leather’s Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. In order they are Nightfall, Midnight, Nightmare, Nightshade and Lastnight. There are also two Jack Nightingale short stories, Cursed and Still Bleeding, which are only available as eBooks. Jack Nightingale has his own website at www.jacknightingale.com

  MASSAGE THERAPY

  I first met Ricky sitting at bar on Walking Street in Pattaya. He was tall and thin and pretty much bald, hunched over a glass of iced water. He seemed a bit miserable and I’m a cheerful enough chap so I asked him what was wrong. He had one hell of a story – most people move to Thailand because they want to start living but it seems that Ricky had come to die.

  He’d been a butcher in the north of England. He’d owned his own shop and made a decent enough living despite competition from the supermarkets. He was a widower – his wife had died of cancer in her fifties – and had two grown-up sons. When he’d reached sixty Ricky had started having problems with his waterworks and had to get up several times a night to pee. It got so bad that he went to see his GP and the doctor referred him to a specialist and the specialist told Ricky that he had prostate cancer.

  According to Ricky’s specialist there are two sorts of prostate cancer. There’s a slow-growing one that can be treated and managed, and there’s a fast-growing aggressive one that is invariably fatal. Ricky had the second type. They treated Ricky, with drugs and radiation therapy, but the cancer continued to grow and to spread. After six months they told him there was nothing else they could do so they gave him a leaflet for the McMillan charity and sent him home.

  Ricky decided that if he was going to die he’d do it under his own terms. He sold his business and his house, gave most of the money to his sons and flew to Thailand. He booked a suite in the Marriott Hotel in Pattaya and kept a bottle of sleeping tablets in his wash bag. His plan was to enjoy what little time had left and once the pain became unmanageable he’d take the tablets.

  He couldn’t drink alcohol and most food made him feel nauseous but at least Thailand was warm and the people were friendly. There wasn’t much I could say to him, but I did suggest that he should have a Thai massage. A good Thai massage done by a professional can really make you feel better, I told him. Ricky said that he’d try. He left the bar soon afterwards, saying that he felt sick. To be honest, I never thought I’d see him again.

  I was wrong. I bumped into him again about three months later, in the Golden Bar in Bangkok, across the road from Nana Plaza. At first I didn’t recognise him. He had put on weight and his hair was growing back. And he was drinking a beer. He grinned when he saw me and told me he was feeling better than he’d fel
t for months. And it was all down to Thai massage, he said. Or rather, a massage girl.

  The day after he’d met me in Pattaya he’d done as I suggested and tried a Thai massage. He did indeed feel better and from then on he had the hotel send up a masseuse every day. Ricky had become disenchanted with Pattaya. “The world’s biggest brothel, it was a big mistake moving there,” he told me. He’d moved to Bangkok and checked into the Marriott in Sukhumvit Soi 2. He’d tried to book a massage on his first night but they didn’t have anyone available, so Ricky had gone looking for a massage parlour. And that was when he met Cherry. She worked in a place in Soi 23, not far from Soi Cowboy. She was in her forties, a bit chubby but with a lovely smile, he said. Cherry had great hands, he said, and had been trained as a masseuse at the famous Wat Po.

  He felt so good after the first massage that he went back to see her the next day. And the day after. On the fourth day Cherry asked him if he wanted a ‘special’ massage. He wasn’t sure what she meant but she’d smiled and said that for a thousand baht he could have a happy ending.

  Ricky explained that he was ill and that he thought a happy ending was out of the question, but Cherry said she would try anyway. Providing that he paid a thousand baht, of course. Ricky had laughed and told her that if she could indeed make him come he’d give her ten thousand baht.

  Cherry had Ricky roll onto his back and she poured a good measure of baby oil over his dick and went to work. To Ricky’s surprise he soon found himself growing hard. Cherry was smiling like the proverbial Cheshire Cat and she started caressing his balls.