by A. J. Low
I was lying snugly under the covers in my bedroom, reading up on debunking supernatural occurrences. A storm raged outside and Mom was nagging at me from the living room.
“Watson—” I said.
“I-did-the-dishes-yesterday. It-is-your-turn-today,” Watson replied.
“Fine,” I huffed, tossing my comfortable covers away. “You still have to come with me so I can recite my case notes to you.”
“Thus-far-I-have-recorded-an-impressive-collection-of-shrieks-and-screams-for-your-case-notes,” Watson replied.
The minute I left the safety of my room, my ears were assailed by a horrendous noise coming from what sounded like a wind instrument.
“DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo.”
“What horrible tortures are you inflicting on that poor instrument?” I asked, hands clasped over my ears. I stood in front of my sister doo-doo-doo-ing away on her recorder. Wendy glared at me but continued puffing away determinedly.
“Your sister is practicing for her music class test, Sam. Leave her alone,” Mom replied.
Dad, who was wearing a huge pair of headphones attached to his laptop, grinned at me as I walked by. Like I have always said: Dad is a very smart man.
As I stood on the stool in front of the sink, up to my arms in warm, soapy suds, I started to recount all the facts of the case to Watson.
“Both times we heard it, we were close to the newly discovered sally port,” I said.
“The first time, a rock flew out from the sally port,” I continued. “Watson, recite what we know about poltergeists.”
“They-are-noisy-and-destructive-entities,” Watson said.
“DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo.”
“Like Wendy. She’s noisily destroying my eardrums,” I said.
“They-often-throw-or-hurl-objects-at-their-targets,” Watson continued.
“DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo.”
“I’d like to throw something at one specific target,” I replied.
“They-seem-to-haunt-specific-locations,” Watson said.
“DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo.”
“If only we could get Wendy to move—wait a minute!” I said. Dropping the soapy sponge, I ran into the living room.
“Play it again! Play it again!” I shouted at Wendy, frantically miming her playing the recorder.
“What’s the matter, Sam?” Dad asked, removing his headphones.
“I need Wendy to play her recorder exactly like she has been playing it the entire night!” I said. “Watson, I need you to record it!”
“Really, Sam? I was just going to tell Wendy to take a break so that I could watch Discovery Channel,” Dad said, looking slightly confused.
“Trust me, Dad! Play it again, Wendy! The one section you’ve been playing all night!”
“DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo.”
“Did you get it, Watson?” I asked.
Watson replied: “DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo.”
“Wow, do I really sound that bad?” Wendy asked.
“Play it again, Watson!” I said.
“DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo.”
“Wendy! That’s enough!” Mom called out. “I mean, that’s enough practice, dear.”
“That wasn’t me!” Wendy shouted back.
Dad was wincing.
“Okay, Watson, now play the ghostly moan!” I said.
“OOOooooOOOooo. OOOooooOOOooo. OOOooooOOOooo.”
“Don’t you guys get it?” I asked.
Everyone looked at me blankly.
I had solved the Case of the Ghostly Moans in Fort Canning! Now to prove to everyone that ghosts didn’t exist!
But I had to wait until the following day. It was raining so heavily that Mom was worried we would all get wet and fall sick. Plus, Watson might rust.
KA-BOOM!
After school on Friday, Dad took Wendy, Nazhar, Jimmy, Watson, and me to the Sakae Sushi at Park Mall for dinner. We had delicious sushi and chawanmushi. Dad let me have three bowls of the delicious egg custard and made me promise not to tell Mom.
After dinner, we trooped over to Fort Canning and headed for the hidden sally port (“Jimmy port!” Jimmy corrected every chance he got). Everybody seemed tense, but I knew I would put their fears to rest soon. We hid near the 9-Pound Cannon at the top of the Spice Garden path, and waited for the remaining parkgoers to leave. My plan required that the area be free of all bystanders so that they wouldn’t interfere.
“My toe itches,” Jimmy said. Watson extended one of his arms and tried to scratch it.
“Hee hee hee, stop! That tickles!” Jimmy said, laughing.
“Shhhh!” Wendy tried to stifle Jimmy’s laughter.
I poked my head out to make sure nobody had heard us. There didn’t seem to be anybody around anymore.
“It looks like we’re clear, everybody,” I said. “Remember now, we have to go very quietly.”
“Ghosts can hear you regardless of how quiet you are,” Nazhar said. “They don’t hear with ears.”
“Because they don’t have any!” Jimmy said triumphantly. Then he looked confused. “Wait, how do they hear anything at all without ears?”
“Luckily for us, there are no ghosts, and I’m going to prove it,” I said.
I led them out from behind the cannon and we tiptoed straight to the sally port (“Jimmy port!”).
We reached the entrance of the sally port before the ghostly moans started up.
“OOOooooOOOooo. OOOooooOOOooo. OOOooooOOOooo.”
Everybody tensed up, except Watson and me. When Dad saw me looking at him, he tried to smile. Jimmy’s eyes were wide with fear, but I motioned for him to calm down.
“It’s not a ghost,” I said. “Trust me.”
Once the moaning stopped, we continued forward. The tunnel leading from the sally port (“Jimmy port!”) was long and winding. We took at least three left turns and four rights, and we were definitely going downward as well.
Periodically, we would hear the ghostly moaning, but it was coming from behind us now.
“That’s odd,” Nazhar said. “It’s not following us. It sounds like it’s still at the entrance.”
“Perhaps it’s only a guardian spirit?” Wendy said.
“And not a very powerful one, since we’ve clearly breached the entrance,” Dad said. “If there were such things as ghosts. Which there are not,” Dad continued, sheepishly.
I pointed out the electric cables running on the ceiling of the tunnel to Watson. He nodded.
The end of the tunnel opened into a large bunker. There were wooden beams running from floor to ceiling throughout and a few tables here and there. There was an exit leading to another tunnel across from us. We could hear someone or something rummaging in a corner, but couldn’t see what was causing it, though I was pretty sure I knew what it was.
“Okay, Watson,” I said, “play it now.”
“DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. DOO-doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo.”
“No! That’s the wrong one! You should have played the moans!” I whispered.
As it turned out, it didn’t really matter. The sound startled the three men in the bunker, and they ran toward the other exit, knocking over a few tables in their haste to escape. One man was dragging a trolley bag behind him as he ran. The wheels on the bag made a really loud rattling sound as they were being pulled over uneven ground!
“Poultry-guests! Poultry-guests!” Jimmy shouted. He started running back the way we had come, arms flapping like a chicken, but then he saw a spider and ran back into the bunker. Watson extended his arms and caught him before he could get too far.
&nbs
p; “That went exactly as planned!” I said. “Except for Watson’s small hiccup.”
“The-plan-was-to-play-the-awful-sound,” Watson said. “How-could-I-have-known-you-did-not-mean-that-one?”
“Good job, son!” Dad beamed.
“Wait, what just happened?” Wendy asked. “Those weren’t ghosts! They were people!”
“Yeah, ghosts don’t scare so easy,” Nazhar said. “But who were they?”
“Thieves and crooks,” a deep voice said.
We all looked toward the voice and saw a few policemen hauling the three men back into the bunker. The one in charge was an Indian man.
“Now, what are you kids doing here?” he asked.
The policemen sat the three men down on the floor while the one in charge walked over to us.
“I’m Officer Siva,” he said.
“I’m Sherlock Sam,” I said, sticking my hand out. We shook hands.
“So what exactly are you doing here?” Officer Siva asked.
“I was here solving a mystery, sir,” I said. “There were ghostly moans coming out of here that I knew couldn’t be from ghosts, since ghosts don’t exist.”
“He’s Singapore’s Great—” Jimmy started.
“Not yet, Jimmy,” Wendy said. “He hasn’t explained anything to us yet.”
“Yeah,” Nazhar said. “What about all the proof of ghosts?”
“It’s like I told you from the start,” I said. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
“Then explain the digital recorder,” Jimmy said. “The recording clearly had ghostly voices in the background!”
“But those weren’t ghostly voices,” I said. “The digital recorder is very sensitive. It actually caught the voices of these three gentlemen, but because they were so far away from where we recorded, the recording sounded faint and garbled.”
“Plus-the-voices-bounced-off-the-tunnel-walls-disguising-their-voices-even-further,” Watson said.
“What about the thermometer?” Wendy asked. “The reading clearly showed a drop in temperature when you got to the sally port.”
“Jimmy port!” Jimmy said.
“Can’t you feel the temperature?” I asked. “It’s like I said before: air conditioners in the park. It’s just that they were in this bunker and we couldn’t see them.” I pointed to the four air-conditioning units in the bunker.
“But the cool air escaped out of the entrance,” Nazhar said.
“Exactly,” I said.
“But what about the EMF meter?” Nazhar asked. “It went crazy, remember? That’s a clear indication of paranormal activity.”
“That was actually the easiest thing to figure out,” I said. “But you guys scared me so badly last night, I’m ashamed to admit I couldn’t think clearly. Watson, show them.”
Watson pulled out the EMF meter from his secret compartment and turned it on. It immediately registered an enormous spike in electromagnetism.
“As-I-tried-to-tell-you-last-night-I-am-causing-these-readings,” Watson said. “I-am-a-robot-with-a-magnetic-personality.”
“Always make sure you have a control group during an experiment to compare against,” I said. “Otherwise, you could totally misread your findings.”
“And the ghostly moans?” Dad asked.
“Wendy helped me figure that out, actually,” I said.
“I did?” she asked.
“Last night, when you were playing your recorder, you were playing the same refrain over and over,” I said. “It made me realize that the ghostly moans were also the same refrain, over and over.”
I walked over to a stereo in the corner, removed the audio equipment attached to it, and pressed play.
“OOOooooOOOooo. OOOooooOOOooo. OOOooooOOOooo.”
“It’s on a loop,” I said. “The ghostly moan has the same duration and changes in pitch every time, and it was piped to the entrance using this audio equipment. They used it to keep people away, in case anybody found the sally port. Like Jimmy did.”
“So one of these men threw that rock the first time we heard the moans?” Nazhar asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I think they had just entered, or were about to leave, and they wanted us to go away as soon as possible, so they threw the rock to scare us further.”
“You are a very clever little boy,” Officer Siva said.
“What were these men doing, sir?” Nazhar asked.
“They were making copies of movies and music illegally, and selling them all over Singapore,” Officer Siva said. “That’s a very big offense, and even bigger when you take into account the size of their operation.”
“There is one thing I can’t figure out though, Officer Siva,” I said.
“Something Sherlock Sam can’t figure out? Impossible!” Officer Siva said, smiling.
“Why are the police here? We didn’t even know a crime was being committed,” I said. “I figured out that it was a man-made sound, and it’s logical that it would be used to hide something, but I didn’t call the police!”
“Well, just two nights ago, quite a few hotel guests from Hotel Fort Canning complained that they heard really loud screaming. It sounded like people were being tortured. The hotel called the police. We didn’t find anything, but just to be safe, my men and I decided to come back to monitor the situation,” Officer Siva replied. “We came over to investigate once we heard the commotion.”
“Screaming?” Nazhar asked. “But that wasn’t the sound the criminals were playing. That was a moan.”
“ARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” Watson said.
“Watson! Enough!” I said.
The ARRGGHHING-ing once again stopped mid-ARGH.
Dad and I looked at each other in horror. The hotel guests had heard our screaming!
“Well, at least we helped catch the criminals?” Dad said finally.
Wendy snickered a little but she was still smiling at Dad and me.
“One of the criminals had illegal copies of the music and movies in his trolley bag, didn’t he?” I said. “I noticed the bag was unzipped as he was running away. The contents must have spilled out. That’s why you were able to arrest him and his accomplices on the spot.”
“You’re really a very clever boy, Sherlock,” Officer Siva said. “You got it exactly right. He left a trail of illegal DVDs behind him as he ran!”
“And we would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you kaypoh kids!” one of the arrested men shouted.
“It’s true,” Officer Siva said. “We would never have caught them without you and your clever brain.”
“Now?” Jimmy asked, looking hopeful.
“Fine,” Wendy said.
“He’s Singapore’s Greatest Kid Detective!” Jimmy shouted.
“Only-when-he-does-not-run-away-screaming,” Watson replied.
∗ ∗ ∗
A few days later, Dad came to my room with a letter.
“Guess what Neil deGrasse Tyson has to say about ghosts, Dad,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“‘If each dead person became a ghost, there’d be more than 100 billion ghosts haunting us all,’” I said.
“Creepy,” Dad said. “But kind of cool.”
“That-is-what-Dr.-Tyson-said-as-well,” Watson said.
Dad beamed. He liked being compared to Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“What’s that in your hand, Dad?” I asked.
“Oh, right, I almost forgot,” he said. “It’s for you.”
“Really?” I said excitedly. “I never get mail!”
I noticed it was from Officer Siva and tore it open quickly.
I read it aloud:
“Wow,” I said when I finished reading. “Do you really think I could help him with cases?”
“We’ll have to clear it wit
h Mom, but I don’t see why not,” Dad said.
I looked at the letter again. “I’m going to keep this forever,” I said.
“Actually, Sam,” Dad said, “is it okay if I frame it and put it in the living room?”
“Dad,” I said, “that would be awesome.”
GLOSSARY
Animatronics—Mechanical creations designed to look alive.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir—The celebrated author of the original Sherlock Holmes stories and novels.
Battle Box, the—The underground bunker beneath Fort Canning that was used by the British as an emergency bomb-proof command center during the Malayan campaign and the Battle of Singapore during World War II. It is now a museum and tourist attraction.
Chawanmushi—A Japanese egg custard usually served in a teacup-like bowl. The custard is flavored with soy sauce, dashi, and mirin, and contains various ingredients, such as shiitake mushrooms and shrimp.
Duit Pisang—Malay for “banana money,” this Japanese-issued currency was used in Japanese-occupied territories in Southeast Asia during World War II.
È Guĭ—A chubby ghost that supposedly appears during Hungry Ghost Month and searches for food. It has a very small mouth and suffers from insatiable hunger.
Electromagnetic Field—A measurable field produced by moving electrically charged objects, like balloons that have been rubbed on your head, which affect all charged objects near them. It is one of the four fundamental forces of nature.
Electromagnetic Field Meter—A scientific instrument that measures electromagnetic fields and their changes over time.
Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)—Electronically generated noises that sound like ghostly speech, but are not supernatural in the slightest. EVP are instead static, stray radio transmissions and background noises that sound like voices.