It was a pickup, on this occasion: a big red thing with fat wheels and tall radiator grill. There was a shallow dent in the fender and a worn look to the paintwork. She managed to thump the front wing with her open palm as she leapt out of the way, enhancing the impression that the vehicle had hit her – something she’d failed to do with Ben because of the wide swerve he threw his car into.
Lying on the ground, face down, she listened to the squeal of tyres and the opening of the door, careful not to move a muscle.
“God, are you all right?” It was a woman’s voice; neither young nor old.
Footsteps approached rapidly. She twitched and groaned at the appropriate moment.
“Are you hurt, did I hit you?” A hand touched her shoulder as she slowly sat up, wincing.
Young, thirties; nice eyes; a hint of grey showing in sandy brown hair worn long and loose; full lips that bore no sign of lipstick; dowdy clothes that failed to make the most of a decent figure, and a hint of floral perfume. A wedding ring, so married, respectable, most likely a kid or two. Pretty, though. She assessed the victim in an instant and decided that sweet and vulnerable was the way to play things this time around.
“I... I think so.” She lifted a hand to touch her brow, all for dramatic effect.
“I’m so sorry. You came from nowhere. I didn’t see you... I couldn’t stop.”
She noted the woman’s pupils, the way her nostrils flared, the rapidity of her breathing. That wasn’t just the result of concern or fear; this woman was attracted to her, though she probably didn’t recognise the fact and would only have been confused by it if she had.
This one promised to be fun.
“What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Emma,” she said smoothly, having always liked the name Emma. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking... Don’t really know what I’m doing at the moment, to be honest. My head’s all over the place. My boyfriend’s just left me... and I lost the baby...” She started to cry; great tearful convulsions that wracked her body and shook her shoulders.
“Oh, you poor thing. There, there, sweetheart, don’t cry.”
The woman’s arms reached out to comfort her and suddenly they were hugging, her head resting against the older woman’s neck, nuzzling.
The tears flowed freely, but deep inside she was smiling.
BALIK KAMPUNG
(GOING BACK)
ZEN CHO
The image of Lydia, driving out of hell on a motorcycle, clinging to her demon’s back, provides a striking start to Cho’s story about a spirit seeking out the cause of her death. This rich tale is full of Malaysian myth and religious custom, a heady brew that brings alive the sights, smells and sounds of this journey towards a hoped-for understanding. I think you’ll see from what follows why Zen is already building a reputation for being one of those most exciting and incisive new genre writers around.
THERE WERE A lot of unexpected things about being dead. The traffic was one of them.
Time passed differently here in the netherworld, so Lydia might have been perched on the back of her cheap motorcycle, clinging to her demon, for hours or years or centuries. Every once in an aeon they moved about three centimetres along. The light of the living world shone maddeningly at the end of the tunnel, not so very far away from them – but the intervening space was crammed full of hungry ghosts, using every form of transport they could beg, borrow or steal for their trip up north for the Festival.
“Can’t believe the traffic is so bad,” she said to her demon. “It’s halfway through the month already!”
“You should see this road on the first day,” said her demon. “The queue goes all the way back. Like this is not so bad.”
Since the dead were only allowed into the living world for one month in each year, the time was precious. Lydia was only so late because nobody had been burning hell money for her, and it had been a struggle to get together the funds to buy some form of transport.
She’d only managed to get the bike by promising to be bonded to a hell official for the next year. It was what they used to call a kapcai motorcycle – a small, aged Honda of the kind hawkers took their kids to school on and Mat Rempits raced with. Fortunately her demon was as bony as most demons were, and didn’t take up much space.
The demon had been another surprise. It had appeared the day she arrived in the netherworld. At first she had been too stunned by grief, too numbed by strangeness, to question the strange tangle-haired creature who followed her around hell. By the time she got around to questioning it, she’d grown used to its unvarying calm, its voice that was like the echo of the voice inside her own head. Its answer felt like something she had already known.
“I am your personal agony,” it said.
“What agony?” said Lydia.
“You’ll figure it out when you understand why are you a hungry ghost,” said the demon.
Hungry ghosts were the spirits of the unfortunate, unlamented dead: those who were killed violently; who died burdened by unfulfilled longings; who had been greedy or ungenerous in life; who were forgotten by their living. It was obvious to Lydia which category she fell into.
“I don’t care about my parents anymore,” she said to her demon.
It wasn’t bravado. Lydia had long made her peace with the fact that she was not the daughter her parents had wanted, and they were not flexible enough people to love her in spite of it. Stuck in the traffic jam, she thought not of them but of Wei Kiat.
Thinking about him and their home in Penang made the wait easier. The tunnel leading up to the human world wasn’t the most pleasant place to while away a few hours. The rock walls were painted with the inventive torments to which the wicked dead were subjected – disrespectful sons and daughters having their tongues torn out; incompetent physicians being chopped to pieces; litterers being made to kneel on spikes; cursers of the wind being bitten by grasshoppers and kicked by donkeys.
Around Lydia the other hungry ghosts were discussing what they would do once they had got out.
“Bastard, if the fella knew how to do his job I won’t be dead now. I’m gonna find his clinic and then that guy better watch out. He better get used to killing his patients.”
“It’s not like RM5 is such a big deal. It’s just annoying, you know? I was dying, also she couldn’t bring herself to pay me back. Maybe it’s too much to possess somebody for that, but if not it’s gonna keep bothering me lor.”
“Yah, go for the Christians. The less superstitious the better. They’re not prepared because they don’t believe in hantu all that. Muslim also, I guess, but I prefer to possess Chinese, feels more comfortable... anyway, have you ever met a skeptic Melayu?”
“No lah, I’m not gonna do all this possessing stuff. Die already, no point holding grudges. I’m gonna go home, see how my relatives are doing, smell my ah ma’s rendang.”
“You’re going home to see your family, is it?” said one of the older ghosts to Lydia. She was travelling by bullock cart, and spoke a Hokkien so strangely accented that Lydia struggled to follow it.
“Yes,” said Lydia. “What about you, auntie?”
“Hai, I’m too old to have relatives to visit,” said the ghost. “I have some great-great-grandchildren in Muar, but they all speak Mandarin and play their iPhones only. Nowadays I only go to the living world to see the shows.”
“Auntie must find the shows very different,” said Lydia. “Even when I was small I remember there were more operas, puppet shows, that kind of thing. These days you only see girls in miniskirts singing Cantopop.”
The antique ghost lowered her voice to a confidential whisper.
“I don’t mind the Cantopop girls,” she said. “After all, the weather is so hot. Why shouldn’t they wear something cooling?”
“That’s very open-minded of you, auntie.”
“Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t be flexible,” said the old woman. “So you’re visiting your family har? Where do your parents live?
”
“My husband, auntie,” said Lydia. “He’s in Penang.”
IN PENANG. AS she sat there in the stinking dark, her arms wrapped around her personal agony, a vision of the small terrace house they had lived in together rose up before Lydia. The low gate, with the patches of rust where the grey paint was peeling away; the narrow front yard Lydia had populated with potted bougainvilleas. She’d had them in every conceivable colour: magenta, rose pink, peach, lilac, deep purple, white. Every day she’d come home from work and exult over the wash of colour spread out before her front door.
She saw her house so clearly she could almost feel the grainy texture of the grille swinging open under her hand. Their living room was floored in fake marble, dim and cool even on the hottest of days. Lydia had furnished it with old-fashioned cane chairs and rag rugs. Wei Kiat had admired her taste.
“You should be an artist,” he’d told her. “You look at things so differently.”
She was always finding out delightful new things about herself with Wei Kiat. He saw in her depths her parents would never have seen, talents and virtues unsuspected even by herself.
She knew she could not expect her home to have stayed the same while she was dead, but there would be a profound comfort simply in seeing it again, in feeling the tiles cool against her bare feet, and smelling the air in her house: a smell that was a mix of old newspapers, clean laundry, and the curry perpetually being cooked next door.
“We’ll have to come out at KL,” the demon said. “That’s the only exit for Malaysia.”
Which was why she’d needed the motorcycle. The dead were disappointingly limited: it was no more possible for her to fly herself to Penang than it would have been when she was alive.
At least, Lydia reflected, the demon knew how to ride a motorbike. She’d never ridden a motorcycle in her life – her parents had thought it unsafe, and Wei Kiat had driven her everywhere in his Chevrolet – but the demon piloted their vehicle with consummate ease.
When they finally emerged into the living world, somewhere behind KL Sentral, it was several hours past sunset. The lights of KL were blinding after the dim red caverns of hell. The starless vault of the night sky seemed too big. Lydia hunched down behind the demon as if it could protect her.
“Hopefully we missed rush hour,” said the demon. “Jam out of hell, jam out of KL, everywhere also jam jam jam. If the government stop playing the fool and improve our public transport we won’t have this problem.”
“Do we have to stay here?” said Lydia. She’d grown up in KL, but she felt no nostalgia for the city. The constant honking of car horns made her flinch. The living, bustling around her, smelt too strongly and felt too sad.
“You don’t want to visit your parents?” said the demon. “We can drop by TTDI first.”
Lydia shook her head, her hair brushing against the back of the demon’s polo shirt.
“Home,” she said.
THE FURTHER THEY got from KL, the less populated the roads were. The glow of the orange street lights on the unfolding measures of asphalt, so infinitely familiar, calmed Lydia down.
“When are we reaching ah?” she said.
“You know how long it takes,” said the demon. “You sure or not you want to go?”
“What else do people do when they have holiday, aside from balik kampung?”
“You don’t want to find out how you died meh?”
Lydia didn’t remember how she had died. She hadn’t tried to recover the memory. She didn’t want to be like other hungry ghosts, clinging to historic grievances, hagridden by old sorrows. As in life, she had managed to get by in hell by sheer discipline: focusing on survival, hope, the image stored inside her of the red-tiled roof of her home, glowing in the sunshine.
“It’s not important,” she said.
“If you don’t even know where you’re coming from, how can you understand where you’re going?”
“Eh, are you my demon or my feng shui master? Can you please concentrate on the road?”
“It’s not like it makes any difference if we have an accident,” said the demon grumpily, but it shut up.
THE DEMON INSISTED on stopping off at Kampar. “We should try the curry chicken bread. It’s very famous.”
“We don’t need to eat or pee,” said Lydia. “Stop for what?”
“After you’re dead for a while you won’t need to act human anymore, but you haven’t adjusted yet,” said the demon. “Might as well eat. You’ve never had curry chicken bread before. Remember what the auntie said. Dead also still can be flexible.”
“Easy for her to say! She got nobody to visit,” snapped Lydia. “I only have fifteen days. And I might have to waste time trying to find Wei Kiat.”
“Wei Kiat is not going anywhere,” said the demon, unmoved. “Come lah, let’s make you less hungry.”
Since they could hardly stride into a restaurant to order the world-famous Kampar curry chicken bread, it was necessary to hang around the restaurant kitchen and dive at the dishes before they were carried out to the living punters. This made Lydia uncomfortable.
“They can still eat,” the demon said. “It’s not like we’re stealing. We only eat the spirit of the food.”
“It feels weird,” said Lydia. Being a spirit gave her a weird double-vision – on one level, in the material world, the plate of chicken bread her demon had despoiled was perfect, unmarred; in the spiritual world, half of the bun had been removed and the curry was leaking out the side. “Can’t we just go outside and eat the offerings?”
As was usual during the Festival, there were offerings of food laid at the roadside: small piles of rice and fruit and lit incense set out by devotees.
The demon was offended. “Fine,” it said. “If you want to have cold rice instead of chicken curry, suit yourself.”
“Maybe I will!”
“Hungry ghosts I’ve heard of before,” said the demon, “but I didn’t know you got such thing as dieting ghosts.”
It was when they were walking back to the motorbike that they heard the unmistakable sound of the Hungry Ghost Festival being celebrated by the living: the strains of Cantopop, blaring at top volume out of doors at ten o’clock in the evening.
“We might as well check it out,” said the demon. “What else do people do when they have a holiday?”
Lydia pretended not to hear it, but she found herself drifting towards the light and noise.
The Festival tents had taken over a whole road. A huge effigy of the King of Hades dominated one tent, flanked by effigies of the guardians of the underworld. An urn full of joss-sticks sent up curls of scented smoke before his stern blue visage.
The tents bustled with people, both living and dead. Food was set out for the ghosts, a much more attractive array of dishes than the roadside plates of rice. Lydia took a pink rice cake. As she drew back from the table she almost upset another ghost’s plastic cup of orange cordial.
“Sorry,” she said.
“No problem,” said the ghost. He was struggling to balance a paper plate loaded with food and his cordial. “You’re only eating so little ah? There’s a suckling pig at the other table there.”
Lydia was going to say she wasn’t hungry, but realised in time how stupid that would sound. “Is it? I’ll go find it. Thank you, uncle.”
“That’s right,” said the uncle. “Not like when we’re alive, can celebrate New Year, Thaipusam, Hari Raya, Mooncake Festival, all that. Now we only get one holiday a year. Better make the most of it!”
Everyone seemed uncommonly cheerful – the dead stocking up on provisions, the living praying at the various altars. Lydia hadn’t even known she’d grown so used to the hangdog looks of the other ghosts and the bureaucratic indifference of the hell officials. Despite her sense of urgency, her mood began lighten under the influence of the atmosphere.
She only glanced at the stage set up at the end of the road, but it was enough to tell her that the show would have pleased the open-minded bu
llock cart auntie. The girls onstage would not have looked out of place at a beach, except for their go-go boots.
As at every ko tai she’d seen in life, the front row of seats was reserved for the ghosts. The only difference now was that she could see the occupants.
But the focus of interest seemed to be somewhere else. She followed the crowd to another tent, where a man in robes was blessing the living. She was about to move away again when the man turned and looked straight at her and the other hungry ghosts watching.
“Sorry ah, good brothers,” he said. “I’m almost finished here. Let me drink some water first and I’ll be ready.”
“He’s a medium,” said Lydia’s demon. “Why don’t you talk to him?”
“I thought only the living liked to consult mediums,” said Lydia. “Send messages to their relatives all that. Spirits talk to medium for what?”
While she was speaking a queue of hungry ghosts had formed behind her. Lydia paused, embarrassed.
“You think what?” said the demon. “For the same reason lah.”
“GOOD EVENING, SISTER,” said the medium. The beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip gleamed in the fluorescent light, but he smiled at Lydia with genuine friendliness. “Have you eaten?”
The Future of Horror Page 71