by Yangsze Choo
“How do you go?”
“I told you, I have a couple of servants. When I reach the plains, I call them and they come and carry me.”
“Could I go there?”
She gave me a long look, suspicion struggling with curiosity again. “Why do you need to go, and how will you cross the plains?”
“Perhaps you could give me a ride?”
“Certainly not! My servants are frail and rather rickety. They’re beginning to fall apart after so many years. But if you have money, you can purchase your passage.” She looked hard at me. I turned out my pockets, revealing a few strings of cash and a couple of small ingots.
“You’ll need more than that,” she said with a barely concealed snort. Inwardly, I cursed the fact that I hadn’t finished burning all the funeral money before Amah had stopped me that day.
“I tell you what,” said Fan. “If you wish to go to the Plains of the Dead, I’ll show you the way. For a price.”
“I thought you were provided for.”
“Just barely. I don’t want to meet my lover looking like a beggar when the time comes.”
“Don’t you see him in dreams already?”
“Dreams! I can manipulate the setting a little, but when he dies he’ll see me as I am. Come, don’t you think this is a good bargain?”
I thought it over and nodded.
“But you need more money. Ask your Heavenly Authorities. Remember, we’ll have to buy horses, wagons, and clothing.”
“And how will I find you when I need you?”
She shrugged. “I’m always here. But hurry! I’m afraid that he won’t live much longer.”
Chapter 14
I had asked Fan about the Plains of the Dead on an impulse, thinking of my mother and also that if I were really desperate it would be one place that I could surely find Lim Tian Ching, hopefully without a demon escort. After all, Fan had said the Plains of the Dead were for human ghosts and had I not witnessed firsthand his mansions and parklands, horses and stables in my dreams? Now that I had an alternate theory of his murder, with Yan Hong as a suspect, I might be able to persuade him to abandon his vendetta, though, to be honest, my prospects seemed bleak. I wasn’t even sure how to persuade anyone to burn funeral money on my behalf.
As I went farther away from the shop houses, the number of spirit lights began to decrease. I wondered whether there was any significance to the roads most utilized by ghosts, some underlying meaning or ancient penchant for certain areas. In the meantime, I took care to avoid being seen by other spiritual denizens. The tales I had heard as a child suggested that there were far more terrifying things abroad than what I had just witnessed.
Before I realized it, I came upon the old Stadthuys. Squat and square, painted a deep red with heavy masonry walls and a sloping European roof, it was a reminder of the times when the Dutch ruled Malacca. I had never been inside but I knew the British still used it as government quarters. The locals said it was haunted and despite myself, I drew back with a prickle of fear. I looked around for spirit lights, but in this quarter there were none. Perhaps they were all inside, those stolid Dutch burghers and their wives in ancient crinolined splendor, still pacing the massive beamed floors and fretting over the trading prices of pepper and nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. The town square lay in front, rigidly planted with flower beds in the Dutch tradition, and punctuated by a fountain. Water gleamed in its still basin and reminded me of my sore feet. I went cautiously over to look into it.
As I bent over the basin, I became aware of another image reflected next to mine, a hazy shape that resolved into an old man wearing a rumpled blouse. He was worn so thin that in the moonlight he was a creature stitched out of fine white lace.
“Who are you?” I whispered at last.
The old man stirred. “Ah, I see you now.” The pale light illuminated a nose like a parrot’s beak and deep eye sockets. A foreigner, I thought. I had never been so close to one before.
“You are not dead, but neither are you truly living. You poor creature.” He was the first spirit who had seen clearly what I was and I drew back, frightened. “I won’t bite. No, no, I won’t. What are you doing here? You should go back to your home.” Although his accent and appearance were strange to me, he spoke in a kindly manner and it was this, coupled with exhaustion, which brought tears to my eyes.
“There, there,” he said. “Stop crying. You can hear me, can’t you?”
Mutely, I nodded.
“A little Chinese girl, I see,” he said. “Begging your pardon, a young lady.”
“Who are you?”
“Me? Old Willem Ganesvoort, that’s who. Just sitting by the fountain as is my wont.”
“You are a Dutchman,” I said excitedly.
“I was a Dutchman,” he corrected. “Now I am, what? A spirit, a soul.”
“Why are you here?”
“I should ask you the same question,” he said in mild reproof, “but there, ladies will have their way.” He gave me a stiff but courtly bow. As he did so I noticed that one of his arms was crippled, clutched to his chest like a fledgling’s wing. “I shipped out to the Orient when I was a young man. Trained as an architect, that was my profession. Ah yes, my arm,” he said, noticing my gaze. “Born with it, died with it. Nobody thought I could ship out from Rotterdam with this arm, though it was good enough to see the world with. But I always loved Malacca the best. And so when my time was up, I stayed a little longer. I like to look at my handiwork, I suppose.”
“And what was that? The Stadthuys?”
“Oh no! Bless me, how old do you think I am? The Stadthuys was built in 1650. I am not quite of that vintage. I helped to make that small addition, however.”
I peered at the darkened building but couldn’t make out what he was pointing at. “Very nice,” I said at last.
“You think so? Of all the buildings I designed, I like it the best. That little addition was nothing much, but I was very pleased at the way it came together. But where might you be off to?”
I opened my mouth, then stopped. I was tired of talking, tired of walking and finding no rest. I wasn’t even sure of this Dutchman, though he seemed harmless enough and so insubstantial that I was quite convinced of his great age.
A faint smile broke across his face. “You don’t trust me. I suppose I can hardly blame you. I myself didn’t speak to another ghost for quite fifty years. But that was my own prejudice. We did not mix so much with the natives in my time, you see; and the only other Dutchman around was that lunatic who killed himself by jumping off the clock tower. Time has mellowed me, however. Besides, it is lonely not to have anyone to talk to.”
The idea of lingering for centuries induced a state of near panic. “I’m looking for the Plains of the Dead,” I said.
“The Plains of the Dead?” he said. “I cannot help you. I cannot find such a place at all, although I have often heard it mentioned. Those are not my beliefs, my child. That is not my afterworld.”
I was silent for a moment. “But you can see me! You can talk to me!”
“Yes, yes. Of course, we are still very much in the living plane. And you also see these cobblestones beneath our feet, and the moonlight shining on this fountain. This is not really the afterlife, my dear. It is merely the very tail end of living. From here we all go on.”
“So what happens to your kind when you die?” I asked.
“Do you know, I am not entirely sure? But my dear mother taught me that there is a merciful God and that is what I choose to believe. Either that, or I shall simply fade away.”
“How did you know what I am?”
“Because I saw one such as you a long time ago. An Indian boy who fell from a tree. The fall didn’t kill him so he lingered for a while.”
“How long?”
/> “Only a few days. He couldn’t eat, you see, and when his heart stopped beating, he finally became a ghost. Poor creature, he was so frightened.”
“Does that mean that I have only a few days too?” My voice shook.
“I don’t know. But you seem stronger than he was. Your body must be stable. But take good care of it. Unless, of course, you are ready to journey on.”
Despite his kindly manner, his words frightened me more than anything I had encountered that night. “Is there no way for me to return to the living?” I asked.
“There may be. There! Don’t fret. Pray that all will be well, and I will pray for you too.” He sighed and for a time we were silent. A faint line of light appeared on the horizon. “Perhaps you should return to take care of your body,” said the Dutchman at last.
“I’m not sure how to get there from here.”
“That I may be able to help you with,” he said. Hesitantly, I described our neighborhood.
“Ah, the merchant quarter,” he said. “It has been a long time since I ventured there. But it is not so difficult to find. Here is how you go.” He knelt, using his good arm to trace a map on a patch of earth. None of his gestures made the slightest mark, but by the faint afterimage left by his ghostly hand, I was able to understand his directions.
“And if I take this road instead?” I asked.
The fresh light of dawn began to flood the town square. I turned to look beside me but the old Dutchman was gone. I did not know what had happened to him; whether he had finally disappeared, his fragile form evaporating under the bright gaze of the sun, or whether he was so ancient that he could only be seen by moonlight. As it was, I sat there disconsolately for a while. Birds were chirping and mist lay above the night-chilled water in the fountain basin. I found that I was weary, so weary and heartsick that I went and lay down beside the Stadthuys, like any beggar on the streets.
When I got up again, the sun was high in the sky. I set off hastily, suddenly full of anxiety for my body. The Dutchman’s directions had been good. Clear and concise, he had somehow impressed the overall pattern of the town upon me and soon I found myself on familiar streets. My steps quickened as I drew near our house, then I stopped short. Standing squarely in front of the door was an ox-headed demon.
Head lowered, it stood with folded arms. The heavy bovine head lolled forward in an attitude of boredom that would have been laughable in a less ferocious creature. Frantically, I pushed back into the wall, feeling the resistance as I forced myself into the brick. My thoughts were whirling like a storm of paper fragments. Why was it here? And why hadn’t I felt the same warning sense of oppression I had experienced before? I could make the excuse that it was only one demon whereas last night the street had been full of spirits, but I couldn’t fool myself. My awareness was dimming; every encounter with the dead drew me closer to them. I felt sick.
The demon stood motionless, like a figure carved from a massive tree trunk. There is a kind of wild ox called the seladang in the Malayan jungles, which stands taller at the shoulders than the height of a man and weighs more than a ton. A seladang is one of the few creatures that can kill a tiger. I had never seen a live one, but once, at the Chinese apothecary’s, there had been a set of sweeping horns brought in by a hunter. Now, looking at the ox-headed demon, I guessed that its tines were even larger than the ones I had seen. But the face beneath them was no mild animal countenance. There was a mixture of cunning and ferocity in the red eyes, a manlike glitter that made me shiver.
As I watched this unwelcome doorkeeper, another demon appeared around the corner.
“Any news?” said the first.
“All clear. Did you go in?”
“Too many spell papers. Besides, only her body’s left.”
My pulse fluttered, a frantic moth. The thought that such creatures were looking for me made me feel faint with terror.
“You stick around for a change. I’m going on patrol.”
They switched places with grunts and a clash of armor.
“Don’t let her slip by you.”
“Speak for yourself! Still, I don’t understand how he knew she was gone. Never had to post a guard before.”
“No idea. Suddenly last night he’s in a froth. ‘Is she still there?’ he says, all mincey and twitchy.”
I pressed the knuckles of my hand against my mouth. So Lim Tian Ching had, indeed, heard my cry of surprise last night.
“I almost bit off his head to stop his squealing.”
They exchanged a red-eyed look. “Don’t bother. If he doesn’t complete his task, he’s ours anyway, not that he knows anything about it.”
The other demon yawned, displaying a gaping maw and a set of razor-sharp teeth. “What should I do if she comes back?”
“Why, make sure she doesn’t leave again of course! She’ll come back; they all do.”
“And her body?”
“The old woman’s doing a good job. It should last. Nothing wrong with the body.”
“What if she doesn’t come back?”
“Gets lost you mean? Then her spirit will shrivel up. Even if she does come back, she won’t fit anymore. Be like a dried bean rattling around in a pod.”
“Best find her, then.”
The first demon strode away as its replacement settled in front of the door. My stomach clenched. I couldn’t go back into the house now. Better to remain at large, I thought, as I waited for the demon to relax its guard. It seemed more alert than its predecessor, however, and stood upright, scanning the street and the houses around. I was beginning to wonder what to do when the front door opened.
Chapter 15
I watched the heavy door swing open with dismay, fearing that whoever came out would fall prey to the waiting demon. I was terrified that it would be Amah, but the figure that emerged was none other than Old Wong, our cook. Despite my anxiety, his intersection with the ox-headed demon was oddly anticlimactic. They avoided each other in a strange little dance, Old Wong obliviously clutching his basket under one arm and the demon stepping aside with bored contempt.
As Old Wong trotted down the street, I wrenched myself loose from the wall, heaving backward into the neighbor’s courtyard. In my haste to keep up, I found myself blundering through other people’s houses, forcing myself through walls and other obstacles. Old Wong moved onward at a steady clip. From time to time I feared I had lost him, but at last when we had come a fair way from the house, I emerged just in time to see him disappear around a corner.
As I hurried after him I wondered what I meant to do. I had no real plan, no course of action in mind. Yet I remembered that brief instant in the courtyard when he had seemed to recognize me and wished there was some way in which I could increase the visibility of my form. If only it were to rain, the falling drops might show a faint outline. But despite the frequent tropical storms that drenched Malacca, the sky had been clear for the last two days, the huge cumulus clouds, like whipped froth, gliding serenely in the sky like floating islands.
I caught up with Old Wong and called out to him, though with little hope that he would hear me. To my surprise, he turned his head. Astonishment flickered across his face, but he set his gaze forward as though he hadn’t heard me at all.
“Old Wong!” I cried again. “It’s me! Li Lan!” I darted around, but he studiously ignored me. “Please! If you can see me at all, help me!”
We walked on thus for a little way, I pleading while he paid me no heed. A muscle twitched in the corner of his eye, but otherwise he behaved as though I didn’t exist. At last I stood in the street and bawled like a child, the tears leaking through my clenched fists and my nose dribbling unceremoniously onto my blouse.
“Little Miss.” Old Wong was looking at me with resignation. “I shouldn’t talk to you. Go back to your body.”
“You can see me!”
“Of course I can
see you! I’ve seen you wandering around the house the past week. What are you doing here, so far from home?”
“I can’t go back. There are ox-headed demons guarding the house.” I spilled out the tale of my misadventures, sobbing from sheer relief.
Old Wong broke into my recital. “Don’t stand in the middle of the street. People will think I’m mad.”
There was an enormous rain tree by the side of the road, its filigreed branches casting a fine network of shade. Old Wong squatted at its foot and said, “Now, what is the matter with you?” As I unburdened myself, he took a twist of newspaper out of his pocket and shook out some toasted melon seeds. “I really shouldn’t speak to you,” he said from the side of his mouth.
“Why not?”
He made an impatient noise. “Because it’s bad! It will tie you to the spirit world. You need to go back to your body. Why else do you think I pretended not to see you before?”
“I’ve tried,” I said. “I’ve really tried but I can’t rejoin my body. And now I can’t even go home!”
“You say there’s a demon guarding the house?”
“You didn’t see him?”
“No, but I sensed something. I can’t see demons. That’s something I’m grateful for.”
“Why is it that you can see me, then?”
“It’s a long story. Do you really want to hear? Aiya, you were always one for stories even when you were a little girl.”
He sighed as he cracked the melon seeds between his teeth and extracted the sweet kernels. Ever since I could remember, he had always had some kind of snack on his person, from shelled peanuts to roasted chickpeas. Despite this he remained as lean and scrawny as a stray dog, his forearms knotted from the efforts of rolling out dough, butchering chickens, and scouring pans.
Old Wong wrinkled his brow. “I can see ghosts. Have been able to since I was a boy. Some people are born with it; others acquire it through spiritual practice. In my case I didn’t realize for a long time that many of the people I saw weren’t alive. I was born in a small village up north, in Perak. Teluk Anson, where the British have mining concessions. My father was a cobbler; my mother took in sewing. I never told you that, did I? I didn’t want people here to know too much about me.