Written in Black, page 9
The durung indicated the existence of a past settlement in these parts, and I began to wonder if there were even more interesting things I could chance upon here, like, say, a longhouse or a collection of heads left behind by a head-hunter. How cool would that be! I could wear those mummified heads around my neck like a trophy or hang them on my door as the ultimate “keep-out” sign for my room.
I wasn’t so fortunate though. All I found were a couple of abandoned stilt houses with zinc roofs and no air-conditioning units, not far off from the durung. They’d clearly been uninhabited for ages, their state of crumbling disuse a dead giveaway, along with their faded paint and rotting frames. One even looked like it might have caught (or been set on) fire at one point. I briefly toyed with the prospect of venturing into them to see if they contained any treasure I could take back home with me, but I was pressed for time and they were too far into the marsh for my sandals to manage the walk there.
There was another abandoned house a bit further down from the two stilt houses, much larger than them and closer to the track. It was a two-storied structure, with multiple broken glass windows and a badly rusted awning that ran full circle between its upper and lower levels. A small ring of bare earth surrounded it, and was connected to the track by a narrow, dry dirt-path. Whatever colour the house had once been painted in had long weathered away; all that remained now was the dark brown of the wooden planks that formed its main structure, and the coppery-red of the badly oxidised metal sheets that formed its roof.
This house I stopped for; I couldn’t help but stay and stare at it. The clouds above me had by now gathered into a vast, hulking mass of dark grey, blocking out the sun and giving not just the house but the entire landscape an ominous feel. Its upper floor loomed overhead against the overcast sky, and its two glassless windows stared down at me like the empty sockets of a skull. Below, the house’s door-less entrance resembled the gaping maw of a monster, its screaming laugh frozen in wood, daring any passerby to meet their doom inside.
A thunderclap rang out, and I looked up. A drop of water fell on me, straight into my eye. I flinched, wiped it off and by the time my hand was off my face, rain was falling everywhere. With no other shelter in sight, I forced my leaden legs to make a move and ran across the path, which had already turned into a thick greyish mud that clogged the soles of my sandals, and into the house.
As I walked in, I found myself in a short corridor, looking into an open hall, dimly lit thanks to the downpour outside but bright enough for me to tell that the plaster on the walls was mostly intact, although marred with peelings, bubbles and discolouration. The ceiling was similarly cracked in most places, and had an unsettling fat bulge towards its middle, where two rectangular fluorescent lights hung heavily and seemed to be dragging down the whole upper floor with them. The faint, musty smell of wood that had been wet for too long lingered in the air, and the floorboards were coated with reams of ancient dust. In terms of fixtures and furniture, there were none to be seen. What I did see instead was a hole in the middle of the hall’s floor, big enough for me to squeeze into if I’d lost enough of my sanity to consider doing that.
Had the house been a totally stripped-down wreck with an interior that was completely destroyed and unrecognisable as a living space, I might have been more comfortable about venturing further in. But this still seemed a proper house; it was bare and rundown but definitely a house that had at one point or another been lived in by people. People who were no longer here. People who might now very well be dead.
I shuddered and proceeded towards the hall, slowly. I often scoffed at Kevin’s fixation with ghosts and other things supernatural, but in all honestly I had an interest in spooky tales and the like as well, and did believe in the existence of such phenomena to a certain extent. Hence my wariness about a place like this, which was a dead ringer for any number of haunted houses I’d read about before.
I continued haltingly, watching out for any sudden movements by whatever horrid creatures that were occupying this ruin, ready to spring out of the woodwork at me at any moment. Ghosts were scary, of course, but perhaps all the more frightening were the filthy vermin that were most likely hiding out in every nook and cranny of the house, and the thought of getting overrun by swarms of them made bumping into a dead person’s spirit seem quite preferable. The floor was awfully unsteady, and every few steps I made produced a series of rustling noises from both below and above me. Images of thousands upon thousands of little feet and claws scratching away behind the walls filled my mind, and I hoped that the sounds meant that whatever creatures were making them were clearing off and out of my way rather than preparing for an all-out assault.
Thankfully, the noises had subsided once I emerged into the hall proper. The lighting was still poor, but I could see a door directly ahead of me, closed shut, and there was a staircase next to it, rising to a pitch-black opening in the ceiling. I wasn’t too keen on going up those stairs or to the upper floor, but curiosity did urge me to move nearer to see more of it.
And that’s when I saw the cigarette butts. Little brown stubs that were littered around the bottom steps, as well as on the steps themselves. They weren’t producing smoke anymore, but they didn’t look that old either. I followed their trail down to the floor, and saw there were other things there besides the used cigarettes: chicken bones and apple cores, newspaper scraps, burnt out match sticks … The place was a downright mess alright. A human-made mess. Which meant it had been made by someone who was living in the house. Someone who might still be in the house at this very moment …
Suddenly, all didn’t feel right. I looked towards the door of the room, and noticed that there was a line of cigarette butts leading up to it. I crept over to investigate, walking past the hole and practically treading on tiptoes. Once I got to the door, I stopped, leaned in, and put an ear as close as I could without touching it. I could not detect any signs of life inside, so I stood back up. After hesitating for a few moments, curiosity finally got the better of my fear, and I placed my hand on the knob and twisted it. It wasn’t locked, and so the door creaked open. The room was seemingly empty, but even more dimly lit than the hall, so I would have to open the door wider to get a better look. And that I did, pushing the door open all the way.
I staggered back and almost fell to the floor at the scene before my eyes.
Hanging before me, from corner to corner and from edge to edge, were hundreds of wooden figurines, tied to a series of wooden rafters running across the ceiling. They were the size of a typical rag doll that any child would’ve chosen to play with, though few would have chosen one of these faceless, vaguely human-shaped effigies, many sporting gruesome mops of long, black, straggly, hair-like tendrils on their heads. And each one of the dolls, without any exception as far as I could see, had its body speared through by metallic rods the size of knitting needles, and had squares of red cloth marking the entry and exit points on their trunks.
What lay below them, on the ground, was just as shocking: sheets of newspapers covered the entire span of the room, all of them obituary pages, lined top to bottom over every inch of the floor. Faces upon faces stared up at me, the black-and-white portraits of all the deceased beckoning me to join their ranks, while overhead the impaled dolls swayed and rotated gently about their nooses, moved about by the rain and winds spilling into the room through its two smashed-up windows.
A gentle breeze drifted into the hall, its chilly touch glancing off the nape of my neck. I reached back instinctively to brush it off, and it felt like moving my hand through a column of icy air. I panicked. Whatever purpose all this had been done for, I had no desire to find out. Slowly, I began backing away, gently pulling the door shut, as if not to awaken the dolls, for they might have just been asleep and wouldn’t be happy with being roused by a trespasser.
What followed next was not my first mistake of the day, but probably my first big one. Caught up in the act of backing off from the door, I forgot all about the one glaring obstacle that I would’ve been able to avoid had I thought to turn around. Instead, my stray foot planted itself into the hole in the middle of the hall’s floor, throwing my body off balance. I jerked about trying to regain some stability, but then fell backwards, butt-first, crashing heavily down onto the floorboards with a deafening thud.
My pulse began to race palpably, and my eyes were darting about everywhere, scanning around wildly for any sign of an imminent attack. Lying in a heap on the floor, I braced myself, both physically and mentally for it. Something was surely going to happen now that I’d compromised my presence; nothing that loud could have escaped anyone or anything’s notice. All I could do now was ready myself for my impending doom …
One second became two seconds became three and then sixty. A hundred. The stillness of the room remained undisturbed following my fall, and all there was to hear was the continued sound of the rain pouring down outside.
I pulled myself to a sitting position and my leg out of the hole. I rubbed at my foot; there was not even a scratch. All I had to worry about now was whether I’d accidentally landed on any of the disgusting trash littering the floor. Still sitting, I twisted to look over where I’d hit the ground; it was as dusty as the rest of the hall but mercifully nothing more than that.
There was just one small newspaper cutting lying beside me that, if anything, would’ve counted as a rare clean spot amidst a sweeping expanse of filth. It was another obituary, and it somehow hadn’t made it into the other room. I’d already seen a hundred of those in there, so one more wasn’t …
Wait, I knew that face. It couldn’t be …
It was.
It was Ah Kong. His portrait, that same shot that was being used for the altar back at Ah Peh’s house, stared back at me, underscored by his date of birth and death, and the names of his living descendants. Including my name.
But that would mean …
My train of thought went no further. The squealing groan of a door swivelling on its hinges rang out from above, a long, high-pitched wail that permeated the floorboards and walls and reverberated down the stairs.
I was out of there and back at the front door immediately.
But I couldn’t step out of the house yet. The rain wasn’t showing any signs of coming to a stop, and the path leading out of the house was almost submerged in murky water, along with much of the ground surrounding the house, which I would have to walk through.
The time was 11.40 a.m. Who knew when I might need to suddenly make a run for it? I decided to use this lull to take a bit of a breather to clear my head. After my experience inside, I didn’t feel like sitting down once more, so I leaned against the frame of the doorway and rested my hand on the jamb, letting it take the full weight of my body while I took in a few deep breaths of fresh air. The moment I came into contact with it, however, I knew I’d made my second big mistake.
Even the faintest initial touch was enough for me to realise how badly rotten the wood was. But by then, it was too late. A good chunk of the jamb gave way, and then I fell down to the ground for the second time within barely five minutes.
For a brief moment, I thought that was going to be it. But then, a sinister scraping sound began to ring out from above me, while dust started to rain down almost as heavily as the real rain only inches away. The lintel overhead began to shudder and I readied myself for a fast break out of there. But it wasn’t the lintel that gave way; it was the wooden underside of the house’s awning. A good two metre chunk of it dropped to the rain-soaked earth with a splash, followed by pieces of grime and muck collected over years and years of neglect. Great clouds of it descended upon the doorway too, and then onto me as well.
“Oh crap!” I began dusting myself vigorously with the flats of my hands. Strange that the dirt seemed to be spreading on me rather than just getting brushed off. When I’d done enough of what I could, I leaned out to wash my hands clean in the rain, right below the broken awning. And as I stood there trying to get my hands and forearms wet only until my elbows, and no more, I heard a stirring noise from above. I couldn’t help but look up.
And there it was, a whole hive of nesting bats, shivering from the sudden exposure, masses of leathery wings and matted fur moving in restless waves. Several looked down at me, their dog-like eyes and snouts fixed on the intruder standing below them. As I stood there, frozen in shock, a few more tilted their heads down, and then more and more joined in, rows and rows of glinting eyes appearing out of the dark swell of shifting bodies, glaring down at me accusatorily.
That was it; I broke into a run right there and then, dashing through the water that came up to my ankles while the rain pelted down on me. I was back on the track within seconds. After stopping for a moment to quickly make sure no vengeful bats were on my tail, I broke into another mad run with my hands over my head in a hopeless attempt to get some cover, wishing desperately for the deluge to stop.
And cursing myself all the way that I should’ve just taken a chance with the lumberjack killer back at the sawmill.
Chapter Nine
Finally, the rain had stopped, and the harsh midday sun was out again in full force. The wilderness, too, was finally giving way to civilisation. The dirt track ended at a junction with a proper tarmac road complete with lanes and cat’s eyes, and I soon spotted a few houses dotting the area, occupying small patches of cleared land amidst the forested backdrop, like little pockmarks on a large swath of green skin.
As I walked along the road, I saw these sparse surroundings lead into a proper, albeit haphazardly planned, housing estate. A perfect example of the settlement’s chaotic set-up was the main road, which split off into multiple offshoots, all of which looked to be twisting and turning into their own convoluted paths through the area. Negotiating this maze of a place was going to be difficult, and I began to consider trying my luck knocking on the doors of the houses to get some help. Of course, having a few sympathetic adults standing outside to approach directly would’ve made things easier for me, but such was my luck that there was no-one around, doing a spot of gardening or sunbathing or whatever it was that people who didn’t work in the daytime did outdoors.
I was still drenched from my run in the rain, and my clothes were soaking wet. But fortunately the clothing was in dark colours, so I hopefully wouldn’t be attracting too many gawkers once I was among living, breathing people again. I hoped that my clothes would get dry at least by the time I met Michael. If not, he probably would have something mean to say about how I looked. Then again, he’d always be sure to have something mean to say about me, irrespective of whatever state I was in.
Thanks to the six-year age gap between us, my elder brother and I weren’t the closest of siblings. For the most part, if Michael wasn’t hitting me or calling me names, then he wasn’t speaking to me at all. As far as I could remember, he stuck mainly to his room or to the TV whenever he was home, or hogged the computer, boasting that he was chatting to hot girls when he was really just talking to his schoolmates who were just as bored and lame as he was. Sometimes, those deadbeat pals of his would come over, on the pretext of studying in a group. They’d arrive with their shaggy unkempt hair, untucked school uniforms and hideous acne scars, and they’d all either lounge around in Michael’s room and laugh together all afternoon in their crude, grunting voices at nothing in particular, or make general nuisances of themselves, strutting around and treating the house like their own private rubbish dump. Certainly, no revision or homework ever got looked at by that bunch, much less completed.
But, to be fair, Michael and I did start speaking to each other a bit more than usual over the last year, and I did manage to have a few normal conversations with him here and there, about football and wrestling and games. In our case, it was probably good enough that we’d been able to reach a point where we could be civil to each other, if not much else.
The closest Michael and I had ever come to really talking like brothers should was when he got turned down by a girl he liked last Christmas. He had gone over to a friend’s house party to woo her, dressed like a stooge from a third-rate boy band, right down to sporting a knock-off designer jacket and new trainers and getting his hair lathered in industrial quantities of green jelly. He returned home early, looking like he had been crying all night, and for the next week, he wore only an expression of complete devastation wherever he went. The heartbreak ran so deep that he lost interest in anything fun he liked to do and started getting into all sorts of crazy stuff instead, like attempting to complete his homework on the day of receiving it, a truly disturbing turn of character indeed for my brother.
I helped him get out of this funk, consoling him with the observations that it wouldn’t have worked anyway because she was too nice and pretty, and he was too much of an idiot. I also made up a song about Wilbur, the guy who had stolen the girl, Michael’s former friend and now-turned love rival:
Wilbur Foo,
