by Medina, KT
A sudden sensation that the mattress was tilting made him open his eyes. The white of the ceiling, a motionless fan, skittering patterns of light and shade. His vision blurred and refocused. Something was hanging over him. A face, its tiny eyes glassy. Ret S’Mai.
Johnny met his gaze. When Ret S’Mai smiled, Johnny began to scream.
*
The light was fading as Alex arrived at the hospital. The temperature had dropped, the wind had picked up, and though it was still fine in Battambang, flashes of an electric storm lit up the sky out west.
Through the windows of the common-room building, he could see patients gathered around the tables drinking and talking, playing cards, a few relaxing on the bench by the wall, smoking cigarettes and laughing together. He stood and watched for a moment feeling an ache – something like envy – for the company. But he knew that in their case he had little to be envious of. Turning, he walked slowly away from the lights and cheer towards the dark hospital building.
As he neared it, he thought he heard another noise, cutting across the others. He paused and listened.
It sounded like somebody screaming.
He crossed the veranda in two steps. As he shoved through the doors into the dark corridor, something hurtled into him, smacking him square in the stomach. He fell back grasping vainly at air. Ret S’Mai, visible in the light coming through the open door, staggered backwards against the wall.
Alex found his feet.
Ret S’Mai’s eyes were hooded and unreadable. ‘Mr Johnny screaming.’
‘Johnny?’
‘Screaming. Couldn’t find Dr Ung. He screaming.’
Alex held up his hands. ‘It’s OK.’
‘Trying to help Mr Johnny.’
‘Ret S’Mai, it’s OK. Johnny’s . . . Johnny’s had a bad time. He’s—’ Breaking off, Alex lifted a hand and massaged his eyes. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he repeated, dropping his hand to his side.
I seen him. He die. What had Ret S’Mai meant? Alex glanced left and right. A dark, deserted corridor. He could take the opportunity to pin the little shit up against the wall and get some truth out of him. Stepping forward, he clamped a hand on Ret S’Mai’s shoulder.
‘Ret S’Mai, I—’
Johnny called out, his voice panicked.
Alex met Ret S’Mai’s gaze for one brief moment, then he glanced towards Johnny’s door. And realised his mistake. With breathtaking speed, Ret S’Mai brought his knee up hard into Alex’s groin and twisted past him. Alex fell to his knees, groaning and cursing. Ret S’Mai burst through the door to the veranda and disappeared into the twilight.
*
Johnny was crumpled against the metal headboard, arms clamped around his pillow. He was wide-eyed and puce. Sweat stuck his shirt to his body. Seeing Alex in the doorway, he yelped and shrank back.
‘It’s me,’ Alex said in a low voice.
Johnny’s eyes skipped wildly around the room. ‘Where is he?’
‘Who? Where is who?’ He had no intention of fuelling Johnny’s terror, not yet.
‘Ret S’Mai,’ Johnny screeched. ‘He was in my room.’
‘I didn’t see anyone. He must have gone.’
‘No!’ Johnny hissed, staring past Alex into the dimly lit corridor. ‘He’s still out there.’
Alex shook his head. The room was hot, breathless. ‘Do you want me to switch the fan on?’
‘No. It’s quiet with it off. I need to be able to hear if he comes back.’
Alex limped into the room, shutting the door behind him. He pulled a chair over to Johnny’s bed. ‘Ret S’Mai’s just a kid, Johnny.’
Johnny’s gaze snapped back to Alex. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils unnaturally dilated. ‘Mary Bell was just a kid too, Alex. Thompson and Venables were just kids.’
‘I don’t know who they are—’
‘The Khmer Rouge used the kids in this country to torture and kill. To shop their parents for being too intellectual, for criticising the state. Murder their friends for being unproductive. People were terrified of the fucking kids.’
Alex lit a cigarette. Johnny held out his hand; Alex lit another and handed it to him.
‘Ung despises cigarettes,’ Johnny said, sucking on it greedily. His contemptuous gaze tracked around the room. ‘This hospital is a shit hole.’
Alex took in the cool white walls, the teak floorboards, worn but spotlessly clean, the crisp white sheet that Johnny was feverishly twisting between bloodless fingers. He looked over to the window. He could see the odd flash of lightning through the trees, hear cracks of distant thunder.
‘What’s going on, Johnny?’
‘Huh?’
Alex took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t an accident. You – weren’t an accident.’
Johnny was fidgeting again; he didn’t seem to have heard. ‘Give me another cigarette.’
‘What?’
‘Another cigarette.’
‘What happened to the—’ He broke off, catching sight of the stub of the first, ground out, barely smoked in the ashtray. ‘Here.’ He lit another and passed it over.
Cigarette clenched between his teeth, Johnny closed his eyes, hauling smoke deep into his lungs, funnelling it out through his nostrils. A blue fug formed low over the bed. ‘What did you say?’ Johnny was squinting up at Alex, through the haze. ‘About my accident?’
Alex’s mouth was suddenly dry. Was he making a mistake? He thought of Johnny and Luke again, arms draped around one another, laughing on the edge of Koh Kroneg.
‘It wasn’t an accident, Johnny. You were injured deliberately. The skull was bait. Someone put that mine there for you.’
Johnny’s blood-rimmed eyes met his.
Through pale lips, Johnny whispered, ‘He’s Huan’s nephew.’
‘Who? What are you talking about?’
‘Ret S’Mai. He’s Huan’s nephew.’
‘Huan? The Huan in your troop?’
Johnny gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘It wasn’t my fault. The moped lost traction, swerved into the side of my Land Cruiser.’
‘You were drunk.’
‘I’d had a few drinks. There is a difference.’
Alex sat forward and put his head in his hands. ‘So you think Huan tried to kill you for revenge. For his brother’s death, for Ret S’Mai?’
Johnny didn’t answer. His lips around the cigarette had pressed into a line, and he was staring down at his hands playing restlessly with the seam of the bed sheet.
‘What, Johnny? There’s more, right?’
After a moment’s hesitation, Johnny shook his head.
‘Don’t lie, Johnny. There’s too much at stake.’
Johnny met Alex’s gaze. Then he blinked and his eyes wandered over to the window.
‘Johnny.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Before Keav. Before I moved Keav in, I had a fling with another Khmer girl. She was a teenager, fifteen, sixteen. Unmarried.’
Alex felt his heart sink. ‘And?’
‘It lasted for a few months. We met each other secretly. She used to come to my flat a couple of times a week. She was sweet, fun.’
‘Who was she?’
‘Just a girl, Alex. Just another Khmer girl hot for a Western man and his money.’
‘Who?’
Thunder muttered on the edge of town.
‘Tell me.’
‘She was Ret S’Mai’s sister.’
Alex put his head in his hands. ‘Jesus, Johnny. Are you completely fucking stupid?’
‘She wanted it, for Christ’s sake. She wanted me.’
‘She was fifteen. The niece of one of your mine clearers. Fuck.’ Alex looked back at him. ‘So what happened?’
‘She, uh, she got pregnant. I took her to a guy I knew, paid for an abortion.’
‘And then?’
‘Then, nothing. I got . . . bored. She was too clingy, thought there was more to it than there was. She thought I was going to marry her.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Lik
e hell. I finished it. Gave her a bit of money and that was that—’ He broke off with a shrug.
‘And the abortion?’
‘What about it?’
‘Did anyone else know about it?’
‘She said not. But now—’
‘Now you think she told someone.’
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’ His voice was barely audible.
‘So where is she now?’
‘I don’t know. She disappeared. I tried to contact her a few times, but never got a reply, so I gave up.’
Alex shook his head despairingly. ‘You’re a fool, Johnny.’
‘Don’t be so fucking Bible class, Alex. I was only having a bit of fun, and she was scum anyway. All those girls are.’ He reached over suddenly and took hold of Alex’s arm; Alex felt his fingers trembling, gripping without strength. ‘She’s got her revenge now, hasn’t she?’ A sick smile had crept on to his face. ‘You need to get me out of here, Alex. Before they come to finish me off.’
Alex untangled his arm and slid the chair back. ‘I’ll speak to Ung.’
‘No, Alex. You. You need to help me.’
Alex held his gaze for a moment then turned towards the door. ‘I have to go. I’ll come first thing tomorrow.’ He felt sick at Johnny. Sick and disgusted.
‘Alex! Come on . . . mate—’
When the door had shut, Johnny slumped against the pillow and ground his fingers through his hair with a groan. He had to get out of here.
It was beginning to come back to him, in flashes. The accident. And before – the lead-up to it. A series of jerky images spliced together, jumbled and random.
He hadn’t told Alex everything.
He hadn’t told him about the ghosts.
26
It was dark, and Tiep wasn’t even sure she could remember a time before the storm began. She could no longer stand the sound of the wind rushing in her ears. Her pulse throbbed and her head hurt and every limb ached.
She wished now that she had let her animals be. They would have survived one night without food. She had fed them this morning, checked them again at lunchtime. But they were all she had. All she and the twins had to live on, and she had known that it would just take a moment to run to the corral, toss some food into their troughs, run back to the hut and tuck herself in to sleep. She had told herself there was nothing to be frightened of out there: just wind and rain.
She thought of her twins in their wooden cot. Would they still be asleep, or would they have woken up and begun to cry for her, wondering why she wasn’t coming to cuddle and comfort them? The thought emptied her of strength. She would never know the rest of their story. The glimpse she’d had of them as she crept out of the hut, asleep side by side in a tangle of arms and legs, was the last she’d ever have.
She leaned against the trunk of the tree and pressed her fingers against the hot, slippery skin at her throat. Fear, she had imagined, would give her energy, strength. And so it had been for a moment.
Leaning over the fence, tossing vegetable peelings into the goats’ trough, she had neither seen nor heard a thing. The first she knew was the grip on her shoulder. She had struck out viciously with the tin feed bucket she had been holding, swinging it behind her with as much force as she could muster. She felt it connect with bone, heard a crunch and a furious scream, swallowed immediately by the wind. If she had expected to be released, she had been wrong. The bucket was torn from her hand, and then she felt a terrible pressure sliding across the soft skin of her throat.
‘Sohm, te.’ Please, no, she said, and even in those two syllables she heard herself begging.
She raised her hands, felt them covered, hot, and when she held them in front of her, she saw she was wearing dark gloves. And then she was sitting in the mud, heavy footsteps moving away behind her towards the trees.
Tiep pressed hard, feeling the lips of the gash in her throat. Blood filled her mouth and she swallowed it down, felt her mouth fill again immediately. She coughed and spat. Her limbs felt weightless.
She’d been wrong about one thing, though. As the rain lashed down on the crown of the hill, she saw a movement on the other side of the corral. Samnang and Vana, her little girls, were lying there on a pallet of straw, sheltered from the rain by the canopy of branches that leaned over them from the edge of the jungle. Tiep lowered her hands, feeling the rain mingling with the tacky bib of blood on her chest. A fatalism settled on her. She would die here, but at least her children would be the final thing she saw. The girls weren’t looking at her, but straight up, into the heart of the storm, their arms and legs moving slowly.
Gradually, her vision closed in. She was terribly cold, colder than she could remember ever having been. She looked to where the babies lay now, but of course they had never really been there at all. Instead there were just the two goats lying by the back fence, fur dark and matted, eyes gleaming. As she watched, one of them got up and walked towards her. Not on all fours, the way a goat should walk, but like a man walks, on its hind legs. Terror filled her. But there was only sadness in the goat’s yellow eyes.
‘Ontharai,’ it said, softly, and darkness came as suddenly as it had when she was a little girl herself, and her mother blew out the flame on the shuttered lantern at bedtime.
27
The only remaining lead was Johnny. Luke had been afraid before he died, had obviously known that he was at risk. Did Johnny suspect, as Tess had discovered, that his own injury was deliberate? That he had now become a target for Luke’s murderer?
She was halfway across the hospital courtyard when she noticed the Land Cruiser parked under the trees by the wall. Dammit. Alex. She couldn’t go in to see Johnny with him there; didn’t even want Alex to know that she was here.
She turned to retrace her steps, and a movement on the common-room veranda caught her eye. Ret S’Mai was standing in the strip of darkness between two windows, talking with someone.
She started towards him, lifting a hand. ‘Ret S’Mai.’
He wheeled round. There was a man standing just behind him. Quickly, she took in the dark skin, the wide flat face, the high soft cheekbones, the crop of short, straight dark hair, the eyes, tiny, black, so similar to Ret S’Mai’s. A face staring out from the team-room wall.
Huan.
She broke into a run. Huan leaped off the veranda and sprinted across the courtyard into the darkness of the street. Ret S’Mai remained, big head bobbed forward, eyes cast to the ground.
‘Ret S’Mai . . .’
He backed away.
‘You know Huan?’
A tiny nod. ‘He my uncle.’
‘I need to talk to him.’
‘Talk to no one. No one at MCT.’
‘Why?’
But Ret S’Mai wouldn’t meet her gaze. She reached out and touched his arm; he looked up and their eyes met. There was a depth of venom in his gaze that shocked her. Cursing, she ducked away from him, across the courtyard and into the street. She stopped, looked left and right, left again. She couldn’t see anything – it was so dark – then a car drove past the end of the road and she caught sight of Huan, bathed for a moment in its headlights, slipping across the intersection.
She started to run. Keeping to the middle of the road. Skipping over the potholes, loose gravel skittering under her boots, calling Huan’s name between breaths. At the intersection, she paused – saw there was no traffic – and sprinted across. The street opposite was dark. The houses here were set well back from the road, their high, protective walls draped with foliage. She couldn’t see Huan, but she could hear the echo of his pounding feet. At the end of the road he turned right, joining a wider, better-lit boulevard which led towards the river. Tess reached the corner at a sprint, twenty metres behind him. There he was, running hard, bathed in coloured lights from the food stalls lining the riverbank. She sprinted after him, keeping to the side of the road so she didn’t get mown down by one of the mopeds. At the end of the road, Huan glanced behind him and dived in
to the crowd of Khmers thronging the stalls.
‘Fuck.’ She slowed and crossed the road at a walk, eyes scanning the milling faces. She pushed her way in amongst them, stood on tiptoes to scan over their heads. But clouds of smoke from wood fires and steam from cooking pots had massed above the stalls, held from dispersing in the night air by their plastic canopies; the fog reduced visibility to metres.
She gave up and began to wander among the stalls, gazing at the food, breathing in the smells, ignoring the eager faces and beckoning hands of stall owners, their customers squatting on stools, a steaming bowl in one hand, chopsticks pinched in the fingers of the other, some in groups, others alone, all staring up at her as she passed.
Tess emerged from the end of the food stalls into darkness, the sounds and smells fading behind her as she walked away. The storm had finally arrived. She hauled the collar of her shirt up around her face; rain melted into her hair and dripped down her neck. She jogged over to a tree by the side of the road and stood under it, gazing down at the river weaving through the darkness below her.
*
Standing under the tree, waiting for the rain to stop, Tess felt almost as if she was locked in a cage, the bars of rain fencing her in. She felt intensely frustrated – to have been so close to Huan and still not to have been able to reach him.
It was a feeling she had grown used to in Afghanistan. Always being one step behind: on the edge of achieving, of getting somewhere, but then never actually nailing the target. Securing a supply route, or clearing a village of IEDs – then hearing that the same route had been lost to the Taliban just a week later, or that most of the village had been razed in a Taliban mortar attack. The Afghan children she had seen watching the Engineers’ clearance operation from doorways, buried alive under tons of rubble.
What now? She didn’t want to go back to her room at Madam Chou’s. That would feel like failure, and she wouldn’t sleep well knowing that she’d spent most of the evening running in circles, chasing her tail.
