by Zen Cho
But Ridzual had never been the kind of guy who attracted that response from his fellow guys, and he was OK with that. He flew under the radar enough that he'd never been bullied. People let him do his own thing, and that was all he wanted. He hadn't even really noticed not having friends. In KL he'd hung out with his cousins, who were used to him being the weird one and didn't hold it against him, and here in Lubuk Udang there was Ah Lee.
Had been. There had been Ah Lee.
His brain had successfully been avoiding the subject of her for all of ten minutes, but now it slid back down the old path. He kept forgetting and thinking of her as his friend, as the girl he'd fallen in love with. And if you thought of her as a human being, it was horrific what he had done to her. He had been a prize asshole, an unmitigated jerk.
But before he could begin beating himself up for messing up the best thing that had ever happened to him, he'd remember that face she'd turned to him. And that made him not know how to feel again. That face had not been human. Kindness wasn't a thing that lived in the same world as that face.
He'd been having nightmares ever since he saw it. The teeth, he'd think in the dream, struggling in the grip of terror, the teeth.
That was the scariest thing. The one mad, inexplicable thing in the whole mad, inexplicable situation that got to him.
How come there wasn't anything wrong with her teeth?
They had been perfectly human teeth. Even, rounded at the edges, slightly yellow.
He had to stop thinking about this. There was nothing he could do about it. Maybe she wasn't a vampire. Maybe she was deluded and he'd been hallucinating. Or maybe she was a vampire, but she wouldn't kill and eat him as long as he left her alone. She knew he wouldn't tell anyone. Who could he tell? Who believed in vampires anyway?
"Stupid," said Ridzual aloud. The word wasn't 'vampire'. 'Vampire' wasn't scary enough to describe the thing he'd seen. It was like calling a toyol a pixie.
"Not vampire," said Ridzual. "The word is 'pontianak'."
The problem with Ridzual was that he was a city boy. He'd grown up watching Japanese superhero TV shows and reading Archie comics. He hadn't really known his grandparents — they'd died when he was too little to hold conversations, much less be told scary stories.
So he knew nothing.
He didn't recognize the scent that sprang out of the evening then, though he registered it as something floral. It reminded him of Ah Lee: it smelled of her. It was funny that it had never occurred to him that Ah Lee might use perfume.
He'd cycled on a little further when he heard the baby crying. A long wail, followed by a piteous sob-sob-sob that pierced the heart. It was startling how close it was — practically next to his ear. He braked by the side of the road and got off his bike.
It was an odd place for a baby to be. He was standing on the edge of a car park. Across the road was a row of shoplots, their signs still lit up, but the entrances a line of closed gray faces.
The car park was an expanse of orange earth, dusty and crumbling and covered with weeds. It was fenced with rusting wire, and shrubs ran along its periphery. There weren't many cars parked there, and the booth at the entrance was dark.
The falling light turned the place eerie. It was the kind of place where you could get done for khalwat, or be murdered, depending on who else was around.
It was the kind of place where you could dump a baby, if you needed to.
He'd read about baby-dumping in the newspapers. But you never thought you'd encounter such things yourself. And not in such a place as this, surely — a nice small town? This wasn't KL.
Who would dump a baby? said a voice in Ridzual's head. Someone young, who wasn't supposed to be doing anything that would lead to a baby in the first place. Someone scared.
He parked his bike on the pavement and walked into the car park. The floral scent grew stronger, though there weren't any flowers around that he could see — only the bushes, strung out around the car park like a salad God had started eating and left forgotten on His plate.
The baby would be somewhere in there, probably. But he couldn't seem to work out where. The farther he walked in what he thought was the direction of the sound, the softer the baby's cries got.
It was getting darker. The world was a pale purply-blue, and the moon showed clear in the sky. The car park was full of dark shapes — empty cars, rustling bushes. The cicadas were screaming their heads off, and the baby was getting so soft he could hardly hear it through the insects — but it was still crying, a long drawn-out wail, trailing off in a hopeless series of hiccups.
He was terrified, but if he was scared, how would an abandoned baby feel?
He found something behind the next bush. It wasn't a baby, though. It was an old lady, lying crumpled on the ground in a pathetic heap of batik and gray hair.
"Shit," said Ridzual without thinking. He bent down and reached out to touch the lady's shoulder: "Sorry, mak cik. Are you OK?"
The face the mak cik turned to him was a normal mak cik face. She was a Chinese lady with fluffy white hair and a mole on her left cheek. She looked like any other auntie you might see at the pasar basah. Her teeth were perfectly ordinary. She was dead.
Ridzual stumbled back. He was shaking so hard his teeth rattled in his head.
Teeth! Of course there was nothing wrong with the teeth. Teeth was vampires. Pontianak didn't pierce the neck with fangs. They didn't drink your blood.
The mak cik held her hands out to Ridzual, as if she was going to hug him, pet his hair. Her hands were small and delicate. The fingernails were long, curving and yellow — and blunt.
It would take a long time for those fingernails to pierce his belly, to scoop out the intestines. It would hurt.
The others came out of the bushes one by one. They were all little old ladies — little old Chinese ladies in those Chinese old lady clothes that looked like pajamas. All with long, blunt fingernails. All dead.
All hungry.
"No," someone whimpered. Ridzual thought of the baby before realizing it was his own voice. "No, no, please, no—"
He turned and went running, crashing through the bushes. Somewhere in the distance a baby was screaming breathlessly, but he knew the wail was issuing from six dry old dead mouths, and it grew softer and softer the closer they were.
His chest was a great flame of pain. He banged his hand against the side-mirror of a car and knew it would hurt later (if there was a later), but it felt like nothing now. He couldn't hear the baby anymore.
A weight hit him in the back and he went down, sobbing. The fingernails dug into his side. Cold musty breath gusted on to his ear. He was going to die. He was sorry for everything. The fingernails cut into his skin, raising welts, and he opened his mouth to scream.
The next minute his mouth was full of earth and pebbles. Something had hit the creature on his back a full-body blow, the impact driving Ridzual's face into the ground. The pontianak rolled off his back, ripping his T-shirt in the process.
They must be fighting over him. There wasn't enough of him to go around, even if they were small. Old ladies didn't usually have much of an appetite, but pontianak were probably different. He had a second while they were distracted, but no more. He struggled to his feet, willing his limbs to move.
It came as something of a surprise to hear one of the pontianak saying, in an angry mak cik croak,
"Ah girl, what you doing here? You go home right now! So late already!"
He should run.
He turned around slowly.
It was Ah Lee, glaring at the old lady who had been about to eat him.
"Who ask you to eat my schoolmate?" she said shrilly. "How'm I suppose to go back to school now? So lose face!"
The pontianak crowded around. Weirdly, they had lost all their eldritch horror: they looked like ordinary mak ciks now. They were definitely talking like aunties, in indignant high-pitched Hokkien.
"And what are you doing?" snapped Ah Lee.
"Me? Wh
at am I doing? What are you doing?" said Ridzual.
"Standing around like this! You want to be eaten, is it?" said Ah Lee.
"No!" said Ridzual.
"Go away," said Ah Lee.
Ridzual had one last chance. He didn't understand everything that had just happened — in fact, it would be more accurate to say that he didn't understand anything that had just happened. But she'd saved his life, and not, it appeared, because she wanted to eat him herself.
You wouldn't save someone's life if you were a monster, would you?
You wouldn't save someone if you thought they were a monster.
"Ah Lee," said Ridzual. "We need to talk."
"Not now," said Ah Lee. Her voice was a door closing. "I need to talk to my family."
The last he saw of her, in that dwindling light, was her gallant back moving away from him, and the cloud of aunts drawing in around her.
Ah Lee decided to try something new.
In the morning she waited outside the school gate until Ridzual arrived. When his parents' car had driven off, she said,
"Let's go."
They couldn't go to a kopitiam or mamak restaurant in their school uniforms, so they went to a nearby park. It was early, cool enough to walk. They didn't talk much on the way.
There were a couple of people in the park — an uncle and an auntie, walking in circles with serious intent looks on their faces. But the kids' playground was empty and they settled down on the swings there.
Ridzual broke the silence first.
"What happened last night, after I went?"
"Oh. Nothing much," said Ah Lee.
"Was it—" Ridzual hesitated. "Did they—?"
Ah Lee stared at him mutely.
Dealing with the aunts had actually been less difficult than she had expected. They had told her off for not staying home and doing her homework, but it was a half-hearted telling off. The aunts knew they had forfeited the moral high ground by trying to eat her classmate. Ah Lee had listened without saying a word to their unconvinced lectures as they flew home.
At the door, she had turned and said to the aunts:
"We are not dogs in the forest."
She had gone straight to bed without speaking to anybody.
She felt guilty about it in the morning — she had said too much. The aunts had already known that they'd overstepped the line, broken the rules by which they operated. The aunts seemed to feel equally ashamed, tiptoeing around her at breakfast.
She had kissed Ah Ma with special tenderness before leaving for school, particularly as she was already planning to ponteng and knew how shocked the aunts would be at that. Non-attendance at school would probably seem a worse crime to them than eating humans.
She didn't know how to explain any of this to Ridzual. It all seemed too complicated.
"Did you have to fight, or — I don't know — something," said Ridzual. Ah Lee could tell that he was already feeling foolish about having asked. "I mean — never mind."
He paused.
"Do you really eat people?"
"Not really people," said Ah Lee. "Only their, you know, their usus all that. Their entrails." She tapped her belly. "We don't like all the other parts."
Ridzual screwed up his mouth. But he only said:
"Thanks for not eating me. And not letting those others eat me."
Ah Lee shrugged. "Usually they won't eat you anyway. We don't eat people we know. They all were just angry only."
Ridzual looked down at his feet. He was scratching shapes in the sand with the toe of one shoe.
"You guys can't eat anything else?" he said. "Like, animal intestines?"
"No."
"Do you eat good people as well, or only bad people, or—?"
"We don't eat women," said Ah Lee. "And we don't eat people we know. That's all. I don't pick and choose, depending if I like your face or I don't like your face so much."
"Not women?" said Ridzual. "I didn't realize vampires did affirmative action."
"It's already suffering enough to be a woman," Ah Lee recited. "Don't need people to eat you some more."
This was Ah Chor's line, but the aunts were unanimous on this. Hadn't Ah Ma told Ah Lee how she had cried whenever she gave birth to a daughter, because she knew what sorrow lay in her future?
"After all there's enough men around," added Ah Lee.
Ridzual grinned, but he looked a little sick.
"Doesn't it bother you?" he said. "At all?"
Ah Lee stared into the distance. It was hard to explain. She had felt differently about these things when she was living.
"I know what you are trying to say," she said. "But it's like animals."
"You feel it's like eating animals?"
"No!" said Ah Lee. "It's like I'm the animal now. After I die I kind of became an animal. When I'm hungry, when I eat, there's no feeling. Afterwards maybe some feeling, I feel a bit bad. But that's why we don't simply just eat people. We process them first. My aunties like to make pepper soup. You know too thor t'ng? Pig stomach soup? Like that, but not with pig stomach."
"Oh," said Ridzual faintly. "Wait, all those old ladies last night — they're your aunties?"
"One is my grandma and one is my great-grandma," said Ah Lee. "The others are my aunties. But don't you think it's a bit weird if there's so many vampire in a small town like this and they don't know each other?"
Ridzual opened his mouth. Then he closed it, his throat working.
"That's definitely weird," he said in a strangled voice.
"Anyway, don't worry about my aunties. They won't eat you," said Ah Lee. "I told them already. And I won't eat you. Never never."
"I know," said Ridzual.
Ah Lee looked at the ground. She felt her eyes start to prickle, so she said it quickly.
"Are you going to try to nail me?"
She was startled and not a little offended when Ridzual started chortling.
"What's so funny?" Ah Lee demanded.
"Er," said Ridzual. "It's an American thing. Maybe I'll tell you some day."
"This is suppose to be serious!" said Ah Lee.
"Sorry, sorry." Ridzual wiped his eyes. "I'm not going to nail you. No."
Saying it seemed to sober him up.
"I'm sorry I tried it," he said.
"Thank you," said Ah Lee. Now the next thing. "You don't have to be friend with me anymore. I won't be offended. I'll understand."
She had to say it. Then it would be done, finished, and they could both go back to their respective lives with all of this behind them.
"It was kind of worth it." Ah Lee kept her eyes on the ground. She would be too shy to say it if she looked at Ridzual. "Ever since I became like this, I didn't really have friends. It was a bit lonely. So it was nice having you."
"I don't want to be friends with you," said Ridzual.
Ah Lee had expected this answer, but she was still taken aback by how much it hurt to hear it. She had been sad about him enough, she told herself sternly. All the aunts had said that.
"Don't waste so many tears on one man," they had scolded, as if it would have been all right to spread out the tears over several men, but not to allocate so many to only one person.
Ah Lee, having been brought up to hate waste, agreed with them. She locked her hands together and blinked furiously. Her chest ached.
"OK," she said.
Ridzual touched her hand. Ah Lee clenched it into a fist so he couldn't take it, but then he tried to pry her fingers apart one by one. Of course it didn't work. Ah Lee started giggling.
"Ah, I give up," said Ridzual, exasperated. "I'm a moron to try to fight a pontianak. But look, 'I don't want to be your friend' doesn't mean 'I don't want to hang out with you'. There can be another meaning."
"What other meaning?" said Ah Lee. She looked up when he didn't answer.
Ridzual was looking at her with a kind of glow in his eyes. It was the way her mother and father used to look at her, back when she was alive, before all th
e bad things had happened — as if she was something special. Something precious. Ah Lee's ex-boyfriend had never looked at her like that.
Ridzual had always had this look, Ah Lee realized. He had always looked at her as if she was the sunrise after a long dark night.
"Oh," said Ah Lee.
"You don't have to not want to be my friend back," said Ridzual.
Ah Lee hesitated. But there was a perfect way to say yes and still sound cool.
"I don't mind," she said.
Ridzual turned his face away, but he was too slow. Ah Lee already knew he was beaming. She reached out and took his hand, encountering less trouble than he had done.
"OK," said Ridzual. "That works."
They smiled stupidly for a while, shedding radiance on the slide and sandbox, showering incidental romance on the speed-walking uncle and auntie.
"Only one thing," said Ah Lee.
"Oh, there's something else on top of the vampire mak cik and the human pig stomach soup?" said Ridzual. "What more is there? I have to fight a werewolf first before I can date you, is it?"
"No lah, there's no such thing as werewolf," said Ah Lee. "It's a small thing only. But — 'vampire' is OK. The other word, please don't use. Is that OK?"
"Why?" said Ridzual.
"It's not such a nice word," said Ah Lee.
"OK," said Ridzual. "OK."
Then he said, "Can I use it one last time?"
Ah Lee nodded. She knew what was coming.
"Will you tell me how you became a pontianak?"
Sitting there with him in the park, Ah Lee told him. She had not told anyone else the story before. He didn't let go of her hand.
Her grandmother watched her being born. Her grandmother watched her die.
Who died in childbirth in the twenty-first century? It didn't happen. Not if you were middle class in Malaysia. Not if you'd followed the rules and paid attention at school and listened to your parents.
Not if you'd been a good girl.
By the time her parents had suspected, it hadn't been too late. That was the thing. The worst thing — worse than being dumped by the boy who'd given her the baby, though that had felt terrible when it'd happened.
