by Zen Cho
"Thank you," said Lydia. She started to get up, but the medium stopped her.
"Wait a minute, good sister," he said. "I have a question for you, if you don't mind."
"I don't have any advice for anybody," said Lydia.
"No, no," said the medium. He looked embarrassed. "I just want to know, what's your birth date?"
The sifu's eyes unfocused, his face twitching. The light of transcendent enlightenment filled his face. His mouth fell open. From the dark depths of his throat issued an awful bellow:
"Eight two one one!"
Even in her impatience this surprised a laugh out of Lydia.
"Oh, 4D," she said. "So people can buy lottery tickets, right?"
"Chinese like to gamble too much," said the demon disapprovingly.
The sifu was still shouting numbers to an attentive crowd when they walked away from the lights and smells of the festival.
The demon had parked the motorcycle next to a drain inhabited by bullfrogs, and their importunate moos filled the night air as the strains of Cantopop died out.
"Can we go now?" said Lydia, but suddenly, for no reason, she was afraid.
What would she find when they arrived in Penang? If Wei Kiat no longer lived at their house it would be difficult to find him. He might not even be in Penang anymore. And if he was, would he be different?
The living world seemed suddenly strange, quick-moving, unknowable. Lydia wished the sky was not so large. She wished, for the first time, that she was still safe within the caverns of the netherworld, protected by the rock ceiling from change and inconstancy.
"You'd better sleep first," said her demon. "If not you'll be tired. We can leave in the morning."
"I'm dead," said Lydia.
"Then there's no better time to rest, no?"
The sky was brightening when they set off again, and dawn crept over the country as they sped along the North-South Expressway. Lydia kept dropping off, her face smushed against the demon's bony back.
Every once in a while she would open her eyes to the landscape of the annual journeys of her childhood. The dark green sea of oil palm trees; massy white cumulus clouds in a harsh blue sky; the narrow barren boles of abandoned rubber tree plantations; the occasional water buffalo standing patiently by the road. They zoomed past orange earth stripped clean and levelled flat, waiting for development; temples with elegant roofs curving towards the sky, roof tiles blinding in the sunlight; billboards advertising herbal supplements and massage chairs.
The shape of the green-furred mountains against the sky brought back an unpleasant memory — the first time she remembered really seeing them and noticing their beauty. She'd been eight and she'd wanted to ask her parents why some of the mountains were red on the inside and some white, but they were fighting in a whisper, believing her asleep.
"I told you to ask for discount. These people want to make the sale, ask only they will give you one."
"Haiyah, bought already," Lydia's father had said. "At most also won't save more than RM100 lah. What for heart-pain over a small thing like that?"
"For you maybe it's not much. Easy lah you, every day come home at five. I'm the one who has to do OT, pay for Lydia's tuition everything. At the end of the day still I'm the one cooking dinner. For some people it's very easy!"
"If it's so difficult marrying a civil servant, why didn't you marry some tycoon?"
"I'm just stupid lah," Lydia's mother had snarled. "That's why, no?"
Lydia had hunkered down in the back seat, making herself small. It had seemed politic to continue being asleep — absent, unhearing.
"What's wrong?" said the demon.
"Just remembering," said Lydia. She told the demon about it. "Dunno why I'm so upset also. They all fought all the time anyway. But Chinese New Year was the worst because they had to be in the same car for five hours."
"Aiyah," said the demon. "Be more xiaoshun lah. Your parents what."
Lydia experienced an unfamiliar spike of outrage. "Aren't you supposed to be my personal agony? Whose side are you on?"
"Of course I'm sympathetic," said demon. "But you're dead liao mah. Your parents also were suffering. Angry for what now?"
Somewhere past the Kedah-Perak border, the demon went off-route. Lydia only woke when the bike started jolting over uneven ground.
They were riding over a dirt track in an abandoned patch of oil palm plantation merging into secondary jungle. It was hot and very, very still.
"What's happening?" Inarticulate fury rose in Lydia. "Bastard, always delay here delay there. You don't realise my time got limit, is it? You think I sold off a year of death to a hell official just to cuti-cuti Malaysia? Where are we going?"
"I'm taking you to the place where you died," said the demon.
They only stopped when they were deep enough that they could no longer hear the noise of traffic from the highway. A heaped black pile of oil palm fruit sat rotting by the path. A lizard ran over the ground by Lydia's feet, lifted its head as if it heard something, and hurried on.
The demon squatted by a tree and looked at Lydia as if it was waiting for something.
"Why — " Lydia realised she was crying, but it was only her demon, after all, only her personal agony whom she had carried ever since she left the living world, only the part of herself she knew best, and she ploughed on: "Why everything has to be some kind of life lesson? I don't need to know what. It's done already. This's supposed to be a vacation. I'm not trying to find myself or what. I just want to relax and see my husband. What's so wrong I cannot do that?"
"What's your agony, Lydia?" said the demon.
"My parents lah!" wailed Lydia. "Ask me something I don't know! My parents give me headache my whole life. Even after I die also I still have to deal with them. But I can't forgive, OK? You think I didn't try? I wanted to be a good daughter. I sent them money everything. But you can't control how you feel."
"You're wrong, Lydia."
"What do you know? You're just a demon," said Lydia. "You can't force yourself to love somebody."
"Not that," said the demon. "You're wrong about the agony. Look around. You sure you can't remember?"
Lydia looked, but the tears in her eyes had turned the world into a brilliant blur. Shapes lost their meaning. She only saw blotches of vivid green, black shadow, blinding patches of sunlight.
"I don't know," she started to say, but she felt a warmth in her hand. She looked down.
An orange light was kindling within her palm. As she watched the flame crept outwards, forming a thin ring of fire. Within it unfolded a scrap of paper. The fire flickered out.
It was a newspaper clipping, its edges burnt black. Lydia had never received a burnt offering before, but she remembered the kind uncle's face, turned to her in puzzlement. The medium in Kampar. He had sent her a message after all.
At first she thought he'd wasted his time. She couldn't read it. It was a Chinese newspaper clipping, and Lydia had gone to a government school. Her Malay was pretty good, her written Chinese non-existent. But she didn't need it in order to understand the picture.
It was a picture of Wei Kiat. She recognised him at once, even though he'd ducked his head to hide his face from the camera. The photograph was familiar — the stern figures of police officers flanking the sullen convict emerging from the court room. She'd seen dozens of such pictures in the newspapers in the course of her life. She'd never known anyone in them before.
"You want me to translate?" said the demon.
Lydia shook her head.
"Do you remember now?" said the demon.
She looked around that buzzing empty space. The only noise was the whirr of insects' wings. You wouldn't hear anything from the road.
It was a good place to have done it.
"No," she said, but there was a hollowness inside her that contradicted the denial. The knowledge settled into her. Lydia knew how it had come to be that she was dead.
She sat down.
"Why did he
kill me?" she said.
"I don't know," said the demon.
"I thought he loved me."
"Yah."
"I loved him so much."
"Yah."
Lydia stared at her hands. "My family was so ... like that ... I thought I was so lucky to find Wei Kiat. He was my chance. Before him I never knew what it's like to be happy." She looked up. "You really don't know ah?"
"I don't have any answers," said the demon.
"You know how to ride motorbike and read Chinese."
"I'm what you need to find your hunger," said the demon. "Doesn't mean I know anything important. I'm just your sadness. I'm just the fact your true love betrayed you."
"You didn't have to say it like that," said Lydia.
She sat with her head bowed, weighed down with grief, and it seemed as if a very long time had passed when the demon's voice broke in on her sorrow. It was as if the voice was merely another strand of her own thoughts, a song playing soothingly at the back of her head. It said:
"Now you know. What does it matter? In the next life you won't remember this sadness. You're already dead. Let go lah your attachments."
Lydia lifted her weary head. "Why are you saying all these pointless things to me?"
The demon fell silent. Then it said, "What do you want to do now, Lydia?"
Lydia scrubbed her eyes, but instead of a scathing rejoinder, what sprung to mind was a vision of the sea. A blue-grey expanse seen over the low wall that bordered Gurney Drive. The waves glinting so brightly in the sun that they almost seemed made of metal. Around the bay the dark green hills rising, and against them the prosaic white and grey forms of condominiums and office buildings.
She saw her bougainvilleas crowded together in her little garden, their delicate petals shivering at the touch of the breeze. Her heart clenched and relaxed.
"I want to go home," she said.
"Penang?"
"Yah," said Lydia. The bougainvilleas, and the sea.
"Not a bad idea," said the demon. "They should still be celebrating the Festival. Penangites really know how to layan ghosts. At least the food will be good."
"Is food the only thing you think about?" said Lydia.
"Somebody has to remember you're a hungry ghost," said the demon with dignity.
It was getting on for the evening by the time they got to Penang Bridge. The time of what her mother called falling light, the sky a mellow orange-tinged grey, the harsh light of the sun softened by dusk. Over the demon's shoulder Lydia could see the lights running along the bridge, the red backlights of the cars drawing away, the dark mass of the island rising ahead of them. And on the further shore, the lights of home.
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Extras
Message to Readers
Thank you for reading Spirits Abroad. I hope you enjoyed it!
If you would like to know when I have new stories out, you can visit my website at http://zencho.org, or follow me on Twitter at @zenaldehyde or on Facebook at zenchobooks. I have a few extra stories available to read online, not included in this book — check out http://zencho.org/short-fiction for links.
I'd be delighted if you felt like reviewing Spirits Abroad on GoodReads, the ebook retailer of your choice, or anywhere else. Reviews, positive and negative, are good for writers and readers both.
Spirits Abroad is also available in print, published by Buku Fixi under their Fixi Novo imprint. Details are available at my website: http://zencho.org/spirits-abroad/.
Other books by Zen Cho
Sorcerer to the Crown is my debut novel, the first in a historical fantasy trilogy set in Regency England. Zacharias Wythe, England's first African Sorcerer Royal, is trying to reverse the decline in England's magic, when his plans are hijacked by ambitious runaway orphan and female magical prodigy, Prunella Gentleman. The book is out in the US from Ace/Roc Books and in the UK and Commonwealth from Pan Macmillan from September 2015. Click here for more information and details of how to buy it.
The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo is a historical romance novella set in 1920s London. When struggling young writer Jade Yeo writes a scathing review of a book by Bloomsbury dreamboat Sebastian Hardie, this leads to literary and romantic adventures she could never have predicted. You can read this for free on my website, or purchase it as an ebook on Smashwords.
Cyberpunk: Malaysia is an anthology of short cyberpunk stories by Malaysian authors, edited by me. Buy the print version from Fixi (in Malaysia) or Amazon.com (outside Malaysia), or get the ebook from Smashwords or Google Play.
If you'd like to read an excerpt from The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, please turn the page.
If you'd like to skip to the author's commentary instead, click here.
The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo — Excerpt
Saturday, 7th August 1920
I had tea with the intolerable aunt today. Aunt Iris, the one who is so rich she has a new fur every year, and so mean she has installed a tip box by the door of every WC in her house, so you have to pay a charge every time you need to go. And so sinfully vainglorious I remember she came to visit us at home once and wore a wonderful glossy black mink fur. She sat on the sofa with a fixed grin on her face, sweating gallons in the heat. Ma had to send Koko out to get the doctor. It was just before New Year and Ma was terrified Aunt Iris would go into an apoplexy in our drawing room — which would have been such bad luck.
I had my angle of attack all planned out today, though. On Wednesday I'd found out how much a piece of chocolate cake cost at the restaurant, and I went in with the exact change in my purse. When the waiter asked me what I wanted, I said: "Chocolate cake, please", and I counted out my coins and paid him right then and there.
"I haven't got any more money than that," I explained.
Aunt Iris was furious: she looked like an aunt and she was wearing her furs, of course. Even the English must have thought it peculiar. But even so she didn't offer to pay. She ordered two different kinds of cake and a pot of their most expensive tea, just to show me. But I profited in the end because she couldn't finish even half of one of her slices of cake. I whipped out my notebook and tore out a page and wrapped the other slice in that.
"I'll save you the hassle of eating it, auntie," I said. "You must be so full now! I don't know how you stay so slim at your age."
I hadn't meant the reference to her age as a jibe. My mother is a very modern woman in most ways, but she would still be offended to be accounted any younger than she is. Her opinion is that she did not struggle her way to the august age of forty-three only to have the dignity accorded to her years snatched away from her.
But Aunt Iris has become quite Western from living here so long. She has a passionate hunger for youth. It is especially hard on her to be thwarted in it because the British can never tell an Oriental's age, so she's been accustomed to being told she looks ten years younger than she is.
"My dear Jade," she said in her plushest voice — her voice gets the more velvety the crosser she is — "I know you don't mean to be impolite. Not that I'm saying anything against your dear mother at all — your grandmother wouldn't have known to teach her these things, of course, considering her circumstances. But as an aunt I do feel I have the right to give you — oh, not a scolding, dearest, but advice, meant in the most affectionate way, you know — given for your sake."
The swipe at my grandmother's "circumstances" made me unwise. Aunt Iris is not really an aunt, but a cousin of Ma's. Her mother was rich and Ma's mother was poor. But my grandmother was as sharp as a tack even if she couldn't read and Aunt Iris's mother never had two thoughts to rub together, even though she had three servants just to look after her house.
"You should call me Geok Huay, Auntie, please," I said. "With family, there's no need for all this 'Jade'."
I spoke in an especially Chinese accent just to annoy her. Aunt Iris's face went prune-like.
"Oh, but Jade is such a pretty name," she said. "
And 'Geok Huay', you know!" She looked as if my name were a toad that had dropped into her cup of tea. "'Geok Huay' in the most glamorous city in the world, in the twentieth century! It has rather an absurd sound to it, doesn't it?"
"No more absurd than Bee Hoon," I said. "I've always wished I could name a daughter of mine Bee Hoon."
A vein in Aunt Iris's temples twitched.
"It means 'beautiful cloud'," I said dreamily. "Why doesn't Uncle Gerald ever call you Bee Hoon, Auntie?"
Aunt Iris said hastily:
"Well, never mind — you'd best take the cake, my dear. Are you sure you don't want sandwiches as well?"
I was not at all sure I did not want sandwiches. I said I would order some just in case, and ordered a whole stack of them: ham and salmon and cheese and cucumber. Aunt Iris watched me deplete the stack in smiling discontent.
"Greedy little creature!" she tittered. "I would rap your knuckles for stuffing yourself, but you rather need feeding. You are a starveling little slip of a thing, aren't you? Rose and Clarissa, now, have lovely figures. They are just what real women should look like, don't you think?"
"You mean they have bosoms and I don't," I thought, but did not say. It didn't seem worth trying to enunciate through a mouthful of sandwich.
She had lots more little compliments like that.
"You would be so pretty if not for your eyes, dear."
And:
"It's such a pity you inherited your mother's nose. Don't take this the wrong way, dear, but your mother's face has always had such a squashed look. A good nose does so much for a woman's profile, doesn't it? Rose has an exquisite profile. I think she is prettier from the side than from the front. That's from Gerald. His mother was known for having a beautiful nose."
"What a strange country this is," I said, "where a woman can have a famous nose. Did they write about it in the newspaper?"
