Sherlock Sam and the Quantum Pair in Queenstown

by A. J. Low

  I looked at Watson.

  “Radio-sets-would-be-much-appreciated,” he replied. Moran nodded. Uncle Victor handed each of us a radio set and headphones that only had a single ear piece, and told us to tune in to channel two. Watson and Moran plugged the headphone jacks into their radios. Watson inserted the headphone into a small compartment that he opened up on his upper right side. Moran plugged his into his right ear.

  Just then, Uncle Saad came up to us. He was tall with floppy hair and had a beard. His eyes were a light greenish-brown behind his glasses.

  “Michael! I’m so glad you guys made it!” Uncle Saad said. He seemed far too energetic for 2am in the morning.

  “I’m actually surprised we made it on time,” Dad said, stifling a yawn. He grinned. “Everyone, this is Uncle Saad. He works in my office and is a fellow engineer and geek. He’s also a volunteer with My Queenstown that organises these tours.”

  Uncle Saad laughed and said, “Yep! I must be crazy, I know. And yah, I know it’s early, but it’s also the best time to see what the community gets up to before the sun even rises. If we’re lucky, we might see the uncle who runs the peanut pancake stall at Tanglin Halt Market. He’s usually up and about by 4am preparing his peanut cake batter and stuff. Plus, I have some awesome ghost stories that I have been saving up just for this tour.” Uncle Saad waggled his eyebrows at us.

  Jimmy looked petrified and clung on to Wendy’s arm. She reached out and slapped his shoulder, mumbling, “Mosquito.” Eliza rolled her eyes but she pulled out a bottle of repellent from her backpack and gave Jimmy a couple of squirts for good measure.

  “It’s all right, Jimmy,” I said. “Ghosts don’t exist, remember?” Except possibly the ghosts of all the insects that my sister’s cloud of insect repellent was creating.

  Nazhar looked at me, and it seemed like he wanted to say something, but then he just sighed and fiddled with his headphone instead. I guess he also thought it was too early to get into a discussion about the validity of his belief that the supernatural existed. Uncle Saad then told us to enjoy the tour and excused himself. He walked a little away from us to the front of the tour group and raised both his hands.

  I could hear his voice in my right ear where the headphone was plugged in.

  “Okay, everyone! Thank you for being on time and also for coming on this pre-dawn tour! Making it here is half the battle won!” Uncle Saad’s voice said clearly in my ear. He was smiling at everyone. Uncle Victor was standing at the back of the group. I guessed that he was there to make sure that no one strayed or got left behind.

  “Is everyone ready to set off?” Uncle Saad asked cheerfully. The group mumbled a half-hearted reply; everyone still looked half asleep. Everyone except Jimmy, that is. He had recovered from his sleepiness the minute he left our house and was now bouncing everywhere. I half suspected that we might be able to tap into him for an unlimited source of clean Jimmy-energy.

  We started the tour opposite the former Forfar House, which Uncle Saad explained was once Singapore’s tallest residential building. It was 14 storeys high and was officially opened on 24 October 1956. The actual Forfar House had been torn down a while back and what now stood in its place was the 30- to 40-storey Forfar Heights buildings.

  “Wow, that’s almost 60 years ago,” Wendy said looking up. Most of the windows were dark, but there were one or two households that were lit up.

  “Fourteen storeys doesn’t sound very high at all,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, Jimmy, it might not sound high now, but remember, last time almost everyone lived in single-storey houses. Imagine what it must have been like to suddenly find yourself living so far above the ground,” Nazhar said.

  Jimmy looked thoughtful, then replied, “It must have been really scary.”

  Nazhar nodded, pushing his glasses up.

  “And for some people, it was the first time they had ever used a lift! Imagine how amazed they must have been,” Uncle Saad said through the headphone. “But as with everything, there was a dark side to the Forfar House building too.” His voice trailed off.

  “Wha-what?” Wendy asked. Dad looked at her and shrugged. Mom narrowed her eyes.

  “Some people died after falling from the highest floor,” Uncle Saad said in a hushed tone.

  Jimmy gulped.

  “And some people say that even now, when it’s dark and rainy, they can hear—”

  “The wind. They can hear the wind,” Eliza interrupted, frowning at Uncle Saad. She had an arm around Jimmy’s shoulders. Mom also gave Uncle Saad a glare for good measure. He looked sheepish and said, “Er, yes, the wind. Well, if any of the older folk want to hear more, you can come and ask me personally.”

  “Was he talking about ghosts, Sherlock?” Jimmy asked, walking next to me.

  “I think he was just trying to scare us, Jimmy,” I replied. “It’s all part of the tour experience. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.”

  Jimmy still looked spooked, but nodded.

  We walked past more buildings and flats. At one point, Uncle Saad said that we were at a prison and I heard Nazhar explain to Eliza that penjara was the Malay word for prison. Eliza was shining her torchlight at a street sign that said Jalan Penjara. We passed the Queenstown Public Library. I perked up a little at that, until I realised that it was too early for the library to be open. The rest of the tour was quite a blur as I tried to stay awake. I was certain that it was pure momentum that was keeping me going. I looked over at my sister and could see the same dazed look in her half-lidded eyes. Eliza and Nazhar seemed to be faring much better. And of course Jimmy was jumping around in excitement. Mom and Moran seemed to be listening intently. I knew Mom really wanted to find out more about her father’s neighbourhood. Dad was nodding, but would stumble every once in a while. He would be looking at something Uncle Saad was pointing at instead of the ground in front of him. Fortunately, Watson reached out and grabbed him before he fell into a drain.

  All I remembered was walking and walking and focusing on putting one foot in front of another. I wondered if it was time for a Khong Guan snack. We passed through a forested area and had to walk through a small pathway that was surrounded by very tall trees. Uncle Victor kept calling out for us to be careful and to use our torchlights to light the way for each other.

  “See, Watson,” I said. “You would have been so much more useful if you were a giant light bulb.”

  “Perhaps-I-should-share-my-brilliance-withtheworld. I-will-reconsider-my-decision-thenexttime-we-have-a-nighttime-adventure.”

  An hour after we had started, we came upon a set of old railway tracks. Nazhar had shown me photographs on the Internet and I was fascinated. I loved trains!

  “These were the train tracks I was telling you guys about,” Mom said excitedly. “The trains were so loud and they made the buildings shake!”

  “That’s right, Kathryn,” Uncle Saad said in our ears. He wasn’t that far away and could hear Mom. “This was formally the Keretapi Tanah Melayu Railways or KTM for short. Lots of residents complained that the unpredictable and noisy trains would keep them up at night. In fact—”

  Suddenly, we heard an extremely loud BANG-BANG-BANG! Everyone, including Uncle Saad and Uncle Victor, jumped and spun around. The sounds had come from behind us!

  “What was that noise?” one of the other participants asked.

  Just then, a young man screamed, startling everyone. We turned to look at what he was pointing at with his torchlight and froze in shock.

  Ghostly figures had appeared a distance away. They were so faint that they were almost see-through, but they were close enough for us to see them quite clearly, especially with all the torchlights that were pointing at them. There was a man dressed in what looked like clothing from when Mom and Dad were kids. He had a gun in each hand and was running straight towards us at full speed. Behind him were three armed policemen, but their uniforms didn’t look like what the police wore today. The loud bangs were gunshots!

  The man
would periodically turn around to fire at the policemen, who would take cover for a bit, then shoot back.

  More people started screaming and running away as the apparitions headed closer and closer to us. Uncle Saad and Uncle Victor looked panicked as well, but they were yelling at everyone to be careful. I heard a couple of people shouting as they tripped and stumbled in the darkness.

  I knew that the worst thing for us to do was to run away in the dark. Dad and Mom clearly had the same idea. They and Moran grabbed Wendy, Eliza, Nazhar, Jimmy and me, and shoved us behind them. Watson stood in front of all of us. I could tell he was filming what was happening. He might like to complain, but he was ultimately still a member of the Supper Club. We were out of the immediate pathway of the apparitions and we could only hope that they wouldn’t change direction at the last moment!

  The man with two guns was getting much closer, and the sound of his gunshots got louder and louder.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  CHAPTER THREE

  The man continued running towards us, chased by the policemen. I saw that he was a Chinese man in his 30s, and he had a look of desperation.

  Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the four ghostly figures vanished into thin air right before they reached us.

  There was stunned silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of everyone’s breathing. Lots of people were on the ground, where they had dived to avoid any bullets that might head in their direction.

  I looked around to make sure everyone was okay. Nazhar looked pretty shaken, but not as much as Jimmy, who was a bundle of nervous energy. He was running around asking everyone if they were okay, over and over. Mom finally caught hold of him and hugged him tightly. He seemed to relax slightly.

  Wendy and Eliza were sitting on the ground looking shell-shocked. Dad was crouched in front of them, checking for any injuries. Watson and Moran were doing the same for each other. Uncle Saad and Uncle Victor tried to calm everyone down, but the tour was clearly not going to continue at this point. People were leaving in a very hurried manner, and Uncle Victor followed them to guide them back.

  Nazhar looked at me with wide eyes and whispered, “Hantu.”

  “That’s…that’s not possible, Nazhar,” I said. “There has to be a scientific explanation for this.” There had to be.

  Nazhar frowned and pulled the My Queenstown Heritage booklet from the yellow bag. He flipped to one of the pages and pointed at one of the entries. “But Sherlock, look at this. How do you explain this with science?”

  I took the booklet from him and saw a photo of the man who had been running towards us, firing at the police. It was Lim Ban Lim, the Dual-Armed Bandit. He robbed banks in Singapore and Malaysia in broad daylight and often had shootouts with the police. He swore he would never be captured alive, and he wasn’t. He was killed in Queenstown in 1972.

  I looked at Nazhar, and he must have seen the confusion in my face.

  “It’s the exact same person, Sherlock.”

  “Maybe it was just a trick of the light…” I was barely convincing myself, let alone Nazhar. It’s hard to argue against the existence of ghosts when the man who appeared and disappeared without any explanation looked exactly like a dead bank robber from the 60s.

  I decided to deal with this after I had time to clear my head.

  Uncle Saad walked over to us and asked, “Are you two okay?” He continued before we could answer, “I’ve done this trail for years and nothing like that’s ever happened before. We might have to discontinue this walk.” He looked quite sad at that.

  “We’re okay, Uncle Saad,” Nazhar said. “Those weren’t real bullets anyway. We were never in any real danger.”

  “Watson, can you play what you recorded just now?” I said. “But without the sound please.”

  Amazingly, Watson did as I asked without complaint (he must have been still in shock), and we saw the four men again, shooting at each other. They were slightly transparent, as I had noticed earlier, but I observed something new this time. The men passed through everything; they were intangible.

  “I agree with Nazhar,” I said. “We weren’t in any danger. Whatever this was, it had no physical substance. When the four men ran through the jungle, they never disturbed a single shrub, leaf or blade of grass.”

  Nazhar looked like he was about to say something, so I quickly added, “But I’m certain there was nothing supernatural about this. I’m just not sure how to rationally explain it yet.”

  Nazhar rolled his eyes at me and walked over to Mom and Jimmy to help console him.

  It was rare for my usually mild-mannered friend to show his displeasure so openly. I knew he had to be mad at me. Nazhar and I had always disagreed on the existence of the supernatural. Was I wrong to dismiss his beliefs so quickly?

  “I think we should go to my office,” Dad said. “It’s at Fusionopolis, which is quite near here. I’ll call Officer Siva, let him know what happened and to meet us there.”

  He looked at Watson and said, “I’m glad you recorded…whatever that was, Watson. I’m sure Officer Siva will want to see it for himself.”

  Uncle Saad decided to join us and we all made the 10-minute walk to Dad’s office. Mom held Jimmy’s hand the whole way, and Eliza helped Wendy slap away mosquitos that weren’t really there. Watson used his flight ability to keep an eye out from above while Moran used his rocket skates to monitor our perimeter constantly. Dad called Officer Siva, rousing him from his sleep to let him know what had occurred. From Dad’s side of the conversation, it was clear Officer Siva would be meeting us at Dad’s office.

  All through the walk, I racked my brain trying to think of a logical explanation for what we had seen, but I couldn’t come up with a single one. Was Nazhar right? Had we just seen ghosts or apparitions from the past? It was true that the main figure was the spitting image of Lim Ban Lim, a man who had been dead for nearly 50 years, but there were all sorts of possible explanations for that, like masks and makeup. But how were they intangible? Why were they transparent? I still had no answers by the time we got to Dad’s building. I knew I should speak with Nazhar about his theories, but part of me didn’t want to have to argue with my friend. It hit me then—I was being extremely closed-minded about this. I had made up my mind about something and refused to listen to any other viewpoints. That was the worst possible way for a scientist or a detective to behave!

  We all squeezed into one lift and Dad pressed the button for the 22nd floor.

  “I’m sorry it has to be under these circumstances, kids, but I’m glad I finally get to show you my office,” Dad said.

  “Yeah,” Uncle Saad said. “We do a lot of cool things there. Besides your Dad’s awesome teleportation experiments, we also do a lot of stuff with virtual and augmented reality. We’re currently trying to build one of those sandbox games where you can be whatever you want, but with augmented reality. We’re basically trying to build a holodeck, aren’t we, Michael?”

  “Teleportation and holodecks?” Mom asked. “Are you sure you guys don’t just watch Star Trek all day?”

  That made us all laugh. It was a much needed stress reliever. What Dad and Uncle Saad were doing at their office did sound super cool. Even Jimmy had settled down enough to smile at the thought of a holodeck, though Nazhar still seemed unhappy with me.

  When we got to the doors of their office, Dad swiped his keycard and the doors opened. It was dark inside, and I couldn’t see anything at first, but Dad went to where the light switches were.

  “Ow!” he yelped out. “I’m okay! Somebody just left something here, and I hit my shin. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Dad turned on the lights, and we saw that everything was not at all fine.

  The entire office had been trashed.

  Experiments and models lay broken all over the floor, sheets of paper were scattered everywhere, and computers and monitors had been smashed.

  “Oh my gosh,” Uncle Saad said.

  We suddenly heard a muffled
voice coming from the far end of the office. Dad, Mom and Uncle Saad instinctively put themselves in front of us as they tried to figure out what the sound was.

  “Do you know if anyone was working late, Saad?” Dad asked.

  Saad turned to Dad and said, “Oh no.”

  They both rushed towards the muffled voice, which had been getting more insistent.

  Mom and the rest of us followed as Dad and Uncle Saad hurried to where a woman sat gagged and bound to a chair. She had long brown hair and was wearing jeans and a light blue t-shirt. She was squirming around and clearly trying to yell despite the duct tape across her mouth.

  “Wendy, are you okay?” Uncle Saad asked the auntie as he untied her.

  “Who did this?” Dad asked as he ungagged her.

  The auntie took a moment to compose herself and then pointed straight at Uncle Saad.

  “It was you, Saad!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dad’s other colleague, Auntie Wendy, was still pointing at Uncle Saad, who looked completely confused.

  “It couldn’t have been Uncle Saad,” Nazhar said.

  “He’s been with us this whole time,” Eliza said.

  Auntie Wendy shook her head. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it was this Saad.”

  We waited for her to continue, but when it became obvious that she wasn’t going to, I asked, “What do you mean it wasn’t ‘this Saad’?”

  “I mean it was a different Saad,” Auntie Wendy said. “Somebody who looked exactly like Saad, but wasn’t Saad. I knew it wasn’t the real Saad because he didn’t recognise me or know his way around the office.”

  Dad and Uncle Saad finished untying Auntie Wendy. Then Dad suddenly panicked. He ran towards his desk and started opening his drawers. When he opened the last one, he let a big sigh of relief.

  “They didn’t steal my Red Vines,” he said. He took out a large container of Red Vines and hugged it. Mom and my sister both gave him The Look. Dad grinned and continued cuddling his candy.