The Hungry Ghost

by H. S. Norup

“Let me just share this post,” she says, while I take a slice of melon.

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask, when she’s shut her laptop.

  “Your daddy had to go to the office.”

  “He left?” I put the toast I’ve buttered down. I can’t believe Dad would go to work on the first day I’m in Singapore! He told me he has the rest of the week off, so we could explore the island.

  “But look at this little surprise he left for you.” Clementine hands me a gift-wrapped box.

  Inside is a new iPhone.

  “It’s all set it up with Wi-Fi and I entered your daddy’s and my own numbers, before I wrapped it,” Clementine says. “We’ll discuss rules for how much you play on it, later.”

  I wish Dad had done those things. Perhaps he hasn’t even bought the phone himself. Her voice seems to be coming from far away. The bite of toast grows in my mouth and doesn’t want to be swallowed.

  “I know your mummy didn’t have… er… a chance to go shopping with you, so I bought you a few absolutely necessary staples.” From one of the dining chairs, she lifts three gleaming shopping bags. “It was so much fun buying girly clothes for once…”

  She begins taking things out of the bags and drapes them across the table: a white top with frills, pink cut-offs, a red swimsuit, a pale pink bikini with frilly edges and a matching sundress, a white summer dress, a dress with pink dots, and two pairs of flip-flops—pink and red.

  “I couldn’t decide, so I took both,” she says with a giggle. Both pairs have heel straps, like the ones for small kids.

  Last time I wore a dress, I was in third grade. It was at Aunt Astrid and Uncle Paul’s anniversary. Mum only noticed I wore shorts underneath the skirt when I was playing tag with my cousins on the dance floor. It’s one of the times I remember hearing her laugh a real belly laugh.

  I know I should be grateful, and I’m trying to smile, but I can’t imagine ever wearing any of it. Frilly and white clothes are utterly useless in survival situations. And there’s an overall lack of pockets. Mum wouldn’t have bought me these kinds of clothes.

  I push the thought away, because she didn’t buy the clothes I’m wearing now. Aunt Astrid did.

  I swallow. It feels like there’s still a lump of toast stuck in my throat.

  “I suppose this isn’t exactly your style, so I also found these for you.” Clementine extracts three plain T-shirts and two pairs of combat shorts. One pair is light brown, and the other is my favourite shade of olive green. Both have flowery embroidery on their side pockets, which are so big they make up for the decorations. I want to put the olive ones on right away.

  “Thank you,” I say, pulling the shorts towards me and feeling the soft cotton of the T-shirts. The red swimsuit turns over as I pull. It has a small zipped pocket on the back—large enough for my Swiss Army knife.

  Mum’s far away, and Dad isn’t here. Clementine is. For a moment, I want to hug her. If I’m not careful, I’m going to end up liking Clementine. Her smile is so big and obvious with that red lipstick, as if she wants to infect everyone with her own happiness. As if it were easy to make other people happy.

  —4—

  After the twins have taken their nap, we walk to the Botanic Gardens. Clementine wants us out of the house while the pest control men are fumigating. They begin “fogging”, as she calls it, before we’ve left.

  “Can the other insects survive?” I ask. The whole garden is already hidden under a mosquito-killing mist. “Beetles and bees are really important.”

  “It’s more important that we don’t get dengue fever. Last year there was an outbreak in our area.” Clementine hurries away from the house and the foul-smelling, poisoned air.

  The Botanic Gardens are beautiful. Plants in hues of lush green, with colourful explosions of exotic flowers, line the pathways. Tourists flock around statues and take selfies in front of water fountains. They waddle through themed areas with signs describing the flora in great detail. Hordes of men in yellow wellies rake and sweep, grooming the gardens. It’s all very impressive, but it has nothing to do with the kind of wilderness I like. I guess that’s going to be hard to find here in Singapore.

  We feed fish and terrapins in one of the lakes. Every time a small turtle head pops out of the water to gobble one of the pellets they’ve thrown, the twins giggle. Their shiny black hair stands up at the back. It sways when they rock the double stroller back and forth. I’m glad Clementine keeps them strapped in.

  On the way back, we pass a thicket of mangrove trees. Countless roots fan out around their trunks and plunge into the swampy bank of the lake. Half-hidden behind this natural shelter, a huge monitor lizard sweeps its metre-long tail over the ground, right next to the path. Clementine walks faster, but I stay a moment to watch it scrape in the dirt, searching for insects and worms. It looks prehistoric, like a dinosaur who forgot to die out.

  The mist and the stink are gone when we return to the house, but Clementine wants to keep the twins indoors. I go to the pool in my new red swimsuit. It fits me perfectly and my Swiss Army knife fits perfectly in the little pocket.

  I walk to the far end of the lawn, but there isn’t a back entrance where the girl I saw last night might’ve slipped out of the garden. Thinking back, it seems strange and unreal. Why didn’t Dad pay any attention to the girl, when she was so obviously trying to get him to notice her?

  The long trip and the time difference had made me a bit woozy. Perhaps I dozed off while sitting in the window seat and dreamt the whole thing.

  After a swim, I lie on a lounger and try to read. The sun has disappeared behind the trees. It’s still hot and so humid, it feels like the air is perspiring. Although I’m not moving, beads of sweat slide down my arm. They drip from my elbow and land on a flip-flop. One of the new red ones. My swimsuit isn’t dry, but it’s not the least bit cold. There’s no risk of catching a chill, like there would be at home.

  Inside, Clementine’s working on her laptop. Every now and then I hear her talking on the phone. She’s arranging some kind of fancy party.

  The hum of distant traffic and cicadas makes me drowsy. The muggy air is like a heavy duvet, pressing down on me. The letters in my book run together. Yawning, I put the paperback down and jump into the pool.

  The water cools me and the black spots in my vision disappear. Lying back, I float, with lazy kicks of my feet, from one end of the pool to the other.

  Suddenly, I have the eerie feeling that someone’s watching me.

  But there’s no one on the terrace or inside the house behind the sliding glass doors. Nothing stirs in any of the upstairs windows either.

  Standing up in the pool, I turn slowly and scan the garden.

  In the dappled shade under a palm tree near the hedge, I spot a white shape.

  The reflections on the water make it difficult to see clearly into the shadows, but I think it’s the girl from last night.

  “Hi,” I call over, and I wade through the water towards her. “I’m Freja. Who’re you?”

  The girl just stands there. She looks like she could be my age. If I have a friend who lives around here, it will be much easier to avoid spending time with the twins.

  As I pull myself out of the pool, I glance down for a split second. When I look up again, she’s gone, as if by a trick of light.

  “Hey, wait! D’you live next door?” I sprint across the grass and stop where she stood.

  There’s no sign of her. The air under the tree is chilly, as if cooled by air con. Goose pimples appear on my arms. The wet swimsuit feels cold.

  I’m right by the gap in the hedge, and I press branches of a shrub aside, trying to enlarge the hole, expecting to see into the next garden.

  I peer through the opening. There’s a panelled wooden fence behind the hedge, and a board is missing. On the other side, water trickles in th
e metre-deep drain, and a car drives past. It's a side street, not a garden.

  Even though I’m thin, I’d never get through the narrow gap in the fence. If the girl climbed over, then I’m impressed, because it’s high and smooth, without any ridges or footholds.

  She can’t have vanished into thin air. There must be a trick to getting in and out of the garden. Perhaps a secret passage.

  I’m going to find her so she can show me.

  —5—

  After putting on flip-flops and throwing the towel over my shoulders, I place my book so it prevents the gate to the street from closing. Following the fence, I half-run around the corner and find the gap. The only thing visible inside is the green of the shrub.

  Back at the corner, I glance up and down the street.

  The girl stands three houses away. Perhaps that’s where she lives. Her long black hair hangs down over her shoulders and her white dress, which is a bit like the one Clementine has given me. I’m amazed she could climb the fence in it. When I wave, she waves back.

  “Wait,” I call, but she turns and runs, melting into the shadows under the trees.

  I chase after her. The pavement’s uneven, with driveways and trees blocking me at every few paces, so I run on the asphalt. It’s useful that the flip-flops have heel straps.

  Sprinting up the road, I wonder why I’m not gaining on her. I’m fast. I have long legs.

  But so does she. It must be a trick of the light, but she’s absurdly tall and thin.

  My thighs are burning, and a stitch is stabbing under my ribs, when the street goes under a big road. I ought to turn back, but I keep running.

  On the other side of the underpass, I stop and gape. It’s as if I’ve entered a different world. Walls of lush plants tower over both sides of the street. It winds upwards, more like a country road, nestled in the dense greenery. To my right, a gravel track runs between the big road and the forest.

  A little way up, the girl’s standing under large palm leaves on a path that leads into the woods. She waves me towards her, before she disappears behind the plants. It’s like we’re playing a game.

  But when I reach the path, she’s gone.

  “Hello. Where are you?” I duck under the long oval palm leaves and a cluster of actual, real, mini bananas. They don’t look quite ripe, but it’s good to know they’re here if I get hungry on an expedition.

  I walk up the path, peering through branches, searching for the girl.

  The single trail continues under a tree with a curtain of long aerial roots hanging down from its branches. I grab a handful of the roots and try to pull downwards, testing their strength. When I hang from them in both arms, they don’t give at all and easily carry my weight. That’s good to know too.

  “Make a sound!” I call beyond the root curtain.

  Here, the undergrowth blocks the path. I want to crawl under the barrier of branches to follow her, but I’m not really prepared to go hiking in a rainforest. My flip-flops and swimsuit are completely inappropriate. And although I have my Swiss Army knife in the little pocket, I can’t possibly go exploring without my compass and a map.

  “Hey! Come back! Can we play out here instead?” My throat rasps on the words; it’s so dry.

  I’m right next to a plant with upturned leaves. Near the stem, the leaves form cone-like shapes. I take hold of a leaf and tilt it towards me. There’s rainwater in the cone. After smelling the water and dipping a finger in it to taste that it’s fresh, I swallow the quenching mouthfuls.

  A pair of eyes gleam golden under one the bushes, and a monkey scurries up a nearby palm tree.

  Bird calls and cicada noise throb in my ears. Cars whoosh past on the big road. No footsteps. No answer.

  Through a gap in the foliage, I spot a half-buried, cracked cement shell, covered in moss. It resembles the wreck of a small submarine, with a crumbled brick periscope. The surrounding ground’s covered in dead leaves and creepers. What is it? And why is it buried here in the forest?

  I wish I could take a closer look, but stepping outside the path without proper shoes wouldn’t be wise. There are pythons and cobras and all kinds of venomous snakes in Singapore—I looked it up—and the poor creatures must have been driven from the city into pockets of nature like this one.

  I wait for a while and keep calling, but the girl doesn’t reappear.

  I’m a bit disappointed. But only a bit. I hadn’t expected to find a real friend on my first day here. And the girl has led me to this magical forest.

  I can’t wait to explore it. A place to escape to might be an even better way to avoid the twins. It’s too late today, but I’ll return tomorrow, wearing hiking boots and bringing the necessary equipment.

  —6—

  I jog back along the pavement to the house, jumping up and down the high kerbs outside gated driveways. Every few steps, I glance back over my shoulder, hoping the girl will reappear. I wish I’d seen her up-close. Apart from her white dress, the long neck and black hair, I can’t describe any of her features.

  Then I step in a pile of squishy gunk. My right foot slides forward. I yelp and land on my left knee, in something mushy.

  Nearby, someone shouts, “Hey!”

  A boy comes running to the gate I’m sitting outside.

  “What’re you doing?” he yells. “It’s taboo to step on the offerings!”

  I’m sitting in the so-called offering. It’s a disgusting mixture of half-rotten mashed pumpkin and squashed banana, scattered with thin sticks.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, and wipe gunk off my shin and knee with a discarded paper plate.

  “Stop it! You can’t do that.”

  By the other gatepost, there’s a display on a paper plate, with a slice of black-spotted pumpkin, a banana, an unlit candle and a bouquet of the long sticks. I must have stepped in one just like it.

  “Sorry,” I repeat. “Did you see the other girl who ran past here a little while ago?”

  “No!” The boy is a bit shorter and much wider than me. He pushes his long fringe back and narrows his eyes. “It’s not like I’m sitting inside the gate, counting running girls. I only noticed you because you screamed.”

  “I didn’t scream.”

  “You did too.”

  “But do you know if a tall, thin girl with long black hair lives around here?”

  “No clue,” he says unhelpfully.

  “And what about up there in the forest?” I ask, and point towards the underpass.

  “Forest? You mean Bukit Brown?”

  I shrug. With its lush plants, the forest ought to be called Bukit Green.

  “Bukit Brown Cemetery,” he says.

  “It’s a graveyard?” Perhaps the half-buried submarine is a forgotten grave. “But it’s completely overgrown.”

  “A Chinese graveyard. It’s not in use any more.”

  “Does anyone live there?”

  He shakes his head. “Ah Ma has told me people used to live in a small kampong up there long ago.”

  I finish scraping the mush up on the paper plate and collecting the other bits I’d scattered. After getting up, I hold the sad remains out towards him. “What did you mean when you said it was taboo to step on your rubbish?”

  “It’s not rubbish! It’s an offering. Don’t you know anything?” The long fringe of his black hair hides his eyes. But I can hear he’s rolling them, from his tone. “It’s the Hungry Ghost Festival. We have to make offerings to our ancestors—feed them and burn money and so on. Otherwise their ghosts will haunt us.”

  Invisible spider legs tickle the back of my neck. Goose pimples race down my arms. It’s utterly ridiculous, but for a moment I can’t help thinking that the girl did look a bit ghostly with her white dress. “Ghosts? Really? You believe in ghosts?”

  “It’s cl
ear that you don’t.” He rips the plate from my hand and strides back in through the gate, mumbling something about how stupid I am to go swimming, wearing red, during the seventh month.

  And I think he’s the stupid one, because it’s the end of August. Even preschoolers know August is the eighth month.

  Instead of finding a friend, I might’ve made an enemy. At least he should be easy to avoid.

  An old Chinese woman opens the door for him. At the sight of the ruined offering, her hands fly up to cover her gaping mouth.

  “Alamak!” she exclaims.

  I duck out of sight and walk as fast as I can back to the house.

  It’s a bit weird that the girl led me up to the graveyard and then disappeared when I thought we were playing hide-and-seek. I’m not sure if I should be annoyed or impressed. It baffles me she could do all this in a dress. But a white summer dress doesn’t make anyone a ghost.

  —7—

  Dad doesn’t get back from the office until dinner’s already on the table and it’s dark outside. Maya has cooked rice with stir-fried chicken and some green vegetables I don’t know. The twins are noisy, and Clementine’s telling Dad about her party planning. I’m not sure he listens, because he keeps peeping at his phone. Before I can ask if he has the day off tomorrow, Clementine asks him when he’s coming home from Jakarta tomorrow night.

  “Jakarta? You’re going to Jakarta? Isn’t that far away?” I ask. Clementine said Jakarta as if he was going on a bus to the next town.

  “It’s a hop, skip and jump. Less than two hours’ flight,” Dad says without looking up from his phone. “I’m landing at twenty past eight.”

  So, I guess we won’t be exploring Singapore tomorrow either.

  Perhaps Clementine notices my disappointment, because she giggles and says, “Daddy’s always travelling or working, right, boys?” as if it’s a good thing. She starts singing, “Money, money, money,” with the twins banging their spoons on plastic plates as background.