The Howling Silence

by Catherine Lim

  Miss Ooi had been a Taoist before she converted to the Catholic religion. So Mr. Seng, to play safe, arranged for two separate rituals, on two separate days, the first conducted by a priest from the Tau Sin Temple and the other by Father Rozario from the Church of St. Anne.

  Mr. Seng had reason to regret his decision.

  The ghost went berserk, clearly upset by what it must have regarded as an act of supreme effrontery – ousting a principal from her beloved school. Later one of the teachers recollected an incident, years back, when a junior official from the Ministry of Education had presumed to come to the school to criticise Miss Ooi about some aspect of the running of her school. Casting of her usual polite, genteel bearing, Miss Ooi turned a livid face upon the startled official and said, “You leave my school this instant.” The rage was multiplied many times in her ghost; it went on a rampage of fury, so that for weeks, staff, students and servants heard loud angry noises, banging of doors, sudden crashing of pictures and maps to the floor, and on one occasion, a wild disarray of the furniture in the staff room. The caretaker reported seeing Miss Ooi, distressed, tearful, angry.

  After the incident, nobody tried to get rid of Miss Ooi’s ghost again. Mr. Seng hurriedly left the school. The new principal, a Mrs. Christina Liew, held a meeting specifically to tell her staff to be philosophical about it all, to accept the ghost in their midst, a ghost that after all harmed nobody and only wanted to be left alone to continue its habitual activities in beloved surroundings.

  So the ghost of Miss Daisy Ooi Mei Lang was left alone in peace. She continued to be seen and heard, but never threw any tantrums again. Once somebody heard singing from the music room; nobody was found to be there, upon investigation. Miss Ooi, when happy, hummed a song or two.

  In 1995, eight years after Miss Ooi’s death, Pin Yun Secondary School was relocated to another district in Singapore, as part of a general upgrading programme by the Ministry of Education. The old school was razed to the ground; the new school, bearing the same name, was much bigger and smarter-looking, reflecting the sophistication of education in Singapore in the 90s, and boasting excellent, most up-to-date facilities such as a theatrette and a fully air-conditioned library.

  The ghost of Miss Ooi remained in the old location, clearly unaware of the move. Somebody reported seeing a very confused ghost wandering around, looking lost and distressed. A principal suddenly bereft of her beloved school, the ghost almost went mad with the pain of the loss and bewilderment. But for the new Pin Yun, it was a relief. For the ghost did not find its way to the new school; it would have been intolerable for the new Pin Yun, gleaming in its newness, to be haunted by the ghost of a dead principal. Refusing to be exorcised, the ghost was forced, by the relocation, to stop its haunting.

  The principal of the new Pin Yun was a Mrs. Bernadette Chan who instead of feeling relieved, felt very sorry. She had heard reports of the ghost trapped in its ignorance and confusion, wandering dazed among the razed remains of her beloved school. Somebody had seen her sitting on a pile of stones weeping inconsolably. Mrs. Bernadette Chan decided she had to do something.

  She had never met Miss Ooi but understood the pain of deprivation and loss.

  The decision to help relieve Miss Ooi’s suffering and provide her a new home cost Mrs. Chan a cool ten thousand dollars which, with much effort, she managed to persuade the school’s Board of Directors to approve as an item of necessary expenditure.

  Today, a visitor shown round Pin Yun Secondary School may be a little puzzled by a room that is always locked and that has, on its door, a plaque bearing the name of Miss Daisy Ooi Mei Lang in beautiful gold letters. Inside it seems, the room is tastefully furnished, with the desk that Miss Ooi used to sit at when she was principal. Nearby is a cupboard of various trophies won by the school during the years of her principalship, including the first prize for a national oratorical contest for which Miss Ooi had personally coached the school representatives. On the wall are familiar, loved pictures, including one, framed in silver, of a staff picture taken in 1985, which was supposedly Miss Ooi’s favourite.

  Her ghost, wandering in misery and confusion on the old site of Pin Yun Secondary School, had been gently led in a ceremony conducted by a Catholic priest (Mrs. Chan figured that the Taoism, renounced for the new religion, probably no longer counted) to the new site, and formally invited to occupy her new home. Miss Ooi’s ghost resides in the room and is apparently very contented there. Very occasionally the sound of her footsteps moving about is heard, and the sniffling into a handkerchief, but mostly it is happy humming.

  Mrs. Bernadette Chan is reluctant to talk about this room specially set up in her school for the ghost of Miss Daisy Ooi Mei Lang. All she will say, with a smile, is: “That was the least I could do.”

  The Seventh Day

  Both my son, who graduated from Harvard with a degree in Physics, and my daughter, who is a physiotherapist, are amused when I tell them the story of my Uncle Botak who died years before they were born.

  “Surely you’re not serious, Dad,” says Brandon.

  “Everything’s ultimately explainable in terms of the human mind,” says Desiree. “Anyone can see that it was a case of pure auto-suggestion, Dad. You wanted something to happen; your mind caused it to happen.”

  The young are certainly entitled to their scepticism. In my youth, I had, my share of it, keeping it hidden from my aunt, who was the greatest devotee of temple deities and who regularly made me drink blessed temple water and wear all kinds of amulets on red strings round my neck or wrist to ward off evil spirits. I submitted to all her ministrations because I knew they were driven by loving concern.

  No aunt ever loved an orphaned nephew more. Indeed, my status as the fatherless and motherless waif drew a special tenderness of pity from my kind-hearted aunt who made it a practice, during meal-times, to pick out the best parts of the meat and vegetables with her chopsticks and transfer them onto my plate, much to the resentment of my cousin Ah Siong.

  I loved Aunt dearly, but my special affection was reserved for my Uncle Botak. His nickname had less to do with a deficiency of hair than his preferred style of a close crew-cut throughout his life. Uncle Botak was a large, hearty, amiable, fun-loving man who ran a small dry goods shop in our kampung. In his free time, he liked to wander about the kampung, talking to fellow villagers, exchanging news, taking part in any activity that promised excitement and fun, such as helping to capture and kill a huge python that had been eating the villagers’ chickens and even piglets, and helping to nab an intruder from a nearby town, who had been peeping at the kampung women bathing at the well.

  Uncle Botak took me along on these excursions, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Once, I played truant, sneaking out of the school to join him in a fishing expedition in a jungle river. When Aunt found out, she scolded us severely, and tweaked my ear until I howled. “You will study hard and get a good education and earn a good living,” she said sternly. “Why can’t you be like Ah Siong?” My cousin never gave Aunt any trouble; he always scored good grades in school.

  After the scolding, Aunt made Uncle and me drink some brew made from the holy temple water and joss-stick ashes, that were supposed to negate the harmful effects of our expedition, for Aunt believed that the jungle teemed with malignant spirits ready to punish those who dared to disturb their abodes in rivers, ponds, swamps, trees or bushes. As Uncle Botak and I meekly drank the holy brew, he turned round and gave me a wink. Sometimes he made fun of Aunt’s superstitiousness but never in her presence.

  Tall, burly, with a booming voice, he was the gentlest person I knew. He was in constant dread of displeasing his strong-willed wife, yet loved her dearly. In a kampung full of women who complained about their husband’s brutality, infidelity or idleness, Uncle Botak was the ideal husband. He would comply with Aunt’s every wish and endure any amount of inconvenience on her account, once scouring several marketplaces to find a special pristine kind of young fowl that Aunt needed for her offering to
a revered temple deity who would accept nothing less than virginal pullet, steamed in its own pure juices and offered with joss-sticks and flowers.

  When it was time for me to go to secondary school, Uncle Botak bought me a bicycle, as the nearest school was miles away from the kampung. Then when I finished my secondary education, Uncle and Aunt scraped together whatever savings they had to send me to university. They could even afford to let me board in one of the university’s hostels for students. My cousin Siong had fortunately won a government scholarship, which meant that the spare money could go to me. I would work at part-time jobs during the vacations to earn some money to enable me to buy gifts for Uncle and Aunt.

  When the kampung was cleared by the government for industrial development, Uncle grew very depressed. He did not like living in the small, crammed flat on the twelfth storey of a block of the government-built flats that he had been given as part of the resettlement programme. He missed the kampung and its wide open spaces terribly. Only six months after moving into the new home, Uncle suffered a stroke, which over the months, reduced him to half his size. But he tried to be cheerful whenever I came to visit. We would talk about our happy carefree kampung days.

  In my third year at university, Uncle Botak died. Cousin Siong, who had gone abroad on a post-graduate scholarship, flew back in time for the funeral. Aunt was distraught, although she had been expecting his death in the last few months when he had hardly moved from his bed.

  Something kept up Aunt’s spirits during the bereavement. It was the prospect of welcoming back Uncle’s ghost seven days after his death. All her energies were channelled into the preparation for this special homecoming. Like her ancestors, she faithfully observed the custom of meticulous, loving preparation, sweeping and cleaning his bedroom, putting clean sheets on the bed, clean pillow and bolster cases, clean towels. She set up a table with a mug of his favourite tea, a pot of boiled rice, and a bowl and a pair of chopsticks beside it. Her ancestors in China had been even more painstaking in their preparations, spreading a thin layer of ash on the floor, so as to allow the returning ghost to leave its footprints, the surest proof of its return.

  Aunt was in a fever of activity and expectation. It was hr way of coping with the pain of her bereavement. Indeed, she was brimming with so much confidence that expectation became certainty. “Prawn noodles,” she said reflectively. “It was his favourite, you know. Maybe I should get ready a plate of prawn noodles too.”

  There was one moment when the confidence faltered and she turned to me to say, a little anxiously, “Do you think he’ll come?” I put a reassuring arm on her shoulder. Cousin Siong had left two days after the funeral and would therefore not be around for his father’s return. I wished I were in his position, if only to be spared the disappointment on Aunt’s face on the morning after the seventh day. She would see the room exactly as she had laid it out, and would have to pretend, for her own consolation, that the ghost had returned. I remember that as a boy I once heard her talk about a relative’s joy in seeing all the evidence of her dead husband’s return – the crumpled bedsheet, the hollow in the pillow where the ghost had laid his head, the footprints on the floor where he had walked, even without the aid of strewn ash. Uncle Botak and I had listened politely; then he turned around and gave me one of his merry winks.

  Sitting alone in my room, thinking sadly of Uncle lying cold and still in his grave, I suddenly had an idea. It was an idea born of a decision to do everything in my power to ensure that Aunt would get her dearest wish. Uncle had never disappointed her in life; now I would make sure that through me, he would not disappoint her in death either. It was as if the spirit of Uncle Botak, as kind and thoughtful as ever, had suggested the idea to me.

  On the evening of the seventh day, when everybody was asleep, I stole into the room prepared for Uncle’s return. Lying down on the bed to crease and crumple the sheets, leaving a conspicuous hollow in the pillow, shifting the pillow bolster to a new position on the bed, drinking some of the tea in the mug, picking up the chopsticks to stir the smooth surface of the boiled rice in the pot and perhaps leave a few grains in the bowl – all these would take just a few minutes.

  I stole out of my room and entered Uncle’s dark, silent room. I was immediately seized by a strange sensation that I was not alone. It came suddenly, real, palpable. I stood very still in the darkness, not daring to breathe. A cold, numbing chill began spreading through my body. There should have been no fear: alive, Uncle Botak had been the friendliest, most reassuring presence; dead, he should be no different. My heart was pounding wildly.

  I heard sounds. They were the sounds of someone walking in the room with bare feet. It was a hurried, restless kind of movement, conveying agitation. There came more sounds in the dense darkness, a cough, a rough clearing of phlegm in the throat, a grunt, the tiny thud of a small object dropped on the floor. I stood still in a paralysis of terror.

  Then it all happened – so fast that I seemed no longer in control but was being borne along by someone else’s will. I felt strong hands grasping my shoulders, propelling me to the bed and forcing me to lie down. As I lay trembling, I felt the same pair of strong hands moving my head and legs this way and that, adjusting them to the contours of the pillow and bolster. Lying very still, I continued to hear the scuffling, breathing, coughing sounds, now amplified by closeness. At one point, the sounds were so close that they became a roaring tumult in my brain. Then I felt an enormous weight on my chest, as if somebody were sitting on it. Next I felt the pair of hands again, pushing me up and towards the table where Aunt had put the pot of rice and the mug of tea. I do not remember what happened next, except that I felt something like a wet pad hit my face. I stumbled, hit the table and heard chopsticks rolling off and falling to the floor. I got up and ran gasping out of the room.

  I stayed awake all night wondering about what had happened. Sufficiently calm, I began to think of possible explanations. A dream? A hallucination? People under tremendous stress have been known to have the strangest experiences. After all, I had been under considerable strain not only of mourning Uncle’s death but worrying about Aunt’s pain.

  The far from benign presence was puzzling. The air had practically crackled with the hostility. This could not have been my friendly, warm, kind Uncle Botak. Death is said to have a softening influence even on the hardest, most unfeeling people, transforming them into gentle, well-disposed spirits. Had it had the opposite effect in Uncle’s case? Or was Uncle still his same benign self but deliberately putting on a show of great displeasure at my presumptuousness in doubting Aunt’s faith in him, and determined to teach me a lesson?

  Or was that presence in the room someone else, someone who died at the same time but had been denied the seventh day welcome home, so that he had come back as an interloper, appropriating another’s welcome?

  My head reeled with all the surmising and began to throb painfully. I was certain of one thing. The experience had been real and not imaginary. I could still hear the sounds of the footsteps and the coughing in my ears, still feel the pressure of the hands on my shoulders. I did something for proof. I removed my shirt and examined my shoulders in the mirror.

  There were distinct marks on them.

  Throughout the night, I heard, coming from the distance, the mourning howling of dogs, long, melancholy, drawn-out wails that added to my terror which shaped into a great sadness so that I found myself sobbing uncontrollably.

  Aunt said the next morning, after the inspection of the room, “He’s come back. I knew he would.” Bright tears glistened in her eyes. In those days, she wept easily, whether from pain or joy. Like Uncle, she missed the kampung and hated the small, crammed flat but would live in it for another twenty years.

  My son Brandon says, “Strange, Dad, but I still think it was an entirely subjective experience.”

  My daughter Desiree says, “Don’t you see, dad, you were scared to do it, but wanted to do it so badly, so subconsciously you shifted the respo
nsibility to a ghost. Ghosts are convenient means for lots of people to resolve their inner conflicts, fears, needs, longings.”

  As I say the young are entitled to their scepticism.

  Elemental

  I am a collector of what must be the most bizarre collectibles in the world – newspaper reports of lovers who dies together in a suicide pact. I show the fine care and systematic meticulousness of the serious collector, arranging my material into suitable categories, labelling and showcasing these, meeting with fellow collectors to talk, discuss, exchange thoughts about what must be the most drastic of human decisions. Unfortunately – very fortunately, considering the highly questionable nature of this past-time – there are not many collectibles or collectors around. I have only a thin, five-page file of the reports and I know of only one person, a fellow journalist for The Courier, who shares the same morbid interest, but says he will certainly not raise it to the unhealthy level of an obsession.

  My ‘collection’ started more than thirty years ago. In 1965, when I was a teenager in school, I read about a suicide pact between two young lovers, which gripped my imagination so much that it became the subject of an intense poem I wrote for my school magazine. The boy, aged nineteen, and the girl, aged seventeen, one night drove off in a rented car, parked it along a lonely lane far from their homes, locked themselves in, poured kerosene over their bodies and set themselves ablaze. I remember vividly the picture in the newspaper of the charred car, all twisted and blackened metal, and the remains of the couple that had been brought out, aid on the ground and hurriedly covered with a piece of tarpaulin.