As if there could be any doubt. “You knew I would.”
“I certainly expected it. Some people don’t. But let’s get you settled. Then we can talk.”
They started along the road and soon reached a tall wooden post beside the trail, with a modern-enough solar-cell lantern
fitted to the top. As soon as they passed it five Vietnamese appeared on the wide veranda: three trim women, two lean men. One of the men came running to meet them, arrived breathless but smiling – he was clearly older than he had first looked -bowed and took Thomas’ bag.
“Thank you, Long. Please tell Miss Elizabeth that Thomas Neville is here.”
“She knows, Mister Stefan.”
As they drew closer, Thomas could hear a piano playing somewhere in the house.
“She plays the piano.”
“It plays the piano.”
“You’re still insistent. Not your daughter?”
“Not even human, I suspect.”
Thomas barely hesitated. “What does she say to that these days?”
“Shakes her head. Continues to insist that it’s my problem. I’ve been out here too long and she should have come sooner. Recalls details from her life, our lives, no one else could possibly know.” Stefan Yosen hesitated, sighed. He’d been through this before. “As my initial proposal explained, I only require your co-operation and acceptance, Thomas, not your absolute belief. Though from what you’ve said, I am hoping for much more.”
“You’re what, may I ask? Sixty-five? Sixty-six?”
“Sixty-six. My daughter would be thirty-eight.”
“But she’s dead.”
“Precisely. The plane crash six years ago, as I explained in my letters. Her body and her mother’s were among those recovered and conclusively identified.”
“I’m very sorry, Stefan. But you say she knows things.”
“More than an impostor should unless well schooled. And schooled by me, I must add. Plus the other things.”
“The other things?”
“Please. Let’s get you settled first.”
The Hotel Dis showed its age. The ale-dark timbers were old, the imported carpeting worn, many of the windows grimy behind repaired grey shutters and rattan blinds, all the signs of too much heat and humidity, too many years of monsoonal rains, too much time.
But with its impressive façade, its two storeys and fourteen guest rooms, there was an old-world charm about it as well, touches of a France that could never have been, that had been sea-changed into something other, just as the French themselves had been by the elusive, reality-crazing ennui, cafard, accidie that had descended upon them well before Dien Bien Phu, the same quiet desperation that had gripped the Americans and their allies twenty years later in Deek’s day.
After being introduced to the staff on the veranda – the old housekeeper, Trang, the maids, Lan and Hoa, an older house-boy, Hùng, who all bowed respectfully in greeting – Thomas expected to be introduced to the so-called impostor in the hotel’s shadowy interior. But Stefan Yosen wanted it otherwise. Rather than taking him into the conservatory, he led the way upstairs and down a long hallway to a surprisingly spacious and well-appointed end room overlooking the main approach to the hotel. His bag was already on the bed where Long had left it.
When Thomas raised the rattan blinds, he could see the trail leading across to the jetty, found the patch of shade where he had just now waited. The tributary was still deserted, he noticed, such an unlikely thing this close to the upper delta, an unmoving brown line against the rich green line of mangroves and rainforest, all of it set against the hazy overlit sky of a pre-delta noon.
The sound of the piano came from below – Chopin? Schubert? – distant but comforting somehow and fittingly old world.
“Suitable?”
“It’s fine. Thank you.”
“My room is across the hall. Hers is at the far end. The other rooms up here are used for storage or are empty and locked.”
“Stefan, nothing has changed? You’re still convinced she’s Jeune Petite? I have to ask.”
“More than ever. Lizzie is Jeune Petite, pretty much as described in the earliest notes my father kept for Larier. He only saw her a few times during his own initial visits, many times more once he took over the place. But even from the beginning he felt the melancholy and the dread she brought pretty well daily. And Jeune Petite continued to be seen frequently enough until Lizzie’s plane crashed. Then, no more. A week or so later Lizzie arrived.”
“So, no further sightings in the past six years?”
Stefan shook his head. “Not as Jeune Petite, no. Just the cafard as we call it – and Lizzie. After that week-long gap.”
“And Larier’s phantom didn’t look anything like your daughter? I have to be sure.”
“Different features and colouring, but same slight build, and with some important signature mannerisms in common. I’ll confirm those after you’ve met her. Mainly it’s the atmosphere, the attendant dread. It’s as bad as ever.”
Which was a quality as much of a place as a particular person, neither of them needed to add.
The piano played on, filling the old rooms.
“The staff continue to feel it?”
Stefan nodded. “They stay on only because they’re like family. And I’m sure you’ll feel it too, Thomas. It will surprise you when you do. There will be mood swings. A slow despair. Halitosis will come on, a flat brassy taste. There will be irritations. If you have a minor infection, it will sting; a recent cut will bleed. You will stumble as you walk, get a splinter from a banister, drop a glass you are carrying. Your shoes will be too tight. You will be convinced the weather is wrong, find that you smell wrong things.”
“Synaesthesia?”
“Of a kind. The senses misfire. The way you attach to the world. You will see why I approached you, why I need to apply your tactics. Your requests to Luc Clarie at the Sorbonne for anything conforming to multi-phase manifestations came just before I made my own enquiries about day-ghosts in July. You cast your net so much wider: allow zombie manifestations, demon possession, everything. I only allowed the ghost and poltergeist elements, the synaesthesia confusion, all very localized, as I tried to get across in my letters. At first I took Lizzie for a remarkable look-alike, then realized she was Jeune Petite tailored to my own circumstances rather than Larier’s. We never learned who Jeune Petite was in Larier’s own life. He refused to say. Someone from his youth perhaps. But my first thought was a fake, an impostor, then our ghost returned to us. I never considered the other possibilities you’ve hinted at. I still wonder why you play this so close to your chest.”
“You said in your first letters that she may be able to read your thoughts. I wanted to take no chances. But what have you found for me?”
“I did as you said, looked for everything on your list. At one extreme, the expected things, the tourist things, major regional hauntings: the hospital at DàLat, the prison at Khám Chí Hoà. At the other, village tales closer to here. Werewolf and vampire equivalents. More than I expected. Under local names, of course, sometimes much older names. Even French namings.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, sangmangeur, for instance.”
“Blood eater?”
Stefan nodded. “A French coining for a Vietnamese spirit from centuries ago, well before the days of Cochin China. Why would the French have had such a regional word for it unless there was something?”
“And werewolves?”
“Not as conventional loups-garous, of course, but stories of people changing into local animals. Pigs. Monkeys. Animanthropy at its most diverse. Thomas, look, before I introduce you—”
“Stefan, let me go down alone right now. First impressions. She knows why I’m here. She’s waiting.”
“As you wish. But one thing. Her appearance—”
“First impressions, please. Give me fifteen minutes alone. Then come in.”
Stefan nodded and went off to his room.
Thomas splashed water on his face, then set off to meet the phantom of the Hotel Dis.
Elizabeth Yosen stopped playing the moment Thomas entered the old conservatory, stood, closed the piano and came forward to shake his hand. She was slender, of middle height and striking to look at, though not in any comfortable way. She had the sort of features that with a few degrees less of everything might have been attractive. But her eyes, green as the darkest water lilies on the Mekong, were far too close together (Thomas tried to recall the medical term for it), her nose too sharp in a pale heart-shaped face framed by shoulder-length hair that was dark but matte, flat as kohl.
It was her smile that completed the effect. It was too full, too generous, more a manic grin below that narrow, intense gaze, like someone barely able to contain a secret, knowing something hilarious and about to burst into laughter.
Thomas found himself fascinated, found it hard to look away when he wanted more than anything to do just that.
“I know, Mr Neville,” she said, relaxing the grin, thank goodness, speaking in a full, well-modulated voice as she released his hand, but astonishing and embarrassing him all the same. “What was exotic and piquant in my mother became rather alarming in me, I’m afraid.”
It was intensely unsettling to have her catch his thoughts so exactly, no doubt the result of a lifetime enduring such scrutiny.
“Miss Yosen—”
“Lizzie, please. And I’m used to it. You are here to out me as an impostor, I understand. This old French ghost, Jeune Petite.”
“Possibly something even older. Are you?”
“Of course not.” At least when she spoke the smile went away.
“But you’re supposed to have died.”
The grin was there again, sweeping up to become a grimace, changing only when she spoke. “Evidently not. Papa will have told you. I took a later flight. I had a last-minute opportunity to meet up with an old friend from New York and so swapped flights with a young woman my mother was having a conversation with in the airport. Such a small thing. This woman looked enough like me. My mother had borrowed my jacket, then must have lent it to this new friend. Maybe the cabin aircon was too cold. A comedy of errors.”
“A tragedy.”
“Truly that. But a comedy now. No DNA testing was done. Our flight swap wasn’t properly registered in the airline database. No next of kin came forward to claim the young woman’s body. It all seemed conclusive at the time. But I survived.”
“Or didn’t.”
The eyes glittered, the darkest malachite green. The smile hooked up once more, locked for a moment, fell away. “As you say.”
“And returned here.”
“Where else? Despite his concerns and later misgivings, Papa needed me.” The dark gaze, the alarming smile were there in every pause. Thomas actually wondered if he spoke to fend them off.
“Autopsy records?”
“Missing, yes? Misfiled, whatever, if one was ever done. Like the flight change. Very convenient, I know, but how does one begin to arrange something like that?”
The usual way, Thomas was tempted to say. By lying. How many people actually checked such things? “Jeune Petite might have no trouble removing autopsy records, replicating fingerprints and DNA results.”
“My, but we modern-day phantoms are resourceful, aren’t we?”
Thomas refused to be baited. “You know why I’m here.”
“I do. You believe I’m Jeune Petite in her latest incarnation. The household phantom re-vamped as a day-ghost for modern times. Any DNA testing you care to arrange will conclusively show I am Elizabeth Jane Yosen, though I’m sure that will no longer be enough given your theories.”
“Stefan told you about those? My theories?” Another stab of dismay. She knows things, Stefan had said.
“Hardly. Just that you are a man with things to prove. They have to concern me or why else would you be here, n’est-ce pas?”
“You don’t mind me being here? Investigating?”
“I welcome it. Anything that helps Papa through this. My returning was quite a shock as it turned out.” Her tone shifted. All traces of the grimace fell away. “Look, Thomas, I hope you can see that I’m the one who needs your help here. It’s been six years, for heaven’s sake! The local phantom stops appearing, so suddenly it has to be me. What sort of logic is that? Please, you must do what you can.” The narrow, too narrow eyes held him. The smile was on hold, a change almost as striking as the smile itself.
It lasted all of ten seconds. Then, like a spaniel shaking itself dry, Lizzie shook her head and her former wry manner was back in place, complete with the intense gaze, the startling smile. “And you are doing remarkably well. Do you know how many people – mostly men and mostly Westerners for some reason -cannot maintain conversation for this long? They find they need to be elsewhere: off to use the toilet, to check on something they meant to pack. But you seem resolute. Perhaps seeing me as a specimen makes all the difference.”
“Miss Yosen, I mean no offence with any of this.”
“Lizzie or Elizabeth, please. And none is taken, Thomas. I simply accept how it is. So, what it this to be? Exorcism by negotiation? You will try to persuade me away, convince me to be gone.”
“Just build up a case profile of the situation this time. Interview the staff, some of the locals, yourself if you’ll allow it. And please excuse the indelicacies of self-interest. As Jeune Petite you could very well be the classic case of something I’ve been investigating for a long time. Something important.”
“And as Lizzie, the maligned and put-upon, cruelly traumatized daughter of a coldly sceptical father? Is it to be quid pro quo for everyone but me? You and Stefan gain. What is in this for me? Apart from entertainment, that is?”
The smile was merciless.
“If what I suspect is true, then what is happening here may well be the fulfilment of vital imperatives, deep-seated tropisms—”
“Dark designs.” The smile. The smile. The green eyes flashed.
“Since you put it that way. Precisely what you would live for.”
“Live for! If that’s the term.” He actually expected her to burst out laughing, the rictus truly promised it.
“If that’s the term.” He tried to sound conciliatory.
Stefan entered then, and with him the old housekeeper, Trang, who announced in her distinctive patois of French and Vietnamese that lunch was served at the long table on the side veranda.
Thomas had never felt such a sense of reprieve in his life. As they moved towards the double-doors, amid Stefan’s polite smalltalk about the day-to-day trivialities of hotel life, Thomas caught a single glance from Lizzie.
Saved, it might have said, but with such a face there could be no way of knowing.
There was Pho Bo and elephant ear fish with rice, plenty of fresh fruit, even a flask of the local rice wine, and the act of eating gave Stefan a chance to tell more about how the hotel came to be, how it had fared during the decades of conflict and dramatic change. Again, the idea became clear that something – either the special nature of the place, its short-term memory quality, possibly the presence of Jeune Petite – had led to the Hotel Dis being spared most of the depredations and turmoil, most of the later Communist interference too. Not once did he address Lizzie by name.
Towards the end of the meal the staff withdrew and, as if by pre-arrangement, Lizzie rose and excused herself as well, leaving the two men alone.
Stefan waited, then raised a cautionary hand. “Remember. Possibly never truly alone.”
Thomas looked around at the empty veranda, then off across the clearing to the river. “Understood. So tell me, Stefan. That light on the post over there.”
“Our ghost-light, we call it. Something to show where we are to visitors after dark. Saves on kerosene. We have the generator but tend to use kerosene lamps, with very few showing after we retire for the evening.”
“Despite the ghost?”
“Despite our ghost. We’
ll leave more on during your stay.”
“It meant something reaching that post earlier. Your houseboy Long waited until we were past it before he came for my bag.”
“He did. The cafard often hits less frequently, less severely, when we respect it as a boundary. Lizzie won’t comment, of course.”
“Then you will suffer because you came to meet me at the dock?”
“Only a little. And I’m used to it.”
“You said before that Lizzie and Jeune Petite shared important signature mannerisms. They include the eyes and the smile, yes?”
“More how they are used. Especially when she first greets you.”
“As if she’s about to burst out laughing.”
“Exactly. On the edge of losing control. It’s disconcerting, I know. You always feel like asking what’s wrong.”
“She wasn’t like that before?”
“Given her features, yes, but with nowhere near the manic intensity. Much less severe.”
“She says you are wrong about everything.”
“I know. So your visit deals with it either way. How do you wish to play this, Thomas?”
“As we agreed initially. She knows your feelings on the matter. You’re open about it. All she doesn’t know is how we intend to proceed. Unless, as you say, she can know things. Reads your thoughts. Mine, for that matter.”
“That part’s inconclusive. Only my own family background till now. Not all of it, but surprisingly personal things.”
The things any real daughter would and wouldn’t know. Thomas realized he didn’t need to say it. “Then I’ll be open about everything but my theories. I’ll speak to her alone, of course, but will interview the house staff and the appropriate villagers first. Since I’m recording it all, we’ll start with a general meeting tomorrow with everyone present so I can set parameters.”
Stefan gave a wintry smile. “Like a trial.”
“An official hearing at least. Get it all out, build up a formal profile at the very least. She says she’s willing to assist, wants this settled as much as you do.”
“That’s just it. She’s always willing.”
“The body in the crash?”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Page 34
