“She will have told you misidentification, yes? That Marie flew on to Denver without her. The flight change wasn’t logged, the autopsy wasn’t filed properly. No one enquired about the dead girl.”
“I’ll be confirming everything you’ve told me. That you think she’s an apparition? How it comes up openly in daily conversation, openly in front of staff. I’ll want it all.”
“Of course, but reassure me, please. She’s more than just a day-ghost, you say?”
“Given how events match existing profiles, yes. You must trust me.”
“And the procedure includes an exit strategy? I want this ended.”
“I’m here three days this first visit. I’ll compile and confirm data as discreetly as I can. At the right time, we present her with the evidence. See her reaction. Try exorcism by negotiation, as she so aptly put it.”
“Again, she may already know what you intend.”
“Immaterial if what I suspect is true.”
“And what if there’s no conclusive outcome? Your time—” “I won’t fake data or force conclusions, Stefan. I’m used to disappointment. I’m happy just to have the profile. It’s what we said back in July. Everyone is fascinated by tales of ghosts and spirits, hauntings and possession. But only as tales. They don’t go far enough. They only ever go one step along the road. Starting tomorrow, we try to go further.”
In the night there was rain that wasn’t.
Exhausted from the flight down from Tokyo and the long river journey from Saigon in the heat and humidity, wearied by the sheer intensity of his first meetings with the occupants of the Hotel Dis, Thomas excused himself at eight o’clock and went to his room.
He slept well at first, but woke a little after midnight, to lie watching the streaks of shifting lesser darkness between the slats of the blinds, certain that there was the steady fall of rain on the roof, running off the eaves. There was the fresh smell of it too, flooding in through the insect screens: wet leaves, night orchids, rich loam, a spicy almost pungent fragrance he couldn’t quite name, even more elusive scents.
It was only when he went to use the water-closet off the bathroom and was on his way back to bed that he thought to look out and be sure. He lifted the blind and pressed close to the insect screen. The smells of the humid jungle night were stronger than ever, but there was no rain, just stillness, complete darkness but for the glow of the solitary ghost-light on its post, the tiny lantern haloed with insects.
The sensory dislocation brought a quiet panic, but then Thomas remembered Stefan’s words about the cafard.
You will be convinced the weather is wrong.
It was enough to make him light his lamp, check his room, the reasonably familiar surroundings he now depended on more than ever to anchor him in time and place. The hotel was so quiet. There were just the jungle sounds and an occasional dull bump-bumping somewhere outside that Thomas thought might be the generator or a water pump working.
And suddenly the thought was there.
Lizzie is outside the door!
He was sure of it. It was like the old childhood fear of something under the bed or in the closet. You had to look to be free of it.
Lizzie was out there!
But to open the door! To actually go over, turn the key and the handle, pull it back. To look out and find her grinning her grin, having the dark, too narrow eyes locked on his. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t bear to do it. Not at this hour. Not at any hour.
But how could he leave it unresolved? He could almost hear her breathing on the other side, pressing close to the wood. He could. He could. She’s right there. Face against the timber, breathing against it. He could feel the pressure of her presence.
Thomas stumbled back to the bed and checked the time: 12:34. It was the lamp! She’d seen its light under the door. He extinguished it at once, then sat quietly in the close darkness watching the door.
There was a knocking then, definite, unmistakable, several firm raps, over so quickly, followed by a long silence. Half a minute? A minute? Then the pattern again, the short quick raps. But no words, no voice, no one calling his name.
Could it be Stefan? Was it Long or Trang or one of the other house staff paying a late call to share secrets, things they dared not reveal in daylight?
The imaginary rain was falling again. Thomas heard the steady patter through the blinds and window screens, heard the impossible drip, drip, drip from the eaves, smelled the wet leaves, the rich earth.
But no more knocking came, no other sound but the false rain, possibly more of the odd bumping, he couldn’t be sure.
Lizzie was out in the hall, grinning in the dark, just waiting. More than a day-ghost, a night-ghost now, the classic haunt-form. Jeune Petite.
If she were out there. Only if.
And what if not Lizzie at all?
Thomas sat barely breathing, staring at the door.
Then remembered the obvious. What were locked doors to a phantom? Lizzie, Jeune Petite, could be inside the room already if she chose to be! Pressed up against the door on this side, utterly still. Thomas was sure he could see her there, darkness in darkness, the first crimplings and twinklings of her smile giving her away.
She has me! It was all he could think of.
But then a far-off door closed, the door at the other end of the hall. Her door.
And the ghost rain stopped, just like that. The night was still, filled with insects and night-birds calling, the occasional faint thumping sound from above.
A second reprieve.
Thomas settled back, tried to sleep again, telling himself that it didn’t matter. Whether Lizzie or just this old, well-known, re-vamped Jeune Petite playing her tricks, she was something known and knowable.
But he had felt the dread, the cafard.
And it was the longest night of his life.
The morning sunlight changed everything, of course, brought the fierce pre-delta sun, the empty river, the line of mangroves in the early haze, the rainforest burgeoning with life.
He neither mentioned nor asked about his experiences of the night before. According to Stefan, everyone present would allow that la maladie du cafard would have left its calling card. It was a given here; of course he would have felt something. You got on with things in spite of it. The fact that they didn’t ask even became strangely comforting.
The first session was at ten with everyone in the conservatory, sitting in the old-fashioned armchairs and sofas close by the piano. Thomas was given the place of honour in Stefan’s big armchair, with Stefan to his right and Lizzie to his left around the small circle they made. He switched on his digital recorder, opened the type-written history Stefan had provided and scanned the highlighted points, needing to anchor himself in the reality of the Hotel Dis as much as anything, then began.
“Larier built this place in 1924, originally as a plantation residence but with an eye to catering for select tourists from Europe. In 1941 he returned to Paris, ostensibly for professional reasons, but the political situation had changed. There was the Japanese occupation, an impotent and token French government desperate that the French retain their business holdings, not to mention their fading dreams of a colonial empire. Everything was uncertain. Stefan, you say Larier left because the ghost sightings were becoming more frequent, increasingly disturbing. He couldn’t stand it. This Jeune Petite, as he called her—”
Elizabeth raised a hand schoolgirl fashion.
“Yes?” Thomas said.
“Present.” She giggled. “That’s me apparently.”
Stefan sighed, rolled his eyes. “Please.”
Not “Please, Lizzie”, Thomas noticed. He avoids naming her to her face.
“So your father says. For the record, are you or have you ever been Jeune Petite?”
“No.” She turned to Stefan. “You hear me, Papa? No!”
Thomas left no time for an answer, continued reading from his notes. “Stefan, within the immediate area, fifty square miles or so, you’ve logged twenty-four
spirit sightings in living memory where more than one supposedly reliable witness was present; eighteen alleged shapeshifter manifestations; five cases of what can be identified as possession as much as an any kind of allowable mental illness. If we extend that area to 300 square miles then we now have five times that number.”
“Though hardly reliable scientifically,” Stefan said. “Folk tales, rumours, hearsay. What you’d expect.”
“Of course. Impossible to substantiate clinically. But it’s just the range we’re after at this point, a sampling of manifestations to match my samplings from elsewhere so that we have a range of forms.”
And so it went, the start of what ended up being a long day. Many of the surrounding villagers couldn’t come in to tell their stories until after sundown, so the actual interviews confirming local accounts of shapeshifters and demon possession went on well after ten o’clock.
It ended with Long and Hoa translating for an old man named Venny, who told a surprisingly consistent and detailed story of two villagers bitten in the night, showing puncture marks on their necks, some exsanguination but with no fatalities involved. No, not the bites of bats, snakes or monkeys, Long translated, nor any known night creature. The wounds were too large, too far apart, too distinctive. Venny knew of others who had suffered similarly; they often talked about such things at the markets and festivals.
Thomas retired around eleven, exhausted but pleased. However it went with trying to determine Lizzie’s role in everything, he had made a good start on a valuable regional profile.
There was no “visit” from Jeune Petite that night, no knocking, no phantom Lizzie, thank goodness. No trace of the cafard either that Thomas was aware of, just the occasional odd bumping sound he had heard the previous night. He slept through, which had the effect of softening the former night’s terrors, of making the false rain and the late-night caller at his door seem the result of travel fatigue, the rigours of being in a new place, primed by Stefan Yosen’s stories and his own vivid imaginings.
The following day went much like the first, with Long translating for the old housekeeper, Trang, so Thomas could learn all he could about Gerard Larier and how life had been in the hotel before Anton and Marguerite Yosen, Stefan’s parents, had assumed permanent residence, then outright ownership at Larier’s departure.
Trang had been born at the Hotel Dis ten years after it was first built. Her tales of Jeune Petite’s appearances spanned an entire lifetime and were not only thorough, earnest and respectful, but often chilling in their unadorned frankness and simplicity.
That afternoon there was an hour with Lizzie, which went much better than Thomas had feared it might. For a start, much of the time he was either making notes or reading prepared questions, with Lizzie in the big armchair and turned slightly away from him.
She seemed resolved to make it easier too. For most of that hour she presented as a loving, concerned and helpful daughter. She held back the smile, breaking form only near the end when she leant around the wing of the high-backed chair and snared him with her gaze. Instantly it was the other Lizzie.
“I think we’ve been very good with this, don’t you? Played very nicely together?”
It may well have negated everything, Thomas wasn’t sure. If a ploy rather than a natural lapse, then it had the same effect: it was like a psychotic episode, something pathological, as if she were suddenly possessed by Jeune Petite, some other here-again, gone-again presence.
“I was just about to say thank you,” Thomas managed, and kept his voice steady considering how he felt. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“But I’ve ruined it?”
“I don’t know yet. You’ve been through a great deal. A wry detachment is entirely appropriate. My intrusion into your lives warrants all sorts of reasonable reactions: indignation, resentment, some form of serious emotional response.”
“You’re unfailingly gracious. Thank you for not saying ‘schizoid event’. I think I like you.”
“Did you knock on my door the other night?” Thomas couldn’t help himself.
Lizzie stood, her smile merciless. “Even if you are a bit too full of yourself, Mr Neville. Papa’s room is opposite yours. Maybe I wasn’t outside your door at all! Now please excuse me.”
And she left the conservatory.
That evening some of Trang’s old friends arrived: two villagers who had travelled all the way up from the delta to tell their stories. Lâm Doan and his brother Bao were motorcycle repairmen from one of the more industrialized delta towns. They confirmed one another’s accounts of a series of shapeshifter incidents involving a local who had turned into a wild pig, then, on a second occasion, a crazed dog that had to be shot. They insisted that the dog had changed back into human form after death, but that fellow villagers had burned the remains before any kind of official investigation could be arranged.
Lâm and Bao were invited to stay the night in the downstairs staff quarters, but they politely refused, preferring the long journey downriver to the prospect of facing the cafard and possibly Jeune Petite. While Trang, Lan and Hoa saw them as far as the ghost-light, Thomas asked Stefan about the odd thumping sound he’d heard in his room.
“That. It’s just the eels in the water tank on the roof.”
“Eels! Stefan, how on earth—?”
“Who knows?” Stefan shrugged. “A bird catches an eel, drops it on its way to the forest. The eel is pregnant, finds its way into the tank. Is it a problem?”
“Not at all.”
“Not like the tristesse, eh? I can tell you feel it. The eels are real. The true real.”
Thomas could only smile. Two days under Stefan’s roof and a term like the “true real” made perfect sense, the cafard just one more commonplace of hotel life.
That third night was as humid and still beyond the windows as the previous two, with just the sound of insects and nightbirds calling from the forest and the occasional bump, bump of the eels on the roof (though how, how, how, Thomas wondered on the edge of sleep, did the eels really get up there in the first place and what did they eat apart from each other?). The thought of them blindly circling remained strange rather than alarming, just another odd fact in a world of amazing facts, and Thomas managed to sleep with little trouble.
On Monday there were some last-minute interviews, one with a boatman bringing in supplies who had a story of walking dead in the upper Mekong. Two fresh corpses, he insisted, a Laotian man and a Vietnamese woman, both pronounced dead from eating poisoned fish, had left their death-beds the next morning, rose up one after the other and walked the half-mile to the river then plunged into the water. Both had started making an eerie droning on their way to the river’s edge, a dismal sound that could still be heard as the corpses were swept away.
After lunch, Thomas spent the afternoon transcribing the fifteen most useful interviews into his laptop, wanting to have hard-copy back-ups and to leave Stefan with a preliminary version of what would be edited down, possibly expanded, back in Tokyo before he flew home to Sydney.
For a special final dinner that evening, Trang served Bun Cha Gio, Banh Hoi and Bun thit nuong prepared according to recipes learned from her mother and grandmother back in Larier’s day. Afterwards, Thomas suggested to Stefan that the two of them adjourn to the long sofa on the veranda inside the insect screen. When they were settled with whisky sours brought by Lan, Thomas announced that it was time to explain his line of research; at least to bring it all together in a quick thumbnail sketch.
“For nearly ten years I’ve been gathering evidence to support a case for there being a single haunt-form for all paranormal sightings. All the multi-phase manifestations: ghost, vampire, werewolf, zombie, demon possession, poltergeist events, the lot, are the results of this basic form being present.”
“You’re saying it’s all one thing?”
“The basic haunt-form is an entity called a stoyen.” He spelled it out. “Whatever it actually is, it is at the root of all the classic paran
ormal manifestations. If you are a traditional Navajo, then you get chindi and skinwalker sightings. If you’re among the tribes of West Africa, you’ll have shapeshifters like those in the Anansi mythos. Here in Vietnam we go back before the Hung native rulers to the first manifestations of the dragon lord Lac Long Quan. It’s such a rich data-pool, both global and regional, general and specific.”
“A stoyen?”
“One of the oldest Indo-European names for it. But the basic haunt-form, giving back what’s expected, whatever is sought or feared, even what is needed in a given culture, to look at it that way. For Venny it was a vampire experience, but very much a regional one manifested in local terms. Here at the hotel you’ve had a stoyen projecting for Larier as Jeune Petite, possibly even the same one Venny told us of. Now it’s projecting for you, exactly what you told me when you first showed me to my room: that it’s Larier’s phantom tailored to your own circumstances.”
“This stoyen?”
“You expect her to be Lizzie as Jeune Petite, do you see? So that is what you get! Not just Jeune Petite, not just Lizzie. But Lizzie as Jeune Petite. A very precise haunting.”
“This is extraordinary. But what is next? What will you do now?”
“Before I leave tomorrow, I will confront Lizzie with what I’ve just told you. Give her an ultimatum.”
“An ultimatum? And what is that?”
“Something obvious really. I know she may read both our thoughts, but since she’s Lizzie, customized to you, there’s a chance she won’t read mine yet. If you can bear with me a little longer, I’d prefer to leave it till I confront her with it.”
As if in reprisal for secrets kept, games played, the cafard returned that night.
Thomas woke around 2:00 a.m., lay listening to the night, wondering about Lizzie. Would she know? Did she know? Lizzie with her mantis-green gaze and dark designs.
No rain flagged it this time, no wrong weather. All the safe signatures were there: the insects, the bird-calls, the eels blindly turning, striking the walls of the tank now and then in their restless sweeps.
Then the certainty was there like before.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Page 35
