The Girl and the Ghost

by Hanna Alkaf

  And so here it was, their demise, in the form of overpriced coffee, free Wi-Fi, and too-loud folk covers of tepid pop songs.

  “What do we do now?” Suraya wondered.

  “Get a coffee?” They both turned to stare at Jing, and she shrugged. “What? Does anyone else have any bright ideas?”

  They didn’t.

  They sat at a round table by the glass walls that faced the main road, on hard wooden stools that were high on aesthetic value and low on comfort. Suraya ordered a bottle of expensive French mineral water because they didn’t serve the regular kind. Jing ordered a cappuccino because “it sounds damn sophisticated,” then began spluttering as soon as she had her first sip.

  “Why do people drink coffee?!” she whimpered, taking a swig from Suraya’s bottle. “This tastes terrible.”

  I believe they call it an acquired taste, Pink said drily. Much like yourself.

  Suraya smirked in spite of herself. “Pink! Behave.”

  “IS HE TALKING ABOUT ME AGAIN??” Jing made a big show of taking a deep breath and pointedly ignoring Pink. From a pocket came another urgent ding. “So what should we do now?”

  Suraya sighed as she reached up to retie her ponytail. “We could try the cemetery I guess? See if there’s anything we can figure out from there. It’s a body we’re looking for, after all.”

  “True also. We—”

  It was at this exact moment, before Jing had even finished her sentence, that Pink glanced outside.

  And froze.

  Across the street stood the pawang. He was perfectly still, save for the cloth of his voluminous robe, which flapped restlessly in the breeze created by the cars that zipped past. He was staring straight at them, the late afternoon sun glinting off his glasses. And as Pink watched, he smiled a slow, chilling smile.

  Without even thinking, without missing a beat, Pink waved his antennae.

  Nothing happened at first. At least, not until Jing, staring down at her still-full cup with distaste, said, “What . . . is that?”

  Then the screams began.

  Out of every crack, every crevice, every shadowy nook, the cockroaches came. They poured out onto every available surface, they swam in mugs of lukewarm coffee, they popped out of the creamy centers of fluffy pastries, and one enterprising bug even managed to crawl out from beneath the folds of one young lady’s intricately wrapped hijab.

  The back door, Pink said quickly into Suraya’s ear. And quickly. As he surveyed the chaos all around them, it was hard not to feel a twinge of guilt for causing it—the lady with the hijab in particular seemed extremely displeased, to put it mildly. But he had no choice. Because when Pink looked at the pawang again, right on the brink of sending swarms of bees to hound him, he suddenly realized that he recognized the look on the pawang’s face.

  It was glee.

  It dawned on Pink right then and there that the pawang was enjoying this. It was nothing more than a game to him, and Pink himself was the prize to be won. And then Pink remembered the rows and rows of ghosts and spirits, with their malevolent stares and their restless movements, and he looked at the two girls and the throngs of hipsters and thought: I cannot let him unleash his monsters here.

  Chaos was the only other option.

  As the two girls pushed their way through the throng of shrieking patrons and the one bearded employee who was trying to smash cockroaches with a jar of Honduran coffee beans, Pink looked back over his shoulder.

  But where the pawang had stood, there was nothing but air and shadows.

  Twenty-Eight

  Girl

  OUTSIDE, BEHIND THE coffee shop, Suraya and Jing paused to catch their breath. Jing wore an expression of sheer disgust. “Ohmygod, Sooz, do you think I drank it? Is that why it tasted so bad? What if I just drank, like, cockroach juice coffee?” Her face took on a distinctly gray shade.

  Tell your friend to relax, Pink said, peering up and down the tiny alleyway that stretched on beyond the back door. We are alone now. As if to prove him wrong, a lone cockroach skittered past, making soft clicking sounds against the cement floor, and causing Jing to jump as though her toes were on fire.

  . . . except for that one, he acknowledged.

  “That was . . . odd,” Suraya said slowly, and though she looked straight at Pink as she said it, she noticed he was very careful not to meet her eye.

  He made a great show of shrugging his little grasshopper shoulders. The only odd thing was how they ever passed a health inspection with an infestation like that.

  “Did you have anything to do with that?” She hated to ask, mostly because she had the nagging feeling that she knew exactly what the answer would be, and wouldn’t like it at all. And maybe Pink knew that too, because all he did was look away.

  “I need a shower,” Jing muttered, rubbing her arms as if she could still feel the march of tiny cockroach legs on her skin. “Or two showers. Fifteen, even.” Ding, went Jing’s phone. “Stop it, Ma,” she muttered to herself.

  “No time for that,” Suraya told her. “We’ve got a cemetery to visit.”

  And a body to find.

  Jing wrinkled her nose. “Okay, then, captain. Lead the way.”

  Tucked away from the crowded town center, the cemetery was trim and neat, the grass free of weeds, the head- and tail stones of each grave scrubbed clean.

  Suraya had thought she would be a little afraid of it, even in broad daylight. There was something about the idea of knowing bodies were hidden in the ground beneath your feet that intimidated her. Yet there was nothing scary about this place or its bodies. It was too clean, too organized, too arranged, like the sterile, fluorescent-lit aisles of a supermarket.

  “So . . . how do we even do this?” Jing asked, scratching her nose.

  “I don’t know,” Suraya said. “But we know we’re looking for a small grave. It’s a start.”

  “Not much of a start.”

  “It’s all we’ve got,” Suraya pointed out. Her head was starting to hurt. “Let’s split up. You too, Pink.”

  He hadn’t expected that; she could tell from the way his little body stiffened, almost imperceptibly. But she needed, more than anything right now, to be alone.

  As you wish.

  He bounded off her shoulder, and the three began to move in different directions in the narrow spaces between stones.

  Remember, Pink called out. Look for children. That will limit your search somewhat.

  Suraya repeated the words for Jing, who nodded but said nothing in reply.

  For a long time, the only sound in the cemetery was the faint whistling of the wind whirling through the trees that shaded the graves.

  The sun was bright, and Suraya’s eyes soon grew tired from trying to make out the names on each headstone, some spelled out entirely in the curving Arabic script that she had to work harder to recognize. She paused beneath the spreading boughs of a tree so gnarled with age that she couldn’t even tell what fruit it might have once borne, and wiped the sweat off her brow. Then she reached into her pocket, where the marble lay snug in its cloth trappings. She wanted to feel the smoothness of its surface, the reassuring weight of it in her hand. She wanted to be comforted by its gentle, oddly familiar warmth.

  But not this time.

  As she reached down to brush it with her fingers, she felt it—a sharp bite of electricity that made her squeal.

  She stared at her hand in confusion. Get a grip, Suraya, she told herself firmly. It’s just a marble. Steeling herself, she reached into her pocket again.

  This time her agonized yelp echoed across the cemetery, bouncing off the stones until it reached Jing and Pink, who turned to her with puzzled faces.

  “You okay, Sooz?” Jing called.

  “Fine,” she called back. “Just . . . uh, tripped.”

  Be careful, Pink told her.

  “Stop nagging,” she muttered under her breath. Gritting her teeth, she plunged her hand into her pocket and grabbed the marble firmly, ignoring the shot of curr
ent that immediately jolted through it and buzzed in her ears.

  The marble was vibrating.

  “What in the world . . .” Suraya tried to remember to breathe, but she couldn’t seem to get it right. For a fleeting instant, she considered throwing the marble as far away from her as she could, gathering up her friends, and going home.

  Then she remembered the pawang, and all that was at stake here.

  She stared at the quivering orb resting in the palm of her hand. “Okay, then,” she whispered. “You wanted my attention. Now you’ve got it. What do you want? What do I do with you?”

  She half-expected a voice to answer from within its glassy depths, but there was only silence.

  Feeling slightly foolish, she held it to her ear, listening for instructions that never came. Then she surreptitiously rubbed it with her fingers, the way Aladdin rubbed the lamp, in case there was even the slightest chance a genie would appear.

  None did.

  In despair, she held the marble up to her eye, trying to see if there was a message she might have missed within.

  Instead, as if she was looking right through it, she saw a tall, thin figure sitting in the tree. He had a gaunt, pale face and dark, mournful eyes that were trained directly at her.

  The thing opened its mouth.

  “You sweat a lot,” it said.

  Suraya blinked. Then she blinked again. She took the marble away from her eye, and the being in the tree disappeared. She put it back, and there he was again. He was clearly there, even if he wasn’t entirely solid; she could see straight through his body to the pits and grooves and contours of the branch he sat on.

  “Don’t talk much, do you?” The ghost, as it was becoming obvious to her this thing was, regarded her closely. She could just make out the faint outline of the plain T-shirt and loose black pants he wore, the oval shape of the black songkok perched on his shaggy head. He looked like he was in his early twenties and somehow also as if he had been around for a very, very long time. “I’d expected more from the likes of you.”

  “The likes of me?”

  “Witch, aren’t you?” He bent down to peer at her. “You’ve got a clearly enchanted object there. Bit young, though.” He straightened up again. “Ooh, or is this a quest? It’s a quest, isn’t it? That’s how it is with these things. You’ve got a magical object, you’ve got either someone clever with witchery, or you’ve got someone on some sort of hero’s journey. That’s how it always was in the books.” He peered at her again. “You don’t look much like a hero, to be sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re a girl, for one thing.”

  This was the last straw. She had not come all this way to be insulted by someone who was already dead. “How would you know what a hero looks like anyway? If you can spew nonsense like that, my guess is you didn’t interact with too many girls while you were alive. . . .”

  The ghost bristled at this. “Insolent little thing,” he sniffed. “When I was alive, the likes of you would have been taken to task for such impertinence.”

  “I’m sorry.” She shrugged. “But you’re not. Alive, that is. And you started it, you know.”

  The ghost pouted. “I was only playing,” he said sullenly. “You needn’t have been so hurtful. One can’t help contracting bloody dengue fever, after all.”

  “It’s true,” she said consolingly. “You couldn’t very well have stopped it once you had it.” She thought of the campaigns her school had run to help prevent the spread of dengue, then thought better of mentioning them. Nobody wants to know the ways you can avoid your own death—at least, not when you’re already dead.

  The ghost sighed. “Ah well. Why dwell on the past, eh?” He stuck out a hand, before realizing what he’d done and putting it into his pocket with a sheepish expression. “Name’s Hussein.”

  “Suraya.”

  “Well, then, Miss Suraya, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” Hussein gestured expansively around the cemetery.

  “Our?” Suraya glanced up and down the headstones; there was no other ghost in sight. “You seem to be the only one out and about.”

  Hussein shrugged. “The others don’t see much point in hanging about during the day,” he said. “They sleep. Even at night, there’s not much of a social life in these parts. Once in a while, there’s a mixer, during the full moon. That’s about it.” He sighed again. “Lot of old folks here. Dead boring, it is. Oh hey, that’s a pun!” He laughed aloud, delighted with himself, as Suraya smiled dutifully.

  “How about children?” she asked, trying hard to keep her voice light, casual, as if the answer wasn’t a matter of life and death. “Any children here?”

  Hussein frowned. “Not too many,” he said. “It’s a thriving little town, see. Infant mortality isn’t too much of an issue here. You’ve got one or two babies—stillbirths, the saddest little things, the older aunties do love having them to cuddle, though—a couple of drownings, one car crash . . .”

  “Can you take me to see them?”

  “Um, Sooz?” As if by magic, Jing materialized at her side, her expression wary. “You do realize you’re talking to yourself, right?”

  “I hate to break it to you, Jing,” Suraya said, passing her the marble, as Pink bounded onto her shoulder. “But . . . I’m really not.”

  There was a muffled gasp, then a breathless, “Cooooooooooooooool.”

  I see we have found ourselves some company.

  “You can see him?”

  Pink shrugged a grasshopper shrug. We are of the same kind.

  “Like family.”

  On very remote branches of the same tree.

  “So what do you miss most?” Jing said, addressing the tree branch very seriously. “Nasi lemak or roti canai?”

  Suraya snatched back the marble, ignoring Jing’s protests. “Hussein, can you take us to see the children’s graves?”

  “Of course.” In one smooth leap, the ghost jumped down from the tree and dusted some nonexistent debris from his noncorporeal rear. “Follow me, ladies. And for the record,” he said over his shoulder, “the answer is nasi lemak. With a side of crispy fried chicken. Mmm.”

  There were three graves. They were small.

  The four of them stood and stared at the names—Intan, aged four; Ahmad, aged two; Liyana, aged two.

  Is this all? Pink said.

  “Not many kiddies here, like I said,” said Hussein, in almost apologetic tones. “There might be a few more, I can check . . .” He scratched his ghostly head. “Why do you even want to see them, though? I won’t lie to you, it’s more than a mite depressing sometimes, seeing the little ones.”

  “We have our reasons. Can you . . . can you call the children?” Suraya’s palms were sweaty, and the marble felt slick and precarious in her grasp.

  Hussein snapped off a smart salute. “As you wish, m’lady.”

  He went to the first grave (Liyana, aged two) and rapped on the headstone. “Assalamualaikum, little sister. Wake up, we have visitors.”

  At first all was still, and Jing jabbed Suraya in the waist surreptitiously. “Is something supposed to happen ah?”

  It was a good thing Suraya held the marble, because Hussein’s glare was so icy it would have given Jing frostbite.

  “Patience,” he said stiffly. “Sabar. I mean, have you ever tried waking up a two-year-old? I think not.” He turned back to the headstone and rapped again—a little harder this time. “Wake up, little sister.”

  If you were looking, you might have noticed the earth move, ever so slightly, right at the foot of the grave.

  Then, slowly, a figure began to glide out of the ground, a figure through which Suraya could see the outlines of the cemetery’s rows and rows of head- and tail stones.

  The little girl ghost rubbed her eyes, glared at Hussein and said, “WHAT?”

  She can speak, Pink said quietly. She has her tongue.

  “She’s not the one.” Suraya’s heart sank. “She’s not the one we’re
looking for.”

  The little girl glared up at her. “Then why you wake me UP?” Without another word, she flounced off and sank back into the earth where she’d emerged from.

  “That went well,” Hussein said, smiling brightly. “Next one?”

  They tried them all, one after the other: Intan, aged four. Ahmad, aged two. They tried Khairul, aged six, hidden in a shadowy corner Hussein had forgotten about. They even tried Melati, aged eight, and Mariam, aged twelve, who rolled her eyes impressively when asked about her tongue and stuck it out to show them before disappearing (although not before telling Jing “Your glasses are dorky.”)

  “This is hopeless,” Jing said crossly, pushing her glasses more firmly up her nose. “And my glasses ARE NOT DORKY,” she added, yelling at the ground for good measure, as if Mariam could hear her.

  “What do we do now, Pink?” Suraya asked quietly.

  I . . . I do not know.

  “What happened to the wisdom of the ages, huh?” She tried to laugh, but it came out limp and weak, and Pink didn’t even smile in response.

  Behind them, Jing was still casting dark looks at the spot where Mariam had been. “What does she know, anyway,” she muttered.

  “You’ll have to forgive Mariam,” Hussein said cheerily. “She’s always grumpy. Doesn’t get many visitors, you know. The family was living here when she died, but then everyone moved away. Too many painful memories and all that. They only come to visit every few months or so. Tough when you don’t live where your dear ones lay buried. . . .”

  “That’s it,” Suraya said suddenly.

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  “Where you die isn’t necessarily where you lived,” she said. “The witch—my grandmother—you said she moved a lot, right? We just need to figure out where she lived before.”

  “That’s well and good, but how are we going to do that?” Jing gestured to her still-pinging phone. “We haven’t exactly got a ton of time. And it’s starting to get dark.”