The Girl and the Ghost

by Hanna Alkaf

  I do not know.

  “If she knew . . .” Suraya paused, trying to find the words. “If she knew, then maybe she was just trying to protect me all along. Maybe she cares more than I thought.”

  She felt a gentle caress on her cheek. It would be hard not to care about you, little one.

  “Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar . . .” The call to prayer filled the room, as clearly as if the bilal was standing in the corner bellowing it just for them.

  Isyak, Pink said. That means about three and a half hours to midnight.

  “Is that the best time to . . . to . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to finish.

  The full moon has powers we do not fully understand, and midnight is when it is at its peak.

  “Is that a yes?”

  It is as good a time as any. Perhaps you should get some rest. Pink’s voice was gentle. There is still much to do. A grave to find, a hole to dig. You will need your strength.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  She went outside onto the porch and sat beside Jing, who was red-eyed and sniffing and wiping her nose on her sleeve, leaving trails of snot.

  Jing reached out to touch her hand. “You okay?”

  Suraya took a deep breath. “I think so.”

  “So. Midnight, huh?”

  They looked toward the mosque.

  “Midnight,” Suraya said. “It all happens at midnight. And we’ve got some homework to do before then.”

  “Huh?” Jing looked at her, eyebrows raised in confusion. “Homework, at a time like this? I knew you were some kind of nerd, Sooz, but this is another level . . .”

  “No lah!” Suraya punched Jing lightly in the arm. “I meant we’ve got to prepare ourselves. We know the pawang is looking for us too; there’s no way of knowing whether he’s figured out where we are or not, but we do know what he’s got to work with. Whatever he throws at us—polongs, bajangs, toyols, whatever other demon he has in his service . . . we’ve got to be ready for them.”

  Jing sighed. “And my ma was so happy I’d found a nice, quiet girl to be friends with.” She pulled out her phone. “All right. Tell me what I’m searching for.”

  “Are you sure? Won’t your ma be able to find us then?”

  “Better her than some monster swallowing me alive.”

  And as the crickets sang in the shadows and Pink watched over them, Suraya and Jing bent their heads close together and got to work.

  Thirty-Two

  Ghost

  MIDNIGHT.

  The moon hung round and full and bright in the sky, but its light was often obscured by clouds, which were so billowy and ominous that they blocked out even the stars. The air was damp and heavy, that oppressive heat and humidity that promised a glorious thunderstorm. But as Pink watched Suraya wipe first one, then the other hand off carefully on her clothes, he suspected her damp palms had little to do with the temperature and everything to do with what they were about to do.

  “Do we even know if this will work?” she mumbled in Jing’s general direction as they walked toward the mosque, their footsteps oddly muffled by the deep, dark night.

  “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” Jing replied. “Also, and I hate to point this out, but . . . we don’t really have any other options.”

  Other than my eventual enslavement by a deranged, power-hungry man, Pink added, trying to be helpful.

  Suraya shot him a look. I’ll own that it’s not an ideal option, he conceded.

  “Be quiet, Pink,” she said, stepping carefully in the darkness, the dirt road crunching softly beneath her feet. “We have to hurry. For all we know, our moms are already on their way.”

  “It’s not them I’m worried about, tbh.”

  There was a light thump, and a sharp clang that felt like it could have woken the entire village.

  “What happened?”

  A snuffling sound. “I tripped and stubbed my toe,” Jing said. “And then I dropped the spade.”

  “Be careful, you klutz.” With every step toward the cemetery, Pink felt Suraya’s footsteps falter a little more, then a little more still. “Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe we should have tried something else.”

  Like what?

  “I don’t know. Something.” There was the tiniest of pauses, then Suraya’s voice in the darkness, small and sad. “I’m not sure I’m ready to lose you.”

  Pink’s little grasshopper body felt heavy with sadness. Nobody is ever really ready for goodbye, he said gently. But sometimes you need to bid farewell to the things holding you back so that you can move forward.

  “You’re not holding me back, Pink.”

  Her voice was thick with tears, and he had to swallow a sudden lump in his own throat. You know that isn’t true.

  There was silence then. In the dim light, Pink could just make out Jing next to Suraya, the too-long sleeves of her top pushed far up above her elbows, her face etched with concern. “Don’t worry, Sooz. This’ll work, I’m sure of it.”

  “I should never have listened to you.” Suraya tried to mask the quiver that still lingered in her voice behind a veil of annoyance, but he heard it anyway.

  “Who’s more foolish?” Jing shot back. “The fool, or the fool who follows him?”

  “Stop quoting Star Wars at me.”

  I hate to interrupt, Pink said dryly. But we have arrived.

  The ribbons of moonlight that managed to filter through the clouds illuminated the distinctive peaks and curves of the head- and tail stones, the sharp edges of the accompanying concrete that bordered some of the graves. This was a cemetery light years from the one they’d visited before; Kuala Gajah was a tired old town, and its tiredness seeped into its burial grounds too, showing itself in the cracked, crooked headstones; the way they were carelessly scattered over the gently sloping ground, as though little thought had gone into their arrangement; the way the weeds, unkempt grass, and unswept leaves covered most of them, as though they had long been forgotten.

  It seemed to Pink both unbearably sad and achingly familiar, all at the same time.

  Hello, old friends, he whispered.

  “Assalamualaikum, ya ahli kubur,” Suraya whispered as she unlatched the little metal gate and stepped inside, her feet crunching against the dry leaves below.

  “Hi, ghosts.”

  They both turned to glare at Jing, who hastily amended her greeting. “I mean, uh, salutations oh residents of the grave.”

  They stood staring at the graves spread out before them. Before, chatting with Hussein in broad daylight, the other cemetery had seemed as scary as a child’s playground. Looking at this one, it was hard not to think about anything but what lay in the ground under their feet.

  Suraya gripped the marble in one hand and cleared her throat conspicuously. “We should split up,” she said. “Look for the graves of little kids. Like before.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jing nodded, but didn’t move. Her hand clutched her little spade like a weapon.

  “It would be much faster,” Suraya said. “Much more efficient.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jing said. In the distance, thunder rumbled as though the sky itself was grumbling at their dawdling. “Or. Or, I mean. We could do it together. . . .”

  “You’re probably right, that’s a great idea,” Suraya said, speaking so fast the words tripped over themselves in their rush to be heard.

  Pink said nothing. He was too busy trying to figure out exactly how he was feeling.

  They set off, working their way through the cemetery methodically, from left to right. The cemetery stood on land that sloped gently upward from the mosque, so that each row was a little higher than the last. At first they tried to read each headstone that they passed, but it took too much time to decipher the looping Arabic alphabet that spelled out each one’s name and parentage, and they soon resorted to eyeing the space between the headstones and their accompanying tail stones, looking for the shorter lengths that told tales of smaller bodies and younger occupants. There didn’t seem to b
e many. The witch used to call Kuala Gajah a “stuck” town: “Stuck in time, stuck in customs, stuck in mediocrity,” she’d snort. It wasn’t a town where young people built a life; it was a town you moved away from while you still could, before it captured you in its web of lethargy and sucked the energy and ambition from your bones. If you died here, she’d said, you died of old age, “and sometimes your children barely make it back from their busy lives in their bustling cities in time for your burial.”

  Why did you come here, then? He’d asked her once.

  “Because people whose lives are incredibly dull are always looking for ways to make it more exciting,” she’d countered. “And will pay for that privilege.”

  Funny how the town had taken her too, in the end.

  It seemed like they worked for a long time, moving from grave to grave in the heat of the night, when they heard it: a low, quiet humming.

  Pink felt Suraya stiffen. Beside her, he saw Jing reach down to clasp her hand, hard.

  “Is that . . . is that Rasa Sayang?” Jing whispered, her eyes wide.

  It was. Even Pink could recognize the familiar, jaunty little tune. It was a song almost every Malaysian child grew up singing, clapping along and mouthing the words even in kindergarten.

  Whoever was singing now, their voice was a low rasp. “Rasa sayang HEY, rasa sayang sayang HEY, HEYYYY lihat nona jauh rasa sayang sayang HEY!” The “heys” were expelled with joyous, enthusiastic force.

  Slowly, the girls turned around.

  Sitting cross-legged on the fresh mound of a nearby grave was an old uncle, wearing a thin white T-shirt and a checkered kain pelikat tied about his thin waist and stroking the wispy bits of hair that sprouted from his chin. He looked as normal as one could look sitting casually in a graveyard in the dead of night, save for one other thing: like Hussein, he wasn’t quite there. You could stare straight through him and just see the faint outlines of the graves beyond.

  Suraya and Jing grasped each other’s hands as if they would never let go. “How come we can see him even without the marble?” Jing whispered, her voice hoarse, and Suraya glanced at Pink questioningly.

  A full moon is a powerful thing, said Pink, shrugging.

  “It’s the moon,” Suraya told Jing.

  The uncle-ghost finally seemed to notice them and squinted in their direction, frowning a little. “What are you staring for?” he said, his voice loud and querulous. “You young people, staring and staring. Got no manners ah? Why so rude?”

  “Sorry, uncle, sorry,” Suraya stammered. “I just . . . we weren’t . . . expecting anyone else to be here . . .”

  “Not expecting!” He sniffed. “You come into someone’s house and don’t expect them to be home? What are you, grave robbers?” He eyed the spade in Jing’s trembling hand suspiciously, and she quickly shoved it behind her back, out of sight.

  “No, sir! We are just . . . looking for someone.”

  He didn’t seem convinced. “Oh yes, hmm? Looking for someone? Bit late for young’ns like you to be out, isn’t it? Back in my day, we made sure our children were in bed by seven o’clock.”

  “Wah, seven is a bit too early, right, uncle?” Jing said.

  “SEVEN O’CLOCK,” he bellowed. “Only way. Otherwise, whack them with the cane. Young people need DISCIPLINE.” And he glowered at them as though he’d have liked to have them disciplined right then and there.

  “What is all this NOISE?” From the depths of another grave, up floated another not-quite-there shape. Only this time, it was a kind-faced woman, plump as a pau and just as white in the moonlight, and clad in a worn-out kaftan with fraying bat-wing sleeves, her hair hidden beneath a ghostly knit cap. “Some of us are trying to SLEEP, Badrul.”

  “It’s these kids,” the uncle-ghost said peevishly, pointing at them. “Knocking about graves at odd hours doing Allah knows what. . . . Mangkuk. Anyway, you shouldn’t waste a fine full moon night like this on sleep, Salmah.”

  “It’s Saloma,” the plump ghost said primly. “And you’re right. One must not waste the magic of a full moon.” She pushed strands of wispy hair from her face. “I do like a good spotlight.”

  “Saloma?” Suraya squinted at the plump ghost, who preened at the attention. “Like . . . the famous singer?”

  “Yes!” she squealed excitedly. “Only . . . er . . . not the famous singer. But I was quite good as well!”

  “Salmah,” Badrul muttered under his breath. “Her name is SALMAH. And she sings like a dying cat.”

  “Shush,” she hissed, fixing him with a stony glare. “You’re one to talk, singing loud enough to wake the dead. Now, children . . . can we help you? What on earth are you doing wandering around here? This is no place for the living.”

  Suraya tried to swallow back her fear. “We’re looking for a grave.”

  Badrul snorted. “Well, you’re in the right place for that, I give you that much.”

  “A name, dear, give us a name,” Saloma-or-Salmah trilled.

  “We don’t know the name, or even whether it’s a boy or a girl. . . .”

  “We just know it’s a little kid,” Jing supplied quickly, pushing her damp hair out of her eyes. “Are there a lot of little kids in this graveyard?”

  “Going to need to get a little more specific, dear,” maybe-Saloma said, shaking her head. “We’ve not got too many, but there are a few. Don’t want to wake them if we can help it. The little darlings need their rest.”

  “And they’re too LOUD,” Badrul added.

  We are looking for one who is not, said Pink, and never had his voice felt so loud, so unnatural. We are looking for a child who does not speak. A child without a tongue.

  The two ghosts looked at each other and shook their heads. “There’s only one child that fits that description,” Badrul said gruffly.

  Suraya’s face was pale, and Pink could feel her body tremble. “Could you take us to her?”

  “Him,” Saloma/Salmah said quietly. “He’s a boy.”

  “Can we see him?”

  “You’d be lucky,” Badrul sniffed.

  “We rarely see him, dear,” Saloma said gently. “He’s not much for socializing, that one.”

  “So where’s his grave anyway?” It never took Jing long to find her equilibrium again.

  In answer, the two ghosts pointed.

  Suraya followed the direction of their fingers up, up, up the slope to the very highest point, where the tangle of trees and vines reached out to embrace a lone head- and tail stone, its outlines just visible in the wavering moonlight.

  “There,” they said together.

  Pink shuddered. “Pink?” Suraya whispered. “Are you all right?”

  Pink looked at her, so worried, so afraid, and felt a twinge where his heart ought to be. She had been through so much because of him. Surely he could do this, for her?

  Come, he said quietly. Let us go and be done with it.

  Suraya and Jing turned to begin their trek to the grave.

  And then they heard it. A frantic skittering, like the sound of a thousand scampering spiders. And a familiar voice.

  “Hello, girls.”

  Thirty-Three

  Girl

  SLOWLY, SURAYA TURNED around.

  The pawang stood in the middle of the cemetery in his pale gray jubah, the moonlight glinting off his little round glasses. All around him, dark shapes wiggled and writhed, and Suraya recognized the creatures from the glass jars: the glinting eyes of the bajang in his civet form, hissing at them from a tree branch as he paced restlessly back and forth; the langsuir as an owl, perched on a headstone and shooting them an icy stare; the green-skinned toyol, baby face contorted into a fearsome growl, fangs bared; the tiny polongs, more than she could count, so many that they looked like one moving black mass; and others that she couldn’t name and wasn’t sure she even wanted to.

  Fear ran an ice-cold finger up her spine, leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake.

  “Hello, girls,” the pawang called
out again, as if they’d just run into each other at the market. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  The girls said nothing. They couldn’t. Fear held their throats in an icy grip, cutting off their vocal cords, making speech impossible.

  The pawang tutted softly. “Ish. It’s terribly rude not to respond to your elders and betters when they speak to you.”

  “Betters?” It was the arrogance that did it, that smug little smile. Suraya’s anger bubbled inside her until it boiled over, seeping into her words, turning them loud and belligerent. “You think you’re better than us just because you’re older than us? Because you’re ‘wiser’ than us? All that means is that you’re an insult to your old age, because nothing I’ve seen from you so far makes you seem very wise at all.”

  “DAMN RIGHT.” Jing sniffed scornfully. “In your head, you’re Darth Vader. You think you’re this smart villain that everyone’s afraid of. You think you have all this power. But actually, to everyone else, you’re Jar Jar Binks. You’re just using fancy special effects to make yourself seem more important.”

  In the graveyard, unseen insects screeched their songs to the moon, whose light glinted off the pawang’s spectacles so that it looked as if his eyes glowed.

  Girls, Pink said evenly, I applaud your speeches and sentiments, but I should point out that perhaps delivering them to a man who has an entire army of ghosts and monsters pointed at us is not the smartest decision you could have made.

  Suraya shrugged. “It’s too late now.”

  “Too late, indeed,” the pawang agreed. “Get them.”

  Pink bounded from Suraya’s shoulder, morphing as he went so that when he landed with a thud on the ground, it was in his true form, his claws unsheathed, a growl in his throat.

  Run.

  Suraya and Jing turned and ran as fast as they could, clambering over graves and tripping on gnarled tree roots in their haste to get away. “Make for the grave!” Suraya yelled at Jing, concentrating on where she placed her feet and trying very hard not to look behind her and mostly succeeding until she heard a great roar.