chapter 18

Girl

ONCE, AT JING'S house, they'd been watching a movie—not Star

Wars, for once. It was meant to be a romance, one of those will-they-

won't-they setups that you know are actually a they-will-because-

they're-the-two-best-looking-people-on-the-screen types. Jing,

surprisingly, was a sucker for sappy movies. Only this one kept

stuttering and skipping, until Jing popped it out of the DVD player

and buffed it vigorously with her sleeve.

The next phase of Pink's haunting made Suraya's life jump like a

scratched-up DVD. Swathes of time would pass in the space of a

blink, without her even realizing it.

Skip.

There they were at the table, Mama and Suraya, and Suraya was

silently rearranging the rice and sambal jawa and freshly fried fish

into shifting patterns on her plate, trying to make it look like she was

eating.

Skip.

She opened her eyes to find herself in the shower, gasping and

spluttering under the furious spray, lungs desperate for air, the skin

on her fingers and toes wrinkled to the consistency of raisins. How

long have I been standing here?

Skip.

And now she was in her bedroom, sitting at her plain wooden

desk, her sketchbook open before her, pen in hand. There was a

picture on the page in front of her: an intricate tangle of flowers and

leaves and vines in stark black ink on the snowy paper. Did I draw

that? She must have, somehow, only . . . only she couldn't quite

remember.

She stared at the page and sighed.

Something on the page sighed back.

Suraya's heart began to pound hard in her chest, a rhythmic

thudding that echoed in her ears.

Beneath the flowers, somewhere in the dark spaces where the

vines and the leaves intertwined, something began to move.

She could see it, dark and writhing, and she could hear it, its

breath a wet, heavy rasping, and she could feel it, most of all—an icy

coldness in the tropical heat of her bedroom, a hole ripped in the

canvas of reality. Its movements were slow and sinuous, and she

couldn't shake the feeling that it was coming closer to the surface,

ready to break free of its paper prison.

The movement stopped, and it was like the entire world held its

breath.

Then slowly, softly, ink began to bleed in thin little lines down the

page, from the very center of her drawing down, down, down to the

bottom of the page. From there, it moved in steady streams and

rivulets across the desk, pooling in the dings and scratches on the

surface on its way to the edge. And then finally, it began to drip

steadily onto the floor at Suraya's feet.

And though she trembled like a leaf in a storm, she stayed where

she was, first because she was so afraid, and later because she

couldn't move if she wanted to. The ink that puddled on the floor

grabbed at her feet, tiny strings of black reaching up to latch onto her

skin, weaving a net to keep her where she was. Then as she

watched, it slowly began to creep up her legs, turning everything it

touched black as midnight, steadily laying claim on her body as if it

was its own to take.

Just as she felt the slick touch of it on her neck, she heard a

voice whisper in her ear, a voice that sounded remarkably like Pink's.

You will not be rid of me so easily.