Chapter 27
Ghost
ARANDOMTUESDAYmorning, as itturned out, was an excellent day
for covert missions involving bus travel, because aside from an
impeccably dressed gray-haired couple holding hands and a
polished wooden cane each, a young man with headphones that sat
atop an impossibly shaggy head of hair, and three girls in
headscarves who went to sleep as soon as they settledinto their
seats, they had the entire bus to themselves.
According to Jing's phone, the journey to Gua Musang was
supposed to take about four hours. But that was if they didn't make
any stops along the way. And as it turned out, this was a bus that did
stop along theway, meandering into little towns and villages to load
and offload passengers.
The girls has been optimisticabout this at first, using the time to
go over the plan again and again and again. "We'll go to the
graveyard andlook for a little kid's grave," Jing would say. "And then
when we figure out which one is Pink's, we'll dig a hole for him
there," Suraya would continue, "so he can rejoin his body."
The rest of me. Pink repeated the wordssoftly to himself,
remembering the smell of damp earth and decaying flesh, the feel of
living things wriggling all around him in the darkness. How to explain this feeling in the pit of his stomach? How to tell the onlyperson he
cared for that the rest of him was her, and not some pileof bones
deep underground? Not for the first time, Pink cursed the emotions
he was trying so hard not to feel. That's what you get, being around
them for so long, he thought dourly. Humanity is contagious.
But he bit backhis bitter thoughts as he watched the two go over
and over their plan, and said nothing, not even as he saw their
enthusiasm slowly begin to dip lower and lower with each stop the
bus made, until it wheezed to a halt so their fearsomely mustached
driver could have his lunch.
"This isgoing to take forever," Suraya said in despair. It was
already 12:17 p.m.; they'd left at 9:27 when they were supposed to
leave at 9:00 a.m.—a delay that was never explained—and they'd
been here for an hour already, sitting on a bench spotted with
peeling paint and rust spots and waiting for the driver, who was now
taking luxuriant drags of a cigarette as he loudly talked politics with
other taxi and bus drivers at the warong nearby. He was so relaxed
that Pink was seriously considering a well-placed hex that would
make his entire mustache fall in clumps into his gentlysweating
glass of iced lemon tea.
Their destination was still almost an hour away, and there were
countless stops before they got there. Suraya couldn't stop moving,
whether it was a jiggling leg or a tapping finger, and Pink could tell
she was just about ready to crawl out of her own skin. He couldn't
blame her—he was starting to feel the same way himself.
"Relax lah," Jing said, taking a swig from a water bottle festooned
with tiny Wookiees. "We have time."
I wouldn't be so sure if I were her. It is only a matter of time
before someone realizes you are gone, Pink pointed out.
"I doubt anyone will noticewhen it comes to me," Suraya
muttered darkly. "Pink says people are going to notice we're gone
soon," she said in answer to Jing's confused expression.
"But it's not like they know where we went," Jing said reasonably.
"And even when we get there, it's not like we can do anything until,
like, really late at night. Imagine what all the old mosque uncles will
say if they seetwo little girls digging up a grave in the middle of the
afternoon."
Suraya laughed in spite of herself. "You have a point." She smiled
and grabbed Jing's hand. "I'm really glad you're here."
"Me too, Sooz."
Pink sat on her shoulder, trying not to mind how easy they were
with each other, how comfortable. How right. It was hard to look at
them and not ask himself: Were we ever that way together?
"You okay, Pink?" Suraya nudged him gently with one finger.
He stirred. I am as well as can be expected, he said.
"Are you excited to be heading home?" They watched as Jing
wiped the sweat from her forehead with a tissue, then crumpled it
into a ball and tossed it into a nearby trash can. It missed, landing
softly on the floor, and she clicked her tongue in irritation as she got
up to retrieve it.
No, Pink said. It was not a home. I just occupied space there.
"Was my grandmother not nice to you, Pink?"
He thought about this for a long time, trying to ignore the tears in
Suraya's eyes. This witch was not really very nice to anyone,he said
slowly. But I supposeshe was nicer to me than to most others,
because I was useful to her.
"She doesn't sound like someone I would have liked."
Most people did not like thewitch, and she did not care about
being liked. Some people are like that.Henuzzled her cheek softly,
trying to take the sting out of his words. Not you. Never you. But
some people.
Across the street, their bus driver stood up, his red plastic stool
scraping harshly across theconcrete floor of the warong. They
watched as he hitched up his pants and bid his fellow drivers
goodbye.
"Back on the road," Jing said, and they clambered back onto the
bus once again.
It was just after 4:00 p.m. by the time the old blue bus sputtered into
the little village just outside Gua Musang, where Suraya got the
driver to drop them off on his way to the big town. Jing and Suraya
got off and tried to stretch the stiffness from their limbs as the bus
roared away. Suraya's shoulder sported a dark patch where she'd
drooled in her sleep, and Pink saw her quickly pull her hair forward to cover it, hoping nobody would notice. Jing definitely hadn't; she
was toobusy rubbing her rear, a look of consternation on her face.
"It's totally NUMB, Sooz," she said, craning her head tolook at it.
"Like I can't feel it AT ALL."
Please tell your friend to stop yelling about her buttocks,Pink
said drily. We are trying to be incognito, after all.
"Shh, Jing, people are looking."
"No they're not," Jing shot back, still grimacing, hands on her
rear. "There's too much going on for them to notice."
And it was true. The bus haddeposited them in the middle of a
bustling scene, near a market from which came the overpowering
smell of fresh fish guts and wet garbage.
"I didn't think it would be . . . like this," Suraya said. "Wheredid all
these people come from? Where do we go now?" Pink had to hang
on for dear life to her shoulder; as Suraya spoke, she dodged a
motorcycle that whizzed by, then quickly ducked out of theway as a
plump older lady strode past them, one hand holding a wicker basket
filled to the brim with spoils from the market, the other hanging on to
a little boy no older than five or six. He dragged his feet as he
walked, kickingat pebbles, his mouth twisted into a mutinous pout.
When he saw them watching, he stuck out his tongue and pulled the
most grotesqueface before his mother pulled him away, scolding as
she went.
Jing fished her phone out of her pocket and plugged the address
into a navigation app. "This way," she said, pointing. There was a
bright little ding.
"Another message from your mom?" Suraya asked.
"Uh-huh." Jing's mother had begun sending more and more texts
once 2:00 p.m. passed and she still wasn't home, and after a while
Jing had just stopped responding.
Where r u
i bought u McDonalds for lunch
did u forget to tell me u have extra class or somethg
The latest one she showed Suraya just said CALL MEin all
caps, with a period at the end.
"She used punctuation." Jing gulped. "That can't be good."
Suraya laid a comforting hand on her friend's shoulder. Then,
because they had to keep going, they started walking.
"What. Is. Going. On."
Where the witch's house was supposed to be was no house at
all. Instead it was an upmarket café, complete with an extensive
menu of specialty coffee written in an overly fancy font on a massive
chalkboard, aninterior replete with wood and chrome and exposed
brick, and hipsters in tight jeans and horn-rimmed glasses.
Pink turned accusingly to Jing, who shrugged helplessly. Do we
have the right address?
"Do we have the right address, Jing?" Suraya repeated.
"Ya, of course!" Stung, Jing shoved her own glasses so they sat
more firmly on her nose and stuck her phone in Suraya's face. "See,
Sooz? Tell him. No mistakes."
"I don't understand," Suraya whispered.
I do, Pink said grimly. It came.
"It?" Suraya asked. Jing was peering at them curiously now,
trying to figure out what was going on.
Progress. The word tasted bitter on his tongue. The witch had
always been worried about progress, modernization slowly leeching
away whatever belief peoplehad left in the old ways and the old
ghosts, "rendering old beings like you and I utterly useless," she'd
tell him with an indignant sniff.
And so here it was, their demise, in the form of overpricedcoffee,
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 theydidn'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 adeep 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 canfigure 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 ofhis 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 whenPink 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
enjoyingthis. It was nothing more than a game to him, and Pink
himself was the prize to bewon. And then Pink remembered the
rows and rows of ghosts andspirits, with their malevolent stares and
their restless movements, and he looked at the two girls and the
throngs of hipsters and thought:Icannot 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.