Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction (14 page)

He was tall, dark and scrawny, and had not shaved for days. Her housemate was seated on the sofa, a huge stack of files piled up by him. Thick textbooks formed a small tower on the table nearby, next to a steaming mug.

The television was on: a news channel on mute.

“Yo, Kumar,” Yi Ling slumped next to him. “How’s the project going?”

“Awful,” he muttered. “Can’t figure out this bloody diagram.”

Oh. Well that meant she couldn’t borrow his laptop then. Hers was in a shop in Digital Mall, having crashed two days ago.

Yi Ling glanced at Kumar’s work.

…the fundamental thermodynamic relation is generally expressed as an infinitesimal change in internal energy in terms of infinitesimal changes in entropy…

She shuddered.

Kumar was in second year engineering. Being a Humanities student, Yi Ling didn’t know what he actually studied, but knew he had a workload just as heavy as hers, believe it or not.

“I’ve been up all night trying to understand this,” Kumar sighed. “Entropic theory. What the hell, man.”

“Maybe you need a break,” Yi Ling said. “Seriously, dude, your eye-bags are nasty.”

“My pills are finished already,” Kumar said. “I need to go to the clinic later.”

Kumar had been taking sleeping pills since he was nineteen. It had all started during his A-Levels: his financially-strapped family had put a lot of stress on him to get a scholarship, and he had developed insomnia in the process.

After weeks of restless nights, Kumar had gone to the doctor, who first prescribed him pills called Lexotan. Kumar had tried them for a month, only to grow resistant: images of him flunking everything had been more powerful than the pill’s sedative powers.

Now he was on Ativan, a stronger drug that Kumar said worked wonders. Yeah, he probably hadn’t had a natural night’s sleep in years. But that was the price you had to pay for academic excellence.

It was better that than end up like her ex-secondary school classmate Fiona. An image swam into Yi Ling’s head: a sallow-faced, wiry-haired girl, with a scar on her face.

Fiona had been extremely driven. She had few friends, constantly barricading herself in the library with her textbooks, studying for up to 16 hours a day, as the rumours said.

For her School Certificate exam, she had scored 10 As… and a D.

The day after the results were announced, Fiona leapt off the top floor of a condominium. There had been an article in the paper.

Yi Ling shuddered at the memory. She would never get to that stage, she reassured herself. No matter how bad things got.

But she really needed a break: Yi Ling had not been anywhere other than classes or home for the past week now and every cell in her body cried out for deliverance.

Retail therapy. I need it now more than ever.

She left Kumar, and went to her room to change. After that, she picked up her phone, and called Amira.

§

Petaling Street. Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown. A hustling, bustling street, packed with traders of every conceivable shape and size, all peddling wares ranging from bootleg Hollywood blockbusters to imitation Italian handbags.

Amira and Yi Ling chatted as they walked beneath the prominent green arch that marked the street’s entrance, and headed towards a row of stalls selling accessories.

Red lanterns marked with Chinese characters hung on strings from lamp posts. A grey-bearded man peddled wooden handicrafts from his wheelchair, while two Bangladeshi-looking fellows walked around with novelty pens and torchlights.

A Chinese man with spiked hair shouted at them in Cantonese from his pirated DVD stall: “
Ham tai, ham tai! Veli cheap
!”

Beside him, an elderly Malay woman stretched her hand over the clothes she was selling. Genuine Kalvin Cleins underwear.

In the air, the delicious smell of roasted peanuts mingled with the foul stench of an exposed drain.

There were many tourists, many of them haggling with vendors or taking photographs: an Australian man was smiling as he snapped a selfie with a pretty young handbag seller.

“Ooh, check that out!” Amira giggled as they passed a stall selling brooches. She wore a black t-shirt and jeans, matched with a blue headscarf. “A genuine Mockingjay pin!”

“How much?” she asked the elderly woman keeping shop.

“Forty ringgit,” the woman replied in Malay.

“What?” Amira was shocked. “That’s ridiculous!“

There was a small argument: Yi Ling watched in amusement as the woman haggled with her friend, eventually bringing down the price to 25 ringgit.

“And that’s the way you do it,” Amira said proudly as they both walked away.

“Whatever lah,” Yi Ling smiled.

It was while they were walking past a row of Chinese food stalls that Yi Ling noticed something strange in an alleyway nearby.

There was a boy. He was pale, with brown wavy hair, and dressed in a black shirt and jeans. There was a large tattoo of a scorpion on his well-developed left biceps.

He smiled at Yi Ling.

And suddenly, he vanished.

Yi Ling blinked in amazement.

“Did you see that?” she asked Amira.

“See what?”

“That boy.”

“Ooh. Was he cute?”

“Kinda.” Yi Ling was hesitant. “Hey, uh, I’m just going to check out those stalls over there, okay?”

“Yeah sure,” Amira said. “Knock yourself out. I’m getting some
char kuay teow
.”

With that, Yi Ling walked nervously into the alley, which was dim and deserted. The only thing stirring were two or three feral cats, who miaowed in suspicion at Yi Ling as she passed.

Yi Ling shuddered.

The place stank. Piles and piles of old newspapers and scrap metal, next to overturned dustbins loaded with rotten food. What looked like human faeces was clogging up a drain. Graffiti was scribbled on the metal grilles and doors of the back of the shophouses forming the alley—most of it profane or political.

Why was she here? Yi Ling couldn’t explain it. All she knew was she was suddenly filled with a morbid curiosity. There was something about that boy that intrigued her, and she knew she would not be at peace until she saw him again.

One of the feral cats hissed and arched its back. Yi Ling noticed it had only one hideous yellow eye. It clawed savagely at the empty air.

There was suddenly a voice. “Can I help you, miss?”

Yi Ling jumped: she whirled around to see the boy from earlier, standing at the tinted-glass doors of a shop.

But that shop wasn’t there before!
She could have sworn!

The boy smiled.

“Why don’t you come in? There may be something here you’re looking for.”

§

The boy’s shop was dusty and crammed, filled mostly with rows and rows of shelves. A stuffed eagle hung from the ceiling, while a medieval suit of armour stood in one corner.

Their contents of the jars on the shelves were unusual. One seemed to contain a shrunken head, while another held a wrinkled hand with six fingers. Another was labelled: ‘The Tears of Your Lover upon Learning of Your Death.’ Still another had what appeared to be a stillborn foetus submersed in a clear milky liquid. To Yi Ling’s horror, it seemed to be moving.

Yi Ling had listened, half-bemused, half-scared, as the boy gave her a very strange offer.

“But… how are you going to take my shadow? Can you?” she asked.

“All you need to do is drink a special tea. It’s a bit sour: it is made from some very rare herbs, after all. Old
Orang Bunian
recipe. You heard of them?” the boy asked.

Yi Ling nodded. The
Orang Bunian
, or ‘Hidden People,’ were right out of Malay folklore. They were a race of supernatural beings said to reside deep within the Malaysian jungle. Like the elves of Western legend, they were said to look like unnaturally beautiful humans, with access to magical powers beyond mortal understanding.

She had heard stories about them as a kid from her old housekeeper back in Alor Setar. Mak Cik Fatimah, grey-haired, snaggle-toothed, saronged, had used them as bogeymen to influence her behaviour. According to her, the
Bunian
were a race of tricksters, who liked nothing more than causing havoc.

“
Adik
, don’t go out too late,” Yi Ling remembered Mak Cik Fatimah telling her in Malay. “Or the
Orang Bunian
will catch you, and make you their slave!”

Yi Ling had always thought of the
Orang Bunian
as a myth.

Seeing this shop and its strange wares, however, she wasn’t so sure any more.

The boy reached under the counter—he seemed to have an entire world down there—and pulled out an ancient-looking copper teapot, and a glass mug.

He poured a murky brew into the mug. It smelled of smoke and old leaves.

“How do I know this is safe?” Yi Ling asked. “How do I know you haven’t drugged it?”

“You have my word that it is perfectly safe. All it will do is make you lose your shadow, and nothing more,” the boy said.

“What about the getting smarter part?”

“That will happen. In a matter of days, you will be the brightest student in the class. You have the word of the
Bunian
.”

“Losing my shadow… it won’t hurt me, will it?” Yi Ling asked.

The boy sighed. “What, do you think you’re going to get shadow cancer or something?”

To her embarrassment, Yi Ling found her hands shaking as she picked up the mug. She pressed it to her lips, and said a silent prayer.

Part of her wanted to fling the mug into the boy’s face, accuse him of scamming her. What he was suggesting was impossible! A violation of physics and biology and logic! Who knew what his real intentions were?

But Yi Ling was desperate. What did she have to lose, anyway?

She closed her eyes as she gulped down the brew. It was sour and burnt her throat, and Yi Ling forced herself not to throw up.

The boy smiled as she slammed the empty mug on the table with a loud
thunk
.

“That was awful,” Yi Ling said. “Do you have any water?”

She stopped. For there was a hideous pain throbbing in her temples.

Yi Ling tried to speak, but her words were stuck in her throat. There was vertigo, and her knees were suddenly weak. Her vision blurred, before suddenly snapping back into focus. There was an unnatural brightness to the world that warped her senses and made her want to throw up.

Her head started to ache. Yi Ling clutched the counter for support.

“I thought you said—”

Yi Ling screamed. Her feet started to burn: it felt as if her heels were being forcibly ground by sandpaper.

The boy grinned. In her vertigo, his features twisted. No longer was he very handsome; instead, with his slit eyes, overly pointed chin and gnarled forehead, he resembled a crone from a medieval painting.

Yi Ling screamed in agony. Tears poured down her cheeks, smudging her makeup.

She was suddenly aware of a dark shape forming behind her. A strange cloud of nothingness—
how was it possible for nothing to have a shape?
—which billowed into a human silhouette.

Even through the burning pain in her feet, Yi Ling recognised the figure’s faint outline.

It was
her
.

The boy now had a small plastic jar. He raised it and shouted some foreign words, and the shadow grew ill-defined, losing its features as it turned into a cloud that floated, like smoke in the wind, into the jar.

“You’re going to do very well in your studies, Yi Ling,” the boy laughed. “You’re certainly going to shine.”

That was the last thing Yi Ling remembered before she blacked out.

§

“Hey. Hey, girl. Are you alright?”

There was a stinging pain. Someone had struck her on the cheek!

Yi Ling opened her eyes, blinking at the sudden infusion of light.

Amira was standing before her, her brow furrowed, panic in her eyes.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I thought you were dead!”

“What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know! I suddenly see you lying on the ground, muttering like
kena rasuk
, I was so scared—”

She was lying on a bench. How she had got there, she had no idea. The last thing she remembered was a good-looking boy with a scorpion tattoo and a strange column of smoke…

Holy shit.

Instinctively, she glanced at the dark alley she had been to earlier—it was no longer there. The space where Yi Ling had walked earlier was blocked (or replaced?) by a wall.

Somehow, she was not surprised.

Yi Ling forced herself to get up.

She was still in Petaling Street, on the road by the Chinese food stalls, where Amira had gone after she bought her Mockingjay pin. There were about a dozen curious onlookers nearby, all staring at them with a mixture of fear and amusement. A middle-aged Malay man in a football jersey was taking photos of her with his phone.

“Let’s get out of here,” Yi Ling said, self-conscious.

“Should we see a doctor?” Amira took her friend’s hand. “You don’t look good. Maybe we should—”

“No,” Yi Ling said. “Let’s go home. I have an assignment to finish.”

And at that, they walked away.

§

Seeing as the fainted girl was okay, the bystanders dispersed.

The Malay man with the camera phone smiled as he went through his shots.
They were both kinda pretty
, he thought.
Damn, I should have stepped in to help, got them indebted to me. Then ask them both out on a date, romance, threesome!

As he went through his pictures, however, he noticed something peculiar.

It was a bright sunny day: his shots had been very clear.

The sunlight meant there were a lot of shadows. They were easy to spot: there was the shadow of the Malay girl on the ground. An Indian man and his son cast twin shadows on the nearby wall, with the shadow of a car nearby.

The girl who had just fainted, however, did not cast one. On the patch of road beside her, where her shadow should have been, there was nothing.

§

That night, Kumar came home to a strange sight.