I took a bus from Bangkok to Cousin Wu's house in Rayong. Cousin Wu was incredibly happy to see me, even though it hadn't been more than half a year since we left each other. During lunch, I asked Wu, "Has your friend Li taken his son to the hospital yet? It can't be supernatural just because he got sick right? Maybe a real doctor should have a look as well."
Wu shook his head. "Of course he did, but the hospital could not find anything, no matter how many tests they ran, and trust me, Li even took his son to four different hospitals, and they all found nothing."
"So what exactly has happened?" I inquired.
"According to Li, his son started acting strange about a month ago. It was really really weird because his kid was quite normal before that. He has never had autism or any mental health issues. Li has been a good friend to me, and something tells me you are the right person to help, so please do me the favour of checking up on him. Li will come to the house tomorrow night, and you can drive my car with him to visit his son at his house. It isn't far anyways. He lives in Rayong as well, so it should only take twenty minutes or so."
I nodded in agreement.
The next evening, Cousin Wu's wife cooked lobster for dinner, but Li did not show up on time. We waited and waited. We were about to give up on him when Li suddenly marched in the room. He came directly over to me and shook my hand. "You must be Mr. Wu's cousin, Mr. Tian Qi. Nice to meet you. I am really sorry for being late. It's my son again. We had to take an extra half an hour to settle him down. Sorry for making you wait. I am really really sorry about it." I told him it was no problem at all.
"Your son's sickness is worsening again?" Cousin Wu asked.
"Yeah, for heaven's sake!" Li sighed. As Lee stood there, his face tortured, his hands clasped, and his eyes cast down, I noticed his clothes were… simple. He seems to have come from a relatively poor background. We sat down together and ate. After dinner, Cousin Wu lent me a local cell phone, and I drove Li home to the North of Rayong.
North Rayong was clearly much poorer than where my cousin lived, with the apartments dirty and old, bordering on a ghetto. You could see the visible cracks on the wall of the buildings. What paint there might have been fifty years ago was now a shadow in the dark. In front of his apartment was a cement cistern with young men and women standing languidly washing themselves. The men wore only their underwear and the women wore light sarongs covering their hips and breasts.
I had never seen anything like it before. "Why are these men and women taking baths together, in public of all places?"
"The people here have no money to afford showers or any running water in their homes, so this is the only way they can clean themselves." Li answered with a bitter smile.
"I didn't know they even made homes without running water…" I sighed.
We stopped in front of one of the old apartments. Li's home was on the fifth floor, a crudely made block of concrete with rusted rebar poking out of the chipped and cracked edges of the building. It was obvious that the house had not been maintained for a very long time, if ever, and at each step made the floor creak and moan like an old man getting out of bed.
The decor looked tattered and faded, and the house had a strong scent of herbal medicine. Two plates of leftovers sat on the table with a vortex of curious insects flying above. There was a low muffled conversation coming from the bedroom, as if someone was talking with their mouth covered. A middle-aged woman walked out from the room, her face covered with sweat, her eyes teary, one ringed with the dark bruised blood of a black eye. She had a cut on her forehead that smelled of strong ointment, that herbal smell that enveloped the house. When she saw us, she quickly wiped tears off her face and shifted her body to the left, obscuring the wound.
"Mr. Tian, this is my wife. Honey, this is Mr. Wu's cousin Mr. Tian. Please, Get Mr. Tian something to drink!" Li asked his wife, and she poured cups of water for me and her husband.
"We've tried to save money while working here in a foreign country, so we rented the cheapest apartment in the least expensive district we could find. Please excuse the humble home." Li muttered, his head once again cast down. I awkwardly blurted that the house was "very homey", and forced a smile. Changing the subject, I asked Li what his son's condition was right now, and where he was. Li pointed at the closed bedroom. "He is in the bedroom, tied up on the bed"
"Tied up?!" I cried.
Li answered with a nod towards the bedroom door that his wife had just come out of. I walked over. On the bed there was a boy who looked like he was six or seven years old. He was wrapped to the bed with strips of cloth, looking like a rice dumpling folded up in a banana leaf. His mouth was stuffed with a cloth. When he saw me enter the room, he started struggling, making muffled cries, his eyes pleading.
In my shock, my first thought was to unbind the poor child, but Li grabbed my wrist as I reached down to the bonds. I snapped, "Do you know this is illegal? You are parents! Why are you abusing your child? This is sick! This is… perverted!"
"You have no idea what you are talking about!" Li screamed, "If we untie him you will hurt both him and us!:
"How? Will this tiny child beat me to death?" I mocked.
Li's wife stood at the doorway. She covered her mouth and sobbed. "My wife's black eye and wound on the forehead, are you blind? Do you see?" Li exclaimed. "Do you know how a six year old did that? With a hammer!"
In shock, Li pulled me out of the room and locked the door. He led me to the table and we sat down, along with his wife, my head spun, and we sat in silence for several minutes. After a while Li sighed loudly, covering his face with his palm. "My son's name is Yong. He is a very good kid. He is very obedient and caring. But a month ago, he started acting very... unnaturally. First he started to sleep talk, strange words, sometimes in Thai which he only knows on the most basic level! In our house, we only speak Chinese, and he has not yet started school. So, when I heard him plead in fluent Thai, 'Why does it have to be today?', 'You hit me, I will hit you back' phrases he couldn't have known, I was shocked and frightened. We didn't understand why he should be having such extreme dreams and where the language was coming from. Then, a few days later, he started to sleepwalk as well. One early morning when I woke up, we found him standing in front of our bed, staring at us, eyes open but empty. When we called his name, he woke up, but had no idea why he was in our room or how he got there."
Li's wife reached across the table to wipe her husband's tears, and then continued speaking for him: "That's not even the worst part. Things got a lot stranger after that. Sometimes when we had meals together he would suddenly start talking like an adult, an adult woman. He would say things like 'Do you still think I'm beautiful, my love?' or 'I am all yours tonight, sweetheart'. We became more and more confused as these 'episodes' occurred more and more often. Then suddenly, he would snap out of it, and without missing a beat would be himself again, not remembering any of his strange behavior.
"Could it be an act?" I asked, "Boys can be quite naughty you know?"
Li shook his head again, "Even if he was playing around, do you think a boy who is not yet seven years old can say things like this? Where would he have learned to speak perfect Thai with perfect pronunciation, and use the femine mode while doing so?"
"Like what?"
"That night he said, 'My family is poor and we can't afford a large dowry. You parents won't accept our marriage. But, can we move to Phetchaburi so they can't stop us. Phetchaburi is a province in the south of Thailand. My son is young. He doesn't know that place. He's never been there. How could he know such mature and complicated things?"
That's true, I thought, this is indeed peculiar. After reflecting for a moment, I asked Li, "If my guess is correct, his conditions became worse and worse and eventually started smashing things and attacking people?"
"Yeah, that night seemed so normal. We were just sleeping like any other evening. Then, I woke in a shock of pain, blood pouring down my forehead, and saw Yong with a hammer in his hand. He stood back gripping the tool then screamed, 'You ran me over with your car! I am going to smash you to death!" repeatedly, his face contorted, his eyes… These were not my son's eyes looking at me. Luckily he was only six and he isn't very strong, but he still managed to give me a serious fracture. We were already poor to begin with, and now it took so much money to find doctors for me and him…."
Li's wife started crying. I felt sympathetic for her and I tried to calm her down. I thought about it again, "Has anything out of place happened before your son started having his... condition?"
"People have asked us this before." Le said. "To be honest, we really can't remember anything out of place that happened. Yong is quite introverted and he never caused any trouble around the neighbourhood. When he played with his mates, he wouldn't even stand up for himself when he got bullied. We never had anything weird happen at home either." I told him to try to think a little harder. I thought that if this was a supernatural event, it must have a genesis. Everything I had heard about people who had problems with spirits had done something to offend, or get in the way of a spirit's passing. Things like this do not happen out of the blue. Maybe it was just something small or minute in their eyes, but it could be the root of all their problems. It must be something that they had overlooked.
After posing some questions to the couple, Li and his wife shook their heads emphatically, insisting the change was sudden and random. To be frank, I was beginning to consider I had bitten off more than I could handle, and that maybe I should abandon this whole situation, leave it to someone who knows more. Besides, Li and his wife are quite poor and I probably wouldn't make anything out of it, yet they were Cousin Wu's close friends, and I did enjoy working with Wu. So, on a whim, I decided to call Fang Gang for his take on the situation.
On the other side of the phone there was loud music and girls giggling in the background. I knew he must be in a KTV bar, singing songs with friends or 'hired girls'. I explained the situation as best I could, but he only giggled, slurring and burping between words. "Not bad kiddo." he hollard into the receiver, "I got a new broker already huh? Not bad, not bad at all! Get as much information as possible, like during the time interval when the customer is having problems, what strangers did they meet, who they have argued with, pissed off, or any exposure to strange people or even animals. Have they killed or harmed anything, moved homes, broken any objects, bought anything, sold anything, lost anything or picked up anything on the street? Ask as many questions as possible. Knowledge is often unknown to the uninitiated, kid. If you get anything that makes you feel... odd, call me again."
After he hung up, I went over Fang Gang's questions with the Li couple. Li's wife suddenly perked up, and exclaimed "Picking up things? Like finding something on the ground?"
"Of course." I said, "Did you pick anything up?"
She fell silent, trapped in thought.