Girl
SLOWLY,SURAYATURNED 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 fromthe 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 theman 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'sshoulder, 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.
Then it was impossible not to look back, impossible not towatch
as those tiny, monstrous shapes swarmed all over Pink, impossible
not to scream as sharp claws began to rend his skin, as the pointed
tips of tiny teeth began to gore his flesh.
She was still screaming when she heard a sharp thwack: the
sound, as it turned out, of wood as it smacked against polong flesh.
There they were, rows of not-quite-there apparitions, bearing
thick wooden branches and rocks picked from cemetery dirt in their
barely opaquehands, and leading the charge were Saloma and
Badrul, who glowered at theinterlopers. "Come to my house and
cause such a ruckus, will you?" he bellowed, hitching his sarong a
little higher up his waist. "Bunch of thugs and hooligans! In my day
ghosts knew how to behave! Mangkuk!"
"CHARGE!" Saloma trilled like an off-key diva in a B-rate opera,
and the ghosts glided forward, waving their makeshift weapons and
whooping and howling as they went.
"Cooooooooool," Suraya heard Jing breathe out beside her.
"Come on," she said, tugging on Jing's arm. "We have to hurry."
A crack of thunder ripped through the sky, and the rain began to
fall in fat, heavy drops that fell hard and splattered wide on the
ground. And then there was another sound, one that tore right
through Suraya's chest so that fear spilled out and chilled her all
over: a fearsome, bloodcurdling shriek. They whirled around just in
time to see thelangsuir burst from her owl form, a swirling figure in
green robes, with long, dark hair that hung down to her ankles.
Through the driving rain, Suraya could just make out her long, sharp
nails and the menacing grin on her pale face as she swooped down
among the ghostly melee.
"What the . . . ," Jing whispered, as they watched her swoop
down on the crowd below.
"No time," Suraya said, forcing herself to turn away. "Don't look
back."
The closer they got to the grave, the harder it was to hear the
sounds of the battle behind them, the more the ground sloped, and
the less well-tended the graves, so that they had to scramble at
some points, holding out their hands to help each other over trickier
bits. Jing winced as her hurt arm jostled around in its cast. The rain
turned their baju kurungs into sudden, heavy nets that clung to their
skin, weighed them down, and caught at their ankles; it seeped deep
into the Earth, turning it into thick mud that alternately made them
slip and slide, or gripped their shoes and refused to let go.
It was while Jing was helping Suraya dislodge her foot from a
particularly clingy mud puddle that they heard the rustling in the trees.
Suraya turned to Jing, whose eyes mirrored the panic she felt
rising from her belly. "What was that?"
"I don't know," Suraya whispered back, scanning the treeline.
"Maybe just a cat or something?"
"Maybe." Jing gulped. "Come on, we . . ."
But the words died on her lips because right at that moment, a
shadow detached itself from the trees and slunk toward them. The
bajang-civet bared his rows of sharp little teeth in a fiendish grin,
staring hungrilyat first Jing, then Suraya, then back again, as though
trying to decide which one to devour first. And as they backed away,
a snicker made them whirl around to see the toyol blocking the path
behind them.
Jing looked at Suraya. "We're surrounded," she said.
Suraya nodded. "Perfect time for the plan. You ready?"
"Ready."
They turned with their backs pressed against each other, so that
they each faced a monster: Suraya staring down the bajang, which
had begun to hiss softly, and Jing looking straight at the toyol, who
kept giggling as he advanced closer and closer to them.
"On my count," Suraya said softly.
"One . . ." Behind her, she felt Jing tense up and saw her hand
slip slowly into the pocket of her backpack.
"Two . . ." The toyol's giggle turned into a cackle of glee; he was
just inches away from Jing now, and the bajang was preparing to
pounce.
"Three!"
Both girls moved at exactly the same time. Jing ran toward the
trees, the toyol hot on her heels, and as she ran she scattered bright
colored cheap plastic toys, candy, and coins that they'd cobbled
together from their own pockets and from the shelves of the only 24-
hour convenience store in town. The trinkets shone and glimmered
in the moonlight. "A toyol, which is basically the spirit of a child, can
be distracted just as a child can be distracted, with bright colors and
shiny objects, toys, and sweetmeats and valuables," they'd read
together earlier, and sure enough, the toyol slowed down as soon as
he saw his new playthings. "Oooooooh," they heard him whisper as he sat to peruse them properly, turning each one over and over
lovingly between his fingers. "Oooooooh."
Meanwhile, Suraya was tryingto dodge the bajang. As she heard
his quick, light steps behind her, she whirled around toface him.
"You hungry?" she called out. "Here you go!" And she drew a plastic
bag from her backpack and set it down at her feet before turning to
run again. She knew he could send her into a fit of madness any
minute now, if he could catch her.Ican't give him that chance,she
told herself, panting hard. Please let this work. Please. Please.Her
blood thundered through herveins and in her ears so that it took a
while for her to realize that she could no longer hear the bajang's
steps. She turned around cautiously and saw that he had stopped
and was devouring the contents of the bag: a gallon of fresh milk and
two dozen eggs they'd hurriedly purchased at a mini-mart in town
once they'd read that bajangs could never pass up a meal.
"Especially this one," Suraya had noted, remembering the hungry
look in this particular bajang's eyes as it moved around its glass
prison.
Jing caught up with her, trying to catch her own breath. "I can't
believe that worked."
Suraya glanced down at the fighting down below and whatever
triumph she felt quickly faded. "Don't get too comfortable," she said.
"We're about to have company." For as they watched, the pawang
had peeled away from the pack of fighting ghosts and was making
his way up to them, his robe hitched up over his knees.
"Coming, girls!" he said, raising his voice to be heard over the
thud of the rain, wiping the water from his glasses as hepicked his
way carefully through the graves.
Jing and Suraya looked at each other, their expressions twin
masks of horror. "We're so close!" Suraya said desperately, looking
up at the tiny grave at the top of the hill, just steps away. "We can
make it, hurry!" She grabbed Jing's hand. "Come on!"
She turned and began to run, pulling Jing along behind her.
Jing didn't move.
"What are you doing?" Suraya turned to look at her. "Let's go!"
"I can't!" Jing said, her voice rising in panic. "What's going on? I
can't move my foot!"
Suraya looked down.
In the shadow and the muck and the rain, something moved.
And then she saw it: a polong gripped Jing's foot, digging its
claws into her shoes, holding her to the ground so that she couldn't
lift it more than an inch. Suraya bent down to swat it away, then
yelped as the creature dug its teeth into her finger and ripped out a
chunk of flesh.
"You nasty thing!" she gasped, blinking back tears, blood trickling
from the open wound and down her elbow, staining the sleeves of
her baju kurung; in answer, the polong merely grinned at her, licking
her blood from its lips with sickening relish. She tried to aim a swift,
hard kick in its direction but couldn't move—more polong had come,
digging their claws into her shoes and feet too, holding them flat to
the ground. As she watched,more and more swarmed to them, until
both her legs and Jing's were writhing masses of black, and the
prickle of dozens of little claws made her bite her bottom lip in pain.
The rain stopped, as suddenly as it had begun.
"Sooz." Jing's voice was choked with fear and tears she was
trying her best to hold back. "What do we do now?"
But before Suraya could answer, someone else spoke first.
"Give up, of course," the pawang said, smiling pleasantly at them
from where he stood between two graves, his hands in the pockets
of his sodden robe, the full moon blazing behind him, turning his face
into a mask of sharp shadow and light.