The Minorities Page 14

  “That’s fine,” I said, unable to look him in the eye. “We can go without you.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Shanti’s words were vicious, jabbing whispers.

  “I don’t care what your problem with Cantona is. Get over them.”

  “You propose a solution then,” I retorted. Their bonding has been heart-warming at first, but this new solidarity they paraded was starting to chafe the relationships I had with both of them.

  “We exorcise her.”

  “Please, don’t! I beg of you!” Diyanah, whom I first encountered floating from my kitchen to the living room, knelt before Shanti. She was crying, her tears blackened from some supernatural discharge. Shanti recoiled.

  Cautiously, slowly, delicately, I lowered myself next to Diyanah and placed a hand on her shoulder. She let me. “You can stay here, for now.” I turned to my housemates. “We’ll think about this again tomorrow. We help those who need help. That’s how we came together, and that’s what we’ll give anyone who needs help.”

  Standing, I offered an open palm to Diyanah. She took it, her cold fingers clasping mine, and rose to her feet.

  “We do not send people away from this house.”

  Chapter Eight: Group Therapy Biscuits

  I woke up with difficulty the next morning. It was a rainy Thursday. The heavy patters and the cool breeze, smelling of rainwater and blowing into my room, tethered me to bed. But I could hear lively chatter coming from the dining area, and I wanted to be a part of it, to spend time with my friends. The decision I made last night to help Diyanah get home felt like an imposition to them. My head kept replaying the line I had used on Cantona: “We can go without you”, and with every repeat, I felt the weight of my guilt grow heavier. This, combined with the fact that our understanding of the world and its natural order had been undone with Diyanah’s arrival, meant a return to normalcy would be a very, very welcome reprieve.

  Eventually, I made my way to where my housemates had already gathered, where conversation filled the air. They were eating Oreos. Tights had a cookie fully dunked into his glass of milk, while Shanti’s cookies had the cream licked completely off. Cantona was holding his to his lips.

  But they were not seated at the table. And it was not they who had been conversing.

  In the seats were four…things. One was Diyanah, in human form, demure and despondent. She sat where I usually sat, at the head of the table. On her left was a vetala, a reanimated corpse native to India. Its easily distinguishable, backward-facing hands and feet must be a terrible inconvenience to the poor creature, especially when shaking someone’s hands or high-fiving a friend. The vetala was saying, “Then this morning, William tells me you are haunting a human. At first I said, ‘Good for Diyanah’, but then he tells me they have overpowered you.”

  “I’m fine, Bala, really,” Diyanah said to him sweetly.

  “Are you sure? Do you want me to eat them?”

  Tights choked on his milk and coughed. “No, Bala, there is no need to,” said Diyanah seriously.

  Next to Bala, a muffled feminine voice said, “We were so worried. We came here as fast as we could!” It came from a pocong, a ghost wrapped in a white shroud.

  “We would have been here faster if Miss Hoppity-Hop here didn’t slow us down,” grumbled a magnificent genie, whose skin rippled with electric blue. He was jabbing an angry finger at the pocong.

  “Oh Alabar, don’t be like that,” said Diyanah. “I’m very glad that Mei Ling is here, that all of you are here.”

  I tiptoed over to my housemates.

  “Good morning,” Tights said to me, not able to tear his eyes off this uncanny group.

  Cantona grunted his greeting.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Mei Ling only hop, so they travel here very slowly,” Tights replied. “I think Alabar angry with Mei Ling.”

  “Damn it, Tights! I got that. What’s happening here?” I pointed at the entire gathering.

  Shanti whispered, “They’re Diyanah’s—”

  “DIYANAH!” screamed a high-pitched voice from outside the house. The next moment, a translucent, luminescent man emerged through the door, passing right through it as if the wooden thing was made of air.

  Diyanah stood up. “Oliver! I am so glad to see you.”

  “More like, see through me!” They laughed. And, admittedly, so did I.

  “Oliver, you’re late,” said Bala.

  “Even Mei Ling arrived before you,” said Alabar. Mei Ling huffed indignantly, but it was lost underneath her shroud.

  “Oh, bitches, please. Time waits for no man, but fabulous does not wait for time,” retorted the ghost named Oliver. “I’m so glad it’s Thursday. One more day tethered to that pastor and I would have gone all Exorcist on his ass—which, by the way, is completely smooth. I saw it. Was in the bathroom with him.”

  “Why?” asked Alabar. “Why in God’s sandy earth were you in the bathroom with him?”

  Oliver grinned. “For reasons.”

  Meanwhile, my housemates and I huddled closer together. “I think every Thursday ghost no need to haunt,” whispered Tights. “They can move anywhere.”

  “Then why is Diyanah still here?” Shanti asked.

  “Yeah, why are you still here, Diyanah?” came Mei Ling’s muffled voice, the first acknowledgement given by any of these beings to our presence.

  “Because I want to bring the human to COME,” she replied, pointing to Tights.

  “Girl, why would you want to do that?” asked Oliver.

  “Because I want to go home.”

  “Darling, you are home. Home is where the haunt is.”

  “No, I want to go home.”

  “You mean heaven?” asked Mei Ling.

  “Bahh, heaven! You don’t want to go to heaven, Diyanah, it’s overrated,” spat Oliver. “Just a bunch of heterosexuals playing tennis in their white robes. White robes! White robes! They went out of fashion with ancient Greece! And do you get to wear stripper heels? No. Leather boots? No. You wear sandals! Sandals! Godforsaken sandals! The footwear of choice for listless men living in their parents’ basement.”

  “Oliver,” said Diyanah.

  But Oliver did not hear his friend. The ghost continued, “And oh, don’t get me started on the music there! Enya and Kenny G. If I could die again in heaven, it’d be because I was bored to death.”

  “Oliver!” Diyanah called again, louder this time.

  Oliver stopped his tirade against heaven and listened.

  “I want to go back to Malacca, to Kampong Air Rindu. I want to serve the rest of my covenant there.”

  Her friends exchanged glances. “We’re okay with it,” Alabar began hesitantly.

  “And William will be okay with it, we’re sure,” added Bala. He looked to the usually effervescent Oliver, who was now holding his tongue…or whatever the tongue’s ghostly equivalent was.

  “But?”

  “Durshirah wouldn’t like it,” said Alabar, and for once, the mighty genie appeared frightened.

  “And I really don’t want to get on Durshirah’s bad side.”

  “Durshirah’s a penanggal!” cried Diyanah. “Every side of his is a bad side.”

  “Now, now, Diyanah, that can be construed as racist,” Alabar said, not quite scolding her. “I’m sure there are penanggals with a…good head on their shoulders.”

  “They don’t have shoulders!” Diyanah turned to look at me and my fellow humans. She then addressed her friends, “I will see you all at today’s session.” They left: Alabar faded into thin air, Mei Ling hopped away while Bala and Oliver ghosted out of sight.

  “I swear I did not know they were coming!” cried Diyanah apologetically.

  “It’s all right,” I said, smiling. Cantona, however, did not look too pleased.

  My housemates checked the seats for ectoplasm and when they found none, took their places and placed their Oreos before them.

  In the living room, seemingly an en
tire world away, the television was showing the morning news.

  “News from the Istana,” a newscaster reported. “President Pupus Tan will be taking a two-week break starting tomorrow. Taking over his duties will be the Chair of the Council of Presidential Advisers, Adsumo Heng.”

  The footage cut to the clean-shaven jowls and white hair of the President of Singapore. He spoke as he always did—slowly, tentatively, as though taking direction from a hidden earpiece. “These past two years have been some of the most fulfilling of my life, serving the people and the Constitution of Singapore. I am going for a, um, minor head surgery, but when I return in two weeks, I will be better and stronger than ever to give the people of Singapore exactly what they deserve.” He smiled. An off-screen reporter asked an inaudible question, and the President replied, “The backbone of my presidency is the building of bridges between all communities in Singapore. No further comment.”

  At the table, we were eating in silence, each of us no doubt processing the gathering of supernatural beings we had just witnessed. It made the Oreos, these black-and-white, mass-produced, heavily advertised touchstones (or, as it were, touchcookies) of the less supernatural aspects of human life, all the more delicious.

  Diyanah stood in the corner of the dining room.

  “Do you eat?” I asked her, filling a plate full of Oreos for her and decanting milk into a tall, clear glass.

  “No, and yes,” she replied shyly.

  We waited for her to clarify, on the assumption that she had more to say on the subject. But she did not. She simply looked at each of us in turn, her countenance curious. The silence became uneasy.

  “What do you mean by ‘no and yes’?” I asked.

  “I do not eat human food. I have no need for carbohydrates. It does not matter to me if something is gluten-free or not. My current disposition is closer to my eternal soul than it was when I was a living human being. The soul has no beginning or end, and does not need nourishment. But I do have essence tethered to this world. That is the part of me that is physical and abides to most of the natural laws of this world. That essence is sustained by sanguis essentia—what you call plasma.”

  “So, you need to drink blood?”

  “Yes. Fresh blood.”

  My housemates very visibly recoiled. I found the thought of her teeth sunk into my wrist, my blood invigorating her, tremendously erotic. I leaned forward, without realising it. The air between Diyanah and me contracted in the space of a withheld heartbeat.

  She quickly said, “But I have never consumed human blood! I drink only from animals.”

  Her words clearly did not assuage my friends.

  “I do not want to trouble you any further. I just want to go back to where I came from. Take me there, and I promise you I will haunt you no further.”

  Shanti sighed. “Can you please let us discuss this in private?”

  Diyanah scanned the house and said sheepishly, “The covenant gives me heightened senses. Wherever you send me, I will be able to hear you.”

  “It’s more for us than for you,” I said to her, chuckling. “Just wait in my room.”

  As soon as Diyanah was out of sight, Shanti hissed, “We have got to exorcise this blood-drinking bitch now! I don’t think I want to spend another morning—”

  “Shanti, she can hear you!” I cried, shocked at her blatant animosity. “She only drinks animal blood.”

  Cantona replied, in his deep, calm, measured voice, “But what if she runs out of animal blood?”

  “We’ll buy some for her! We’ll feed her, the same way I’ve been feeding all of you! The woman needs our help.”

  “That is not a woman! That is a monster that happens to be female,” Shanti replied. “We cannot let her stay here.”

  “Well, then help me bring her to Malacca.”

  Tights spoke up. “Yes, I with you. I no want panty eunuch haunt me until I die.”

  “It’s ‘pontianak’, Tights,” I corrected him.

  “Guys, this is too risky,” Shanti said. To Tights, she added pointedly, “Consider the fact that we’ll have to cross the border to Malaysia.”

  Cantona was nodding. “This is your fault, Tights. You want to let out the bad wherever you want? We’re covered in bad right now.”

  Shanti jabbed an index finger into my chest. “You never think, do you? Tights is here illegally. He doesn’t have his passport. How do you plan to smuggle him into Malaysia?”

  I stood up. “Diyanah!”

  She emerged from my room and returned. “Yes?”

  “You’ve heard all of that. Is there anything you can do about that?”

  “My covenant allows me to render myself and other human beings invisible to the naked eye. The most wondrous of Nature’s gifts are available to me. I can camouflage myself and those around me.”

  “Okay, it is settled then. I will take Tights and Diyanah to Malacca.”

  Diyanah smiled, wider and brighter. Her eyes lit up, the brown of her pupils glowing hazel. Then, the smile faded slightly. “Before that, I have to take you to COME.”

  “What that?” Tights asked.

  “You see, Tights, when a girl likes a boy, they do a special dance and the boy will produce a special juice—”

  “Shut up!” Shanti snapped. “Answer the question, Diyanah. What is that?”

  “It’s the group governing supernatural beings in Singapore. I need to update them on my transmigration.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “Do we need to follow?”

  “He does,” she said, pointing to Tights.

  “Then we’re all coming,” Shanti said with a sigh. “Where is COME?”

  “The Old Changi Hospital,” Diyanah replied, the ghost of a triumphant smile fleeting across her face.

  To most, Changi heralded images of a state-of-the-art airport known for its clockwork efficiency and the kind of cleanliness that could transcend godliness. But there was a side of Changi that hid in the shadows. This side had military bases and colonial-era structures and decrepit residential buildings and Pakcik Dollah’s bookstore. This was the side we sped along—the five of us in my mother’s Toyota—and then we went even further. Shanti sat next to me. In the back seat, Diyanah was sandwiched between Cantona and Tights. My occasional peeks into the rear-view mirror revealed that Diyanah was positively enthralled by all this. Her gaze followed every car, climbed every tree from trunk to crown, and reached to the height of the blue sky above.

  She was the first to speak when we reached Changi. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What is?”

  “That black car has been following us,” said Diyanah worriedly. Sure enough, there was a sleek black Audi behind us. It looked familiar, but black Audis were not a rare sight in Singapore.

  “Singapore is small,” I said to Diyanah. “The chances that a car took the same route as us to reach a rather limited set of destinations is…I can’t do the maths. Cantona?”

  “I don’t know how many roads and destinations there are in Singapore,” he replied.

  “I can’t give a definitive answer.”

  “He was following us from your home,” Diyanah said.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said. I turned the wheel and brought the car into a small lane—an old shortcut to the Old Changi Hospital. Sure enough, the car sped past behind us. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

  After about two bumpy minutes on the dirt road, we reached the whitewashed survivor of British colonialism—the abandoned, unused Old Changi Hospital. Even now, in the light of day, it looked foreboding and sinister. Its white façade, framed by decaying wood, seemed to invite passers-by to enter and be swallowed by the secrets hidden inside. We followed the crumbling road that led to its main entrance as dead leaves rustled underneath. I parked by the entrance, and wondered for a mad moment if I would be fined by the traffic police for doing so.

  Through the rusty metal gates, Diyanah led us into a dusty lobby where we treaded on dead leaves strewn all over the
floor. At a singular receptionist’s table, yellowed, cobwebbed files littered its surface.

  Diyanah stood before it. She cleared her throat and recited aloud into the emptiness, “Saya benar-benar mahu melihat anda, saya benar-benar mahu bersama anda, saya benar-benar mahu melihat anda, tetapi ia mengambil masa yang terlalu lama.”

  “What was that?” Shanti asked.

  I laughed. “The lyrics to George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’, translated to Malay.”

  “Our administrator is a huge fan,” Diyanah explained.

  “Any chance your administrator was a grumpy Malay man when he was living? Became a ghost earlier this year?”

  “Dude, there are many people out there who were fans of George Harrison,” Cantona muttered testily. “Your father wasn’t the only one.”

  I wanted to retort, and I wanted to retort very harshly. But Diyanah spoke before I could. “Our administrator is a British ghost, and he’s been one for much longer than a few months. Here he is now.”

  An apparition, translucent and glowing around its edges, dressed in the royal British military uniform of the 19th century rose from the floor. This was the first time anybody not undead in the room had ever seen a ghost.

  It eyed each of us threateningly—until it saw Diyanah. When it did, its features softened and it said in a thick British accent, “Hello, Diyanah! It is good to see you.”

  Diyanah smiled in response.

  “You look pale,” the ghost continued, its voice thick with worry. “Have you not been eating?”

  “Not in a while,” Diyanah admitted. She pointed to me. “This one loves cats.”

  “Ah, no matter,” said the ghost. “We have a buffet waiting downstairs. A few junkies OD-ed at Block D, and we drained them of their sanguis essentia for today’s meeting.”

  “William, you know I don’t drink human blood.”

  The ghost named William dropped his voice to a barely audible whisper. “Are they friend or food?”

  “Friend,” Diyanah answered.

  “Yes, we come as friends!” I cried. The ghost named William floated through the receptionist’s table until his nose was only a few centimetres from mine. His eyes, or the representation of his eyes in ghost form, burrowed into mine.