The Minorities Page 15

  I stretched out a hand and told him my name.

  “Very funny,” he said, phasing a ghostly hand through mine.

  “This is Cantona, Tights and Shanti.” I gestured to each of them. They waved uncertainly at the ghost, not knowing if they should be frightened or engage in small talk with him.

  Diyanah pointed and proclaimed cheerfully, “Tights is the human of my covenant.”

  The ghost named William bowed and asked a gentlemanly, “How do you do?” to each. He then introduced himself: “My name is William Farquhar. I am chair and administrator here.”

  It took me a few moments to register what he had just said. “What was that?”

  “Chair and administrator.” But it was not his position that had caught me by surprise—it was his name. “Well, I’m not an actual chair. The term I prefer is ‘chairman’ but we have members claiming it was not progressive. It’s a messy affair.” There was something about the ghost’s mannerisms—that measured British outer layer with a clear undercurrent of finicky, worrisome disquietude—that made me not want to hassle or trouble him, even to clarify myself, for I was sure I would be adding to an already lengthy list.

  “You’re the William Farquhar?” We followed him behind the receptionist’s table, where a round seal had been built into the floor.

  “Well,” replied the ghost of William Farquhar, “there’s William Farquhar from the history books, there’s William Farquhar the person, and then…” He waved a hand. With a metallic groan, the seal parted and revealed a spiral staircase that went deep into the bowels of the Old Changi Hospital. “…there’s William Farquhar the ghost.”

  Shanti and I expressed our awe at the secret before us. Cantona and Tights were still eyeing the ghost in fear.

  “We’re the Council of Metaphysical Entities, Singaporean Chapter,” said the ghost of William Farquhar as Diyanah led the way down.

  “So…COME?” I asked.

  “If we must conjure an acronym, then yes.”

  “Well, at least you’re not the Association of Singaporean Supernaturals.”

  “AOSS?” I wanted to correct him, but I just nodded along.

  “We used to be called UNAWARE—the Union of Apparitions, Wraiths and Related Entities, but some of our female members said it was sexist.”

  “How is that sexist?”

  “You tell me,” said the ghost of William Farquhar, his spectral hand scratching his spectral head. “There was a time when women just did their duty in the kitchen and tended to the children instead of making obstructive comments on official matters.”

  “Now, that is sexist.”

  It was now my turn to descend, behind Tights. I could not see where the wrought-iron staircase led, for the depths only promised pitch darkness. I went down slowly, tentatively, my hands grabbing the railings tightly.

  “So, what does COME do?” Shanti asked from inside the abyss.

  “You see, Shanti, when a boy and a girl want to have a baby, the boy must make a special kind of tadpole—”

  “Shut up!” Shanti’s words echoed from underneath.

  Behind me, the deep, polished voice of the ghost of William Farquhar replied, “We keep track of the comings and goings of supernatural entities in Singapore. We also provide holistic support to our members, and ensure they fulfil their covenants and seamlessly transcend to the hereafter.”

  Diyanah’s voice, soft and ethereal, wafted from below. “William, there is something urgent I must talk to you about.”

  “I’m afraid it will have to wait for the next two hours. It’s Thursday! We have group therapy today.”

  “Group therapy?” asked Cantona.

  My feet were starting to dip into a basin of light.

  “You will see,” said the ghost of William Farquhar.

  Several more steps down and I was in a long, stone corridor lit by torches. Diyanah, by now, had morphed to her pontianak form. I realised then that I no longer feared her in that form. This was part of who she was. Diyanah was smiling at me through the ragged curtains of her hair.

  My hand brushed against something thick, metallic and heavy sticking out from the corridor wall. I held my torch up to it. There was a brass plaque bolted into the wall, and carved into its rough surface was a poem of some sort.

  “‘The Feast of the Sullen’,” came William Farquhar’s voice further down the corridor. “It’s a song lost to the passage of time, about forgotten people and creatures, those left behind by a world rapidly advancing into the unknown future.”

  Peering into the carvings against the illumination of my torch, I read:

  “Feast with us, O fellow man

  we who are yoked to our fates,

  no more human than we are cattle;

  It is true we are branded

  and it is true that we slave

  and it is true our tongues are parched,

  never knowing the taste of ambition,

  and it is true our hands are coarse

  for they grovel upon the earth below

  and do not touch heaven above.

  It is true we wear no silk

  and it is true we hold no gold

  and it is true we are mute

  as lightning without thunder.

  And we break our backs

  because the lords above

  refuse to break theirs.

  But we invite the lords above

  to break bread at our tables,

  and dine, as they always do,

  at The Feast of the Sullen.

  And when they ascend to be with the Gods,

  we will return unto the void.”

  We forged ahead, the dancing, flickering lights cast our restless shadows upon the walls. The corridor went on for about fifty metres before opening up to a large chamber filled with blue-painted wooden furniture I last saw in Ikea. On blue stools were an assortment of creatures—vampires, pontianaks, ghosts, jinn and their supernatural kin, each engrossed in their own snarled, growled or whispered conversations with their seated neighbours. I spotted a couple of pocongs, and I could not tell if either one of them was Mei Ling. Alabar was among them, regaling those closest to him stories of his adventures in the Negev Desert. A circular coffee table sat in the middle. The carafes on it contained a deep red liquid. One held a brown liquid.

  “Is that blood?” I asked.

  “Yes,” replied the ghost of William Farquhar.

  “And the brown liquid? Is that…”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh! Nasty!”

  “What’s wrong with chocolate milk? That’s for the four of you humans.”

  “Oh. Right.” The supernatural beings in attendance were looking at us curiously, with cautious fascination. Oliver was one of the exceptions, waving at us excitedly. The other exception was the vetala known as Bala, who waved at us with his backward-facing palms.

  “Everybody, we have guests today,” said the ghost of William Farquhar. He gestured for each of us to take a stool, and we did so. I placed myself next to Diyanah. Tights sat next to me, followed by Shanti and Cantona. On Cantona’s right was a tiny thing that looked like a dead baby brought back to life. The administrator added, “Why don’t we all go in a circle and introduce ourselves. Let’s go clockwise starting from Diyanah.”

  “My name is Diyanah and I’ve been a pontianak for almost seventy years,” she said, her voice as gentle as it had been when she spoke to us.

  “Hi, Diyanah,” the chamber chorused in response.

  The ghost of William Farquhar pointed a glowing hand towards me.

  I told them my name, and the entire chamber burst into laughter. After the laughter died, Tights introduced himself as Tights, and those in attendance said, “Hello, Tights.”

  “Tights,” said the ghost of William Farquhar, “is Diyanah’s human.”

  “Um, that is to say, I’m haunting him,” Diyanah said quickly. I assumed she must have been discomforted by the description, refusing to place any possessive element to t
heir relationship.

  “And the other humans are his friends, so they’re off limits for any mischief you might have in mind,” added the ghost of William Farquhar. “Next up…”

  “Hello! My name is Shanti and I’ve been a human being for about twenty-five years now.” I laughed, but nobody laughed with me.

  Those who could speak said, “Hello, Shanti.” The rest growled or howled in an arguably friendly manner.

  Cantona then introduced himself, and the chamber echoed his hello.

  The tiny, brown impish thing next to him then stood up, barely reaching his knee. “Hello, my name is,” the thing growled in a high-pitched British accent, “It’s Complicated.” Looking at its mouth, I saw razor-sharp teeth caked with blood. The overall effect was confusing at best. It waved a miniscule hand. “I have been a toyol for almost a century. I think.”

  Every soul, with the exception of the human ones, chanted in unison, “Hello, It’s Complicated.”

  I looked at the ghost of William Farquhar.

  “After being dead for so long, it is possible for one to forget one’s…living name.” He sighed. Without the actual expulsion of air, the sigh seemed graver. It occurred to me that his name might not actually be William Farquhar. “It’s Complicated, for example, named himself after something his master had been saying to him for the past two years.”

  That did not seem to answer the question that Tights and Cantona had in mind. It’s Complicated rectified that, stating, “A toyol is the essence that is brought into this world when a bomoh brings back to life a stillborn.”

  The rest of the room introduced themselves. There were ghosts and pontianaks, succubi and hantu tetek. They were all snarling, menacing things, but here, in the chamber, they were part of a supportive community.

  After introductions, the ghost of William Farquhar asked the floor, “Does anybody have anything to confess this week?”

  Oliver’s hand shot up. “My human has been misappropriating church funds. He’s been using it to fund his wife’s music career. And I don’t mean music like she’s a classical violinist in Italy. I mean she makes skanky-ass R&B videos. She’s not even good. She doesn’t have the class of Mary J. Blige, nor the artistic vision of Lady Gaga, nor the oozing sex appeal of Miley Cyrus. Ugh. So, I helped expose him.” He grinned mischievously. “Left an incriminating file here, a shady invoice there, in places where the right people would pick it up.” There was scattered applause from the chamber.

  “You’re not supposed to meddle in the affairs of your human!” growled a vampire at the other end of the room.

  “Honey,” said Oliver, “isn’t haunting technically meddling in the affairs of our respective humans?”

  “But wait, Oliver,” said Diyanah worriedly. “Won’t that mean you’ll have to haunt him in jail?”

  Oliver’s grin never left his face. “Yeah, and you should see the kind of action those lonely men get up to in prison.”

  There was laughter as well as outrage from the gathered members of COME. “Order!” cried the ghost of William Farquhar. “Anybody else have anything to confess?”

  As the chaos faded into reverent silence, It’s Complicated raised a thin stick of a hand. “I do.”

  William Farquhar said grandly, “It’s Complicated, you have the floor.”

  The tiny toyol stood up. “I had to kill my master last night,” it said morosely, to the gasps of those in attendance. “I wanted to fight my covenant.” The impish thing was crying, but I found it hard to sympathise with the toyol after its confession. “My covenant decrees that if my master does not feed me blood for seven consecutive nights, I must kill him and have his blood.”

  “Your master has not been feeding you?” asked Alabar indignantly. His tone was indignant—a tone matched by murmurs that scattered across the chamber.

  “He has. He was a good master,” replied the toyol quickly. “He stopped feeding me his own blood about two years ago. When I asked him why, he kept saying, ‘It’s complicated.’”

  Shanti, Cantona and I exchanged looks. Tights was listening intently to the toyol.

  “He started feeding me old, pre-frozen chicken and cow blood.”

  The chamber, sans its human occupants, grunted as one: “Ugh!”

  The toyol continued, “Days went by, and my essence had to subsist on poor sanguis essentia. My master would apologise, and sometimes, as he apologised, he would cry. By then, he had stopped asking me to do his bidding, so I entertained myself by hunting and killing house lizards and cockroaches. I forgave him, of course, but we all know the call of the covenant.”

  Some of his fellow metaphysical entities agreed with him. Others made dismissive sounds.

  It’s Complicated heard them, too, and he addressed them directly. “Oh, you may call me weak for refusing to heed the urgings of my covenant. But my master was a good human being. I was his toyol for eight years, and for six of those years, he supported me, and he did all he could to help me fulfil my covenant. I felt he deserved to be protected.”

  This divided the group again. They erupted in agreement as well as violent objection.

  “Please remember,” It’s Complicated proclaimed sombrely, “that I eventually killed him last night, whether you agree with my actions or not. I’m telling you now that I did not like what I had to do. I did not like what the covenant had forced of me.”

  “Why did you do it then?” asked Diyanah gently.

  “Last month, we talked. He told me he wished things had turned out differently. He told me he had contracted AIDS and has been holding back because he did not want to give me tainted blood. He was worried about what it would do to my essence. He said when the covenant demanded that I kill him, I should do it. Last night, when the covenant took over, I slit his throat in his sleep.” The toyol was crying uncontrollably now, its bony chest heaving. I noted that this supernatural being’s essence did not exclude the mechanisms to express great sorrow. Cantona very hesitantly patted it on its back.

  “Thank you for that sharing, It’s Complicated,” said the ghost of William Farquhar sympathetically. “Does anybody else have anything they need to share?”

  “I have a question. Why are the humans here?” growled an Eastern European vampire, rising to his feet, having never raised his hands. I would learn later from the ghost of William Farquhar that this was Gyava, a Hungarian vampire who had washed ashore after his trading ship sank in the Strait of Malacca some two hundred years ago. Gyava was taller than most of those present, and his deep voice carried throughout the room. He had obviously embraced the social expectations imposed upon him: he wore a black cape—red on its underside—with a high collar, over a black tunic and pants. “Can we eat them?” He even spoke in a heavy accent I would confidently classify as Transylvanian.

  “These mortals,” said the ghost of William Farquhar loudly, “are not food!”

  Gyava sat down, cursing in what I guessed were old-timey Hungarian vulgarities.

  “They’ve come here with Diyanah,” said the ghost of William Farquhar.

  “As food?” asked Bala the vetala.

  “No! They are not food!” the ghost of William Farquhar repeated irritably.

  “Then why did she bring them here?” came the raspy voice of a pocong, the one which was clearly not Mei Ling. “The Chinese one looks very delicious. I want to eat him!” It stood up and hopped towards Tights, who stumbled backwards.

  I stood up and placed myself in front of Tights. “Hop any closer,” I said to the pocong, “and I’ll pull at that stupid shroud.”

  There was a collective, “Ooh!”

  “Back to your seat, Larry!” the ghost of William Farquhar barked to the pocong.

  I walked to the middle of the circle. “Ladies and gentlemen. Friends both living and…undead. For the past few days, Diyanah has haunted my home. She is a fearsome pontianak—I mean, I was truly scared out of my wits. She is a fantastic tormenter, and those claws! Those claws! In the 21st century, the living hav
e been numbed to horrifying images due to something called the Internet. But when I saw Diyanah’s claws, I nearly pissed my pants.”

  Next to me, Diyanah put her hands behind her back sheepishly.

  “Diyanah has since become our friend. That does not mean she is no longer yours. And as friends, the least we can do is to hear what she has to say with—and I cannot stress this enough—an open heart and some compassion.” I walked back to my seat and before I sat, I added, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Diyanah, my favourite pontianak.”

  Diyanah stood up and smiled at me as she made her way to the middle of the chamber. She cleared her throat, even though her essence had eradicated the mechanics that would leave phlegm there. She stood silent for a few moments, then said, “I want to go back to Malaysia, my land of birth.” Diyanah’s words hurtled across the chamber, and got the reaction I had expected—more uproar, more protests. Into this chaos, she whispered, “My land of death.”

  A handsome jinni named Hameed, whose muscular body glowed like embers, stood up. The chamber fell silent. “For many years, I have wanted to go home, but the human who holds my lamp would not grant me my freedom. Instead, he keeps wishing for more wishes. Like an idiot. I yearn to return to the burning deserts and Jannah-like oases of Khaibar. Instead I am stuck in Sixth Avenue, watching whatever nonsense is on Channel 5.” He puffed his rather impressive chest and proclaimed, “I say we let Diyanah return to Malaysia.”

  Gyava rose to his feet. He must be almost two metres tall, dwarfing not just me, but the jinni as well. “Durshirah would not like it.”

  “With all due respect, my good man,” said the ghost of William Farquhar, “this is a dignified, democratic body. We do not pander to the whims of one member, especially one who wants to decide for us what we can or cannot do.”

  That only served to madden Gyava further. “We are a small, weak body in a small, weak country. This is not the time for dignity or democracy. We cannot afford to lose one of our own to childish fancies. That is the weakness of the living. Do not make it ours.”

  Gyava was speaking directly to Diyanah now, who was looking back at him, her expression defiant—save for her subtly trembling lips. “We have lost enough of our own to exorcisms and desolations. It’s exactly because of the still living”— he bared his fangs at us, hissing— “that we number so few. We can still rise and bring them to heel if we stay together.”