'There is something mysterious about the shack at the beach. Some people say that if a young virgin goes swimming on a full moon night in the sea, her soul will be captured by a monster that dwells in the sea. The drowned corpse of the victim is always found naked in the shack.' The narrator paused for dramatic effect. Giggles followed, growing into an outburst of laughter. 'Nonsense! What is so scary about that? it's probably just some pervert work, raping the girls, then leaving their bodies in the shack,' a bright eyed girl with an olive countenance cut it. Born of British Malay parentage, she had the exotic Eurasian look that was very fashionable in those days. Although she was a few months short of fifteen, there was no doubt that her features would blossom into stunning beauty in the near future.
'Ah ha, that's where you are wrong, Lina. The forensic scientists claimed that the victims were still virgins, with no sign of sexual violation. Moreover, their causes of deaths were confirmed as drowning. Perverts don't drown their victims. Instead, they raped and murder them either by strangulation or some other violent method, not necessarily in that order, but seldom drowning. And the clinching argument for my closure is that these deaths take place usually only once in a year, at most twice. S far as records show, more than 20 cases have been documented. So tell me, my dear Lina, what pervert would be so patient as to strike only once a year?' 'Cut out the dramatics, Bernie. What's your point?' 'Always forthright to the point. That's what I like about you. My point is that we should do the public a service, our gang will solve the mystery of the drownings!'
There was an uproar, as the other four girls in the room all protested loudly at the same time. 'You must be crazy!' 'Why should we want to do that!?' 'You've got to have an earthshaking argument to convince me to take part in this one!' 'Oh no! No way am I going to mess around with a murderous pervert!' Bernie waited patiently for the noise to die down before continuing, 'Come on, girls. We're the cool gals, right? Nothing ever guts us down. We solve this and we will become famous in Singapore. We may even get offers to go on TV or radio! Do you want to spend the golden years of your lives slogging over your textbooks, only to graduate to go on to boring nine to five jobs? Where's your zest? Where's your fire? Even if nothing comes out of this, at the very least, we'll have had a good time!'
'Where do you get all this stuff from?' The question was from a plump, pimply girl who would have been rather sweet, if not for the outbreaks on her face. 'My sis, ('Which one?'), Betty, the one who is majoring in History at NUS, has took this book on interesting things in Singapore. The other time when I was on medical leave for two weeks because I had chickenpox, I was so bored I browsed through it. Came across this strange incident at Sembawang Beach, and I was pretty fascinated by the story. I find it rather bizarre, how only one person and always a young girl at that would be drowned a year. Mind you, it does not happen every year. There is no pattern to the years of each drowning. But I believe that that could be because in certain years, no one went swimming on that particular full moon night. It has to be on one full moon night, you see.'
'And which moonlit night would that be?' This was from the athletic one, Sandy, who had her hair cut to a short crop, so that it wouldn't interfere with her movements. 'I've yet to work that out.' 'Don't be ridiculous, Bernie. We've only got a legend. So without a single clue, you expect us to solve what the police, with all their resources, have not been able to accomplish?' 'Let's not be too nasty, Lina. Why don't we listen to what Bernie has to say before passing our judgments?' The fourth girl, Lingli, was studious looking with a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles framing her pale, oval face. 'Do you have any plan in mind, Bernie?' 'You've known me the longest and that's why you know me best. Well, I wouldn't call it a plan exactly, but I think that there are a couple of things that we could start with which may lead us to other things.' 'Such as?' Josie, the sweet one, asked. 'Such as finding out which are the rest of the full moon nights this year and staking out the beach on these nights.'
Lina delivered her opinion of the idea with a snort of derision. 'Anything else?' 'Yup. As we all know, the current calendar that we follow is the Gregorion calendar. That's why the dates of the drownings are all different, because the Gregorion calendar is not based on the moon. So we also have to check up the lunar based calendars to see if those dates might mean something in some other calendars.' Lingli nodded her head in agreement. 'And?' 'What do you mean 'And'?' 'Anything else?' 'I said 'a couple', right? So those are the 'couple'!' 'Well,' Lingli said slowly, mulling over Bernie's suggestions as she spoke, 'I don't think your ideas are too bad. In fact, they may be workable. Staking out the beach won't be as dangerous as it seems, as long as we don't go too near the water, we should be fine. Remember? The victims all drowned. The only thing I fear is what if there is no rational explanation to all these?'
'You mean like there is no human cause or something like that?' asked Bernie. 'Exactly.' 'I've thought about that too. Well, you all know that I'm rather open minded about such things. I don't disbelieve in the supernatural but until there is conclusive evidence, I'm rather not a believer either. In this case, if the culprit is not from the natural world, I'll have proven something to myself. Isn't it better this way than to remain in doubt for the rest of our lives?' The rest of the girls fell silent. Bernie's argument sounded logical, but they were also sane enough to know that something that sounds so rational and reasonable in the safety of the familiar would take on a more sinister guise if any of them were unlucky enough to be given the task of haunting a dilapidated shack in the dark of the night, moonlit or otherwise.
'It's getting late. I promised my mum that I'd be back in time for dinner. Why don't we all sleep on it tonight and discuss about it tomorrow?' Lina said, looking at her watch. 'Ya, I also need to go. We'll talk about it again tomorrow,' Josie rose, checked her pinafore to make sure that the blue pleats are still in place. 'OK, so same place tomorrow in school?' Seeing that the others also getting up to retrieve their bags and backpacks, Bernie could sense that there was nothing to be gained by pushing the others that afternoon. 'Yeah, see you.' 'Bye.'
All five of them met together after school the next day. They had chosen to meet at the little school chapel for the simple reason that it was rarely frequented and there was little chance of them being eavesdropped upon there. Outside, they could hear the occasional shouts from the Athletics Club Members, who were practicing for the upcoming National Championship. Sandy was looking rather guilty because she should be out there too, pounding away on the rubber track with the rest of her teammates. 'This is crazy and I'm crazier to allow myself to be persuaded by you,' Lina was saying. 'It's my natural charisma,' beamed Bernie. 'OK, I've been thinking about it. The night after tomorrow is a full moon night. So we'll start sleuthing then. We'll divide ourselves into two teams. First team will be Lingli and Lina. Second team will comprise of the rest of us. Lingli, I've put you into the smaller team because you know Korean Kungfu ('It's tae-kwan-do,' Lingli corrected her but it did not make the least difference to Bernie) and all that, I'm sure you'll be able to handle any pervert who should turn up. In the meantime, I'll go to the archives and the National Library to see if there's any information that we've left out. Lingli, would you like to come with me?'
Lingli shook her head. 'Sorry, but if I'm to be on the night shift the night after tomorrow, I'd want to clear up as much work as I can today and tomorrow.' 'Lingli!' The girls protested in unison before looking around in guilt, wondering if they had caught the attention of any nearby teacher with the noise. Lingli shrugged her shoulders and continued packing her notes into her bag. She could be rather obstinate and nothing moved her to greater mulishness then her rights to attack her schoolwork. 'It's alright. I could accompany you if you want me to, Bernie,' The U.N. aspirant, Joise volunteered. Bernie nodded. Before leaving, she told the first team, 'And remember, whatever you do, do not go into the water. And if anything turns up, call me using your hand phone.'
The moon was a round disc, casting its silvery rays on the ground. 'I don't know why I'm here and I'm doing,' muttered Lina as she slapped away the mosquitoes that were whinning around her. 'You know what Bernie is like. Once she gets hold of an idea, she refuses to let go of it, like a dog biting a bone.' 'I don't know why I keep letting her talk me into these stupid circumstances, like the time I dressed as a boy and slipped into Hxx Cxxxxx Junior College for a day, or...' 'Or the time you stole the ugly hair beads from the shop. Well, Bernie can be very persuasive and you've yo admit that crazy as her ideas are, they are good fun too.' 'Yeah, yeah, and that's why I'm here, in the middle of the night, feeding the mosquitoes. The next time she has a good idea ...' 'Shh!' 'What? Are you trying to scare me? Don't be an idiot!'
Then Lina heard it too. The rustling of tall grass sounded like someone was wading through the man sized weeds, heading towards them. They were hiding behind the shack, facing away from the sea. It was not exactly what Bernie had told them to do but the sea breeze could be rather chilly. Right behind them was a big field that had been untended for years. The wild plants growing there had grown taller than a man, tall enough to hide any creature except for Godzilla. The girls huddled together in fear, wondering if they should make a run for it and worrying that their legs would not carry them far and fast enough. visions of themselves naked and dead, in the shack, photographed by the paparazzi kept flashing before them.
As the sound grew nearer, they found themselves holding their breath. 'Ah!' 'Ahhhhhhh!!!' The girls screamed in rejoinder. 'What are you girls doing here? You gave me a fright!' The six foot monster rapist murderer of their imagination turned out to be a frail and unkempt Malay man who could easily fall within the age range of forty and sixty. Lingli was not in the least concerned that this skinny human could pose a threat to both of them. A tae-kwon-do black belt holder, she was confident of overpowering any earthly assailant. It was unearthly ones who worried her. 'What are you doing her, in the middle of the night?' she asked. 'Nothing lah.' Noting the suspicious looks the girls were giving him, he added, 'I'm just checking my lines.' 'Lines?' For a while, the girls were confused. 'Yeah, fishing lines! The night in the best time to fish. Some of the biggest, fattest fish only come out in the night, you know.'
'Oh.' 'Eh, how about you girls? What are you doing here so late? Do your parents know you are here?' 'Of course. We're doing a project, on the nocturnal fauna found in this area,' Lina lied. Seeing the confused look on the man's face, she explained, 'Both of us are doing a Science project on the living habits of nocturnal animals that is, animals that are active in the night.' 'Like my fish, eh? Aiyah, then you should find me. I'm the expert here, you know. everything, in the water, on the land, I know best. I've been fishing here for years!' The girl threw each other an amused glance. The man seemed to have recovered from his earlier shock. Indeed, as he was recommending his abilities to the girls, he puffed himself up like a proud cockerel.
'Thank you very much, but we wouldn't like to trouble you,' Lingli demurred, 'We've to...' '...Naaa... Naaa... Naaa...' A low wailing cry emitted from the sea and seemed to reverberate in the ears of the girls, as if it was bouncing back from all directions from the land. 'What's that?' The girls clutched each other's hands. 'What? Oh, that is the cry of Sulaiman,' the fisherman indicated towards the sea. 'Sulaiman?' The girls chorused in unison. 'You've never heard of the story before?' Seeing the girls shake their heads and the eager looks on their faces, the man said, 'Why don't we sit somewhere we can get the sea breeze?' So they moved out from behind the shack to sit below some trees, within sight of the man's fishing lines. After they had made themselves comfortable, the man began, 'It's a very, very old story, passed down by the older folks who live around here. They say that many, many years ago, way before the white man came, even before that, before the bumiputras living here saw the light of the true God, there was a brother and sister pair living here. They were orphans. Their father, a fisherman, was drowned in the sea and their mother fell sick from grief. Not long after that, she also died, leaving the two children alone.
The children, poor things lah, they had to fend for themselves from a very young age. The villagers took pity on them and tried to help them, but how much could they do? Life was difficult and everyone was poor. The elder brother, Sulaiman, taught himself to fish and both of them depended on his meager earnings from the market for a living. Minah, the sister, stayed at home, did the housework and in her spare time, she did some craft works which Sulaiman would take to the market to sell too. Having no other living relative but each other, brother and sister grew very close to each other. Sulaiman was very protective of his sister. He would not let her go outside the hut by herself. He was also very particular about the visitors from the village who came to their kampong hut when he was out fishing. He did not like it. Many people felt that he was too protective. And that it was God's judgement when Minah fell sick a few months before her fifteenth birthday. God was wrathful because he was angry with Sulaiman. For Minah had grown into a beautiful young girl who had many suitors but Sulaiman rejected all of them because he taught they weren't good enough for his little sister.
So God grew angry about Sulaiman's unhealthy pride and affection for his sister and decided to punish him by taking Minah away from him. Nobody knew what sickness it was that poor Minah contracted. But she could not breathe easily. The slightest exertion would set her panting and wheezing. And her skin once the subject of much ranting and raving amongst the young men, a light brown that seemed to illuminate with a light of its own became dull and darkened. She became so weak that she could only lie in bed. Her flesh melted away, leaving her eyes like alien orbs in a face that had once stirred the blood of many a man in the village. Sulaiman almost went berserk with worry. He traveled to other villages, to get their bomohs to come and treat his sister. But each bomoh said the same thing after examining his sister. They did not know what was wrong with Minah and they could not save her.
Then one night, when each belabored breath that Minah drew was an agony, and her pains grew so much that she wished for released, she knew that she could not make it to the next dawn. Calling her brother, she told him in whispers, for she had not the strength to speak louder, to bury her in the plot next to their mother. Then she turned her face aside and waited for death. Mad and desperate with grief, Sulaiman decided to take the final step to save his sister, whatever the cost. One of the earlier bomoh whom he had consulted had offered him an unorthodox solution. One that he hadn't the courage to try, until now.
The bomoh had told him that he could fool the Dark One, the keeper of souls and guardian of Hell, if one life was given in exchange for the intended victim. A life for a life, as simple as that. Now that Minah lay so close to the portals of death, he felt that he had to do something, even if it required the ultimate sacrifice. Following the bomoh's instructions, he took a flower bath, so that the floral scent would mask his masculine smell. Then he wrapped one of Minah's sarongs around himself.Kneeling before Minah's bed, he said, 'Na, I'll be going to a very faraway place. There, there is a cure for you. Don't despair. You'll well again. I don't know when I'll be back. But please do something for me when you're well. Come to the sea and sing to me every year, on this day. No matter where I am, I'll be able to hear you.'
Then he left the hut and was never seen again. Later, it was rumored that somebody saw him walking into the sea. But a miracle did take place. Minah, whom many bomohs had examined and pronounced beyond help, did recover. Perhaps she was too sick at that time and did not hear her brother. Or maybe the passage of time had dimmed her memories. A few years after she recovered, she married a warrior from another village and moved away. She did not fulfill her brother's last wish. And she moved away, every year, on the night of her recovery and the night her brother went missing, the villagers would hear the cries from the sea, the cries of a forlorn brother calling for his sister.' 'Naa... Naa...' The cries were still going on.
Excited, thinking that they might stumbled upon something promising, Lingli asked with the predatory instinct of a bloodhound, 'How did you know this story?' The man shrugged. 'I told you, I've been coming here for many, many years. I know many of the old people who have been living here all their lives, and their ancestors before them. They told me the story.' 'Does this story have anything to do with the drownings?' 'You know about that too?' The man's eyes narrowed as a new thought occurred him. 'Why are you really here?' 'We told you already,' Lingli protested. 'We're here to do some schoolwork, right, Lina?' Lina nodded her head vigorously, as if the truth was correlated to the strength with which she pumped her skull. 'Really? Then how come you know about the drownings?' 'It's something that we come across when we were reading op on the area to do our research,' Lina explained, 'and when you told us the story just now, the two just linked and made a connection.'
Satisfied, the old man nodded, 'You girls are quite bright. The people living here, they also think that the drownings have something to do with the story of Sulaiman. Actually, the drownings have gone on for years ever since Sulaiman's disappearance.' 'You mean to say that there are far more drownings than have been recorded?' 'Yes. The older people tell me that the legend of Sulaiman does not end with the cries they hear every year. They also believe that ever since then, if any young girl went into the sea on the anniversary of the night that he disappeared, Sulaiman would claim her because he is still waiting for his sister, Minah, to return.' 'But if that's the case, why do the victims always turn up naked? Don't you think that points to the work of a pervert?'
'You all cina girls, what do you know about the customs of the bumis here? Don't you know that years and years ago, the men living here, if they were angry with their womenfolk, they would turn them out of the house naked to shame them!' 'So what are you saying is that Sulaiman is angry with Minah?' 'Aiyah. I don't know if he is angry with his sister or with the girls who tricked him into believing that they are Minah lah. Oi yoh, my lines are biting.' He quickly got up and jogged towards the spot where he had cast his lines. Lina and Lingli looked at each other excitedly. 'I'll call Bernie,; Lingli said. She took out her hand phone. 'Sxxx!' 'What's the matter?' 'My battery is flat. I think I'll go and use a public phone. You want to come?' 'No. I'm feeling a little lazy. I think I'll stay here and enjoy the sea breeze. Come back quickly.' 'Are you sure? You think it's safe?'
Sighing, Lina nodded, 'Don't be a nag. Anyway, you'll be back real quick right? And the cries have stopped. If there is any basis to the story, Sulaiman must have gone back to his watery grave and will bother no one anymore until next year!' Lingli looked out to the sea. Lina was right. The cries had stopped. Maybe the time of danger was past. Besides, she would only be away for 10 - 15 minutes. Lina would be fine. Lina looked at her retreating figure. The she looked back to the sea. She did not know why. But she enjoyed being at the seaside. Coming to the seaside always filled her with a sense of peace and bittersweet emotion that she could not identify, although sometimes she thought that was rather like nostalgia. Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of something sticking out of the sand in front of the entrance of the shack. She thought that it was strange that all three of them did not notice it earlier.
Out of curiosity, she walked towards it. It was a piece of wood. Some urge from her subconscious pushed her to retrieve it. Without questioning herself, she swept away the sand from its side and dug it out. It was a very old piece of wood carving. So old that its surface had been worn to a smooth varnish and parts of it had disintegrated with age but it was still recognizable as a human carving. Turning it over, her face stared back at her. The impetus of the shock burnt away the years of partition between her conscious and subconscious minds, so that they merged into one. She was Lina, But at the same time she was Minah. Her brother, Sulaiman, was calling for her from the sea. 'Naa... Naa...' Yes, she remembered the promise that she had broken. It was time to fulfill the promise.
'Hello?' Bernie? This is Lingli.' 'What happened to you? I've been trying to get hold of you all night!' 'Sorry, my hand phone battery was flat and I didn't realize it. Listen...' 'No, you listen! I was in the National Library earlier and in a book on early artifacts found in Singapore, I found a wood carving that looked a lot like Lina. It was recovered from some early kampong settlement near the sea. Then later, during World War II, it disappeared again. Whatever its significance may be, I think it's important that you don't let Lina go near the sea. We'll discuss it further when you guys come back, Is she beside you?' Lina was never seen again. And the interesting thing was that after her disappearance, Sulaiman's cries were never head again either, full moon night or otherwise.
'Ah ha, that's where you are wrong, Lina. The forensic scientists claimed that the victims were still virgins, with no sign of sexual violation. Moreover, their causes of deaths were confirmed as drowning. Perverts don't drown their victims. Instead, they raped and murder them either by strangulation or some other violent method, not necessarily in that order, but seldom drowning. And the clinching argument for my closure is that these deaths take place usually only once in a year, at most twice. S far as records show, more than 20 cases have been documented. So tell me, my dear Lina, what pervert would be so patient as to strike only once a year?' 'Cut out the dramatics, Bernie. What's your point?' 'Always forthright to the point. That's what I like about you. My point is that we should do the public a service, our gang will solve the mystery of the drownings!'
There was an uproar, as the other four girls in the room all protested loudly at the same time. 'You must be crazy!' 'Why should we want to do that!?' 'You've got to have an earthshaking argument to convince me to take part in this one!' 'Oh no! No way am I going to mess around with a murderous pervert!' Bernie waited patiently for the noise to die down before continuing, 'Come on, girls. We're the cool gals, right? Nothing ever guts us down. We solve this and we will become famous in Singapore. We may even get offers to go on TV or radio! Do you want to spend the golden years of your lives slogging over your textbooks, only to graduate to go on to boring nine to five jobs? Where's your zest? Where's your fire? Even if nothing comes out of this, at the very least, we'll have had a good time!'
'Where do you get all this stuff from?' The question was from a plump, pimply girl who would have been rather sweet, if not for the outbreaks on her face. 'My sis, ('Which one?'), Betty, the one who is majoring in History at NUS, has took this book on interesting things in Singapore. The other time when I was on medical leave for two weeks because I had chickenpox, I was so bored I browsed through it. Came across this strange incident at Sembawang Beach, and I was pretty fascinated by the story. I find it rather bizarre, how only one person and always a young girl at that would be drowned a year. Mind you, it does not happen every year. There is no pattern to the years of each drowning. But I believe that that could be because in certain years, no one went swimming on that particular full moon night. It has to be on one full moon night, you see.'
'And which moonlit night would that be?' This was from the athletic one, Sandy, who had her hair cut to a short crop, so that it wouldn't interfere with her movements. 'I've yet to work that out.' 'Don't be ridiculous, Bernie. We've only got a legend. So without a single clue, you expect us to solve what the police, with all their resources, have not been able to accomplish?' 'Let's not be too nasty, Lina. Why don't we listen to what Bernie has to say before passing our judgments?' The fourth girl, Lingli, was studious looking with a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles framing her pale, oval face. 'Do you have any plan in mind, Bernie?' 'You've known me the longest and that's why you know me best. Well, I wouldn't call it a plan exactly, but I think that there are a couple of things that we could start with which may lead us to other things.' 'Such as?' Josie, the sweet one, asked. 'Such as finding out which are the rest of the full moon nights this year and staking out the beach on these nights.'
Lina delivered her opinion of the idea with a snort of derision. 'Anything else?' 'Yup. As we all know, the current calendar that we follow is the Gregorion calendar. That's why the dates of the drownings are all different, because the Gregorion calendar is not based on the moon. So we also have to check up the lunar based calendars to see if those dates might mean something in some other calendars.' Lingli nodded her head in agreement. 'And?' 'What do you mean 'And'?' 'Anything else?' 'I said 'a couple', right? So those are the 'couple'!' 'Well,' Lingli said slowly, mulling over Bernie's suggestions as she spoke, 'I don't think your ideas are too bad. In fact, they may be workable. Staking out the beach won't be as dangerous as it seems, as long as we don't go too near the water, we should be fine. Remember? The victims all drowned. The only thing I fear is what if there is no rational explanation to all these?'
'You mean like there is no human cause or something like that?' asked Bernie. 'Exactly.' 'I've thought about that too. Well, you all know that I'm rather open minded about such things. I don't disbelieve in the supernatural but until there is conclusive evidence, I'm rather not a believer either. In this case, if the culprit is not from the natural world, I'll have proven something to myself. Isn't it better this way than to remain in doubt for the rest of our lives?' The rest of the girls fell silent. Bernie's argument sounded logical, but they were also sane enough to know that something that sounds so rational and reasonable in the safety of the familiar would take on a more sinister guise if any of them were unlucky enough to be given the task of haunting a dilapidated shack in the dark of the night, moonlit or otherwise.
'It's getting late. I promised my mum that I'd be back in time for dinner. Why don't we all sleep on it tonight and discuss about it tomorrow?' Lina said, looking at her watch. 'Ya, I also need to go. We'll talk about it again tomorrow,' Josie rose, checked her pinafore to make sure that the blue pleats are still in place. 'OK, so same place tomorrow in school?' Seeing that the others also getting up to retrieve their bags and backpacks, Bernie could sense that there was nothing to be gained by pushing the others that afternoon. 'Yeah, see you.' 'Bye.'
All five of them met together after school the next day. They had chosen to meet at the little school chapel for the simple reason that it was rarely frequented and there was little chance of them being eavesdropped upon there. Outside, they could hear the occasional shouts from the Athletics Club Members, who were practicing for the upcoming National Championship. Sandy was looking rather guilty because she should be out there too, pounding away on the rubber track with the rest of her teammates. 'This is crazy and I'm crazier to allow myself to be persuaded by you,' Lina was saying. 'It's my natural charisma,' beamed Bernie. 'OK, I've been thinking about it. The night after tomorrow is a full moon night. So we'll start sleuthing then. We'll divide ourselves into two teams. First team will be Lingli and Lina. Second team will comprise of the rest of us. Lingli, I've put you into the smaller team because you know Korean Kungfu ('It's tae-kwan-do,' Lingli corrected her but it did not make the least difference to Bernie) and all that, I'm sure you'll be able to handle any pervert who should turn up. In the meantime, I'll go to the archives and the National Library to see if there's any information that we've left out. Lingli, would you like to come with me?'
Lingli shook her head. 'Sorry, but if I'm to be on the night shift the night after tomorrow, I'd want to clear up as much work as I can today and tomorrow.' 'Lingli!' The girls protested in unison before looking around in guilt, wondering if they had caught the attention of any nearby teacher with the noise. Lingli shrugged her shoulders and continued packing her notes into her bag. She could be rather obstinate and nothing moved her to greater mulishness then her rights to attack her schoolwork. 'It's alright. I could accompany you if you want me to, Bernie,' The U.N. aspirant, Joise volunteered. Bernie nodded. Before leaving, she told the first team, 'And remember, whatever you do, do not go into the water. And if anything turns up, call me using your hand phone.'
The moon was a round disc, casting its silvery rays on the ground. 'I don't know why I'm here and I'm doing,' muttered Lina as she slapped away the mosquitoes that were whinning around her. 'You know what Bernie is like. Once she gets hold of an idea, she refuses to let go of it, like a dog biting a bone.' 'I don't know why I keep letting her talk me into these stupid circumstances, like the time I dressed as a boy and slipped into Hxx Cxxxxx Junior College for a day, or...' 'Or the time you stole the ugly hair beads from the shop. Well, Bernie can be very persuasive and you've yo admit that crazy as her ideas are, they are good fun too.' 'Yeah, yeah, and that's why I'm here, in the middle of the night, feeding the mosquitoes. The next time she has a good idea ...' 'Shh!' 'What? Are you trying to scare me? Don't be an idiot!'
Then Lina heard it too. The rustling of tall grass sounded like someone was wading through the man sized weeds, heading towards them. They were hiding behind the shack, facing away from the sea. It was not exactly what Bernie had told them to do but the sea breeze could be rather chilly. Right behind them was a big field that had been untended for years. The wild plants growing there had grown taller than a man, tall enough to hide any creature except for Godzilla. The girls huddled together in fear, wondering if they should make a run for it and worrying that their legs would not carry them far and fast enough. visions of themselves naked and dead, in the shack, photographed by the paparazzi kept flashing before them.
As the sound grew nearer, they found themselves holding their breath. 'Ah!' 'Ahhhhhhh!!!' The girls screamed in rejoinder. 'What are you girls doing here? You gave me a fright!' The six foot monster rapist murderer of their imagination turned out to be a frail and unkempt Malay man who could easily fall within the age range of forty and sixty. Lingli was not in the least concerned that this skinny human could pose a threat to both of them. A tae-kwon-do black belt holder, she was confident of overpowering any earthly assailant. It was unearthly ones who worried her. 'What are you doing her, in the middle of the night?' she asked. 'Nothing lah.' Noting the suspicious looks the girls were giving him, he added, 'I'm just checking my lines.' 'Lines?' For a while, the girls were confused. 'Yeah, fishing lines! The night in the best time to fish. Some of the biggest, fattest fish only come out in the night, you know.'
'Oh.' 'Eh, how about you girls? What are you doing here so late? Do your parents know you are here?' 'Of course. We're doing a project, on the nocturnal fauna found in this area,' Lina lied. Seeing the confused look on the man's face, she explained, 'Both of us are doing a Science project on the living habits of nocturnal animals that is, animals that are active in the night.' 'Like my fish, eh? Aiyah, then you should find me. I'm the expert here, you know. everything, in the water, on the land, I know best. I've been fishing here for years!' The girl threw each other an amused glance. The man seemed to have recovered from his earlier shock. Indeed, as he was recommending his abilities to the girls, he puffed himself up like a proud cockerel.
'Thank you very much, but we wouldn't like to trouble you,' Lingli demurred, 'We've to...' '...Naaa... Naaa... Naaa...' A low wailing cry emitted from the sea and seemed to reverberate in the ears of the girls, as if it was bouncing back from all directions from the land. 'What's that?' The girls clutched each other's hands. 'What? Oh, that is the cry of Sulaiman,' the fisherman indicated towards the sea. 'Sulaiman?' The girls chorused in unison. 'You've never heard of the story before?' Seeing the girls shake their heads and the eager looks on their faces, the man said, 'Why don't we sit somewhere we can get the sea breeze?' So they moved out from behind the shack to sit below some trees, within sight of the man's fishing lines. After they had made themselves comfortable, the man began, 'It's a very, very old story, passed down by the older folks who live around here. They say that many, many years ago, way before the white man came, even before that, before the bumiputras living here saw the light of the true God, there was a brother and sister pair living here. They were orphans. Their father, a fisherman, was drowned in the sea and their mother fell sick from grief. Not long after that, she also died, leaving the two children alone.
The children, poor things lah, they had to fend for themselves from a very young age. The villagers took pity on them and tried to help them, but how much could they do? Life was difficult and everyone was poor. The elder brother, Sulaiman, taught himself to fish and both of them depended on his meager earnings from the market for a living. Minah, the sister, stayed at home, did the housework and in her spare time, she did some craft works which Sulaiman would take to the market to sell too. Having no other living relative but each other, brother and sister grew very close to each other. Sulaiman was very protective of his sister. He would not let her go outside the hut by herself. He was also very particular about the visitors from the village who came to their kampong hut when he was out fishing. He did not like it. Many people felt that he was too protective. And that it was God's judgement when Minah fell sick a few months before her fifteenth birthday. God was wrathful because he was angry with Sulaiman. For Minah had grown into a beautiful young girl who had many suitors but Sulaiman rejected all of them because he taught they weren't good enough for his little sister.
So God grew angry about Sulaiman's unhealthy pride and affection for his sister and decided to punish him by taking Minah away from him. Nobody knew what sickness it was that poor Minah contracted. But she could not breathe easily. The slightest exertion would set her panting and wheezing. And her skin once the subject of much ranting and raving amongst the young men, a light brown that seemed to illuminate with a light of its own became dull and darkened. She became so weak that she could only lie in bed. Her flesh melted away, leaving her eyes like alien orbs in a face that had once stirred the blood of many a man in the village. Sulaiman almost went berserk with worry. He traveled to other villages, to get their bomohs to come and treat his sister. But each bomoh said the same thing after examining his sister. They did not know what was wrong with Minah and they could not save her.
Then one night, when each belabored breath that Minah drew was an agony, and her pains grew so much that she wished for released, she knew that she could not make it to the next dawn. Calling her brother, she told him in whispers, for she had not the strength to speak louder, to bury her in the plot next to their mother. Then she turned her face aside and waited for death. Mad and desperate with grief, Sulaiman decided to take the final step to save his sister, whatever the cost. One of the earlier bomoh whom he had consulted had offered him an unorthodox solution. One that he hadn't the courage to try, until now.
The bomoh had told him that he could fool the Dark One, the keeper of souls and guardian of Hell, if one life was given in exchange for the intended victim. A life for a life, as simple as that. Now that Minah lay so close to the portals of death, he felt that he had to do something, even if it required the ultimate sacrifice. Following the bomoh's instructions, he took a flower bath, so that the floral scent would mask his masculine smell. Then he wrapped one of Minah's sarongs around himself.Kneeling before Minah's bed, he said, 'Na, I'll be going to a very faraway place. There, there is a cure for you. Don't despair. You'll well again. I don't know when I'll be back. But please do something for me when you're well. Come to the sea and sing to me every year, on this day. No matter where I am, I'll be able to hear you.'
Then he left the hut and was never seen again. Later, it was rumored that somebody saw him walking into the sea. But a miracle did take place. Minah, whom many bomohs had examined and pronounced beyond help, did recover. Perhaps she was too sick at that time and did not hear her brother. Or maybe the passage of time had dimmed her memories. A few years after she recovered, she married a warrior from another village and moved away. She did not fulfill her brother's last wish. And she moved away, every year, on the night of her recovery and the night her brother went missing, the villagers would hear the cries from the sea, the cries of a forlorn brother calling for his sister.' 'Naa... Naa...' The cries were still going on.
Excited, thinking that they might stumbled upon something promising, Lingli asked with the predatory instinct of a bloodhound, 'How did you know this story?' The man shrugged. 'I told you, I've been coming here for many, many years. I know many of the old people who have been living here all their lives, and their ancestors before them. They told me the story.' 'Does this story have anything to do with the drownings?' 'You know about that too?' The man's eyes narrowed as a new thought occurred him. 'Why are you really here?' 'We told you already,' Lingli protested. 'We're here to do some schoolwork, right, Lina?' Lina nodded her head vigorously, as if the truth was correlated to the strength with which she pumped her skull. 'Really? Then how come you know about the drownings?' 'It's something that we come across when we were reading op on the area to do our research,' Lina explained, 'and when you told us the story just now, the two just linked and made a connection.'
Satisfied, the old man nodded, 'You girls are quite bright. The people living here, they also think that the drownings have something to do with the story of Sulaiman. Actually, the drownings have gone on for years ever since Sulaiman's disappearance.' 'You mean to say that there are far more drownings than have been recorded?' 'Yes. The older people tell me that the legend of Sulaiman does not end with the cries they hear every year. They also believe that ever since then, if any young girl went into the sea on the anniversary of the night that he disappeared, Sulaiman would claim her because he is still waiting for his sister, Minah, to return.' 'But if that's the case, why do the victims always turn up naked? Don't you think that points to the work of a pervert?'
'You all cina girls, what do you know about the customs of the bumis here? Don't you know that years and years ago, the men living here, if they were angry with their womenfolk, they would turn them out of the house naked to shame them!' 'So what are you saying is that Sulaiman is angry with Minah?' 'Aiyah. I don't know if he is angry with his sister or with the girls who tricked him into believing that they are Minah lah. Oi yoh, my lines are biting.' He quickly got up and jogged towards the spot where he had cast his lines. Lina and Lingli looked at each other excitedly. 'I'll call Bernie,; Lingli said. She took out her hand phone. 'Sxxx!' 'What's the matter?' 'My battery is flat. I think I'll go and use a public phone. You want to come?' 'No. I'm feeling a little lazy. I think I'll stay here and enjoy the sea breeze. Come back quickly.' 'Are you sure? You think it's safe?'
Sighing, Lina nodded, 'Don't be a nag. Anyway, you'll be back real quick right? And the cries have stopped. If there is any basis to the story, Sulaiman must have gone back to his watery grave and will bother no one anymore until next year!' Lingli looked out to the sea. Lina was right. The cries had stopped. Maybe the time of danger was past. Besides, she would only be away for 10 - 15 minutes. Lina would be fine. Lina looked at her retreating figure. The she looked back to the sea. She did not know why. But she enjoyed being at the seaside. Coming to the seaside always filled her with a sense of peace and bittersweet emotion that she could not identify, although sometimes she thought that was rather like nostalgia. Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of something sticking out of the sand in front of the entrance of the shack. She thought that it was strange that all three of them did not notice it earlier.
Out of curiosity, she walked towards it. It was a piece of wood. Some urge from her subconscious pushed her to retrieve it. Without questioning herself, she swept away the sand from its side and dug it out. It was a very old piece of wood carving. So old that its surface had been worn to a smooth varnish and parts of it had disintegrated with age but it was still recognizable as a human carving. Turning it over, her face stared back at her. The impetus of the shock burnt away the years of partition between her conscious and subconscious minds, so that they merged into one. She was Lina, But at the same time she was Minah. Her brother, Sulaiman, was calling for her from the sea. 'Naa... Naa...' Yes, she remembered the promise that she had broken. It was time to fulfill the promise.
'Hello?' Bernie? This is Lingli.' 'What happened to you? I've been trying to get hold of you all night!' 'Sorry, my hand phone battery was flat and I didn't realize it. Listen...' 'No, you listen! I was in the National Library earlier and in a book on early artifacts found in Singapore, I found a wood carving that looked a lot like Lina. It was recovered from some early kampong settlement near the sea. Then later, during World War II, it disappeared again. Whatever its significance may be, I think it's important that you don't let Lina go near the sea. We'll discuss it further when you guys come back, Is she beside you?' Lina was never seen again. And the interesting thing was that after her disappearance, Sulaiman's cries were never head again either, full moon night or otherwise.
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