Curse of the Pogo Stick (13 page)

“No, Yeh Ming. I have a lot to tell you. Come.”

They began to walk towards the trail that led up the mountain. “We thought the jumping stick was on our side at last but it didn’t protect us from this new evil. There were fifteen families here in the village. Three different clans but we were one unit. All friends. All caring for each other like one family. We lost our men and then we lost our war. There wasn’t much hope for us to stay here. Women and children and old people aren’t going to survive in an exposed place like this. The Hmong scouts told us your army will soon be getting new helicopters and bombers from the Soviets. Once that happens, even the most secluded village will be overrun. Most of our friends have left already.”

“On the big march?”

“Yes, but the strongest of us stayed behind to help Long and Zhong. They refused to leave without their daughter.”

“She’s one of you seven?”

“No. You haven’t seen her. She doesn’t show herself to many.”

“The house beside the trail?”

Bao nodded. “My father used to tell me of some evil presence beyond the peak of this mountain. It allowed us access to the water but we were advised to keep away from the hut and the jungle behind it. That’s why we were upset when Chamee moved up here. She stays there alone. Her story is more tragic than any other. She was fourteen, quite beautiful and untouched by any man. Long and his wife had ensured that much. They wanted her to have a special marriage, but, above all, they wanted her to wait till the war was over so she didn’t end up marrying a corpse. But we think it was because she was unspoiled that she was such a target. A beautiful virgin. What spirit could resist that?”

“She was possessed?”

“Much worse than that, Yeh Ming. She’s betrothed.”

“To?”

“I cannot say.”

They were nearing the lonely house and all of Siri’s instincts began to twang just as they had on his first trip up to the spring. He stopped and took Bao’s hand.

“You know?” he said. “That old ‘we can’t speak its name’ routine doesn’t work at all. That was all made up by storytellers to scare little children. Let’s assume that I can take the pressure – spiritually. If it’s a curse I know I can pretty much handle it. You have to tell me everything.”

She looked into his eyes and knew he was sincere. She lowered her voice and a tremble ran through her words.

“It is Moo’er. He is the illegitimate nephew of Xor, the thunder demon. He keeps a harem on earth and seeds them all.”

“Long’s daughter’s expecting a demon?”

He obviously sounded cynical because Bao cut him in half with her evil eye.

“Shame on you, Yeh Ming, for doubting such a thing.”

“It’s not that I doubt, sweet general. It’s only that I’ve never heard of a devil having the…equipment to achieve such a feat.”

“Then see with your own eyes.”

She paced off ahead leaving Siri no choice but to scurry after. There was no doubt in his mind that some discontent haunted the area around the old house yet he would have expected demonic impregnation to register more violently on his senses. The closer they came to the house, the warmer his amulet felt against the skin of his chest, but even as they stood no more than five yards from the lattice fence everything seemed calm.

Bao called out, “Chamee, a great shaman has come to see you.”

There was no response.

“How do you know it’s actually Moo’er and not just some other randy demon?” Siri asked.

“He told us who he was when he first came.”

“How?”

“You’ll see.” She shouted again. “Yeh Ming has come all the way from the past to exorcise your demon, Chamee.”

They stood waiting for some reaction but heard only the civets laughing in the trees overhead and the distant sound of explosions. Siri was beginning to wonder whether even Chamee was a figment of Bao’s imagination when the door to the house opened slowly and a vision appeared. A young girl, even more beautiful than Bao, walked from the shadow of the house and stood in the sunlight that filtered through the leaves above. Her hair was in wild Rastafarian knots, and insomnia had charcoaled black rings around her eyes. The effect was exotic and mysteriously frightening. She wore a sheer white slip, no more than a woven cobweb, and her enormous stomach heaved against the cloth. Siri was astounded at the size of it. There were no hidden cushions to magnify the condition. The shift clung to her like lint and left no secrets. She carried the largest child he’d ever seen in his life.

“This is what frightens Long,” Bao whispered. “If the demon child is born, his daughter will be split in two. And then Moo’er will claim his offspring and the spirit of his bride and drag them down to his world. This is why Long went to so much trouble to bring you. She hasn’t eaten for a month. We bring her food but she ignores it.”

Siri had seen a good many inexplicable phenomena of late, but in spite of his spiritual afflictions, he was still a logical, scientific man – not to mention a cynic. He’d had dealings with the
Phibob
, the malevolent spirits of the forest who hounded him. And he’d realized, all too late, that the only real damage they could inflict was on his mind. That didn’t make them any less dangerous but it did give him an advantage. Evil, he had come to believe, was controllable as long as man had the strength of will to believe in himself. He had never actually run across demons before but he was prepared to put his theory to the test.

He walked to the fence and, by working it back and forth, began to loosen the central post that held it up.

“Yeh Ming, I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bao said.

“Don’t worry, my general. So far, it’s no more than a fence.”

Chamee stood still in front of her door, a small fixed smile on her face. She seemed to be urging him on. Her hands caressed her huge belly like a fortune teller with a glass globe. The fence, being symbolic, wasn’t hard to pull down. It fell in front of Siri and he stepped over it. He heard a low growl from inside the house, neither human nor animal.

“I’m just a doctor,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. I want to take a wee look at that baby of yours.”

He stepped into the tunnel of vines and roots that hung down from the old trees on either side of the path and as he did so he felt a kind of force. The area seemed to be alive.

A strange tingle ran through his skeleton like ant bites, not painful but uncomfortable. He continued forward, swimming his arms through the vines, but he was disorientated. He stood still for a moment to clear his head but the pins and needles made his legs numb and turned into a dull ache.

He looked up at the round-bellied virgin in time to hear her speak. She was still eight yards away but her voice was loud.

“Keep coming, old man.”

He watched her lovely lips move but the sounds they uttered were deep – not possibly the voice of a teenaged Hmong girl.

“Keep coming,” she said again. The voice shocked Siri and put him on the defensive.

“You obviously don’t realize who I am,” he said with more bravado than real confidence. “I am Yeh Ming, the shaman.”

His body was shaking like a tin roof in a monsoon. His toes curled. He clenched his fists and took another step. He tried to calm her with his words.

“Come on, dear. I’ll just take a look at you and then I’ll leave you alone. You need a doctor. Look at the size of you.”

“Then come on,” she said, curling her finger towards him. “I’m waiting.” Her voice was even deeper now, a frightening double-bass-string twang.

He took another step but the vines seemed to strangle him, whip at his shoulders and chest. He refused to believe that he could be physically assaulted by the spirit world in broad daylight, awake, and sober. It was impossible, but…He took one more half step before the air around him became a blinding flash and he was zapped like a mosquito on a truck battery. All he recalled as he floated to the earth was the sight of the pregnant girl waving at him in slow motion and the black sky wrapping him up like a newborn in a tar blanket.

“You are a hero, Yeh Ming. A hero.”

Siri’s eyelids opened slowly like the remote-controlled garage doors he’d seen in the movies. The muscles in his upper torso ached. He felt like he’d been tied in a burlap sack and thrown down a flight of stairs. He wore no shirt and his chest was covered in lash wounds and bruises. Elder Long was leaning over him, smiling.

“None the worse for wear at all,” he said. He grinned and turned to the five women who sat behind him in an arc. “Just marched on in there. Took down the fence and, brave as you like, marched on in. That’s courage.”

All but General Bao were smiling.

“That’s courage,” Long repeated. “I’ll warrant something knows it’s got a fight on its hands now. Look out, you who cannot be named, Yeh Ming’s in the village. That’s the end of you.” He laughed and punched his fist into the air.

Siri rolled to his side and threw up. It was evidently not the first time. Yes, he thought, somebody did have a fight on his hands, but it was Siri himself. This was far beyond the limited realm of his experience. It wasn’t a battle of wits and wills. It was a physical fight. He had no idea how to wage war against a demon, a supernatural creature who was capable of raping virgins and swatting old doctors like midges.

“We’ll have the exorcism tomorrow afternoon,” Long said.

“What?” Siri groaned. “Couldn’t we put it off for a day or two?”

“Testing me again, Yeh Ming?” smiled Long.

Bao explained for Siri’s benefit, “We’re coming into the week of Hmong New Year. The auxiliary spirits take a holiday. They won’t be around to accompany you to the Otherworld. Tomorrow’s our last chance.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be well enough,” Siri said.

“Don’t worry.” Now Bao smiled. “The feeling will go away in a couple of hours. The scars last for a week.”

Siri raised his eyebrows and she nodded. She was quite a girl.

THE SHAMAN’S MAIDEN FLIGHT

N
ight had already enveloped the village and the evening meal sat undigested in Dr Siri’s gut. There was only so much pork a man could eat. Still aching from his run-in with Moo’er, he sat in the shaman’s hut with General Bao undergoing a crash course in how to conduct an exorcism. He’d attended them before but seeing was by no means the same as doing. He’d once seen a man twirl plates on the end of cane rods but he’d broken four when he tried it himself. Pretending to be a shaman wasn’t going to be any easier. And pretend was all it could be. Siri and Bao had decided it was the least he could do for his host. Just provide a little hope, go through the motions, say, ‘Sorry, Long, I did my best’ and go home.

But that wasn’t Dr Siri Paiboun. Deceit and trickery didn’t sit well on his conscience. He had to do more than that. Earlier, while he’d sat on a boulder waiting for his supper, the sun slowly easing its way over the mountains, he’d engaged himself in a little lateral thinking like his literary hero Inspector Maigret. There was no doubt the area around the house was out of alignment. His talisman told him that much. His aching muscles told him it was something he needed to be afraid of. But his head told him the situation was not as impossible as it seemed. By the time he’d joined the others for dinner, he had a Plan B.

But first he had to get through Plan A. Fortunately, Bao had assisted her father on so many occasions she knew the ceremonies by heart and was a patient teacher for Siri. He’d written the various stages of the exorcism on a small cheat sheet and committed some of the more important phrases to memory. He was just about to attempt a full dress rehearsal when they were disturbed by the splutter of tired ponies from outside. The search party had returned.

Siri and Bao hurried outside just as Long and the others emerged from the main house. Dia and Chia were seated on the same horse and behind them, strapped face-down on the second pony, was a rather feral-looking Judge Haeng. He was barely conscious. While the girls unstrapped him Siri looked into his milky eyes and found a weak pulse.

“Did you give him anything to drink?” Siri asked.

“He wouldn’t take it from us, Yeh Ming,” Chia told him.

“Or food,” Dia added. “He just screamed and fainted. Will he live, do you think?”

“I’ll be able to get a better look when we get him down from his mount, but I don’t see too many problems a little nutrition won’t fix. You are excellent trackers. Well done. My heartiest thanks.”

As they helped the judge down, Siri did detect a broken wrist. The fact that there was no cry of pain when Siri grabbed it suggested Haeng had no feeling. The numbness extended to his head. In his stupor he mumbled phrases like, ‘What will become of me?’ and ‘The Lord Buddha protect me,’ a plea Siri filed away for some blackmail in the future. Although Long wanted the newcomer to recover in the main house, Siri decided a room to himself would be less traumatic for Haeng if and when he came around. He made up some excuse about the possibility of contagion and they opened up the hut nearest to Siri’s own and made it comfortable.

A broken wrist, a lost toenail, several deep lacerations probably caused by running into trees, bruises, a slight fever as a result of malnutrition, and a bad case of poison ivy. But, against all the odds, Judge Haeng would live to tell the tale. Bao looked at his well-manicured fingernails and soft hands.

“He isn’t your assistant, is he, Yeh Ming?”

“In fact, he’s my chief,” Siri confessed.

“But…but he’s much younger than you.”

“That’s the marvellous thing about communism, Bao. Equal opportunity. Even a man without experience has the chance to run a department.”

“It’s a silly system.”

“I’ll pass on your views to the prime minister next time I see him.” He tightened a splint and wiped the dribbled water from his patient’s chin. “Now, don’t I have some rehearsals to complete?”

They walked slowly to the shaman’s house but Bao stopped outside.

“It isn’t really equal, is it, Yeh Ming?”

“What’s that?”

“Communism. I mean, will the government really give a share of their power to the Hmong who fought with them against us? Will they give them good jobs and high positions in the army? There are still the little mice and the big elephants, aren’t there?”