Two Steps Along the Road
TERRY DOWLING HAS BEEN called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine, and “Australia’s premier writer of dark fantasy” by All Hallows. His collection Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear won the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection, earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was hailed as “one of the best recent collections of contemporary horror” by the American Library Association.
Other award-winning horror collections by Dowling are An Intimate Knowledge of the Night and Blackwater Days, while the The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series featured more horror stories by the author during its twenty-one-year run than by any other writer. His latest titles include Amberjack: Tales of Fear & Wonder and his debut novel, Clowns at Midnight.
“‘Two Steps Along the Road’ came out of a conversation with US editor Danel Olson,” Dowling explains, “where we discussed me doing a ghost story set in Vietnam for Exotic Gothic 3, and the interesting possibilities it might provide for delivering atmosphere and an interesting perspective on familiar things.
“Before I knew it, I was blending two separate elements that were demanding attention: the notion of a root-form behind all hauntings, regardless of what form they took, and the unnerving realization that the eyes of a quite attractive teaching colleague would be truly terrifying to behold if they were set just a tad closer together.
“The ideas were intended for very different stories but, as so often happens, they decided they were meant for each other.”
WHEN THOMAS NEVILLE climbed from the white runabout at the ramshackle jetty and saw the Hotel Dis 300 yards off in the clearing, he felt he’d been thrown back not just in time but into other identities as well.
He went back forty years to his father’s tours of duty at Da Nang and Long Tan, of course, and the stories that damaged, often unsettling man had been persuaded to tell in Sydney before he died, making those stories, those events Thomas’ own after a fashion. But it went beyond old Deek’s experiences, much further beyond, back to when the dream of a French Indo-China had still seemed possible.
Thomas couldn’t explain it. It was as if he were seeing the sprawling two-storey structure through Deek’s eyes as well as his own, and through those of Gerard Larier who had built the place in 1924.
Then he was back in an instant, as if a switch had been thrown, and he was remembering to call “Cảm on!” to the boatman. The young Vietnamese waved, worked the throttle of the outboard with easy skill. The narrow craft made a long slow arc on the brown surface and began the four-mile journey back to the great waterway of the Mekong. Only when it had vanished from sight and there was a blazing insect-laden silence all around, did Thomas heft his bag again and carry it the eight or so yards to where the jetty met the road. The path more like. There was a good chance it was decades since it had last seen a wheeled vehicle.
Wait till someone comes for you, Yosen’s final letter had said. It is most important that you do this.
And since Stefan Yosen was the client, and the advance suitably impressive, Thomas did just that. He set his bag down again and stood in what shade he could find, watching the weathered wooden structure off in the clearing for any signs of life.
Maybe it was the absence of rice paddies and farmed terraces, any signs of the usual wetland farming, but the Hotel Dis was unnervingly familiar, that was the problem, the sort of rundown mansion you saw in too many old movies featuring antebellum plantation estates in forgotten Louisiana bayous, or those decaying colonial hotels you still found in the backwaters of the various Congo republics or in the Cameroon. More so when Thomas took off his sunglasses to wipe the sweat from his eyes. In the blur of heat and humidity, the Hotel Dis truly was too much like something out of time. It brought the borrowed memories, the other identities, crowding in again: Deek’s R&R stint at the Market Hotel on Cranbow Road, Larier’s journal entries for the Unitat and his meetings with Sainteny and others from the Deuxième Bureau.
“You’re wondering why it’s never been renovated,” the words came, not from the road leading to the decrepit hotel but from the jungle to the side. Stefan Yosen appeared from a track concealed there, pushing low fronds aside as he stepped into view. He was a tall, long-faced man in his late sixties, twenty years Thomas’ senior, and wore modern enough clothes - white trousers and shirt, wide-brimmed hat, synthetic fibre sandals, sunglasses – but in the broad strokes he looked as much of some other time as the building itself.
They shook hands, exchanged the right pleasantries for two people who did but most certainly did not know each other, both aware of an edginess between them, possibly to remain. It had been in the initial letters, the few phone calls, the careful e-mails. It came with the nature of the project too, the reason for this visit now.
“Tourism’s booming everywhere but here,” Yosen said, gesturing to include the deserted tributary and the cleared stretch of the estate. “It’s as if they don’t see. That boatman just now knew where he was bringing you. Thang’s been here hundreds of times. He’ll be out to get you Tuesday. But he doesn’t see it, will have put it out of his mind already. This is a short-term memory place. The way it sits in the mind. It doesn’t exist.”
“And why is that, Stefan?” Thomas had come a long way from Saigon (they still called it that in the South); these details had been promised.
His host’s answer was almost a question. “But you see it. The hotel. That’s what matters.”
As if there could be any doubt. “You knew I would.”
“I certainly expected it. Some people don’t. But let’s get you settled. Then we can talk.”
They started along the road and soon reached a tall wooden post beside the trail, with a modern-enough solar-cell lantern
fitted to the top. As soon as they passed it five Vietnamese appeared on the wide veranda: three trim women, two lean men. One of the men came running to meet them, arrived breathless but smiling – he was clearly older than he had first looked -bowed and took Thomas’ bag.
“Thank you, Long. Please tell Miss Elizabeth that Thomas Neville is here.”
“She knows, Mister Stefan.”
As they drew closer, Thomas could hear a piano playing somewhere in the house.
“She plays the piano.”
“It plays the piano.”
“You’re still insistent. Not your daughter?”
“Not even human, I suspect.”
Thomas barely hesitated. “What does she say to that these days?”
“Shakes her head. Continues to insist that it’s my problem. I’ve been out here too long and she should have come sooner. Recalls details from her life, our lives, no one else could possibly know.” Stefan Yosen hesitated, sighed. He’d been through this before. “As my initial proposal explained, I only require your co-operation and acceptance, Thomas, not your absolute belief. Though from what you’ve said, I am hoping for much more.”
“You’re what, may I ask? Sixty-five? Sixty-six?”
“Sixty-six. My daughter would be thirty-eight.”
“But she’s dead.”
“Precisely. The plane crash six years ago, as I explained in my letters. Her body and her mother’s were among those recovered and conclusively identified.”
“I’m very sorry, Stefan. But you say she knows things.”
“More than an impostor should unless well schooled. And schooled by me, I must add. Plus the other things.”
“The other things?”
“Please. Let’s get you settled first.”
The Hotel Dis showed its age. The ale-dark timbers were old, the imported carpeting worn, many of the windows grimy behind repaired grey shutters and rattan blinds, all the signs of too much heat and humidity, too many years of monsoonal rains, too much time.
But with its impressive façade, its two storeys and fourteen guest rooms, there was an old-world charm about it as well, touches of a France that could never have been, that had been sea-changed into something other, just as the French themselves had been by the elusive, reality-crazing ennui, cafard, accidie that had descended upon them well before Dien Bien Phu, the same quiet desperation that had gripped the Americans and their allies twenty years later in Deek’s day.
After being introduced to the staff on the veranda – the old housekeeper, Trang, the maids, Lan and Hoa, an older house-boy, Hùng, who all bowed respectfully in greeting – Thomas expected to be introduced to the so-called impostor in the hotel’s shadowy interior. But Stefan Yosen wanted it otherwise. Rather than taking him into the conservatory, he led the way upstairs and down a long hallway to a surprisingly spacious and well-appointed end room overlooking the main approach to the hotel. His bag was already on the bed where Long had left it.
When Thomas raised the rattan blinds, he could see the trail leading across to the jetty, found the patch of shade where he had just now waited. The tributary was still deserted, he noticed, such an unlikely thing this close to the upper delta, an unmoving brown line against the rich green line of mangroves and rainforest, all of it set against the hazy overlit sky of a pre-delta noon.
The sound of the piano came from below – Chopin? Schubert? – distant but comforting somehow and fittingly old world.
“Suitable?”
“It’s fine. Thank you.”
“My room is across the hall. Hers is at the far end. The other rooms up here are used for storage or are empty and locked.”
“Stefan, nothing has changed? You’re still convinced she’s Jeune Petite? I have to ask.”
“More than ever. Lizzie is Jeune Petite, pretty much as described in the earliest notes my father kept for Larier. He only saw her a few times during his own initial visits, many times more once he took over the place. But even from the beginning he felt the melancholy and the dread she brought pretty well daily. And Jeune Petite continued to be seen frequently enough until Lizzie’s plane crashed. Then, no more. A week or so later Lizzie arrived.”
“So, no further sightings in the past six years?”
Stefan shook his head. “Not as Jeune Petite, no. Just the cafard as we call it – and Lizzie. After that week-long gap.”
“And Larier’s phantom didn’t look anything like your daughter? I have to be sure.”
“Different features and colouring, but same slight build, and with some important signature mannerisms in common. I’ll confirm those after you’ve met her. Mainly it’s the atmosphere, the attendant dread. It’s as bad as ever.”
Which was a quality as much of a place as a particular person, neither of them needed to add.
The piano played on, filling the old rooms.
“The staff continue to feel it?”
Stefan nodded. “They stay on only because they’re like family. And I’m sure you’ll feel it too, Thomas. It will surprise you when you do. There will be mood swings. A slow despair. Halitosis will come on, a flat brassy taste. There will be irritations. If you have a minor infection, it will sting; a recent cut will bleed. You will stumble as you walk, get a splinter from a banister, drop a glass you are carrying. Your shoes will be too tight. You will be convinced the weather is wrong, find that you smell wrong things.”
“Synaesthesia?”
“Of a kind. The senses misfire. The way you attach to the world. You will see why I approached you, why I need to apply your tactics. Your requests to Luc Clarie at the Sorbonne for anything conforming to multi-phase manifestations came just before I made my own enquiries about day-ghosts in July. You cast your net so much wider: allow zombie manifestations, demon possession, everything. I only allowed the ghost and poltergeist elements, the synaesthesia confusion, all very localized, as I tried to get across in my letters. At first I took Lizzie for a remarkable look-alike, then realized she was Jeune Petite tailored to my own circumstances rather than Larier’s. We never learned who Jeune Petite was in Larier’s own life. He refused to say. Someone from his youth perhaps. But my first thought was a fake, an impostor, then our ghost returned to us. I never considered the other possibilities you’ve hinted at. I still wonder why you play this so close to your chest.”
“You said in your first letters that she may be able to read your thoughts. I wanted to take no chances. But what have you found for me?”
“I did as you said, looked for everything on your list. At one extreme, the expected things, the tourist things, major regional hauntings: the hospital at DàLat, the prison at Khám Chí Hoà. At the other, village tales closer to here. Werewolf and vampire equivalents. More than I expected. Under local names, of course, sometimes much older names. Even French namings.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, sangmangeur, for instance.”
“Blood eater?”
Stefan nodded. “A French coining for a Vietnamese spirit from centuries ago, well before the days of Cochin China. Why would the French have had such a regional word for it unless there was something?”
“And werewolves?”
“Not as conventional loups-garous, of course, but stories of people changing into local animals. Pigs. Monkeys. Animanthropy at its most diverse. Thomas, look, before I introduce you—”
“Stefan, let me go down alone right now. First impressions. She knows why I’m here. She’s waiting.”
“As you wish. But one thing. Her appearance—”
“First impressions, please. Give me fifteen minutes alone. Then come in.”
Stefan nodded and went off to his room. Thomas splashed water on his face, then set off to meet the phantom of the Hotel Dis.
Elizabeth Yosen stopped playing the moment Thomas entered the old conservatory, stood, closed the piano and came forward to shake his hand. She was slender, of middle height and striking to look at, though not in any comfortable way. She had the sort of features that with a few degrees less of everything might have been attractive. But her eyes, green as the darkest water lilies on the Mekong, were far too close together (Thomas tried to recall the medical term for it), her nose too sharp in a pale heart-shaped face framed by shoulder-length hair that was dark but matte, flat as kohl.
It was her smile that completed the effect. It was too full, too generous, more a manic grin below that narrow, intense gaze, like someone barely able to contain a secret, knowing something hilarious and about to burst into laughter.
Thomas found himself fascinated, found it hard to look away when he wanted more than anything to do just that.
“I know, Mr Neville,” she said, relaxing the grin, thank goodness, speaking in a full, well-modulated voice as she released his hand, but astonishing and embarrassing him all the same. “What was exotic and piquant in my mother became rather alarming in me, I’m afraid.”
It was intensely unsettling to have her catch his thoughts so exactly, no doubt the result of a lifetime enduring such scrutiny.
“Miss Yosen—”
“Lizzie, please. And I’m used to it. You are here to out me as an impostor, I understand. This old French ghost, Jeune Petite.”
“Possibly something even older. Are you?”
“Of course not.” At least when she spoke the smile went away.
“But you’re supposed to have died.”
The grin was there again, sweeping up to become a grimace, changing only when she spoke. “Evidently not. Papa will have told you. I took a later flight. I had a last-minute opportunity to meet up with an old friend from New York and so swapped flights with a young woman my mother was having a conversation with in the airport. Such a small thing. This woman looked enough like me. My mother had borrowed my jacket, then must have lent it to this new friend. Maybe the cabin aircon was too cold. A comedy of errors.”
“A tragedy.”
“Truly that. But a comedy now. No DNA testing was done. Our flight swap wasn’t properly registered in the airline database. No next of kin came forward to claim the young woman’s body. It all seemed conclusive at the time. But I survived.”
“Or didn’t.”
The eyes glittered, the darkest malachite green. The smile hooked up once more, locked for a moment, fell away. “As you say.”
“And returned here.”
“Where else? Despite his concerns and later misgivings, Papa needed me.” The dark gaze, the alarming smile were there in every pause. Thomas actually wondered if he spoke to fend them off.
“Autopsy records?”
“Missing, yes? Misfiled, whatever, if one was ever done. Like the flight change. Very convenient, I know, but how does one begin to arrange something like that?”
The usual way, Thomas was tempted to say. By lying. How many people actually checked such things? “Jeune Petite might have no trouble removing autopsy records, replicating fingerprints and DNA results.”
“My, but we modern-day phantoms are resourceful, aren’t we?”
Thomas refused to be baited. “You know why I’m here.”
“I do. You believe I’m Jeune Petite in her latest incarnation. The household phantom re-vamped as a day-ghost for modern times. Any DNA testing you care to arrange will conclusively show I am Elizabeth Jane Yosen, though I’m sure that will no longer be enough given your theories.”
“Stefan told you about those? My theories?” Another stab of dismay. She knows things, Stefan had said.
“Hardly. Just that you are a man with things to prove. They have to concern me or why else would you be here, n’est-ce pas?”
“You don’t mind me being here? Investigating?”
“I welcome it. Anything that helps Papa through this. My returning was quite a shock as it turned out.” Her tone shifted. All traces of the grimace fell away. “Look, Thomas, I hope you can see that I’m the one who needs your help here. It’s been six years, for heaven’s sake! The local phantom stops appearing, so suddenly it has to be me. What sort of logic is that? Please, you must do what you can.” The narrow, too narrow eyes held him. The smile was on hold, a change almost as striking as the smile itself.
It lasted all of ten seconds. Then, like a spaniel shaking itself dry, Lizzie shook her head and her former wry manner was back in place, complete with the intense gaze, the startling smile. “And you are doing remarkably well. Do you know how many people – mostly men and mostly Westerners for some reason -cannot maintain conversation for this long? They find they need to be elsewhere: off to use the toilet, to check on something they meant to pack. But you seem resolute. Perhaps seeing me as a specimen makes all the difference.”
“Miss Yosen, I mean no offence with any of this.”
“Lizzie or Elizabeth, please. And none is taken, Thomas. I simply accept how it is. So, what it this to be? Exorcism by negotiation? You will try to persuade me away, convince me to be gone.”
“Just build up a case profile of the situation this time. Interview the staff, some of the locals, yourself if you’ll allow it. And please excuse the indelicacies of self-interest. As Jeune Petite you could very well be the classic case of something I’ve been investigating for a long time. Something important.”
“And as Lizzie, the maligned and put-upon, cruelly traumatized daughter of a coldly sceptical father? Is it to be quid pro quo for everyone but me? You and Stefan gain. What is in this for me? Apart from entertainment, that is?”
The smile was merciless.
“If what I suspect is true, then what is happening here may well be the fulfilment of vital imperatives, deep-seated tropisms—”
“Dark designs.” The smile. The smile. The green eyes flashed.
“Since you put it that way. Precisely what you would live for.”
“Live for! If that’s the term.” He actually expected her to burst out laughing, the rictus truly promised it.
“If that’s the term.” He tried to sound conciliatory.
Stefan entered then, and with him the old housekeeper, Trang, who announced in her distinctive patois of French and Vietnamese that lunch was served at the long table on the side veranda.
Thomas had never felt such a sense of reprieve in his life. As they moved towards the double-doors, amid Stefan’s polite smalltalk about the day-to-day trivialities of hotel life, Thomas caught a single glance from Lizzie.
Saved, it might have said, but with such a face there could be no way of knowing.
There was Pho Bo and elephant ear fish with rice, plenty of fresh fruit, even a flask of the local rice wine, and the act of eating gave Stefan a chance to tell more about how the hotel came to be, how it had fared during the decades of conflict and dramatic change. Again, the idea became clear that something – either the special nature of the place, its short-term memory quality, possibly the presence of Jeune Petite – had led to the Hotel Dis being spared most of the depredations and turmoil, most of the later Communist interference too. Not once did he address Lizzie by name.
Towards the end of the meal the staff withdrew and, as if by pre-arrangement, Lizzie rose and excused herself as well, leaving the two men alone.
Stefan waited, then raised a cautionary hand. “Remember. Possibly never truly alone.”
Thomas looked around at the empty veranda, then off across the clearing to the river. “Understood. So tell me, Stefan. That light on the post over there.”
“Our ghost-light, we call it. Something to show where we are to visitors after dark. Saves on kerosene. We have the generator but tend to use kerosene lamps, with very few showing after we retire for the evening.”
“Despite the ghost?”
“Despite our ghost. We’ll leave more on during your stay.”
“It meant something reaching that post earlier. Your houseboy Long waited until we were past it before he came for my bag.”
“He did. The cafard often hits less frequently, less severely, when we respect it as a boundary. Lizzie won’t comment, of course.”
“Then you will suffer because you came to meet me at the dock?”
“Only a little. And I’m used to it.”
“You said before that Lizzie and Jeune Petite shared important signature mannerisms. They include the eyes and the smile, yes?”
“More how they are used. Especially when she first greets you.”
“As if she’s about to burst out laughing.”
“Exactly. On the edge of losing control. It’s disconcerting, I know. You always feel like asking what’s wrong.”
“She wasn’t like that before?”
“Given her features, yes, but with nowhere near the manic intensity. Much less severe.”
“She says you are wrong about everything.”
“I know. So your visit deals with it either way. How do you wish to play this, Thomas?”
“As we agreed initially. She knows your feelings on the matter. You’re open about it. All she doesn’t know is how we intend to proceed. Unless, as you say, she can know things. Reads your thoughts. Mine, for that matter.”
“That part’s inconclusive. Only my own family background till now. Not all of it, but surprisingly personal things.”
The things any real daughter would and wouldn’t know. Thomas realized he didn’t need to say it. “Then I’ll be open about everything but my theories. I’ll speak to her alone, of course, but will interview the house staff and the appropriate villagers first. Since I’m recording it all, we’ll start with a general meeting tomorrow with everyone present so I can set parameters.”
Stefan gave a wintry smile. “Like a trial.”
“An official hearing at least. Get it all out, build up a formal profile at the very least. She says she’s willing to assist, wants this settled as much as you do.”
“That’s just it. She’s always willing.”
“The body in the crash?”
“She will have told you misidentification, yes? That Marie flew on to Denver without her. The flight change wasn’t logged, the autopsy wasn’t filed properly. No one enquired about the dead girl.”
“I’ll be confirming everything you’ve told me. That you think she’s an apparition? How it comes up openly in daily conversation, openly in front of staff. I’ll want it all.”
“Of course, but reassure me, please. She’s more than just a day-ghost, you say?”
“Given how events match existing profiles, yes. You must trust me.”
“And the procedure includes an exit strategy? I want this ended.”
“I’m here three days this first visit. I’ll compile and confirm data as discreetly as I can. At the right time, we present her with the evidence. See her reaction. Try exorcism by negotiation, as she so aptly put it.”
“Again, she may already know what you intend.”
“Immaterial if what I suspect is true.”
“And what if there’s no conclusive outcome? Your time—” “I won’t fake data or force conclusions, Stefan. I’m used to disappointment. I’m happy just to have the profile. It’s what we said back in July. Everyone is fascinated by tales of ghosts and spirits, hauntings and possession. But only as tales. They don’t go far enough. They only ever go one step along the road. Starting tomorrow, we try to go further.”
In the night there was rain that wasn’t.
Exhausted from the flight down from Tokyo and the long river journey from Saigon in the heat and humidity, wearied by the sheer intensity of his first meetings with the occupants of the Hotel Dis, Thomas excused himself at eight o’clock and went to his room.
He slept well at first, but woke a little after midnight, to lie watching the streaks of shifting lesser darkness between the slats of the blinds, certain that there was the steady fall of rain on the roof, running off the eaves. There was the fresh smell of it too, flooding in through the insect screens: wet leaves, night orchids, rich loam, a spicy almost pungent fragrance he couldn’t quite name, even more elusive scents.
It was only when he went to use the water-closet off the bathroom and was on his way back to bed that he thought to look out and be sure. He lifted the blind and pressed close to the insect screen. The smells of the humid jungle night were stronger than ever, but there was no rain, just stillness, complete darkness but for the glow of the solitary ghost-light on its post, the tiny lantern haloed with insects.
The sensory dislocation brought a quiet panic, but then Thomas remembered Stefan’s words about the cafard.
You will be convinced the weather is wrong.
It was enough to make him light his lamp, check his room, the reasonably familiar surroundings he now depended on more than ever to anchor him in time and place. The hotel was so quiet. There were just the jungle sounds and an occasional dull bump-bumping somewhere outside that Thomas thought might be the generator or a water pump working.
And suddenly the thought was there.
Lizzie is outside the door!
He was sure of it. It was like the old childhood fear of something under the bed or in the closet. You had to look to be free of it.
Lizzie was out there!
But to open the door! To actually go over, turn the key and the handle, pull it back. To look out and find her grinning her grin, having the dark, too narrow eyes locked on his. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t bear to do it. Not at this hour. Not at any hour.
But how could he leave it unresolved? He could almost hear her breathing on the other side, pressing close to the wood. He could. He could. She’s right there. Face against the timber, breathing against it. He could feel the pressure of her presence.
Thomas stumbled back to the bed and checked the time: 12:34. It was the lamp! She’d seen its light under the door. He extinguished it at once, then sat quietly in the close darkness watching the door.
There was a knocking then, definite, unmistakable, several firm raps, over so quickly, followed by a long silence. Half a minute? A minute? Then the pattern again, the short quick raps. But no words, no voice, no one calling his name.
Could it be Stefan? Was it Long or Trang or one of the other house staff paying a late call to share secrets, things they dared not reveal in daylight?
The imaginary rain was falling again. Thomas heard the steady patter through the blinds and window screens, heard the impossible drip, drip, drip from the eaves, smelled the wet leaves, the rich earth.
But no more knocking came, no other sound but the false rain, possibly more of the odd bumping, he couldn’t be sure.
Lizzie was out in the hall, grinning in the dark, just waiting. More than a day-ghost, a night-ghost now, the classic haunt-form. Jeune Petite.
If she were out there. Only if.
And what if not Lizzie at all?
Thomas sat barely breathing, staring at the door.
Then remembered the obvious. What were locked doors to a phantom? Lizzie, Jeune Petite, could be inside the room already if she chose to be! Pressed up against the door on this side, utterly still. Thomas was sure he could see her there, darkness in darkness, the first crimplings and twinklings of her smile giving her away.
She has me! It was all he could think of.
But then a far-off door closed, the door at the other end of the hall. Her door.
And the ghost rain stopped, just like that. The night was still, filled with insects and night-birds calling, the occasional faint thumping sound from above.
A second reprieve.
Thomas settled back, tried to sleep again, telling himself that it didn’t matter. Whether Lizzie or just this old, well-known, re-vamped Jeune Petite playing her tricks, she was something known and knowable.
But he had felt the dread, the cafard.
And it was the longest night of his life.
The morning sunlight changed everything, of course, brought the fierce pre-delta sun, the empty river, the line of mangroves in the early haze, the rainforest burgeoning with life.
He neither mentioned nor asked about his experiences of the night before. According to Stefan, everyone present would allow that la maladie du cafard would have left its calling card. It was a given here; of course he would have felt something. You got on with things in spite of it. The fact that they didn’t ask even became strangely comforting.
The first session was at ten with everyone in the conservatory, sitting in the old-fashioned armchairs and sofas close by the piano. Thomas was given the place of honour in Stefan’s big armchair, with Stefan to his right and Lizzie to his left around the small circle they made. He switched on his digital recorder, opened the type-written history Stefan had provided and scanned the highlighted points, needing to anchor himself in the reality of the Hotel Dis as much as anything, then began.
“Larier built this place in 1924, originally as a plantation residence but with an eye to catering for select tourists from Europe. In 1941 he returned to Paris, ostensibly for professional reasons, but the political situation had changed. There was the Japanese occupation, an impotent and token French government desperate that the French retain their business holdings, not to mention their fading dreams of a colonial empire. Everything was uncertain. Stefan, you say Larier left because the ghost sightings were becoming more frequent, increasingly disturbing. He couldn’t stand it. This Jeune Petite, as he called her—”
Elizabeth raised a hand schoolgirl fashion.
“Yes?” Thomas said.
“Present.” She giggled. “That’s me apparently.”
Stefan sighed, rolled his eyes. “Please.”
Not “Please, Lizzie”, Thomas noticed. He avoids naming her to her face.
“So your father says. For the record, are you or have you ever been Jeune Petite?”
“No.” She turned to Stefan. “You hear me, Papa? No!”
Thomas left no time for an answer, continued reading from his notes. “Stefan, within the immediate area, fifty square miles or so, you’ve logged twenty-four spirit sightings in living memory where more than one supposedly reliable witness was present; eighteen alleged shapeshifter manifestations; five cases of what can be identified as possession as much as an any kind of allowable mental illness. If we extend that area to 300 square miles then we now have five times that number.”
“Though hardly reliable scientifically,” Stefan said. “Folk tales, rumours, hearsay. What you’d expect.”
“Of course. Impossible to substantiate clinically. But it’s just the range we’re after at this point, a sampling of manifestations to match my samplings from elsewhere so that we have a range of forms.”
And so it went, the start of what ended up being a long day. Many of the surrounding villagers couldn’t come in to tell their stories until after sundown, so the actual interviews confirming local accounts of shapeshifters and demon possession went on well after ten o’clock.
It ended with Long and Hoa translating for an old man named Venny, who told a surprisingly consistent and detailed story of two villagers bitten in the night, showing puncture marks on their necks, some exsanguination but with no fatalities involved. No, not the bites of bats, snakes or monkeys, Long translated, nor any known night creature. The wounds were too large, too far apart, too distinctive. Venny knew of others who had suffered similarly; they often talked about such things at the markets and festivals.
Thomas retired around eleven, exhausted but pleased. However it went with trying to determine Lizzie’s role in everything, he had made a good start on a valuable regional profile.
There was no “visit” from Jeune Petite that night, no knocking, no phantom Lizzie, thank goodness. No trace of the cafard either that Thomas was aware of, just the occasional odd bumping sound he had heard the previous night. He slept through, which had the effect of softening the former night’s terrors, of making the false rain and the late-night caller at his door seem the result of travel fatigue, the rigours of being in a new place, primed by Stefan Yosen’s stories and his own vivid imaginings.
The following day went much like the first, with Long translating for the old housekeeper, Trang, so Thomas could learn all he could about Gerard Larier and how life had been in the hotel before Anton and Marguerite Yosen, Stefan’s parents, had assumed permanent residence, then outright ownership at Larier’s departure.
Trang had been born at the Hotel Dis ten years after it was first built. Her tales of Jeune Petite’s appearances spanned an entire lifetime and were not only thorough, earnest and respectful, but often chilling in their unadorned frankness and simplicity.
That afternoon there was an hour with Lizzie, which went much better than Thomas had feared it might. For a start, much of the time he was either making notes or reading prepared questions, with Lizzie in the big armchair and turned slightly away from him.
She seemed resolved to make it easier too. For most of that hour she presented as a loving, concerned and helpful daughter. She held back the smile, breaking form only near the end when she leant around the wing of the high-backed chair and snared him with her gaze. Instantly it was the other Lizzie.
“I think we’ve been very good with this, don’t you? Played very nicely together?”
It may well have negated everything, Thomas wasn’t sure. If a ploy rather than a natural lapse, then it had the same effect: it was like a psychotic episode, something pathological, as if she were suddenly possessed by Jeune Petite, some other here-again, gone-again presence.
“I was just about to say thank you,” Thomas managed, and kept his voice steady considering how he felt. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“But I’ve ruined it?”
“I don’t know yet. You’ve been through a great deal. A wry detachment is entirely appropriate. My intrusion into your lives warrants all sorts of reasonable reactions: indignation, resentment, some form of serious emotional response.”
“You’re unfailingly gracious. Thank you for not saying ‘schizoid event’. I think I like you.”
“Did you knock on my door the other night?” Thomas couldn’t help himself.
Lizzie stood, her smile merciless. “Even if you are a bit too full of yourself, Mr Neville. Papa’s room is opposite yours. Maybe I wasn’t outside your door at all! Now please excuse me.”
And she left the conservatory.
That evening some of Trang’s old friends arrived: two villagers who had travelled all the way up from the delta to tell their stories. Lâm Doan and his brother Bao were motorcycle repairmen from one of the more industrialized delta towns. They confirmed one another’s accounts of a series of shapeshifter incidents involving a local who had turned into a wild pig, then, on a second occasion, a crazed dog that had to be shot. They insisted that the dog had changed back into human form after death, but that fellow villagers had burned the remains before any kind of official investigation could be arranged.
Lâm and Bao were invited to stay the night in the downstairs staff quarters, but they politely refused, preferring the long journey downriver to the prospect of facing the cafard and possibly Jeune Petite. While Trang, Lan and Hoa saw them as far as the ghost-light, Thomas asked Stefan about the odd thumping sound he’d heard in his room.
“That. It’s just the eels in the water tank on the roof.”
“Eels! Stefan, how on earth—?”
“Who knows?” Stefan shrugged. “A bird catches an eel, drops it on its way to the forest. The eel is pregnant, finds its way into the tank. Is it a problem?”
“Not at all.”
“Not like the tristesse, eh? I can tell you feel it. The eels are real. The true real.”
Thomas could only smile. Two days under Stefan’s roof and a term like the “true real” made perfect sense, the cafard just one more commonplace of hotel life.
That third night was as humid and still beyond the windows as the previous two, with just the sound of insects and nightbirds calling from the forest and the occasional bump, bump of the eels on the roof (though how, how, how, Thomas wondered on the edge of sleep, did the eels really get up there in the first place and what did they eat apart from each other?). The thought of them blindly circling remained strange rather than alarming, just another odd fact in a world of amazing facts, and Thomas managed to sleep with little trouble.
On Monday there were some last-minute interviews, one with a boatman bringing in supplies who had a story of walking dead in the upper Mekong. Two fresh corpses, he insisted, a Laotian man and a Vietnamese woman, both pronounced dead from eating poisoned fish, had left their death-beds the next morning, rose up one after the other and walked the half-mile to the river then plunged into the water. Both had started making an eerie droning on their way to the river’s edge, a dismal sound that could still be heard as the corpses were swept away.
After lunch, Thomas spent the afternoon transcribing the fifteen most useful interviews into his laptop, wanting to have hard-copy back-ups and to leave Stefan with a preliminary version of what would be edited down, possibly expanded, back in Tokyo before he flew home to Sydney.
For a special final dinner that evening, Trang served Bun Cha Gio, Banh Hoi and Bun thit nuong prepared according to recipes learned from her mother and grandmother back in Larier’s day. Afterwards, Thomas suggested to Stefan that the two of them adjourn to the long sofa on the veranda inside the insect screen. When they were settled with whisky sours brought by Lan, Thomas announced that it was time to explain his line of research; at least to bring it all together in a quick thumbnail sketch.
“For nearly ten years I’ve been gathering evidence to support a case for there being a single haunt-form for all paranormal sightings. All the multi-phase manifestations: ghost, vampire, werewolf, zombie, demon possession, poltergeist events, the lot, are the results of this basic form being present.”
“You’re saying it’s all one thing?”
“The basic haunt-form is an entity called a stoyen.” He spelled it out. “Whatever it actually is, it is at the root of all the classic paranormal manifestations. If you are a traditional Navajo, then you get chindi and skinwalker sightings. If you’re among the tribes of West Africa, you’ll have shapeshifters like those in the Anansi mythos. Here in Vietnam we go back before the Hung native rulers to the first manifestations of the dragon lord Lac Long Quan. It’s such a rich data-pool, both global and regional, general and specific.”
“A stoyen?”
“One of the oldest Indo-European names for it. But the basic haunt-form, giving back what’s expected, whatever is sought or feared, even what is needed in a given culture, to look at it that way. For Venny it was a vampire experience, but very much a regional one manifested in local terms. Here at the hotel you’ve had a stoyen projecting for Larier as Jeune Petite, possibly even the same one Venny told us of. Now it’s projecting for you, exactly what you told me when you first showed me to my room: that it’s Larier’s phantom tailored to your own circumstances.”
“This stoyen?”
“You expect her to be Lizzie as Jeune Petite, do you see? So that is what you get! Not just Jeune Petite, not just Lizzie. But Lizzie as Jeune Petite. A very precise haunting.”
“This is extraordinary. But what is next? What will you do now?”
“Before I leave tomorrow, I will confront Lizzie with what I’ve just told you. Give her an ultimatum.”
“An ultimatum? And what is that?”
“Something obvious really. I know she may read both our thoughts, but since she’s Lizzie, customized to you, there’s a chance she won’t read mine yet. If you can bear with me a little longer, I’d prefer to leave it till I confront her with it.”
As if in reprisal for secrets kept, games played, the cafard returned that night.
Thomas woke around 2:00 a.m., lay listening to the night, wondering about Lizzie. Would she know? Did she know? Lizzie with her mantis-green gaze and dark designs.
No rain flagged it this time, no wrong weather. All the safe signatures were there: the insects, the bird-calls, the eels blindly turning, striking the walls of the tank now and then in their restless sweeps.
Then the certainty was there like before.
She’s outside. She’s come calling again.
All part of the world, Thomas told himself. Just another part of the world. Nothing less, nothing more.
This time he would brave it. Endure it. Go out into the hall. Talk to this stoyen of the Hotel Dis as to any thing of the world with sense enough to understand.
He left his bed, dressed quickly and went to the door.
She could just as easily have been inside the room. She wants me to go to her. Wants the fear, the control. Her dark designs.
Thomas opened the door, but there was no one, nothing.
He stepped into the hall, made himself do it.
Lizzie was at the far end outside her room, just standing, watching, staring with her dark, too narrow eyes, her swept-up, I-know-something-you-don’t grin.
He actually took four, five steps towards her, needing to be sure of what he was seeing.
“Lizzie?”
The smile curved up. He shouldn’t have been able to see it, not the eyes or the grimace, not at this distance, not for a moment. There was just the one lamp giving light behind her on the stand near the top of the stairs. But he did, he could. There was light on her face, impossible light. She was bending light to show her eyes, the dreadful, overdone smile.
Here for you this time!
“Lizzie?” he said again, and fought not to blink. She’d be gone if he did and this mattered: Lizzie as Jeune Petite. Jeune Petite as Lizzie.
Why didn’t Stefan hear him calling? Were they in collusion? Let’s serve up the stranger!
Perspiration beaded his forehead, beaded and ran, fell, stinging his eyes, blurring his vision. He had to blink. Had to.
Resisted but couldn’t help it, did so quickly.
And she hadn’t gone.
She was closer, much closer, halfway down the hall now, arms at her sides, grin slashed and curving, just standing there.
He hadn’t seen her move.
“Lizzie?”
He began retreating, step by backward step, not daring to turn or look away, reached his room, found the door shut – shut! – fumbled for a knob that wasn’t there, glanced to find it.
It had been moved, was half a yard higher on the door!
He reached up and turned it, glanced back as the door swung in.
She was right there, four yards away now in the dark hallway, the light on her face all wrong.
Then – third reprieve! – he was through and had it shut and locked, stood giggling and shaking, sobbing, triumphant.
He’d left his bedside lamp lit, thank God. But when he looked, he saw Lizzie sitting on the end of his bed.
Got you!
He wished she’d say it, say something, anything. It was too quiet, just the jungle sounds, the night insects, the bump-bump of the eels on the roof.
And she raised her arms.
Come to me!
Her eyes held him. The smile cut, slashed, struck out, drew him forward. The eels kept circling, turning, thumping in the dark.
And it happened. Whatever it was. Everything it was. The cool mouth, the thrusting tongue. The slim body against his, atop his when the clothes were gone, the arms clamping, legs locking him hard, the mouth fixed, open, thrusting, breathing into his, giving, taking.
And, all the while, the eels kept turning.
Again there was the blazing day, the river bright with sunlight, the night terrors over and done with.
He told Stefan about it all over breakfast, owed him that, recorded everything this time too, trying to stay impartial: how confused he was, how uncertain about what had actually happened, just that it had, seemed to have.
Stefan nodded, accepted, then matched stories one for one, helping Thomas to feel better knowing that such similar, intimate encounters had been part of it for him too.
“But not Lizzie, you understand,” he kept saying. “She’s not.”
It was easy for Thomas to allow it. “Of course,” he said, then realized how that sounded. “Of course not.”
At 10:30, he went looking for Lizzie to say goodbye, found her in the conservatory, quietly reading in the big armchair.
“Back to normal soon,” he said, not mentioning the previous night.
“But you’ll be back.”
“I still have some things to do here.”
“I notice you don’t say my name now, Thomas.”
“You know what I told Stefan?”
“Enough. How does it concern me?”
“We require you to move on. Give Stefan and the others some peace.”
“Of course you do. But if I choose otherwise?”
“We bring in the research groups. Turn you into an on-site case study. I’ve made preliminary arrangements.”
“I can damage them. Bring their worst fears.”
“They’ll sign waivers. There’ll be constant observation. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
“I can maim and kill. Do such lasting harm.”
“They’ll still come. We’ll choose carefully. A chance to survive Jeune Petite will be like a chance to pull the Sword from the Stone. Only the bravest, the most committed will come.”
“Probably the most ignorant, the most gullible.”
“Not this time. You will be known. Quantified like any other phenomenon in the world. Something with a process, a methodology. Re-natured.”
“Now there’s a word.”
“It fits.” He wouldn’t name her. “Nothing supernatural. Not really. If anything happens to Stefan, the hotel is bequeathed to a local university in Ho Chi Minh City for research projects. That or burnt to the ground. You can haunt the jungle again.”
“I must think about this.”
“Thang gets here around eleven.”
“Is that a farewell or an invitation?” Her dark eyes flashed.
Without another word, Thomas turned and left the room.
Forty minutes later the white runabout pulled in at the dock. Stefan and Long came as far as the ghost-light post, observing old proprieties just in case. They shook hands and waved Thomas on his way.
“Don’t forget us,” Stefan called after him, which Thomas suddenly realized was a more pointed request than it first seemed.
This is a short-term memory place. The way it sits in the mind.
“I won’t!” Thomas called back and tried to keep his thoughts straight. The Hotel Dis would stay in long-term memory. It would, though again he wondered if Jeune Petite would ever really leave, or even if there would be some final trick, a legacy, something. He had just stepped past the boundary post after all.
But he reached the jetty without incident. The glare on the river was terrible at this hour, leaching the sky of colour, filling the world. It made Thomas squint even through his sunglasses, made him look down at the boards through half-closed eyes as he carried his bag to the runabout, passed it down to the young boatman.
But it wasn’t Thang who took it. It wasn’t the young Vietnamese at all.
It was Deek grinning up at him, Deek beckoning, urging, the flashing, dazzling water at his back.
“Thought I’d get you myself,” his father said. Enough of his father. “Get you back to Saigon in no time. We might even drop by the Market Hotel on Cranbow Road and consider our options.”
And the old man smiled. And in all that light, his eyes were uncommonly fixed, as green as the darkest water lilies on the Mekong, and the smile, the inescapable smile, swept up to become one with the blazing heart of the river.