Colin Cotterill - Curse of the Pogo Stick

“Hello,” he called. “I’m hungry.” Still nobody came.

He got to his feet, found his balance, kicked a mangy long-haired mutt out of his way, and staggered to the door. A village. He was in a pagan village in the middle of damned nowhere. Deserted all but for some stunted horses and a few other mindless animals. He had to learn to walk on his legs. He wobbled to the nearest hut. Some animist shrine there with… a what? A toy in the middle? How would these people ever become civilized when here they were worshipping toys?

His nose led him in the direction of food. There was certainly something cooking in the largest hut. It took him some time to get there but his stomach rallied his legs forward. Nobody in the main hut either but a huge pot sat slow-boiling over embers. He grabbed a cloth and lifted the lid. It wasn’t French cuisine but it appeared to have some nutritional value. He washed his hands in a tub of water, took a bowl, and scooped it into the soup. He helped himself to a spoon, sat on a bamboo ledge, and ate heartily.

If he’d been in less of a hurry, he might have found the pot of gruel cooking on the stove hearth. That was for humans. The larger pot was kept boiling throughout the day. It was for the pigs. Anything unfit for human consumption found its way into that pot: the leftover, the inedible, the unpleasant and indescribable. They all ended up in the pig swill. The Hmong believed that if you kept that mishmash boiling long enough, the livestock wouldn’t know it from food.

Three hours had passed and barely a word had been exchanged by the onlookers. Flies had found their way to the blood and the house buzzed with their presence like badly wired telegraph lines. A heavy black crow sat observing from a nearby stump. The screaming had stopped some time before but the silence was, in many ways, worse. Left to their own imaginations, terrible thoughts passed through the heads of Long and the women. They visualized Yeh Ming’s battle with the demon. Saw him being too late to stop the sacrifice. And even now they knew not whether their great shaman had survived. He had instructed them to wait, so wait they did. But for how long? What if Yeh Ming lay wounded inside and in need of help?

The door suddenly swung open as if of its own volition, as if gasping for air. The mouths of the viewers mirrored its gape. Seconds passed, then minutes, and there was no movement and no sound. Even the crow sat spellbound. And finally, Dr. Siri, their own Yeh Ming, emerged from the house with an exhausted smile on his lips. And in each arm he carried a bonny round baby. He walked unhindered through the tunnel of vines, crossed the lattice fence, and stood facing Long.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re a grandfather.”

The women, still carrying their mental images of terror, approached the babies cautiously. Did they sport horns? Have fangs? Did they have all the requisite limbs and organs?

“Are they…?” Long began.

“They’re perfectly normal, perfectly healthy human beings,” Siri smiled. Although they were certainly pretty babies, he didn’t add the word “beautiful” in case the infant-stealing dab spirits were listening.

Long beamed with pride and took one of the babies in his arms. Chia took the other and the women flocked around them, cooing at their prettiness. Bao stepped forward and threw her arms around Siri as if some unspoken prayer had been answered. It was an ecstatic and awkward moment that lasted all of four heartbeats.

“And Chamee?” Long asked. “Where is my daughter?”

It was the question Siri had dreaded. He pulled away from Bao and stood before Long with his hands clasped in front of him. He shook his head.

“I’m afraid it was too much for her,” he said.

The elation subsided suddenly. Yet, if they were to be honest with themselves, they’d all long given up hope of Chamee’s surviving this. Once the devil had her body, their only hope had been that they might retrieve her soul.

“How did she…?” Long began.

“It’s something that shouldn’t be spoken of,” Siri replied. Bao looked at him with surprise.

“You have to understand that,” he continued. “All you need to know is that the demon didn’t get her soul or those of her children. Before she… went, she’d seen the boys and she knew she was free. She could never have been happier. She told me she would take her love for you all to the Land of the Dead.”

Long nodded slowly as he considered the alternatives and seemed to come to a conclusion. He had lost his daughter but she had died content and free of possession. And in her stead he had two beautiful grandchildren. Yes, he could live with that. There was only one more matter. He looked at the house and Siri preempted the inevitable question. With one of the babies still squirming against his chest, he led the old man away from the flock and put his arm on his shoulder.

“Long, there cannot be a traditional burial.”

“But…”

Siri knew Long would struggle with such a possibility but Yeh Ming had already warned the elder not to speak of events and he knew better than to go against such a directive.

“All the arrangements have been made,” Siri told him. “When the time is right, Chamee will travel to the Land of the Dead and be reincarnated. You know who I am and how much influence I have. To prevent this happening again, that house and all it contains must be destroyed as it is.”

Again there was a look of horror on Long’s face. Questions gathered behind it, questions he could not ask. The baby gurgled and its face puckered into a near smile and Long resolved to accept Yeh Ming’s decision.

“So be it, Yeh Ming.”

When he ordered the women to torch the house they were shocked. One or two even ventured to question him.

“You’re sure this is the only way?” Nhia asked calmly.

“Yes,” he replied.

One look at the faces of the two old men told them that there was no discussion to be had. A decision had been made and they had to trust that it was the correct one.

Nobody could abide to sit and watch the house burn. They’d returned to the village, all of them, and were busying themselves with preparations for their departure. Nothing could keep them there now. General Bao had gone to her father’s hut, retrieved a quart of paraffin and a Zippo, and walked back up to the house. As per Siri’s instructions, she had avoided entering the cursed place and set her fire against the front wall. It was an old building and it accepted the flames with an unnatural hunger. Even before the villagers reached the huts the explosions had begun. They all tried to ignore the violent conflagration that rose in a storm from the evil house. No fire had ever displayed such colors or emitted a blacker smoke. No fire had ever crashed and blasted heavenward with such intensity. They tried their hardest not to stare at the mountaintop but it was a spectacular inferno and they knew it would attract attention from many kilometers away. Their departure could not be too soon.

When they’d first returned to the village, Long and the women had found Yeh Ming’s feeble-minded ‘assistant’ wracked with pain and curled on the ground in front of the main house. His stomach growled like a dying dog. Pigs circled around him, land vultures awaiting his final breath. At first the women assumed it was part of the exorcism, the assistant reliving the pain of the master, but Siri arrived, saw the half-eaten pig swill, and diagnosed the condition as chronic food poisoning. What he couldn’t explain was what had turned the judge’s hands nearly black. It gave the appearance that Haeng was rotting from the fingers up. This mystery was solved by Ber, who pointed to the tub of indigo they used to dye their cloth. It would appear the judge had washed his hands in it before attempting to poison himself.