My Longkang

I used to stay in a rented house. It was a new house and looked very comfortable. We paid RM850/month for it. Which isn’t too bad when you divide by eight : i.e. the number of people living in it.

It was well-furnished and the house-owner, Mr Selvaraj, was a nice guy. He had an accident on the job and from the compensation that he received from SOCSO and his insurance he bought the house. It was built on former rubber estate land.

When we moved in, he told us not to disturb a vase or urn that was on the stairway landing. On the wall behind the urn were some words in Tamil which I couldn’t read.

We were always in and out of the house and there being so many people living together…there were constant queues to use the toilets etc. etc. To sum it up, we were a boisterous household there. As we were all from the same place, we nurtured a certain kinship among us and took care of each other…the men and the ladies.

During weekends I was the only one left in the house. I did what I could to keep the premises clean. The little corner in my room …10ft by 6ft was my living space and I had no where else to hide or run to. It was my sanctuary.

As weeks went on, the area around the urn began to get dusty as we were forbidden to sweep or mop around the area. After some time, I just couldn’t stand but be irritated by that corner with its dust.

The dirt kept irritating me. I decided to sweep and mop the place around the urn. I have always abhorred dirt and uncleanliness. I felt goosebumps as I did the chore because I knew the house-owner wouldn’t like what I was doing. Anyway, how was he to know?

It was a weekend. As usual I was all alone. The heat was unbearable and the hour was about 2a.m. In the middle of the night, I felt disturbed by an eerie presence in the room. It seemed to be pulling my leg. I willed my leg not to misbehave but the feeling persisted. That was when I began to experience fear and opened my mouth to scream. As I screamed, no voice came out as I felt a slimy hand holding and pulling my tongue. No voice came out. I wanted to move but I couldn’t move. The room was icy cold and there was the smell of flowers such as prevalent during the Thaipusam procession. The fusion of scented flowers.

It got worse the next few consecutive nights. I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night and my friends started to look at me in a funny way. I began to act creepy too, to my shame and horror. I always looked backward and sideways all the time as night approached.

My house mates had a meeting and we decided to call up the house owner. He was adamant. The urn was not to be moved. We had already paid so much for the deposit we decided to stay put.

I decided too to face this unknown horror face-on. I decided to wait for it. I sat on the living room sofa and waited. Time seemed to drag and soon I was fast asleep. Until…I woke up for no reason at all that I could think of.

I looked around me. The living room had been transformed. It had become a shack. The floor was packed dirt. I saw a very old Indian man sitting on a crude chair. It wasn’t an ordinary chair. It was very crude and evidently self-made. It hadn’t been planed and it was constructed of rubber branches nailed together. The nails were big and rusty. I could see the gnarled, knotted branch clearly and its texture was very rough. I could see it with perfect clarity.

it was like this for some time. I went back to the sofa. I sat there. He sat on the rubber wood chair. Together we waited for dawn to arrive. By 4.40 the newspaper delivery boy turned up and the sound of the motorcycle seemed to wake him up from his stupor and slowly he faded away.

I woke every body up. They all agreed that it was unusually cold. The marble floor was icy and the smell of scented flowers lingered on even when the eight of us were excitedly talking about the night’s events.

We insisted the house-owner remove the urn from the house. He told us all to vacate the house the following weekend. He got a priest to say the necessary prayers and when we came back the following Monday, the corner was empty. I never experienced it again in that house.