THE GHOUL
WE HAD been sitting late upon the veranda of my bungalow at Kuâla Lipis, which, from the top of a low hill covered with coarse grass, overlooked the long, narrow reach formed by The combined waters of the Lîpis and the Jělai. The moon had risen some hours earlier, and the river ran white between the black masses of forest, which seemed to shut it in on all sides, giving to it the appearance of an isolated tarn. The roughly cleared compound, with the tennis ground which had never got beyond the stage of being dug over and weeded. and the rank growths beyond the bamboo fence. were flooded by the soft light, every tattered detail of their ugliness standing revealed as relentlessly as though it were noon. The night was very still, but the heavy, scented air was cool after the fierce heat of the day.
I had been holding forth to the handful of men who had been dining with me on the subject of Malay superstitions, while they manfully stifled their yawns. When a man has a working knowledge of anything which is not commonly known to his neighbours, he is apt to presuppose their interest in it when a chance to descant upon it occurs, and in those days it was only at long intervals that I had an opportunity of forgathering with other white men. Therefore, I
had made the most of it, and looking back, I fear that
I had occupied the rostrum during the greater part
of that evening. I had told my audience of the pĕnanggal—the “Undone One”—that horrible wraith
of a woman who has died in childbirth, who comes
to torment and prey upon small children in the guise
of a ghastly face and bust, with a comet’s tail of
blood-stained entrails flying in her wake; of the
mâti-ânak, the weird little white animal which makes
beast noises round the graves of children, and is
supposed to have absorbed their souls; and of the
pôlong, or familiar spirits, which men bind to their
service by raising them up from the corpses of babies
that have been stillborn, the tips of whose tongues
they bite off and swallow after the infant has been
brought to life by magic agencies. It was at this
point that young Middleton began to pluck up his
cars; and I, finding that one of my hearers was al
last showing signs of being interested, launched out
will renewed vigour, until my sorely tried companions, one by one, went off to bed, each to his own
quarters.
Middleton was staying with me at the time, and he
and I sat for a while in silence, after the others had
gone, looking at the moonlight on the river. Middleton was the first to speak.
“That was a curious myth you were telling us
about the pôlong.” he said. “There is an incident
connected with it which I have never spoken of
before, and have always sworn that I would keep to myself; but I have a good mind to tell you about it,
because you are the only man I know who will not
write me down a liar if I do.”
“That’s all right. Fire away,” I said.
“Well,” said Middleton. “It was like this. You
remember Juggins, of course? He was a naturalist,
you know, dead nuts upon becoming an F. R. S.
and all that sort of thing, and he came to stay with
me during the close season[1] last year. He was bunting for bugs and orchids and things, and spoke of
himself as an anthropologist and a botanist and a
zoölogist, and Heaven knows what besides: and he
used to fill his bedroom with all sorts of creeping,
crawling things, kept in very indifferent custody,
and my veranda with all kinds of trash and rotting
green trade that he brought in from the jungle. He
stopped with me for about ten days, and when he
heard that duty was taking me upriver into the
Sâkai country, he asked me to let him come, too. I
was rather bored, for the tribesmen are mighty shy
of strangers and were only just getting used to me;
but he was awfully keen, and a decent beggar enough,
in spite of his dirty ways, so I couldn’t very well say
‘No.’ When we had poled upstream for about a
week, and had got well up into the Sâkai country, we
lad to leave our boats behind at the foot of the big
rapids, and leg it for the rest of the line. It was
very rough going, wading up and down streams when
one wasn’t clambering up a hillside or sliding down the opposite slope—you know the sort of thing—and the leeches were worse than I have ever seen.
them thousands of them, swarming up your back,
and fastening in clusters on to your neck, even when
you had defeated those which made a frontal attack.
I had not enough men with me to do more than hump
the camp-kit and a few clothes, so we had to live on
the country, which doesn’t yield much up among the
Sâkai except yams and tapioca roots and a little
Indian corn, and soft stuff of that sort. It was all
new to Juggins, and gave him fits; but he stuck to it
like a man.
“Well, one evening when the night was shutting
down pretty fast and rain was beginning to fall,
Juggins and I struck a fairly large Sâkai camp in the
middle of a clearing. As soon as we came out of the
jungle, and began tightroping along the felled timber,
the Sâkai sighted us and bolted for covert en masse.
By the time we reached the huts it was pelting in
earnest, and as my men were pretty well fagged out,
I decided to spend the night in the camp, and not to
make them put up temporary shelters for us. Sâkai
huts are uncleanly places at best, and any port has
to do in a storm.
“We went into the largest of the hovels, and there
we found a woman lying by the side of her dead
child. She had apparently felt too sick to bolt with
The rest of her tribe. The kid was as stiff as Herod.
and had not been born many hours, I should say.
The mother seemed pretty bad, and I went to her,
thinking I might be able to do something for her; but she did not seem to see it, and hit and snarled at
me like a wounded animal, clutching at the dead
child the while, as though she feared I should take
it from her. I therefore left her alone; and Juggins
and I took up our quarters in a smaller hut nearby,
which was fairly new and not so filthy dirty as most
Sâkai lairs.
“Presently, when the beggars who had run away
found out that I was the intruder, they began to come
back again. You know their way. First a couple
of men came and peeped at us, and vanished as
soon as they saw they were observed. Then they
came a trifle nearer, bobbed up suddenly, and peeped
at us again. I called to them in Sĕ-noi[2], which
always reassures them, and when they at last summoned up courage to approach, gave them each a
handful of tobacco. Then they went back into the
jungle and fetched the others, and very soon the place
was crawling with Sâkai of both sexes and all ages.
“We got a meal of sorts, and settled down for the
night as best we could; but it wasn’t a restful business. Juggins swore with eloquence at the uneven
flooring, made of very roughly trimmed boughs,
which is an infernally uncomfortable thing to lie
down upon, and makes one’s bones ache as though
they were coming out at the joints, and the Sâkai
are abominably restless bedfellows as you know. I suppose one ought to realize that they have as yet
only partially emerged from the animal, and that,
like the beasts, they are still naturally nocturnal.
Anyway, they never sleep for long at a stretch,
though from time to time they snuggle down and
snore among the piles of warm wood ashes round the
central fireplace, and whenever you wake, you will
always see half a dozen of them squatting near the
blazing logs, half hidden by the smoke, and jabbering
like monkeys. It is a marvel to me what they find
to yarn about: food, or rather the patent impossibility of ever getting enough to eat, and the stony-heartedness of Providence and of the neighbouring
Malays must furnish the principal topics, I should
fancy, with an occasional respectful mention of
beasts of prey and forest demons. That night they
were more than ordinarily restless. The dead baby
was enough to make them uneasy, and besides,
they had got wet while hiding in the jungle after our
arrival, and that always sets the skin disease, with
which all Sâkai are smothered, itching like mad.
Whenever I woke I could hear their nails going on
their dirty hides; but I had had a hard day and was
used to my hosts’ little ways, so I contrived to sleep
fairly sound. Juggins told me next morning that
he had had une nuit blanche, and he nearly caused
another stampede among the Sâkai by trying to get a
specimen of the fungus or bacillus, or whatever it is,
that occasions the skin disease. I do not know
whether he succeeded. For my own part, I think
it is probably due to chronic anæmia—the poor devils have never had more than a very occasional
full meal for hundreds of generations. I have seen
little brats, hardly able to stand, white with it, the
skin peeling off in flakes, and I used to frighten Juggins out of his senses by telling him he had contracted
it when his nose was flayed by the sun.
“Next morning I woke just in time to see the still-born baby put into a hole in the ground. They
fitted its body into a piece of bark, and stuck it in
the grave they had dug for it at the edge of the clearing. They buried a flint and steel and a woodknife
and some food, and a few other things with it,
though no living baby could have had any use for
most of them, let alone a dead one. Then the old
medicine man of the tribe recited the ritual over the
grave. I took the trouble to translate it once. It
goes something like this:
“‘O Thou, who hast gone forth from among those
who dwell upon the surface of the earth, and hast
taken for thy dwelling-place the land which is beneath
the earth, flint and steel have we given thee to kindle
thy fire, raiment to clothe thy nakedness, food to
fill thy belly, and a woodknife to clear thy path.
Go, then, and make unto thyself friends among those
who dwell beneath the earth, and come back no
more to trouble or molest those who dwell upon the
surface of the earth.’
“It was short and to the point; and then they
trampled down the soil, while the mother, who had
got upon her feet by now, whimpered about the
place like a cat that had lost its kittens. A mangy, half-starved dog came and smelt hungrily about the
grave, until it was sent howling away by kicks from
every human animal that could reach it; and a poor
little brat, who chanced to set up a piping song a few
minutes later, was kicked and cuffed and knocked
about by all who could conveniently get at him with
foot, hand, or missile. Abstenance from song and
dance for a period of nine days is the Sâkai way of
mourning the dead, and any breach of this is held to
give great offence to the spirit of the departed and
to bring bad luck upon the tribe. It was considered
accessary, therefore, to give the urchin who had
done the wrong a fairly bad time of it in order to
propitiate the implacable dead baby.
“Next the Sâkai set to work to pack all their house-hold goods—not a very laborious business; and in
about half an hour the last of the laden women, who
was carrying so many cooking-pots, and babies and
rattan bags and carved bamboo-boxes and things,
that she looked like the outside of a gipsy’s cart at
home, had filed out of the clearing and disappeared
in the forest. The Sâkai always shift camp, like
that, when a death occurs, because they think the
ghost of the dead haunts the place where the body
died. When an epidemic breaks out among them
they are so busy changing quarters, building new
huts, and planting fresh catch crops that they have
no time to procure proper food, and half those who
are not used up by the disease die of semi-starvation.
They are a queer lot.
“Well, Juggins and I were left alone, but my men needed a rest, so I decided to trek no farther that
day, and Juggins and I spent our time trying to get
a shot at a sêlâdang[3], but though we came upon great
ploughed-up runs. which the herds had made going
down to water, we saw neither hoof nor horn, and
returned at night to the deserted Sâkai camp, two
of my Malays fairly staggering under the piles of
rubbish which Juggins called his botanical specimens.
The men we had left behind had contrived to catch
some fish, and with that and yams we got a pretty
decent meal, and I was lying on my mat reading by
the aid of a dâmar torch, and thinking how lucky
it was that the Sâkai had cleared out, when suddenly
old Juggins sat up, with his eyes fairly snapping at
me through his gig-lamps in his excitement.
“‘I say,’ he said. ‘I must have that baby. It
would make a unique and invaluable ethnological
specimen.’
“‘Rot.’ I said. ‘Go to sleep, old man. I want
to read.’
“‘No, but I’m serious,’ said Juggins. ‘You do
not realize the unprecedented character of the opportunity. The Sâkai have gone away, so their susceptibilities would not be outraged. The potential
gain to science is immense—simply immense. It
would be criminal to neglect such a chance. I regard
the thing in the light of a duly which I owe to human
knowledge. I tell you straight, I mean to have that
baby whether you like it or not, and that is that.
“Juggins was forever talking about human knowledge, as though he and it were partners in a business
firm.
“‘It is not only the Sâkai one has to consider,’ I
said. ‘My Malays are sensitive about body snatching, too. One has to think about the effect upon
them.”
“‘I can’t help that,’ said Juggins resolutely. ‘I
am going out to dig it up now.’
“He had already put his boots on, and was sorting
out his botanical tools in search of a trowel, I saw
that there was no holding him.
“‘Juggins,’ I said sharply. ‘Sit down. You are
a lunatic, of course, but I was another when I allowed
you to come up here with me, knowing as I did that
you are the particular species of crank you are.
However, I’ve done you as well as circumstances
permitted, and as a mere matter of gratitude and
decency, I think you might do what I wish.’
“‘I am sorry,’ said Juggins stiffly. ‘I am extremely sorry not to be able to oblige you. My duty
as a man of science, however, compels me to avail
myself of this god-sent opportunity of enlarging
our ethnological knowledge of of a little-known people.’
“‘I thought you did not believe in God,’ I said
sourly; for Juggins added a militant agnosticism to
his other attractive qualities.
“‘I believe in my duty to human knowledge,’ he
replied sententiously. ‘And if you will not help me
to perform it, I must discharge it unaided.’
“He had found his trowel, and again rose to his
feet.
“‘Don’t be an ass, Juggins,’ I said. ‘Listen to me.
I have forgotten more about the people and the
country here than you will ever learn. If you go
and dig up that dead baby, and my Malays see you,
there will be the devil to pay. They do not hold
with exhumed corpses, and have no liking for or
sympathy with people who go fooling about with
such things. They have not yet been educated up
to the pitch of interest in the secrets of science which
has made of you a potential criminal, and if they
could understand our talk, they would be convinced
That you needed the kid’s body for some devilry
or witchcraft business, and ten to one they would
clear out and leave us in the lurch. Then who would
carry your precious botanical specimens back to the
boats for you, and just think how the loss of them
would knock the bottom out of human knowledge
for good and all.’
“‘The skeleton of the child is more valuable still,’
replied Juggins. ‘It is well that you should understand that in this matter—which for me is a question
of my duty—I am not to be moved from my purpose
either by arguments or threats.’
“He was as obstinate as a mule, and I was pretty
sick with him; but I saw that if I left him to himself
he would do the thing so clumsily that my fellows
would get wind of it, and if that happened I was
afraid that they might desert us. The tracks in
that Sâkai country are abominably confusing, and quite apart from the fear of losing all our camp-kit,
which we could not hump for ourselves, I was by no
means certain that I could find my own way back
to civilization unaided. Making a virtue of necessity, therefore, I decided that I would let Juggins
have his beastly specimen, provided that he would
consent to be guided entirely by me in all details
connected with the exhumation.
“‘You are a rotter of the first water,’ I said frankly.
‘And if I ever get you back to my station, I’ll have
nothing more to do with you as long as I live. All
the same, I am to blame for having brought you up
here, and I suppose I must see you through.’
“‘You’re a brick,’ said Juggins, quite unmoved by my insults. ‘Come on,’
“‘Wait,’ I replied repressively. “This thing cannot be done until my people are
all asleep. Lie down on your mat and keep quiet. When it is safe,
I’ll give you the word.”
“Juggins groaned, and tried to persuade me to let
him go at once; but I swore that nothing would induce me to move before midnight, and with that I
rolled over on my side and lay reading and smoking,
while Juggins fumed and fretted as he watched the
slow hands of his watch creeping round the dial.
“I always take books with me into the jungle, and
the more completely incongruous they are to my
immediate surroundings the more refreshing I find
them. That evening, I remember, I happened to be
rereading Miss Florence Montgomery’s “Misunderstood” with the tears running down my nose; and by the time my Malays were all asleep, this incidental
wallowing in sentimentality had made me more sick
with Juggins and his disgusting project than ever.
“I never felt so like a criminal as I did that night,
as Juggins and I gingerly picked our way out of the
hut across the prostrate forms of my sleeping Malays;
nor had I realized before what a difficult job it is to
walk without noise on an openwork flooring of uneven boughs. We got out of the place and down the
crazy stair-ladder at last, without waking any of my
fellows, and we then began to creep along the edge
of the jungle that hedged the clearing about. Why
did we think it necessary to creep? I don’t know.
Partly we did not want to be seen by the Malays, if
any of them happened to wake; but besides that, the
long wait and the uncanny sort of work we were after
had set our nerves going a bit, I expect.
“The night was as still as most nights are in real,
pukka jungle. That is to say, that it was as full
of noises—little, quiet, half-heard beast and tree
noises—as an egg is full of meat; and every occasional
louder sound made me jump almost out of my skin.
There was not a breath astir in the clearing, but miles
up above our heads the clouds were racing across
the moon, which looked as though it were scudding
through them in the opposite direction at a tremendous rate, like a great white fire balloon. It was
pitch dark along the edge of the clearing, for the
jungle threw a heavy shadow; and Juggins kept
knocking those great clumsy feet of his against the
stumps, and swearing softly under his breath.
“Just as we were getting near the child’s grave
the clouds obscuring the moon became a trifle.
thinner, and the slightly increased light showed me
something that caused me to clutch Juggins by the
arm.
“‘Hold hard!’ I whispered, squatting down instinctively in the shadow, and dragging him after me.
‘What’s that on the grave?’
“Juggins hauled out his six-shooter with a tug.
and looking at his face, I saw that he was as pale as
death and more than a little shaky. He was pressing
up against me, too, as he squatted, a bit closer, I
fancied, than he would have thought necessary at
any other time, and it seemed to me that he was
trembling. I whispered to him, telling him not to
shoot; and we sat there for nearly a minute, I should
think, peering through the uncertain light, and trying
to make out what the creature might be which was
crouching above the grave and making a strange
scratching noise.
“Then the moon came out suddenly into a patch
of open sky, and we could see clearly at last, and
what it revealed did not make me, for one, feel any
better. The thing we had been looking at was kneel-
ing on the grave, facing us. It, or rather she, was
an old, old Sâkai hag. She was stark naked, and
in the brilliant fight of the noon I could see her long,
pendulous breasts swaying about like an ox’s dewlap, and the creases and wrinkles with which her
withered hide was criss-crossed, and the discoloured
patches of foul skin disease. Her hair hung about her face in great matted locks, falling forward as she
bent above the grave, and her eyes glinted through
the tangle like those of some unclean and shaggy
animal. Her long fingers, which had nails like
claws, were tearing at the dirt of the grave, and her
body was drenched with sweat, so that it glistened
in the moonlight.
“‘It looks as though some one else wanted your
precious baby for a specimen, Juggins,’ I whispered;
and a spirit of emulation set him floundering on to
his feet, till I pulled him back. ‘Keep still, man,’
I added. ‘Let us see what the old hag is up to.
It isn’t the brat’s mother, is it?’
“‘No,’ panted Juggins. ‘This is a much older woman. Great God!
Great God! What a ghoul it is!’
“Then we were silent again. Where we squatted
we were hidden from the hag by a few tufts of rank
lâlang grass, and the shadow of the jungle also covered us. Even if we had been in the open, however,
I question whether the old woman would have seen
us, she was so eagerly intent upon her work. For full
five minutes, as near as I can guess, we squatted
there watching her scrape and tear and scratch at
the earth of the grave, with a sort of frenzy of energy;
and all the while her lips kept going like a shivering
man’s teeth, though no sound that I could hear came
from them.
“At length she got down to the corpse, and I saw
her lift the bark wrapper out of the grave, and draw
the baby’s body from it. Then she sat back upon
her heels, threw up her head, just like a dog, and bayed at the moon. She did this three times, and
I do not know what there was about those long-drawn
howls that jangled up one’s nerves, but each time
the sound became more insistent and intolerable,
and as I listened, my hair fairly lifted. Then, very
carefully, she laid the child’s body down in a position
that seemed to have some connection with the points
of the compass, for she took a long time, and consulted the moon and the shadows repeatedly before
she was satisfied with the orientation of the thing’s
head and feet.
“Then she got up, and began very slowly to dance
round and round the grave. It was not a reassuring
sight, out there in the awful loneliness of the night,
miles away from every one and everything, to watch
that abominable old beldam capering uncleanly
in the moonlight, while those restless lips of hers
called noiselessly upon all the devils in hell, with
words that we could not hear. Juggins pressed up
against me harder than ever, and his hand on my arm
gripped tighter and tighter. He was shaking like a
leaf, and I do not fancy that I was much steadier.
It does not sound very terrible, as I tell it to you here
in comparatively civilized surroundings; but at the
time, the sight of that obscure figure dancing silently
in the moonlight with its ungainly shadow scared me
badly.
“She capered like that for some minutes, setting
To the dead baby as though she were inviting it to
join her, and the intent purposefulness of her made
me feel sick. If anybody had told me that morning that I was capable of being frightened out of my
wits by an old woman, I should have laughed; but
I saw nothing outlandish in the idea while that grotesque dancing lasted.
“Her movements, which had been very slow at
first, became gradually faster and faster, till every
atom of her was in violent motion, and her body
and limbs were swaying this way and that, like the
boughs of a tree in a tornado. Then, all of a sudden,
she collapsed on the ground, with her back toward
us, and seized the baby’s body. She seemed to nurse
it, as a mother might nurse her child; and as she
swayed from side to side, I could see first the curve
of the creature’s head, resting on her thin left arm,
and then its feet near the crook of her right elbow.
And now she was crooning to it in a cracked false to
chant that might have been a lullaby or perhaps
some incantation.
“She rocked the child slowly at first, but very
rapidly the pace quickened, until her body was
swaying to and fro from the hips, and from side to
side, at such a rate that, to me, she looked as though
she were falling all ways at once. And simultaneously her shrill chanting became faster and faster,
and every instant more nerve-sawing.
“Next she suddenly changed the motion. She
gripped the thing she was nursing by its arms, and
began to dance it up and down, still moving with
incredible agility, and crooning more damnably than
ever. I could see the small, puckered face of the
thing above her head every time she danced it up, and then, as she brought it down again, I lost sight.
of it for a second, until she danced it up once more.
I kept my eyes fixed upon the thing’s face every time
it came into view, and I swear it was not an optical
illusion—it began to be alive. Its eyes were open
and moving, and its mouth was working, like that of
a child which tries to laugh but is too young to do it
properly. Its face ceased to be like that of a newborn baby at all. It was distorted by a horrible
animation. It was the most unearthly sight.
“Juggins saw it, too, for I could hear him drawing
his breath harder and shorter than a healthy man
should.
“Then, all in a moment, the lag did something.
I did not see clearly precisely what it was; but it
looked to me as though she bent forward and kissed
it; and at that very instant a cry went up like the
wail of a lost soul. It may have been something in
the jungle, but I know my Malayan forests pretty
thoroughly, and I have never heard any cry like it
before nor since. The next thing we knew was that
the old hag had thrown the body back into the grave.
and was dumping down the earth and jumping on it.
while that strange cry grew fainter and fainter. I
all happened so quickly that I had not had time to
Think or move before I was startled back into full
consciousness by the sharp crack of Juggins’s revolver
fired close to my ear.
“‘She’s burying it alive!’ he cried.
“It was a queer thing for a man to say, who had
seen the child lying stark and dead more than thirty hours earlier; but the same thought was in my mind,
too, as we both started forward at a run. The hag
had vanished into the jungle as silently as a shadow.
Juggins had missed her, of course. He was always
a rotten bad shot. However, we had no thought
for her. We just flung ourselves upon the grave,
and dug at the earth with our hands, until the baby
lay in my arms. It was cold and stiff, and putrefaction had already begun its work. I forced open its
month, and saw something that I had expected.
The tip of its tongue was missing. It looked as
though it had been bitten off by a set of shocking
bad teeth, for the edge left behind was like a saw.
“‘The thing’s quite dead,’ I said to Juggins.
“‘But it cried—it cried!” whimpered Juggins.
‘I can hear it now. To think that we let that horrible creature murder it.’
“He sat down with his head in his hands. He was
utterly unmanned.
“Now that the fright was over. I was beginning to
be quite brave again. It is a way I have.
“‘Rot.’ I said. ‘The thing’s been dead for hours,
and anyway, here’s your precious specimen if you
want it.’
“I had put it down, and now pointed at it from a
distance. Its proximity was not pleasant. Juggins,
however, only shuddered.
“‘Bury it, in Heaven’s name,’ he said, his voice
broken by sobs. ‘I would not have it for the world.
Besides, it was alive. I saw and heard it.’
“Well. I put it back in its grave, and next day we left the Sâkai country. Juggins had a whacking
dose of fever, and anyway we had had about enough
of the Sâkai and of all their engaging habits to last
us for a bit.
“We swore one another to secrecy as Juggins,
when he got his nerve back, said that the accuracy of
our observations was not susceptible of scientific
proof, which, I understand, was the rock his religion
had gone to pieces on; and I did not fancy being told
that I was drunk or that I was lying. You, however,
know something of the uncanny things of the East,
so to-night I have broken our vow. Now I’m going
to turn in. Don’t give me away.”
Young Middleton died of fever and dysentery,
somewhere upcountry, a year or two later. His name
was not Middleton, of course; so I am not really
“giving him away,” as he called it, even now. As
for his companion, though when I last heard of
him he was still alive and a shining light in the scientific world, I have named him Juggins, and as the
family is a large one, he will run no great risk of being
identified.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — The Further Side of Silence/The Ghoul. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.