The Boy and the Ghost

The Dead Archenemy

It was a late night in the middle of May when Suresh found out what happened to Jacob. He was studying for his end of term exams in his first year (that were a month away) and he often found himself staying back really late and not coming home till midnight since;

a) his parents were surprisingly very chill about him staying out late since they knew he was a smart kid who valued safety above all else. Plus he had no friends and only ever stayed in the library

and b) he didn't live that far away from school and it was just a few bus-stops away. The library was open till midnight anyways.

Gayathri and Hazira were talking really loudly in the table behind his in the library about some shitty Disney remake and a Netflix teen drama where thirty-something actors played hypersexual adolescents.

"OMG" Gayathri shouted (yes she actually yelled the abbreviation). It was 8pm and the library was empty except for them and Ms. Agatha, the librarian.

"Jacob got into an accident!"

Suresh turned around immediately to see Gayathri and Hazira looking at her phone with eyes ready to pop out of their sockets. There was a chill in the air suddenly and it wasn't the busted air conditioning.

"Serious ah?" Hazira asked rather shocked. "Ya Allah... you're right lah." She said after reading whatever it was on Gayathri's phone.

This explains why he was absent yesterday. Suresh thought. He's never absent.

"Oh God." Gayathri said after a few moments of silence. "He's dead."

Suresh felt his heart stop beating.

He didn't know how to react. Gayathri and Hazira were still staring at the glaring phone screen in the dimly-lit library. After freezing for a few seconds, Suresh suddenly forced himself to get up and shoved all the books down his bag before leaving.

So many thoughts raced through his mind.

How did this happen?

When did this happen?

He rushed to the bus stop and he peeled at his lips and bit his fingernails until he got down two stops earlier than usual. He found himself walking to the street where Jacob lived. Not that far away from where he lived, except it was a gated community of identical bungalows that were painted a hideous shade of beige that looked like the colour of bird shit in the orange glow of street lamps.

And his heart sank when he saw a tent had been erected in front of his house. With sombre music playing and the porch of his house was lined with tall floral bouquets and tables filled with chattering old Chinese men and women. He looked closer and saw that by the door was a large framed picture of Jacob.

Holy shit. Jacob Lam is dead.

The boy he had hated so much. The boy who he constantly called his archenemy. The boy he loathed and envied and talked shit about whenever he got the chance.

He didn't know how to react. Or what to even feel. He just kept his head down and walked uphill and down to where his house was, sandwiched between an affluent suburb of semi-detached houses and an old Malay kampung built long before independence.

He didn't just walk though, because somewhere in between, with all the thoughts in his head, he started running. And he didn't care that it was dark and the uneven road made legs bend and twist.

His feet were shaking and his shoulders felt unbearably heavy for some reason, but he played it off from exhaustion of a full day of school and the humid, thick night air.

He was so tired in fact, that as soon as he unlocked his gate and front door and found himself immediately scuttling to his bedroom where he threw himself on his soft mattress and clutched his pillow till he fell asleep.

But before he entered his house, as he was taking off his shoes and the light bulb above his doorway flickered repeatedly, he found himself too distracted to notice the bucket of water that sat by the door and that he didn't follow one of his mother's most important rules.

When walking after sunset, when the azzan sounded and the sky began to fade from radiant aureate yellow into a dark ocean blue beset with clusters of stars, one must always wash their feet before entering their home.

This was also to be followed when coming back from funerals or from visiting graveyards which is when his mother even insisted that they all bathe with lemon, turmeric and rosewater to wash off the scent of death or any spirits that may have hitched a ride to their houses.

But Suresh couldn't have cared less about his mother's rules, because that night he had the worst sleep of his life.  Where his nightmare was so horrific he started to cry and scream in his sleep. But no one could hear him.