Shroud: Jinn

17 - Animus

A girl in a school uniform sprinted from the forest and dashed right in front of my moving car. With all the strength in me, I stepped on my brakes as hard as I could. If I had taken that moment to blink, I could have almost hit her. The girl stood rigid in place as she stared at me wide-eyed and I held the steering wheel, frozen in the same shocked expression. It took me a few seconds before I got out of the car.

"How many times must I tell you? Always look right, look left and look right again before you cross the road! Don't just dash across!"

She looked up at me guiltily, "I'm sorry, Baba..." Her face looked damp as though she had been crying. 

"Where are going in a hurry? Why didn't you head straight home from school?"

"I was from Auntie Ning's house," she sniffled back a tear. "The parakeet's gone."

"Maybe it's just lost."

"No, Baba. I don't think it's coming back. Auntie Ning and Uncle Geming too."

"What are you saying?" I asked, my heart fearing the worst.

* * * ◊ ˚ ◊ ˚ ◊ ˚ ◊ ˚ ◊ * * *

I kicked at the basket that was at my feet, its weaves ripped to shreds. The green papayas I had given Ning the night before were smashed in one squidgy pile of mess. The large depth of the fresh tyre marks left on the ground hinted that a large vehicle passed by not long ago. There was a messy trail of blood leading from the road to the front of the house. The window shutters and the rattan door flapped noisily in the wind, showing peeks of the stark emptiness inside except for a few wrecked furniture that were overturned. Every query thrown at the neighbours passing by were met with avoiding glances and they dispersed from Saleha and me as quickly as they came.

A young Chinese boy in a white singlet and a pair of school shorts in a similar colour to Saleha's pinafore skipped past, nibbling on a long piece of crispy fried youtiao, Chinese breadstick. I doubted that he would know what had happened but it did not hurt to ask. I tapped on his shoulder, making him turn around.

"Do you know what happened here?" I pointed towards Ning's house.

He rubbed his thumb, index finger and middle finger together and then held out his palm, indicating he would not be willing to give out the information for free. I mentally rolled my eyes and gave him a few cents.

"My Ah Ma (grandmother) told me there was a big lorry. It moved the furniture away. The lorry left in a hurry. My Ah Ma (grandmother) don't know where it went."

"Do you know anything about the blood?" I pointed it out to him to which his face paled in surprise for a moment then he shook his head. "Do you know anything else?"

He held his palm out again and I handed over a few more cents.

"My Ah Ma (grandmother) said that Uncle Geming was scolding Auntie Ning a lot and dragging her to the big lorry."

I tightened my jaw and swallowed hard. Looking down at the fresh blood that was still in a coagulated mess, I wondered if it was from Ning's lochia which was postpartum bleeding. Geming must have dragged her towards the lorry against her will, not even allowing her time to change into a fresh pair of clothes.

Knowing how protective Ning was with the dead newborn, postmortem would have been out of the question. But with Ning gone so suddenly, I would never find out what truly happened with the dead baby pre-death.