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51 pages

English

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A boy is given a girl's name so that he can escape the attention of malignant ghouls. A devout Catholic priest is suspected of hanky-panky with a submissive Chinese wife when she gives birth to an albino child. A young girl student dies before her English examinations, but still manages to write an out-of-point essay for the Cambridge Syndicate. From societal superstitions and the imagination come these 15 tales of the paranormal. The Series:This title is being reissued under the new Marshall Cavendish Classics: Literary Fiction series, which seeks to introduce some of the best works of Singapore literature to a new generation of readers. Some have been evergreen titles over the years, others have been unjustly neglected. Authors in the series include:Catherine Lim, Claire Tham,Colin Cheong, Michael Chiang,Minfong Ho, Ovidia Yu andPhilip Jeyaretnam.

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Short story

Catholicisme

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Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International
Date de parution	09 juillet 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814974653
Langue	English

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MARSHALL CAVENDISH CLASSICS
THEY DO RETURN . . . BUT GENTLY LEAD THEM BACK
They Do Return ... But Gently Lead Them Back
CATHERINE LIM
2021 Catherine Lim and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd
First published in 1983 by Times Editions
This edition published in 2021 by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196.
Tel: (65) 6213 9300. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com
Website: www.marshallcavendish.com
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Other Marshall Cavendish Offices:
Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 800 Westchester Ave, Suite N-641, Rye Brook, NY 10573, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd, 253 Asoke, 16th Floor, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a registered trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Name(s): Lim, Catherine.
Title: They do return ... but gently lead them back / Catherine Lim.
Other title(s): Marshall Cavendish classics.
Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2021. | First published in 1983 by Times Editions.
Identifier(s): OCN 1253349643 | e-ISBN: 978 981 4974 65 3
Subject(s): Paranormal fiction. | Superstition--Fiction.
Classification: DDC S823--dc23
Printed in Singapore
Contents
The Old Man in the Balcony
A Boy Named Ah Mooi
The Legacy
The Story of Father Monet
Grandfather s Story
Of Moles and Buttocks
Full Moon
The Anniversary
The Exhumation
Of Blood From Woman
Lee Geok Chan
Two Male Children
A Soldier Stalks
They Do Return... But Gently Lead Them Back
K.C.
The Old Man in the Balcony
One of my earliest recollections is of an immense coffin - perhaps the immensity was derived from the child s perception of the world from her tiny, three-foot frame, for I could not have been more than four then - standing in a covered part of the stone courtyard of a very old house. The coffin had been bought by the mistress of the house for her father-in-law, who had reached that hopeless stage of senility of having to be fed and bathed like a child.
I could still see him clearly - a very old man with long white, wispy hair and beard, crouching in a corner of the balcony upstairs, wearing a kind of faded coat, but naked from the waist down. Occasionally, his daughter-in-law would squat down with scissors and patiently trim his hair, beard and fingernails.
We children used to stare wonderingly at him whenever we were brought on a visit to the house. After the coffin, the old man with no trousers was a natural attraction, and we stood in a cluster just beyond the doorway, staring at him, but at the same time poised for flight should he spring up and attempt to catch us. Of course he was incapable of doing anything apart from eating soft food and soiling himself, but still we associated him with a large fund of supernatural strength that he could always draw upon to attack and kill people.
The coffin had been in readiness for the last 20 years, but the old man lingered on, and his daughter-in-law, whom I remember we called Ah Han Chare, had clearly quite forgotten about its existence or had chosen to ignore it as she went about her business of being the town s matchmaker and bridal helper. She was a jovial, friendly woman who laughed a great deal, and even at that age I remember I was struck by the contrast between her effervescence, her merry laughter and her bright jangling jewels, and the desolate coffin now beginning to gather dust and cobwebs, that had become a fixture in her house. That she had bought it for her father-in-law was a measure of her great affection for him.
At some time in their old age, men and women fretted about the possibility of dying without a proper coffin to be buried in. To reassure her father-in-law that no such calamity would befall him. Ah Han Chare had bought him the coffin, and from that moment he had ceased to fret and worry.
My mother-in-law was a mean, cruel woman, but he has always been good to me, said Ah Han Chare, explaining this filial gesture. The coffin had stood for so long in the house that soon it lost all its terror for the children in the household. They played around it, and when no one was looking, tried to lift its heavy lid and slip inside.
On the night the coffin knockings began, Ah Han Chare and Ah Kum Soh, a distant relative who was staying with her, sat up in their beds, listened intently and nodded to each other.
It will be soon, they said. The signs are here already. And they thought, without sadness, of the deliverance of the old man curled asleep on a mat in the room next to the balcony, a place grown musty and foul-smelling with urine and dropped food. They listened for a while and counted the knocks, all 17 of them.
Perhaps it will be tomorrow, said Ah Kum Soh. When morning came, she padded softly to the old man s room, but he was clearly still alive, for he looked at her with his bleary eyes and signalled that he wanted to be carried to his warm sunny spot in the corner of the balcony.
In the afternoon, someone rushed to Ah Han Chare and said, He s dead! But he was referring to Ah Kum Soh s husband, an idle good-for-nothing wastrel who wandered through the town all day in singlet and pyjama trousers, picking his teeth. The man had fallen into a drain and died there. There was a deep gash on his head and he had apparently been dead a few hours before being spotted by a passing trishaw man. Ah Kum Soh became hysterical and put the blame of her husband s death squarely on the old man in the balcony.
The coffin knockings were meant for him, she wept, but he did not want to go, so my husband had to go instead. You mark my words, there will be more deaths yet!
When the coffin knockings were heard once more, Ah Han Chare and Ah Kum Soh again sat up and listened intently. The knocks came distinctly in the middle of the night - knock, knock, knock - becoming more and more faint until they were finally absorbed into the stillness of the night.
Ah Kum Son s son, a frail little asthmatic child of seven, had a fainting fit and was rushed to hospital. He did not die, but the whole town - which by this time had heard of the mysterious knockings at night, and which was talking about Ah Kum Soh s husband s death in awed whispers - started rumours about a small corpse being brought home, and of another of the relatives about to die, in response to the coffin s call.
Why doesn t the old man answer the call? they asked. How many must go in his place? Ah Kum Soh, weeping, stood before the old man as he was crouching half-naked on the balcony, and began to berate him for his heinous crime. He stared at her, eyes grey and rheumy, and once or twice he looked around and called pathetically, Ah Han! Ah Han! for his daughter-in-law s name was the only one he could call now.
Ah Han Chare fell ill shortly after, and the town was gripped with tense expectation. The coffin had called again, impatient to have an occupant after the long years of waiting, and now it was the mistress of the household herself. I remember the anxiety communicated to us children, for we did not venture near the coffin any more, nor look at the old man whose stubborn refusal to answer the coffin knockings resulted in the tragic deaths of others.
A priest from the town temple was called in to appease the coffin and persuade it to end its persistent calls, for the knockings had persisted for several nights. Ah Han Chare lay in a stupor, surrounded by weeping children and relatives.
Ah Han! Ah Han! came the whimperings from the old man, hungry and terrified, for in the days of confusion following her sudden illness, he had neither been washed nor fed. Nobody heard him.
On the fourth day, a child ran in to announce: He s dead! He s dead! I saw him myself! He s all stiff and there are ants in his eyes too! They went to see, and true enough, he was dead, fallen on his side, his thin legs doubled up under him.
They rejoiced to see Ah Han Chare out of danger. She was able to sit up in bed and take a bowl of porridge. The knockings ceased, the old man was laid in the coffin and buried next to his wife, who had died 30 years earlier.
Ah Han Chare, when it was all over, was able to speak about the coffin knockings as if they had been everyday occurrences, it being part of her exuberant nature to be able to weave the coffin incidents into the ribald tales she invariably carried away with her after the wedding festivities that she organized with much zest. But her popularity as matchmaker and bridal helper declined sharply, for she became connected with coffin knocks, and few were prepared to risk the taint of death in a house of marriage.
A Boy Named Ah Mooi
I was so used to calling my playmate Ah Mooi that it took me years to realize that Ah Mooi was really a name suitable for girls. But by then it was too late to ask him why, for the expansiveness of childhood had narrowed into the awkward tentativeness of adolescence. And the tiny gold earring that