The taxi ride home was silent. Rafeah had plugged in her earphones and feigned sleep. Ramli was turning over various pieces of information in his head.
What he had read about the pelesit was worrying. And he could not make sense of most of it. His basic understanding was that it was some kind of supernatural creature, usually commanded by an evil person to carry out various mischievous and nefarious deeds. And that it took the shape of a grasshopper or cricket.
The problem was that it all went against his late father’s teachings, so Ramli was flummoxed. Why would his mother – a faithful, pious wife – have mentioned the creature? Ramli decided that his mother was speaking gibberish, and had probably suffered a panic attack from having been alone at home. The experience had led her to mutter some nonsense from her childhood. Ramli decided that this made perfect sense.
And it would not have happened if Rafeah had been at home instead of gallivanting somewhere with her wayward friends. He had ignored her growing impunity and impurity for too long. Ramli decided that there was no need to wait for his mother to come home.
Ramli suddenly felt his fatigue wash away. He was energised by the thought of what was going to happen when they reached home. He could also feel a warmth blooming in his groin. By the time the taxi pulled into the driveway of their block of apartments, he was almost in a frenzy.
As they entered the apartment, Ramli firmly called out to Rafeah as she walked to her bedroom.
She froze. Ramli smiled as he embraced the authority his father had bequeathed him. This was the only legitimacy he had ever needed in life.
He was about to issue his next command when he heard his sister speak.
“I know what you want. Just let me shower and change clothes first.”
Ramli grunted to signal her to go ahead. Without even needing to use force, he had broken her resistance. He relished his newfound power. As Rafeah slunk off into the room, Ramli sat himself down by the sofa. He could feel the smug smile that was tugging at the corners of his lips.
Things were looking up. Rafeah would be brought in line. Their mother would recover. And soon, they would go back to being the family they were before his father’s death. An unpleasant thought suddenly occurred to Ramli. He would also need to discipline his mother when she came home. The talk of pelesit was a sign of corrosion of the morals his late father had engraved upon mother. It needed to be halted before it spread.
A high pitched creaking broke the train of Ramli’s thoughts. He got up quickly, startled by the sound. He walked towards the kitchen, where he thought it had come from. Infernal things. Ramli reminded himself that it was all nonsense. He looked around, still tense and wondering where the offending insect was. Then he heard another chirp from behind him.
Ramli spun around and came face to face with the biggest insect he had ever seen in his life. The yellow grasshopper was the size of his forearm, about half a metre long. It was perched on the coffee table in front of the television. There was no way it had been there earlier. He had sat right by the same table and would not have missed it.
Staring at the creature, Ramli was not sure what to do next. Reflexively, his right hand went to his hip before he remembered that he was off-duty. As he withdrew his hand from the phantom holster, he kept his eyes on the giant insect. He could see its mandible clearly, shifting around as though it was chewing something. Its antennae were also swinging around, sensing for hazards in the surroundings, though Ramli could not think of what hazards existed for such a freakish creature.
Another chirp caused Ramli to turn his head away from the monster-sized grasshopper on the kitchen table. He barely had time to focus on the cricket – a normal-sized one – on the kitchen table before he heard yet another chirp. This time, it came from above him and as he looked up, his eyes turned to saucers as he gazed upon the squirming mass that now occupied the ceiling of the living room. Thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of crickets and grasshoppers were all massed together, some staying perfectly still while others crawled and hopped over each other. Ramli now heard a cacophony of chirps, whistles and tweets as the creatures all seemed to be competing to see who was the loudest among them.
There was no time for Ramli to react to the horror laid out before him. He felt a sudden pressure push against his chest. Knocked backwards, he fell at roughly the same spot which his mother had occupied the previous night. The giant grasshopper packed a punch more powerful than any blow he had ever taken in his life. The back of Ramli’s head throbbed with pain from the impact with the floor. He raised it slightly and saw the yellow monstrosity was still on his chest. It seemed to be digging into his chest with those mandibles Ramli had noticed earlier. At the same time, crickets and grasshoppers were raining down from the ceiling onto the floor. As they landed, they were hopping towards where he lay. He felt the first pricks of pain seconds later and wondered if grasshoppers and crickets were known to bite.
Ramli wanted to scream but he was afraid that some of the insects would crawl into his mouth as well. Groans and grunts escaped his lips. He wondered if Rafeah had already been taken by the creatures. He looked towards the hallway and there she was.
Rafeah was leisurely standing there, her arms crossed. The brown skin which ran through their family seemed to have taken a darker, almost ethereal tone. She was smiling but her eyes, nose and lips seemed to be dripping with malice. There was also a hardness in her eyes, as though she was furious about something. Ramli did not understand any of it.
“Why?” Ramli managed to squeeze out just one word.
“You knew what he was doing to me. And you let it happen. You were supposed to protect me and you failed. Both of you.”
The only sensation that was stronger than the confusion Ramli felt was the burning pain. As his life began to ebb away, Ramli struggled to make sense of her words.
“He’s already burning in hell. I think it’s time for a family reunion.”
The nurses of Ward 9D of Changi General Hospital were used to busy nights.
That night though, Head Nurse Revathi felt dogged by a sense of unease which was compounding the usual fatigue from the shift.
“Did you hear that?” The squeaky voice of rookie Nurse Alice Tay almost caused Revathi to drop the mug of coffee she had just made. She strained her ears to see if she could pick up what the young girl was on about.
Then she heard it. A sound like a vibrating whistle.
It was a sound that was familiar to Revathi, who enjoyed hiking through nature parks in her free time. But it bothered her to hear it at her workplace.
“It’s a cricket, I think,” she told Alice.
“Why would there be a cricket in a hospital?”
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