Grasshoppers (Full version)

Ramli bin Rahman was tired. His legs felt leaden as he lifted them one after the other, and even though he was barely thirty, he actually felt out of breath climbing the stairs.  Like his late father, he had a stout frame. He had kept himself fit and strong, but fatigue had conquered him this night.

Making his way up the stairs, Ramli had noticed that there was very little sound in the estate. He glanced at the fitness tracker on his wrist. The display lit up and told him that it was 11.15 pm. Not far from midnight as he had guessed. On days like this, he regretted becoming a police officer. It often felt like a thankless job. The old man who scolded him today underlined that feeling. It was not as though Ramli could bring the dead back to life.  

If it had not been his father, Ramli would have taken a different path. He had very much wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a religious teacher. However, the late Mr Rahman had stressed that Ramli needed to do something different with his own life. And serving as a police officer would allow him to help people and also give him a legitimacy he would need. Ramli never learnt what the old man meant about legitimacy.

He still remembered the day his father had collapsed suddenly while they were having dinner. Heart attack, the doctors said. The man was barely sixty. Ramli missed him. The memory weighed on him as he ambled onto the corridor. His thoughts were interrupted by a a familiar but annoying sound.

For about a year, Ramli had noticed an uptick in the sounds of crickets and grasshoppers in the neighbourhood. The shrill, high pitched cry of the insects reminded him of his childhood visits to his mother’s kampung in Johor. There was something different about the cries he had been hearing though. The falsetto whistling seemed to pierce his skin and riddled his spine with fear. Ramli tried to pinpoint when exactly he had begun to notice an uptick in the insect calls. He thought that it might have been just before his father’s passing. He wondered if his annoyance was due to him subconsciously linking the sounds to the death. But it was ridiculous and he knew it. Worse still, it was superstitious. His father would have been disappointed to see him indulging in such madness.

Nevertheless, more than once Ramli had been sufficiently irked by the calls that that he had ventured out to the surrounding greenery to see if he could detect an infestation. He had come up empty to date. What was perplexing was that he always heard the insects but he had yet to see one. Ramli wondered if anyone else in the block was as perturbed as he was by the creatures. He had not seen any signs of increased fogging or other pest removal measures being carried out.

Ramli keyed in the code at his front door and stepped into the apartment. The lights were off, which was normal for the time of night. But there was an odor permeating throughout the apartment. A sour, unpleasant stench which Ramli recalled from attending to reports about dead animals. Ramli began to imagine the worst but also hoping his mother was unhurt. He reached for the light switch on the wall but as he was about to flick it on, he froze as he heard a loud piercing cry ring through the room. It was one of those damned insects. And it was coming from somewhere… inside the apartment.

The thought made Ramli’s blood boil. Having the damned pests invade his house was a step too far. He momentarily forgot the smell which had bothered him and turned on the lights.

And saw his mother pointing a knife at him.

#

A few hours earlier.

Fatimah did not like eating alone. She was not used to it. Years before, they always ate as a family. Then, her husband and daughter were constant presences. Since the funeral though, Rafeah had taken to skipping dinner at home. Given the history between father and daughter, Fatimah thought she understood why. As for Ramli, Fatimah knew that he was probably going to be home late again. 

The living room clock struck eight, and as Fatimah put away the dishes and dried her hands, she heard a sound that chilled her veins.

The shrill, vibrating whistling was like a needle piercing the relative quiet of the aprtment. Fatimah instinctively reached for a knife from the rack. For just a moment, she wondered if she had lost her mind. It was not a sound alien to her. She had grown up with the sounds of crickets, grasshoppers, and all manner of insects.

But this was something different. Fatimah felt as though her younger self was screaming a warning to her from deep inside. Trying to remind her of a superstitious tale from her kampung. She had largely forgotten such stories since she wedded her husband. He was pious and intolerant of anything he considered as deviant. Yet, decades on, it seemed that the ‘deviant’ knowledge had stayed with Fatimah after all. Their return to the forefront of her thoughts had been picking up pace since she became a widow. The heart attack had made her suspicious, but she had let it go at the time, not wanting to traumatize her children further.

Ramli had been complaining to her about an infestation of crickets and insects. She had brushed him off, but she had heard them too.

But never inside the house.

Her nerves wound ever tighter as she scanned the kitchen for signs of the intruder. When, she heard the cry again from the living room, Fatimah tightened her grip on the knife and took slow, cautious steps towards the source of the infernal noise.

As she poked her head over the threshold, she saw it. 

It could have passed for a normal grasshopper. Except that its size was monstrous. Fatimah thought that its body spanned the length of her forearm. The creature’s magnified size also meant that its compound eyes, feelers, mandibles, and limbs were on clear display. Worst of all was the sickly yellow colour of the monster’s body. It made her sick just to look at it.

She heard one more chirp then saw the creature launch itself off the dining table and towards her. She closed her eyes and slashed at it blindly. A shrill scream also escaped her lips as fear overtook her. She felt no feedback from her slash and knew that she must have missed. She opened her eyes slowly and scanned the room. No sign of the fiend.

Another sharp whistle from Fatimah’s right startled her, and she wheeled around while swinging her knife downwards in a backhand slash. She felt her blade make contact with some part of the thing’s body. Fatimah had kept her eyes open this time and she saw that she had managed to severe one of the six legs with her assault. However, she was dismayed to find that the creature had shrunk itself to about the size of her palm. This confirmed her worst fears.

A thick, powerful spray of red liquid shot out from the hole which marked the spot which once belonged to the severed leg. The stink of it reminded Fatimah of the carcasses and corpses which had needed to be cleared out of the kampung occasionally, having been preyed upon by unseen predators. As it splashed onto her clothes, Fatimah gagged and staggered backwards.

She backed herself up against the wall by the front door. Her eyes darted from one spot to another. Her mind was also in overdrive as her memories about the damned demonic thing surfaced rapidly. She was being targeted. But by whom? And why? 

As she struggled to think while staying on guard, Fatimah felt her heart stop as all the iights in the apartment extinguished and she was plunged into darkness. Panic began to set in and she gripped the knife in both hands, stabbing and slashing in random directions in the futile hope of inflicting a decisive blow.

In the silent darkness, Fatimah could hear the booming of her heart. She could also hear an occasional chirp, each time from a different direction. She felt as though it was mocking her. Fatimah did not know how long her standoff had lasted and how much longer she would have to hold out. Tears of fear and sadness were streaming down her face and she choked back sobs more out of instinct than anything else. 

Light suddenly returned to the living room. Fatimah reflexively released the grip of her left hand from around the knife hilt so that she could shield her eyes from the light.  As her vision cleared, she could see Ramli staring at her wide-eyed.

Mixed emotions ran through Fatimah as she moved to embrace her son. The knife dropped with a clatter as her nerves began to loosen. She felt her legs go out from under her. The aging woman could feel her son’s strong hands catch her before she hit the floor. Then she felt her throat constricting and began gasping for air. She could also feel her consciousness begin to slip. She could not pass out yet. She still had to warn her son, her children of the danger.

There was just one thing she had to tell Ramli. One word, three syllables. That was all Fatimah needed to muster. She willed her vocal cords to work, to squeeze out one last thing.

“Pe… pe…” One down, two to go. Fatimah focussed her every thought to the task at hand. Then she heard a chirp.

And then another. 

“Pe…le…”

Fatimah winced and groaned softly as she felt a sharp pain of her prick at her lower back. She gave in to the darkness.

#

Almost 2am. It was by no means the latest that Rafeah had ever come home but it was definitely past the threshold where she could leisurely walk into the apartment.

If all went well, Rafeah would not bump into her brother when she opened the door. Otherwise, he was more than likely to be waiting for her, probably nursing a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, acting as though he was their father.

The day the old man died had been a happy day for Rafeah. Her mother probably knew her feelings and the reasons for it. The older woman was ignorant but she was not blind. Ramli, however, was a different animal.

He was ignorant. That was the least cruel thing Rafeah could think about Ramli. It confounded her how blind he had been all through the years. Even two years in national service had not opened his eyes to the twisted reality he lived in. Then again, Rafeah knew that her brother had always been a good son and a faithful follower of the late Mr Rahman. He took the teachings which had been imparted to him very seriously. Ramli was all about preserving traditions, customs, and the old ways. The changing world was an ever present enemy. It was their responsibility to protect themselves from the pernicious influences which threatened to seep through at all times. Corruption could not be allowed to take root.

Ramli saw her as a poor corrupted soul, Rafeah was sure of that. His words and actions had made clear to her that he was intent on perpetuating the way of life their father had enforced while the older man was still living. And soon he would go too far. She was certain of that.

The smell of vodka on her breath reminded her that she did herself no favours with her brother. But she no longer cared. When she started drinking, it was largely to numb the pain. She had convinced Ramli to let her go to university, something their father had specifically forbade for fear of her corruption. Rafeah had taken the opportunity and hit the ground running to continue the reclamation of her life.

She was almost done with her endeavour.

And tonight, she had good reason to celebrate. She licked her lips and was pleased to find that she could still taste some of the alcohol. And if Ramli was still awake when she walked in, then so be it. She was sure that her high would carry her through the ordeal that would ensue. It had before. She ran her hands through her long wavy hair and straightened up her slight frame. Despite herself, she was quite tired.

She entered the code and stepped through the door. There was a stench hanging in the atmosphere reminiscent of the abbatoir she had once visited on a school trip.

Rafeah switched on the lights and walked to the dining table, where she could see a handwritten note weighed down with a ceramic mug. It was Ramli’s handwriting, she could tell that from the curving and leaning scribble. A smile crept upon her lips as she picked up the note to read it

                         “Mum in hospital. Changi General. Possible heart attack. Come ASAP.”  

#

Ramli wondered where Rafeah was. He supposed that he would have caught her trying to sneak in at some ungodly hour yet again had it not been for what happened to their mother. She was so flighty and vain. And God, how he hated her friends. Those uppity undergraduate bastards, with their corrupt and decadent ways. He always felt as though they looked down on him because he had chosen to start work as a policeman instead of pursuing a degree. He was also sure that they looked down on him for being conservative and traditional. They would never appreciate that his father had raised him to be aware and respectful of his roots and he had no intention of disavowing the man’s teachings. 

Ramli bowed his head and rubbed at his brow furiously. He still had not figured out what his mother was trying to tell him. No matter how hard he tried, it was still not coming to him. The only thing he could be sure of was that it was a Malay word. His mother had never been fluent in English.

It was almost dawn and yet there was still no sign of his sister. Ramli fought to push back the rage that was building inside him. He would have to teach her a lesson much like how his father would have done when alive. She had gone too far. Ramli regretted not enforcing his father’s wish to forbid Rafeah from attending university. Wanting to cut Rafeah a little slack, he had allowed her to attend a local university instead.

But the old man had been right about her being corrupted. 

As the man of the house now, Ramli saw that he had been short sighted in giving in to his sister’s wishes. She might have run away from home had he denied her as their father had. But there were other ways to prevent that and keep her at home. He resolved to talk to his mother about withdrawing Rafeah from university and making other plans. It could wait until she was discharged and in better shape.

Their household was built on authority. Rafeah needed to re-learn the importance of respecting that authority.

Letting out a huge sigh, Ramli buried his face in his palms again and proceeded to try and rub the fatigue out. He had not closed his eyes and rest for just over twelve hours and he was determined to stretch out every bit of energy he had gained from the half-hour nap from yesterday afternoon.

Ramli heard the sound of the swing doors opening and saw Rafeah walk in. Just as Ramli was about to call out to his sibling, he was distracted by a weird yellow shape darting past his head. He jerked around quickly wanting to see what it was. He had barely caught sight of it at the periphery of his vision. There was also a ringing in his ears. It was akin to a chorus of crickets or grasshoppers. Ramli wondered if the stress of the last few hours had finally gotten to him. There was no way that a hospital could be infested with pests like his estate had been. He was still lost in his thoughts when his sister came up to him.

“How is she?” He wondered if his sister really cared. As much as he tried to contain his rage and frustration, Ramli could hear the venom in his voice. “See for yourself.  Thankfully, it wasn’t a heart attack. Just shock. Extreme shock.”

“Are you alright?” Ramli almost smirked at Rafeah’s hypocritical query. If she truly cared, she would have arrived earlier. No, she would not have left home at all the night before. He decided to let her question go unanswered and just stared at the wall. He didn’t want his face to betray his plans tom his sister. 

Ramli watched as his sister turn and walks towards their mother’s hospital room. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, and decided to search the web for clues as to what his mother had been trying to say. On a whim, he keyed in the search terms ‘grasshoppers’, ‘crickets’, ‘scary’, and ‘Malay’ .

The top result sent a chill down Ramli’s spine. It was about a demonic creature called the pelesit.

That was it. His mother’s message.

Pelesit.

#

Rafeah was not sure what she felt as she gazed upon her mother’s still and comatose form in the hospital bed. She welcomed the privacy they had and as she sat in the chair by her mother’s side, she reached out and stroked the old woman’s forehead affectionately.

Theirs had been a rocky relationship since Rafeah was a young child. Their arguments never lasted too long, but they were not infrequent. Since her father died, Rafeah had argued less with her mother. This was no surprise since the man was a big part behind their occasionally strained relationship.

The man her mother married was strict and conservative. He provided for the family and never left them wanting, at least not materially. But he ran the household with an iron fist and insisted on total and complete obedience.

Unfortunately, Rafeah had been gifted with a rebellious spirit. She and her father were like oil and water, and sometimes, Rafeah seemed to be oil further inflaming her father’s fire. He was a volcano when provoked, and he had burnt through her years of childhood innocence, justifying that he was putting her onto the path of becoming a proper, decent woman. Her mother was always there to console her at the end of each night, but it did little to ease the pain she felt. She could not remember when it began but there was no doubt as to when it ended.

It ended when he did.

Rafeah did not doubt her mother loved her. However, the older woman had also made a clear choice for her role as spouse over that of parent. Rafeah had tried to rationalise and justify her mother’s actions. She would have called it wilful inertia but had decided to give her mother the benefit of the doubt. As Rafeah entered adulthood, she had come to realise that her mother was as much a victim as she herself had been. A simple village girl who had been raised to always obey the man she married. No matter how heavy the cost. 

Realisation, however, had not been accompanied with forgiveness.

Continuing to stroke her unconscious mother’s hair and forehead, it occurred to Rafeah that her way out had been gifted to her by the poor woman, albeit inadvertently.

About two years ago, they had gone to her mother’s village. Her father had fallen ill and had not joined them. He had warned them, though, that any loose lips would be decisively tightened when they returned home. Nevertheless, Rafeah had had a good time meeting relatives who loved her unconditionally and sympathised with her in a way no one else had before. She would have liked to stay but knew it was impossible.

Love was not the only thing they gave her though. Her extended maternal family had also shared some family secrets. Knowledge she lapped up readily.

She pondered whether she should return there when it was all over. She supposed she should. There was still so much more to learn. The tuition costs were heavy but it was nothing Rafeah could not afford.

She stood up from her chair and bent over to gently kiss her mother on her forehead. She also whispered softly of her love and understanding for the woman before she bade her final farewell.

#

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?”

#