But then the flock of seagulls hit the jet engine.
With a company of media representatives established under the shade of a duck heel tree, Thongfa’s commandos scaled the walls of the compound like Special Olympic ninjas. Some made it to the top, unsure of what to do once there. Most made it halfway up the ropes and then slid back down, blowing into their palms to assuage the burning sensation. Some lost their grip completely and thudded into the bougainvilleas. Only one brave soul made it over the wall and into the compound. He unlatched the gate from the inside, and Thongfa and his men advanced along the gravel driveway, making enough noise to raise the dead.
Samart was alone in the front seat of the Austin A40. He had a beer bottle in his hand. Not knowing why he was there, and for want of something to do, he sipped at the drink. It was flat. No, not flat, tasteless. Totally without... texture. It was as if he were pouring merely the concept of beer into his mouth, without experiencing any of the pleasures. This should have been a dream, but it was different. He was real. Even if the beer was non-existentially awful, and the car interior was a set from a long-running season of nightmares, he had substance. Something had happened. He considered briefly that he might have been elevated to a higher spiritual plain — been awarded a karmic gold star by the gods. But, of course, that was unlikely. There were mornings he couldn’t even elevate himself out of bed.
The view outside the Austin was like traveling through country lanes at warp speed. It looked like a nice day. There was nobody in the driver’s seat and the steering wheel spun both clockwise and anticlockwise like a prop on a children’s carousel. There was a dead jasmine lei hanging forlornly from the rear-view mirror. Always bad luck to have anything dead in a motor vehicle. But as he was untangling it, the mirror shifted position and in the glass he saw the probably smiling face of Halfhead. There was something different about her. She seemed to have picked up another dimension since he’d last seen her. She was wearing a newly bloodied frock with a white lace collar. There was lipstick on her half lips.
“Something bad’s happened,” he said. His voice resonated unexpectedly around the interior of the car, vibrating the spring-headed basset hound on the back window ledge.
“This isn’t a dream anymore,” she said.
“You’re real now?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“You aren’t.”
“So, I’m...”
“Dead.”
Without provocation she reached forward and slapped his ear. It hurt.
“I felt that.”
“You’ll be feeling a lot worse.”
“What? Why?”
A genuine fear was rising from the rusty bed of the Austin and gnawing at his ankles. It was as if he’d driven over the carcass of Terror somewhere back on the road, and its entrails had wrapped themselves around the axles and were seeping in through the bolt holes. He wasn’t the driver, but he felt responsible for its mutilation.
“I’m having a very bad dream,” he said, and instantly knew he wasn’t.
“You’re about to,” she said, and all at once she was beside him behind the wheel. “A very bad dream from which you’ll never awaken. A nightmare that will stick to you like poison ivy.”
“I don’t...”
“Tsk! That stain’s going to be hard to get out. You should have soaked it straightaway. Men never get that concept.”
He had no idea what she was talking about until he followed her gaze to the large blood-framed hole in his lower chest. He hadn’t noticed it. The wound was like a centrifugal fun fair painting on the white canvas of his silk shirt.
“I am dead,” he said.
“It happens.”
“How?”
“Insane Colonel Thongfa. He’d just raided the house you informed him of. It belonged to one the many mistresses of somebody so important no news channel dared mention his name. And that unmentionable somebody just happened to be in bed beside her at the time. The Colonel barely had time to shoot you before he vanished from public life.”
“But...”
Samart was fussing with his chest wound, attempting to gather the edges of his shirt together to hide the offal.
“But you told me Khun So would be there,” he reminded her. “You said...”
“Sorry.”
“You knew whose house that was.”
She smiled, and her sluggy tongue unfurled to her Adam’s apple.
“But you’re my spirit guide,” he said, his voice several octaves above masculine.
She put her hand on his knee.
“You know?” she said. “I might have exaggerated about my role in your universe just a bit.”
“Then I don’t get it. What are you?”
“Just a regular old malevolent spirit. A nasty ghost with a chip on her shoulder.”
“Against me?”
“Yes.”
“What have I ever done to you?”
“Lottery numbers.”
“What about lottery numbers?”
“You made them up.”
“Of course I made them up.”
He started to laugh and his spleen slipped out onto his lap. He opened the glove box hoping to find something to patch the hole. It was annoying. He ripped the registration sticker off the windshield, but the gum no longer stuck. He threw it down in a rage.
“All this is because I gave you bum lottery numbers?”
“It certainly wasn’t the worst thing you did. You were lying to people for years about serious things. Pretending to talk to relatives on this side. Having the mourning ones hand over their valuables. Giving them false hope. You’ve pissed off a lot of folk, Samart. A lot of lost souls are dying to meet you. We have a little admiration society. We Buddhists may not have a heaven, Teacher Wong, but we have a nice selection of hells. We’re on our way to one I think you’ll enjoy.”
The scene beyond the windows had passed quickly through purple dusk to a mauve-black night. The only lights beside the road came from bushes burning. The car began to slow and figures stepped out from behind the bonfires. It occurred to Samart that whoever researched for the Living Dead movies had done a field trip to purgatory because zombies really did look like that. Some of them made Halfhead seem positively pretty. They laboured painfully toward the car as it rolled to a stop.
“Look,” Samart said, holding back his panic, “I want to lodge an appeal. I get sent to hell because I got the lottery numbers wrong? That’s ridiculous, and it’s not fair. I was just starting to make something of myself.”
“Based on lies, Samart. As always. Do you really think it doesn’t matter? People came to you out of desperation. They wanted help. My husband was a security guard. He got laid off during the recession. He was depressed. He turned to drink. Our poor but happy life was disintegrating. My neighbour told me you had a gift. I came to you and...”
“I know you?”
“You probably don’t remember me. I’ve let myself go a bit since then. I told you about our problem. I gave you a sack of rice and my mother’s ring and you gave me the lottery numbers. I asked if you were sure. You were confident. You said you’d seen the numbers in a dream, but you couldn’t be certain what order they would appear in. I believed in you. I put all the savings I’d hidden away from my husband, sold our fruit handcart, borrowed money from friends and bought every ticket — every combination of those numbers. Every ticket I could find from one side of the city to the other. And the lottery numbers were announced, and not one of your numbers came up. Not one, Samart. Now what are the odds of that? There should be a prize for having no numbers, don’t you think?”