The lady offered a cold hand to be shaken, a queenly gesture. The bangles on her wrist jingled; her fingernails were long and lavishly varnished. The lady wafted the same bangled hand toward a large plate of huge black spiders, sitting on a glass coffee table in front of her.
Jake declined the spiders, and accepted instead a cup of water from a large jug. The bangled spider witch gazed at him. Then she smiled, and yawned, as if too busy and important to be intrigued; her left hand hovered over the plate, and plucked a large tarantula.
She munched on a spider leg, delicately. Then she ate the fat, oozing black thorax of the spider, staring at Jake as she did so. She ate with her mouth open. He could see the pulp of black spider flesh inside her mouth; he was staring at an old woman’s mouth with red lipstick on yellow teeth. And masticated black tarantula within.
A shudder of revulsion convulsed him. He was actually swaying. Maybe it was dehydration; he gulped down some more water, then busied himself with his camera, but he could feel the tarantula of fear slowly stalking down his spine. This was stupid. She was deliberately trying to spook him, as Tyrone had forewarned. The witch was trying to unnerve him; she was maybe succeeding.
The interview began almost at once. Ty asked questions in Khmer and the witch answered languidly, with a hint of vanity at certain points. She ate three whole spiders as they conversed. Jake watched her, helplessly fascinated. She was plucking off the big spider legs and popping them in her mouth, or chewing them like toffee strings. Her bangles chinked. She had crumbs of tarantula on her chin. One spider leg got stuck between her teeth — she pulled at it and then ate it, licking her fingers. Then she coughed another leg straight into a napkin.
Jake stared at the napkin as it unfurled itself on the table. The half-chewed black spider leg lay within the nest of uncrumpling paper, glistening, faintly pink and creamy with spider blood.
The urge to gag was overwhelming; but this, too, was maybe part of her act, her shtick. Her modus operandi.
Photography. Jake needed to take photos. That way he could distance himself from this grisly scene. But as he fumbled with his camera, he realized, with dismay, that his lens was smeared with his own sweat. The images he was getting were distorted. The witch was just a leering mouth full of blackness. A yawning insectivore in jewelry. Jake cursed. Always keep your camera clean. The first rule of photography; like a soldier learning to oil his rifle.
Seeking wet wipes from his bag, and dry tissues, Jake shivered in the cold of the overly air-conditioned room as he urgently cleaned the lens. He was barely aware, as he worked, of the silence in the room, then he noticed it.
“What?”
The witch had said something that had apparently given Tyrone pause. Jake noticed that the witch was staring his way now.
“What?” he asked. “What’s happened, Ty? What did she say? Is it about me?”
Ty shrugged, with an awkwardness. Silent.
“Tell me.”
“It’s just her doing her thing. Trying to freak you.”
“Ty!”
“She says you have sadness in your life….”
“And?”
The witch spoke quickly in Khmer. Tyrone translated further:
“She sees a ghost child. Uhm… The ghost of a ghost, a little girl? A girl who was snatched away.”
This was absurd — and grotesquely degraded. Jake waved away the idiocy. It was so chilly in this stupid room; why did they have the air-con turned so high?
But the woman was persistent, pointing at Jake. Tyrone continued to translate:
“She also sees a floating head, long hair, white face, a head with… I don’t know, don’t know the word. Something to do with your mother’s spirit, her ghost?”
“My mother? What does she know about my mother?”
“Don’t know, pal. I think it’s a Khmer ghost image, the arb, the floating woman’s head — trailing blood—”
Now the anger surged: Jake felt his own shameful and angry stupidity. He had walked into this. The woman had researched them. She was, of course, a charlatan.
“Fuck all this, Ty. Fuck her.”
“Calm down.”
“No. Fuck it. ’S obvious. She’s got some inside gossip on me. Trying to spook me—”
“Heck. I did warn you. These people make a lot of money for a reason.”
“OK, let’s spook her back, the spider-eating bitch. Let’s just ask her about the smoke children. Watch her choke on her bloody arachnids then.”
“But Jake — that’s a big risk—”
“Tell her we know about them!”
Tyrone paused, and pondered. Then he swiveled on the woman, and threw questions at her, urgent questions. The interview had become an interrogation. The witch waved an angry hand, bangles jangling. Her teeth were stained black from the roasted tarantulas. She didn’t care. She was irked and aroused, but she wasn’t saying any names. Jake heard no name in her stream of Khmer consonants.
Abruptly, the lady clapped her hands, twice, as if summoning guards. And then her voice deepened, to a weird and guttural muttering. Barely human. Growling.
“What the hell is she doing now?”
Tyrone backed away.
“I don’t know, I don’t know — maybe she’s casting some spell, some hex. Come on — let’s go!”
“We’re done?”
“I think we need to go? Don’t you think?”
The witch was swaying from side to side; her growling had evolved into a hissing; and she was pointing a varnished fingernail. But Jake was not done. He swerved on the woman.
“Who ordered the babies, you bitch? Who?”
She hissed once more through her black, spider-stained teeth. A snake at bay.
“Tell us? Who the fuck was it? Who ordered the kun krak? The smoke children? Who paid you to do that?”
Tyrone grabbed Jake’s angry arm; Jake angrily shook him off.
“Ty. You do it! Ask her. Tell her if she doesn’t help us we will write a story, tell everyone she is ripping babies out of women—”
“But—”
“And threaten her.”
Ty stiffened, as if finally snapping to attention; then he turned and he barked the question at the witch. He made the threat.
Her expression froze. Her eyes iced with hatred. Jake wondered if she was going to faint, or shout, or curse them again. But then she said, very slowly and distinctly:
“Madame Tek.”
The infernal, serpentine hissing recommenced. Jake grabbed his cameras and Tyrone snatched his notebook: they were fleeing, escaping the chilly house, racing for the door — and ignoring the protests of the assistant, lurking in the hallway.
The door slammed shut behind them; the heat was intense and immediate after the overly conditioned air of the witch’s villa.
“Sweet Jesus!” Jake said. “Is that who I think it is? Who ordered the smoke babies?”
Tyrone shook his head. “Yes. Yes, it is.” He hurried on. “Jake. It was Chemda’s own mother.”
16
Jake called Chemda as soon as they got back from Skuon. It was dark. He sat at his empty desk in his sparse apartment overlooking the Tonle Sap, and murmured the truth.
“Chemda, I’m sorry.”
“She said it was my mother?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”