When we climbed down from the power lines, we were in myworld again, even if ghost light still shone on Sopha’s hands. I grabbed her bythe elbows and held her close to me. We both shook with static and fear. “Neveragain, do you understand?” I said. “Never ever, I don’t care whathappens here. Don’t leave me alone.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I won’t go.”
“Promise.”
We linked pinkies. The glow that radiated from her fingersnever landed on mine. I wanted to cry but I didn’t. I didn’t believe her. Iwanted to believe her.
◊
At the mouth of the banana orchard, I turned and checked forthe third time to see that none of the foreigners were filming. I wouldn’t letthem make a movie about my sister the ghost. I’d let her kill the entire crewbefore I did that.
“You’re certain your sister is here,” said Kao, fidgetingwith the threads looped around his arms. I had wrapped the whole crew fromwrist to elbow before we’d left.
“Her spirit or her body,” I said. “Or both.”
I still wanted to believe that there was no body, that Sophahad shed the world of Psaodung like the rest of us shed clothes, but shewouldn’t be an ap if something worse hadn’t happened to her. Angry ghostsdidn’t come out of nowhere. Girls who escaped their fears didn’t wreakvengeance on foreign film crews.
One of the men called out that he’d found something. Ifollowed the sound of his voice, but he was dead when I got to him. The ghostlight was sun-bright around me, crackling down my spine until my limbs feltstiff, but I still couldn’t see the spirit that had killed the foreigner.
Kao caught up to me. Seeing the dead man, he cursed inEnglish and then in Khmer. “We need to get out of here.”
“No,” I said. “She’s here. Do you have a knife?”
When I cut the strings from my wrists, the orchard changed.The ghost lights were brighter now, bigger, focused around faces and bodies.They were people but they were wrong. Their features shifted so their facesdrooped to one side. Their mouths opened too wide or their sockets had no eyes.Their hands hung down past their knees; their legs ended in toeless clumps. Inthe dark, I could see them and only them. Hands came out to grab me, teethshowed, and I realized the spirits didn’t care if my sister was a hauntedchild.
Then they gave way and there was Sopha: sharp incisorsgleaming out of her crimson mouth, viscera pulsing like a fish on a spinalline. Her light opened a path through the orchard for me and I stepped through,towards Sopha, then towards what used to be Sopha but wasn’t Sopha any longer.
Sopha’s body had been lying in the grass beneath the bananatrees for so long that she should have been gone, but an ap needed a corpse toclimb back into when the sun rose. Her spirit had kept her body fromdisintegrating. Mak’s silver earrings still glinted in her ears. Pink rubbershoes still stuck to her feet. In the banana orchard, my sister was stilleleven years old.
“Sopha,” I said. “I’m here to take you home.”
I knew she couldn’t talk to me. I didn’t really think shewould. But my eyes still stung when she disappeared, darkening the orchard,pulling the other ghosts away with her.
◊
I went back to the banana orchard in the morning, my wristsbare. The film crew had mashed the undergrowth into a path I could easilyfollow. Sopha was still lying where she’d been lying for thirteen years, and inthe sunlight, she was not a body, she was only my sister.
I carried her out of the orchard, slung over my shoulder. Ihad planned to conceal her body in a rice sack, but seeing her, I changed mymind. I had also planned to bury her discreetly behind our house. If ourneighbors caught me with the perfectly preserved body of a girl many yearsdead, they would believe that I too was haunted. Already I was wearing white, Ihad shaved my head, one look at me would reveal that I was mourning someone.But I gave myself up completely and took Sopha to the middle of Psaodung.
The sun had risen an hour ago and the well was crowded. Isaw the faces of my neighbors through a veil of sun glare and dust, theirshock, their confusion, and they were like something I was dreaming. I feltonly distantly afraid. This walk into the center of Psaodung was just anotherclimb across a bundle of electrified wires, and Sopha was still leading me.
By now I had an audience. Half the village at least, mencoming in from the riverbanks, children stopping on their way to school. Mingstanding on the ladder to our stilt-house, open-mouthed. The film crew,stumbling over themselves to find their cameras before my shovel hit the dust.They were still filming when I finished digging Sopha’s grave and walked away.
I never saw the foreigners’ movie, and I still don’t knowwhose story they told. But Ming told me they dropped three sacks of rice at ourhouse before they left Psaodung. She didn’t refuse, she said she couldn’t.Pride has always been too precious for us to afford.
Thin Places
The knock on theschoolhouse door came an hour after dismissal, and Miss Augusta hesitated for amoment before answering. She had never met the child who stood on thethreshold, but she knew already that the girl’s name was Lilianne Eisner, thatshe had arrived in Branaugh only yesterday, and that she was not supposed to beattending school with the other children. This information had come to MissAugusta courtesy of numerous letters, hand-delivered by children on behalf oftheir parents. We are concerned, they had begun. We trust that youwill act accordingly. By trust, Miss Augusta suspected, they meant, willbe watching to see that you do. The girl needed to be sent home at once,and yet Miss Augusta could not find words delicate and sharp enough for thepurpose. Instead she found herself opening the door wider.
“You must be the new lighthouse-keeper’s daughter,” shesaid.
The girl did
