Dr Siri Paiboun 01; The Coroner’s Lunch

“I’m polite that way. What happened?”

She sat cross-legged on the floor as he ate. “I’m afraid Lao Jong was a bit beyond his depth. He’s actually more of a fixing-of-stomach-ache, saving-of-vegetable-garden type of medium. He can deal with little troubles like that very well. But what we had last night was hell and brimstone. He’d never experienced anything like that before. Fortunately, you had.”

A sudden dark flash came across Siri’s mind. He saw himself with his hands around Auntie Suab’s throat during the exorcism. He shrugged it from his mind.

“Me? What good was I? I was unconscious.”

“This body was. But Yeh Ming was with us. You acted as a mentor for Lao Jong. Kept everyone calm. Between the two of you, you were able to chase the Phibob from my body.”

Siri again saw himself with his hands wrapped tightly around the old lady’s throat, but this time there were sounds: the gong, screaming.

“We made certain they couldn’t possess anyone from the village, not even your soldier friend. He was crying like a baby at the end.”

“Where did they go, the Phibob?”

“Back to the trees. They don’t use hosts very often. They’re more at home in the jungle.”

“Why did they pick you?”

“The amulets, I suppose. I pick up a lot of bad karma from my clients. I handle a lot of cursed talismans. Malevolent spirits often target women.”

“And you didn’t know they were in you?”

“The host never knows. Their influence works on your subconscious. This, for example.” She held up the black prism in front of his eyes. “I had no idea it had been tampered with.”

As it swung back and forth, the images of the previous night became more vivid. He could smell the beeswax from the lamps. Suab was fighting him off with incredible, unearthly strength. Nobody came to help. Lao Jong lay unconscious on the ground, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

Auntie Suab looked at him. “What’s wrong?”

“I…I’m getting visions of last night. They’re so real.”

“That’ll continue for a while, I’m afraid. It’s only to be expected after what you went through. That’s one more reason why you need to put this back on.” She slid across the floor towards him and held out the amulet.

“Put it on? But it was the amulet that stopped me seeing the Phibob in the first place.”

“It stopped you seeing them while they were in the host. Now that they’re gone from me, there’s no danger. The amulet’s charm has been reversed. The prism will protect you from their revenge. Are you listening?”

Siri was shaking his head. The quiet of the morning was invaded by the sounds of last night’s ceremony: The villagers were chanting his name. A woman was crying; it was Lao Jong’s wife lying over his body.

The morning was losing its warmth. The sun through the window had fallen behind a cloud.

“It’s so real.”

“Put this on, Yeh Ming. Put this on and it will all go away.”

“I can’t. For some reason I know I shouldn’t. There’s something wrong here.”

“You must trust me.” She was losing her patience with him. Her voice became deeper.

“How do you know they talked of revenge?” The tiniest drip of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth, and Siri understood. The night was not intruding into the morning; the morning was intruding into the night. He wasn’t imagining he was strangling Suab. He actually was. That was the reality. The soft bed, the kind Suab, and the soup, was an image forced into his head by Phibob.

The malevolent spirits were lulling him, coaxing him to put on the amulet to weaken him. It was their only hope. He had Suab by the neck and he was casting the spirits from her. They couldn’t withstand his power. They’d killed the medium, but Yeh Ming was too strong. He removed one hand from Suab’s neck and with inhuman ferocity slapped her across the face.

“Be gone, Phibob. Be gone.”

And gone they were, in a rush of static that sucked the air from the room. Suab’s body became limp, and Yeh Ming let it drop. He looked around at the silent villagers, who held their palms together and cast their tear-filled eyes downward. His work was done. Slowly he crumpled to the ground and slept.

¦

When he awoke he heard the sound of a spoon clanking against a pot but didn’t dare look. He heard the sound of soup pouring into a bowl and tried not to listen.

“He’s awake.”

It was a man’s voice and it was answered by the grunt of another. Siri looked up to see some of the elders sitting in a huddle at the far side of the hut. They got to their feet and hurried across the room. They seemed pleased to see him. The young girl he’d met before was dishing up soup for everyone. It smelled good.

Siri said nothing to the men. He watched them. He looked for abnormalities, anything out of place, sudden changes in the light. Tshaj spoke first.

“How are you feeling, Yeh Ming?” The voice seemed legitimate, but Siri wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

“Who are you?”

The men looked at each other, confused. “I’m Tshaj. What’s wrong?”

“What year is this?”

“1976.”

“The date?” Siri figured a malevolent spirit wouldn’t have an up-to-date calendar.

The elders looked at one another again. Unfortunately, dates weren’t something they needed to concern themselves with either. One of them took a stab at it.

“November?”

“What day?”

“Monday.”

“No. That isn’t possible. What happened to Friday and Saturday and Sunday?”

“You slept through them.”

“You’ve been out like a clod of earth since…that night.”

It wasn’t unlikely. He felt leaden and uncommonly hungry. The smell of the soup was bringing on rumbling in his insides. But he still wasn’t absolutely at peace with what he was seeing.

“Where’s Lao Jong?”

Tshaj looked down at his hands. “He’s gone.”

“Gone, dead? From the exorcism?”

The men nodded solemnly.

“He wasn’t in physical condition to tolerate all that turmoil he was hosting. He’d never really done it before, not to that degree. He had a bad heart already, and the Phibob could tell. I can’t think what they made him see that shocked him so. Not sure I’d want to know.”

“I can imagine.”

“Lucky for us, Yeh Ming was open to the deities. There was the devil of a battle.”

“I think I met that devil. What happened to the Phibob?”

“Back to the forest.”

“Just like that? They just happily scurried back to the forest with their tails between their legs?”

“There’ll be nothing happy about it. There’s still a lot of mischief to be had in the jungle. But they’ll think twice about possessing any of us, now that we’re protected. Yeh Ming left us a blessing and put a spell on our village.”

“Nice of him.” Siri decided this was reality, if only because his stomach was bleating like a tethered goat from the aroma of the soup. Recovering from seventy-two hours of sleep is no easy matter, and he needed help from the elders to sit up. They were flesh and blood, but mostly bone. The blushing girl spooned soup into his mouth. He could have done it himself, but he rather liked the service.

“What about the captain?” he asked between slurps.

“He was blessed too. It seemed to make him very confident. He decided to protect his men as well. Auntie