The Hungry Ghosts - Anne Berry

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glare, wisely she elects to creep away.

      ‘You’ll make yourself sick if you eat all that,’ says Alice prophetically.

      And that is exactly what Jillian does.When she has eaten so much that she seems barely able to walk and keep it all contained, she flicks off the kitchen light, staggers through the dining room, and down the long, dark corridor to the bathroom.We follow her and see her stumble inside, slam the door, and switch the light on.A thin, yellow stripe at the base of the door filters into the dimness.We hear Jillian lock it behind her. Then she begins to retch. For a long while she vomits and chokes. The sounds are harsh. They splinter the night. I am amazed that no one wakens at the din. Alice crouches in the murk listening to her sister disgorging herself,and her mother snoring. A few times Bear approaches her, but then he senses my presence and slinks away again, hackles high. Several of the corridor windows are open, and a welcome breeze is cooling the flat.The cicadas trill. Their song rhythmically swells and then subsides.The taps snort out water. The toilet flushes. Then silence. The cicadas too are momentarily still, as if in anticipation.The bathroom door slams open, hitting the wall with a resounding ‘thwack’. A square of light falls into the darkness, with the silhouette of Jillian squinting at its centre. She is not wearing her glasses.

      ‘Bitch,’ she fires into the corridor. She stinks of bile. She wipes the back of a hand over her mouth, gives a brittle laugh and flicks off the light. The darkness springs back. I remember what it is to be starving, the acid ache of it. I remember not knowing if I would eat again. I remember that food haunted my dreams, that it had the power to bewitch me. Jillian feels her way like a blind man past Harry’s bedroom to her own, goes in, the door thumping shut behind her. Still Alice huddles in the blackness. Bear growls softly. Some time later, after several unsuccessful attempts, a key turns in a lock and scratches the dark. The front door swings open. Nicola appears with a boy in tow, silhouettes in the lobby light. Entwined they fall back against the front door, closing it with their bodies. They tumble onto the Persian rug in the shadowy hall. There is a lot of grunting and struggling. Clothes are tossed aside. White bits swim into sight. Buttocks, an erect penis, a breast, an upright V of splayed legs.They are made luminous in the moonlight, these infrequently seen body parts. The dog watches cocking his head in puzzlement.

      ‘For Christ’s sake stop fucking about and put it in,’ snarls Nicola. The tone of her voice is bored and irritable.There is a bit of adjustment, then a good deal of rocking and panting, followed by a breathy cry. A few seconds pass. ‘Get off me, Mick. I think I’m going to be sick,’ groans Nicola. The boy, Mick, leaps up obediently. He begins tugging on his jeans. Nicola is slower to get up. She pulls on her pants and smoothes down her skirt. ‘I’m tired, so can you just fuck off now,’ she says opening the front door, unceremoniously showing the boy out, and shutting it firmly behind him. Without bothering to put on the lights she weaves her way down the corridor, never noticing Alice hugging the blackness to her. She vanishes straight into the room she shares with Jillian.

      Alice’s mother, Myrtle, is on next.Her bedroom door opens slowly, and for a few seconds she stands swaying in the doorway. Then she steps gingerly into the stream of moonlight. She is wearing a pale dressing gown.There is a metallic sheen to it. Her hair is loose, falling about her shoulders. Her gait is unsteady. She finds her way to the bamboo-clad bar in the hall. She also seems to want invisibility, and does not bother with the lights. She fumbles with the sliding door of the bar, grabs a bottle, unscrews the top and takes a greedy gulp. With it clutched to her chest, she treads with the care of a tightrope walker back to her bedroom, and quietly closes the door.

      ‘While my father is away,’ whispers Alice, whose father is on a business trip in Singapore, ‘the mice come out to play.’

      Later Alice drags some pillows and blankets into the corridor, and nestles by a bookcase that borders one of the walls. She cannot see the titles in the half-light, but she touches the hard spines of the books, and follows the contours of the lettering printed on their covers with an index finger. Much later, when I levitate out of Alice to glide along the ceiling, until I am floating just above the drinks cabinet, Bear cautiously nears my host. He sniffs her bedding warily, until he is satisfied it holds no trace of me.Then he nudges his way into the makeshift bed. Not satisfied with his proximity to Alice, he nuzzles at the bent arm at her side. Alice, half asleep, starts, her eyes springing open. Then in a wave of recognition she enwraps Bear, her dog,and draws him close to her.At length they sleep,Alice dropping off first, Bear rolling his eyes upwards and baring his teeth at me once, and then again, before finally settling down. I peer at them with bafflement at first, and then with something very like resentment. Alice’s face is calm, like still water. Her arm rises and falls gently as the dog’s lungs fill and deflate. Soon their rhythmic breaths interlock, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, and their two hearts fall to beating in unison. I am covetous of their shared warmth, their joint slumber. Seeing their bodies spooned together makes me recall the taste of the Chinese speciality, Bitter Melon.

      On the bar is a cut-glass decanter. Dipped in moonshine, the diamond panes glint like silver sequins. Although the decanter looks heavy, I am positive I can shift it. I condense myself and slither between it and the smooth, plastic surface of the bar. I radiate heat, drawing it from Alice, from the dog, from the air, and concentrating it, as you might do with a glass concentrating the energy of the sun to make fire. I distil the moisture of the night, sucking it up from the dew-soaked air. Soon the plastic is wet and slippery. I feel the decanter move then, just an inch or so. After that it is easy, one inch more and more and more. Now nearly half of the crystal sphere hangs over the edge of the bar. The liquid inside it sloshes and slops, a storm in a bottle. I draw every drop of it into the unsupported half of the glittering bulge. The bottle vibrates a moment. Then it arcs and plummets, splitting into pieces against the wooden floor with a heavy crash.The liquid bursts, liberated briefly before it pools. The dog snarls. Alice shifts drowsily. I hear a whimper coming from one of the bedrooms. I think it may be Harry.Then the hush slowly unfurls again.

      In the morning though it is anything but quiet.A shaft of sunlight falls on the jagged pieces of the fractured decanter. It makes a wondrous dazzlement of them. I am delighted by the eye-catching trinkets I have brought into being. Surprisingly,Alice’s mother is not impressed. She shrieks at Alice. The dog scurries away, head down, tail between his legs. The amahs raise their hands to their mouths, and insist they know nothing of how the decanter came to be broken. But when Ah Lee hunkers down and begins to pick up splinters of glass, Alice’s mother grabs her shoulder and gives it a little shake.

      ‘Alice will do this,’ she cries. ‘She will collect up every bit of it in a bag, and when her father comes home she will show it to him.’ She lets go the shoulder and swoops on Alice. ‘You will tell him what you have done. Do you understand me,Alice?’ Myrtle Safford’s face looks flushed. It is fast becoming the colour of raw meat. Her fingers work busily at the embroidered sleeve of her blouse. She is bound to pull a thread if she persists in picking at the fine handiwork, I think.

      ‘I did not break the decanter,’ Alice says, on her feet, head held high, facing her mother. She repeats this several times.

      ‘Do not lie to me,’ Myrtle interrupts her. Her eyes look dry and sore, the lids drawing in sharply, as if the bright sunshine is hurting them.

      Jillian materialises wearing one of her father’s old shirts. Her apathetic flint-grey eyes scan the tableau, amahs askance, mother enraged, Alice defiant. She wags her head slowly, knowingly from side to side. ‘I have a sore throat,’ she grunts, her hand stroking her collarbone. She yawns expansively, steps carefully over the broken glass, pushes past the amahs, and on into the dining room. ‘I need some breakfast. I’m starving,’ she mutters over her shoulder.

      I cannot help wondering if she will throw it all up again later on. Nicola does not make an entrance. I expect she is tired after the previous night’s exertions. Harry peeps round his door, surveys the scene, and vanishes like a timorous mouse. It is plain to me that Alice is agitated. She does not seem the least bit thrilled with my achievement. She stoops and picks up a piece of glass.While her mother is shouting, she pushes the ragged point of it into the tip of a thumb. Ah Lee bursts into a fit of nervous giggles.

      ‘Mo lei tau!’ Ah Dang mutters.

      Alice

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