Part One
Chiang Mai Horror Stories
By
Sean Fallon
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
George Bernard Shaw
Part One
I had been working at the Naga Academy for nine weeks when they sent me for a check-up. The check-up was a necessary requirement for applying for a work permit to work overseas. Now even though I had been working in Thailand for just over two months, they had only recently pulled their finger out and started preparing the paperwork in order to make the arrangement legit.
I strolled the short distance from the school to the hospital during my lunch hour. The sweat poured down my face, making my sunglasses keep sliding down my nose and parts of my shirt were turning see-through. I avoided the trees that grew straight up out of the pavement and stepped over a sleeping dog, all the while humming tunelessly to myself. A few months ago I had been working in Manchester at a clothes shop struggling to make ends meet. Now I was a teacher earning half what I would in England but enjoying my life a hundred times as much.
The hospital appeared on my left and I sauntered towards the patient entrance, past an ambulance unloading a man on a stretcher who seemed to have been in a motorbike accident judging from the amount of skin scraped off his leg. The guy was simply moaning to himself whereas I think I would have been screaming the place down but maybe they had given him something in the ambulance to keep him quiet.
I entered the hospital, the cold air of the ceiling fans stroking my face like an over-zealous bar girl. The man behind the counter was short and fat, wearing a blue shirt with a nametag that bore a name I don’t think human tongues were designed to pronounce.
He said, ‘Sawadee krub,’ and wai-ed me.
I returned the gesture and said, ‘check-up.’ Then made a strange hand motion that I think was supposed to mean check-up.
He looked at me blankly for a few seconds and my heart sank. I had been in Thailand for over two months and I still had yet to master conversational Thai, I could greet people, thank people, order food and drinks and all those other necessities but I couldn’t banter with natives or help them understand me with a few choice Thai words.
Finally he said, ‘You want check-up? Go to booth 23 and wait to be called.’
I thanked him and wai-ed again feeling somewhat of a tit for doing that horrible tourist thing of the loud talking and stupid hand gestures. I sheepishly walked to a line of benches under a fan and sat next to a thin Thai man in a Chelsea shirt.
Next to me on the bench was a copy of the Bangkok Post. My local newspaper was the Chiang Mai Gazette, which was an easier paper to read, mostly because it was written in English. The Bangkok Post however usually had the most interesting pictures on the cover. In England most tabloids will show a certain degree of restraint when it comes to stories about murders or grisly accidents, usually hinting at the details and keeping the pictures discreet.
Not in Thailand.
The Bangkok Post printed the most horrendous things on its cover. Today it was an image of a man in an orange jumpsuit loading/removing what appeared to be severed heads into/from a set of cardboard boxes. The pictures weren’t blurred out or black barred. No, this severed head had a face and a pair of eyes that stared at the reader seemingly begging them to read the story.
A large man in a claret red Lanna shirt sat down next to me. I carried on looking at the pictures in my paper but they usually saved all the interesting pictures for the first page, the rest was simply pictures of the king and pictures of celebrities I didn’t know. I folded the paper up and put it on my lap. The man next to me was humming a song under his breath and it took a few seconds before I realised it was the Naga Academy song: ‘Naga give me wings.’ I turned to look at the man.
The humming stopped and the man said, ‘Ah, Eric, what are you here for?’
It was my boss, Jeff Colis, his Lanna shirt stretched out across his large belly.
‘Morning Jeff, I’m here for my work permit check-up. It’s stupid cos I had a check-up when I first got here.’
‘That was for your teaching license.’ He was American but I couldn’t place the region, his voice was a seemingly constant monotone, which had caused me to contemplate suicide twice during the week long orientation he had held for the new teachers when we first arrived at the school.
‘Couldn’t they just photocopy it?’ And even before I finished speaking I knew instinctively what his reply would be. Four words that he seemingly thought answered all questions about this country.
‘That’s the Thai way.’ He chuckled as though that strange piece of overt racism passed for wisdom.
‘Yeah….so what are you here for?’
He paused for a second then said, ‘What?’
‘What are you here for?’
‘Oh, I’m here for a check up too. When you get to my age you gotta make sure everything’s in full working order.’
‘Yeah, totally.’ That appeared to be the end of the conversation and we both lapsed into silence. I opened my bag and took out the first thing my hand touched: my camera. I turned it on and pointed it at different parts of the hospital, watching the scene on the little screen on the back of the camera.
The screen was suddenly filled with white as an orderly walked past me and started talking to Jeff.
The orderly was wearing a classic white hospital uniform only this one was slightly off-white. Everything about this guy was strangely grubby. He had crooked brown teeth and a cold sore on his lip that he had clearly been picking. He had dirt under what was left of his well-bitten nails and I’m pretty sure that there was blood on the cuffs of his shirt.
Jeff and the sleazy hospital guy conversed in rapid Thai then Jeff stood up and followed the guy away from me. I watched them through the camera trying to get a picture of the sleazy guy to show my friends but in the end I only managed to get a rush shot just as he and Jeff turned a corner and were out of sight.
Something about the whole thing freaked me out but before I could dwell on it more I was called into the doctor’s office for my check-up.
After school I met up with Dave and Zed at Ears, a restaurant near the school. It wasn’t called Ears but the waitress who always served us had big ears and the name stuck. Actually calling it a restaurant was a push, it was like the inside of a mechanics filled with chairs and serving food. The huge ceiling fans seemed designed for industry as opposed to making one’s dining experience comfortable. However the food was gorgeous and the big-eared waitress was a cutie so we went there every day.
I ordered my usual: Khao Pad Gai with a Khai Down on top, which was basically chicken fried rice with a fried egg on top.
‘You get your permit sorted?’ said Dave, sipping an ice coffee.
‘Yeah I got my check-up and gave it to Pacman.’ The woman in the admin office was fat to the point that she was completely circular, hence Pacman. Most of the Thai people we knew were simply given nicknames by us that we never said to their face, simply because most of the time we did not know their names or couldn’t pronounce them.
‘Right, she’ll take you to immigration next week probably to finish it all off.’ Dave taught at the Academy as well but had lived in Thailand longer than me so his work permit had needed to be sorted faster before his visa ran out.
Zed pushed his plate away with a satisfied sigh. ‘That was the shit.’
His plate had been cleaned of food in less than two minutes. ‘Jesus, you fucken inhaled that.’
He laughed and downed his orange shake in one gulp. ‘I was hungry.’
‘From what? I believe it was only yesterday you said that you do fuck-all all day.’ Zed didn’t work at the school; in fact he didn’t work anywhere. He had traveled around Asia for a bit then went to Australia and hated it so much he moved back to Thailand. I had met him last year when I was traveling around Thailand and we had agreed to meet up again after I had got the job at the Academy.
‘Its hard work doing nothing, anyway I’ve been editing my film, playing on the computer, fucking ya mum.’
Ice coffee sprayed out of Dave’s nose as he roared with laughter.
‘Fuck you, guys.’ Not my best retort but I’d had a long day.
Once my friends had stopped laughing I said, ‘Oh I saw Jeff in the hospital today.’
‘What was he doing? Looking for a personality donor?’ said Dave.
‘Well he said he was going for a check-up but then went off with this horrible hospital dude. I tried to get a photo of this guy cos he was fucken mess.’ I pulled my camera out of my bag and showed Dave the picture on the little screen.
‘It’s not a great photo but he doesn’t look like someone I’d want looking after me.’
I handed the camera to Zed.
‘Yeah I was just sat next to him and luckily he didn’t try and tell me any stories but I did complain about something and-‘
‘That’s the Thai way,’ said Dave in a perfect Jeff monotone.
‘Exactly.’
‘Dude, this is odd,’ said Zed turning the camera so I could see the picture.
‘What’s up?’
‘Well, the sign behind Jeff.’
On the picture behind Jeff’s head was a green sign, all in Thai, indicating the direction they were going and probably saying which area they were heading to. ‘It’s in Thai.’
‘Yeah, but I can read Thai and it seems like this sleazy dude is taking Jeff to the maternity ward.’
‘You sure?’
‘Pretty sure.’ He translated the words for me from Thai writing to English style writing then the words from Thai to English.
‘Why the hell would he be going to a maternity ward?’
‘He’s got a wife,’ said Dave.
‘And she’s, like, seventy.’
‘Maybe he got a student pregnant,’ said Zed.
‘Doesn’t seem likely, seems too religious and also too boring for that kind of thing,’ said Dave. ‘And also he’s probably too old.’
This statement stuck in my head, how old was Jeff? I had been to his house when I first arrived in Chiang Mai and his wife was pretty old, about sixty or maybe seventy but Jeff was fairly sprightly. By no means a young man but not an old one either. He had once said he had lived in Thailand for thirty years and someone had told me that he had owned a business in America before that, maybe he was sixty and just took good care of himself.
‘Actually, saying that, Jeff might just be boring enough to have a really dark secret like that.’ Dave pushed his plate away and signaled the waitress over. ‘If he was really exciting and outgoing then chances are he’d have nothing to hide but he’s not, he’s not in the slightest bit interesting which makes me think that that motherfucker has got something to hide.’ The waitress arrived and we flirted with her for a bit then paid our bills and headed home.
Home was a hotel room on the third floor of the Nunta Watsa Lodge. It was quite expensive for a place in Thailand but it had a T.V., a fridge, maid service, room service and a swimming pool.
Dave lived in the room above mine and Zed lived on the other side of the city. Zed had left his bike at the Lodge so came back with us to pick it up.
Once I was back in my room I got the air-con blasting and got changed out of my school uniform and into my civvies. Though having a T.V. was a perk the problem was that ninety-nine percent of the channels were solely Thai language which was a problem considering that not only was I not fluent in Thai but all the shows looked really weird. I just left a music channel on with the volume low and had a nap.
I had been asleep all of five minutes when there was a knock at my door. I knew straight away it was Amie by her distinct knock: three loud bangs on the door. Even though I knew it was her I always had a brief image of a policeman outside my door about to burst in and bust my ass for some reason.
I croaked, ‘Come in,’ and she entered.
I had met Amie at the same time I had met Zed. Last year when I was holidaying in Thailand I had been pick pocketed on the Khao San Road and forced top spend my last eleven days there. Luckily after I had been there six days and teetered on the brink of madness I met Zed and Amie and we had hung out together and to be honest when we parted company I had never expected to see them again, but that was not the case. We had kept in touch on the internet and eventually they had lured me back to the Land of Smiles.
‘Hey,’ she said, walking into my room and standing at the foot of the bed. Amie was an American but I didn’t hold that against her.
‘Alright, what’s up?’
‘Nothing, just a bit bored. What you been upto today?’
‘Taught for a bit then had to get another check-up for my work permit.’
‘Shut up! They still haven’t sorted that out for me.’
‘Did you just tell me to shut up?’
‘Yeah, oh well, hopefully they’ll do it next week, how was it?’
‘Same same really, only I was sat next to Jeff in the waiting room.’ She winced, ‘and then some minging hospital orderly led him away to what I later discovered was the maternity ward.’
‘Minging?’
‘Oh, English slang: disgusting, horrible, ugly.’
‘Oh right,’ she shook her head slightly and I had the feeling the words “those wacky Brits” was flashing through her head.
‘I can show you how minging he was.’ I showed her my camera.
‘Wow, he looks horrible even from that angle, I’d hate to see his whole face.’
‘Yep. No idea why they’d let him work in a hospital or why he’d be mates with Jeff.’
‘So why’s Jeff going the maternity ward, think he knocked up a student?’
‘Nah, too boring.’
‘You never know, he may have a secret life we don’t know about. Maybe he just sits in his office all day smoking dope and fucking students.’
'That would explain the monotone voice if he was just baked all the time.’
‘Yeah he, like, walks into a meeting and says, “Sorry I’m late, I was high on crack! Let a playa play!'
'I can’t work it out, he is just too boring to have impregnated a student so why the maternity ward?’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll work it out. Okay just popped in to say hello and now I’m off to get some food. I’ll seeya later.’
‘Yeah you too, honey.’
When she left I lay on my bed watching T.V. until I fell asleep.
After a week I stopped thinking about the hospital thing and focused on my work. Being a teacher in Thailand is a mixture of bone crushing misery and unprecedented joy. The misery usually comes from the fact that the other teachers in my office never tell me anything until the last minute so I’ll be forced to give tests I haven’t prepared my students for which makes me the bad guy in their eyes. The joy comes from the fact that I get paid an inordinate amount of money for what is essentially very little work.
I was sitting at desk writing next weeks lesson plans when the office phone rang. I usually don’t answer it because I don’t speak enough Thai to get any messages across but recently I was being encouraged to try and have a go. So as the phone rang the other teachers in my office looked to me.
I picked up the receiver, dreading hearing Thai, ‘Hello.’
‘Hey, Sean?’ It was Amie.
‘Hey, thank God it’s you, thought I was about to have another Thai phone call disaster.’
She laughed, ‘Well I was tempted to start speaking Thai just to hear you panic but I’m not that much of a shit.’
‘Oh that’s good to know. So what’s up? Becky’s teaching if you want to speak to her.’ Becky was the other English speaker in my office, she was also American and sometimes I was forced to hold that against her.
‘I’ll speak to her later, but the weirdest thing happened to me today. Went for my check up and while I was walking up to the hospital an ambulance was dropping off a guy on a stretcher who looked like he’d been in a motorcycle crash. His chest was just pouring blood and he was yelling and crying and one of his legs was completely fucked. Anyway, it was your minging hospital guy.’
‘No way.’
‘Yep and that dude was fucked up, when my check up finished and I went back past the front of the hospital there was blood everywhere. I would not be surprised to see him on the front of the Bangkok Post in the near future.’
And she was right.
Two days later on the cover of the newspaper was a picture of the minging orderly with some of the nastier gore vaguely blurred out but not blurred enough that you couldn’t pretty much see what it was.
I was sat in Ears with Dave and Zed. Zed had taken the paper and was trying to decipher the article.
‘Basically it says that hospital worker, Kiet Tanvisut, was killed in a motorcycle accident when his bike collided with a wall.’ Zed put the paper down, ‘that is a shit way to go.’
‘Yep,’ I said, turning the paper over so I couldn’t see the picture.
The three of us sat in silence for a few moments, possibly contemplating mortality, possibly waiting for someone to speak.
Eventually Dave made a noise as he started shuffling a pack of cards he had taken from his bag.
I closed my eyes, ‘Please tell me they aren’t what I think they are.’
‘What? These? They’re my Tarot cards.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You do realise that its complete bollocks, right?’
‘Really? And why is it bullocks?’
‘It’s bollocks cos its bollocks. You can only give people vague ideas about the future which they interpret to mean whatever they want them to mean.’
‘Exactly,’ said Dave, a lightly smug look on his face.
‘What?’
‘I never tell people I can tell their future I just offer them what the cards have to say and its up to them to decide to follow them or not.’
‘And how is that not bollocks?’
‘Dude, I didn’t invent them, I just like them. You wanna reading, ask for one, if not, don’t.’ He put the cards back in his bag. ‘Just don’t be an arsehole about it.’
‘Okay, sorry, dude, I just don’t get it, that’s all.’
‘Okay.’
Zed sighed loudly, ‘Can we pay the bill now?’
The next day I was in school again, sat in my office playing naughts and crosses against myself when Ajarn Pichaya came over to my desk.
‘Hi,’ I said surreptitiously moving my naughts and crosses game under some homework I was supposed to be marking.
‘Hello Eric, are you ready for our lesson?’ She was carrying a large pile of worksheets that gave the students vocabulary words about describing their own house. For this lesson we split a class of sixty and Ajarn Pichaya took one half, myself the other.
‘Yeah, ready to go.’
She dropped the worksheets on my desk. ‘This is your half. Oh and you won’t be teaching in your normal room, Ajarn Jeff has taken that so you’ll have to find a free room.’
Fucken Jeff! ‘Oh that’s alright, do you know any free rooms?’
‘There’s possibly some on the science floor.’
I had been looking for an excuse to teach in the science labs for ages as they were the only rooms that had air conditioning instead of fans. ‘That’s perfect.’
When my lesson was over the class slowly bled out of the ice cold science lab and I stood behind the raised dais at the front for a while soaking up the beautiful chilled air.
Today, much like every other day, had been a hot one and the chance to be able to stand around without sweating out half my body weight was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Eventually, however, I had to make a move back to my office; those homework assignments weren’t going to mark themselves.
I walked down the empty corridor humming the Thai national anthem, which had a habit of getting stuck in my head. This was possibly because the school had to sing it every morning at eight a.m.
Almost as soon as I had left the science room I had begun to sweat. I stopped and removed my new glasses I had bought over the weekend. They had thick black rims and I was currently in love with them. I wiped them lovingly with a cloth I kept in my pocket, trying to get every speck of perspiration from them. I raised them so I could look through the lenses to check how clean they were. Through the lens I saw that I was standing next to a large wooden case with glass doors. It looked like a trophy case with each glass panel showing shelves laden with jars.
I put my glasses back on and peered through the glass.
Each jar contained a dead animal floating in formaldehyde.
There was a rabbit, a rat, a turtle, a bird, a variety of lizards and a snake. The snake made me take a few steps back. I was terrified of snakes and just being in close proximity to one, even a dead one in a jar behind a pane of glass made me feel uneasy. It was black and white, coiled in a circle, its head resting atop the coils. Part of my mind was trying to convince me that any second now it was going to move or I’d look away for a second and look back and it would be gone then I’d feel a strange slithering sensation across the back of my neck before the teeth sank in.
I shuddered and felt cool sweat coat my arms and back.
I looked away from the snake down to the next shelf, which may not have been my best idea.
There were five jars on the next shelf. They were arranged from smallest to biggest like an opened Russian doll. The smallest was about the size of a jam jar while the biggest was the size of a football. The three in-between bridged the sizes.
They were all filled with formaldehyde and contained dead specimens as well the only difference being that these five jars contained dead human foetuses.
Dave dropped his fork back onto his plate. ‘You couldn’t have told me this story when I wasn’t eating?’
‘Sorry chief, still a bit wigged out by the whole thing. I mean there are dead babies in jars in the school. It’s offensive on so many levels.’ I hadn’t ordered food and sat in Ears sipping a glass of water.
‘Offensive?’ asked Zed, calmly eating his food.
‘Hell yeah, there are dead human beings on display in a trophy case in a school. Why are they there? The science classes don’t do experiments on them so what purpose do they serve?’
‘They show what a foetus looks like,’ ventured Dave.
‘Bullshit, the little ones might do that but the big one, that big one is a baby. It’s got hair, fingernails; it’s got a fucken facial expression for fuck’s sake. There is no reason why that should be on display anywhere.’
Zed pushed his plate away. ‘This has really got to you, hasn’t it?’
‘It’s a baby crammed into a jar half its size and when you look at it, it looks back at you. It’s the most horrible thing.’
‘Well, what are you gonna do about it?’ Said Dave.
‘The only thing I can do. As distasteful as it is, I’m gonna have to go and speak to Jeff.’
‘Fucken hell, this has got to you.’ Said Dave, ‘you’re willing to enter Jeff’s office and endure a conversation with him. That could take hours just for him to eventually say the four magic words.’
‘I know but I feel as though I gotta do something, cos there’s something wrong about those jars. Something very wrong.’
The next day I got Jeff’s mobile phone number from Becky and rang his mobile. As the phone rang I forced all negative thoughts to the back of my mind and reminded myself that having to phone Jeff was for the greater good.
‘Hello,’ and there was that monotone I knew and loathed, only today he sounded slightly croaking, as though while talking to me he was chewing paper.
‘Hi, Jeff, it’s Eric.’
‘Hey Eric, what’s up?’
‘Erm, I was wondering if you had any time after school I could come see you about something.’
‘Well, yeah, you finish at half four and I have some stuff to do so come over to my office about five.’
‘Yeah, that’s great, seeya later.’
‘Yeah, bye.’
I hung up, admittedly that could have been more painful. So if I was meeting him at five that meant I wouldn’t get out of his office until at least half six and chances are the foetus thing would be resolved in the first ten minutes and the rest of the time would be filed with handy teaching tips or anecdotes that don’t go anyway. Still I kept reminding myself it was for the greater good.
Gradually half four arrived and the teachers began to leave. I headed over to Jeff’s office just in case I could catch him and quickly tell him my problem, saving me the horror of the planned meeting.
I crossed the vast school grounds in fifteen minutes and arrived at his office. His secretary was behind her desk eating a bag of fruit.
‘Sawasdee krub, Ploy, is Ajarn Jeff here?’
‘No, Mister Eric, he go to meeting.’
‘Thanks, Ploy. I will leave him a note.’
I entered his office and quickly wrote a note explaining that I had missed him and the journey across the school and back would probably make me late for our planned time but I needed to get my bag before they locked everything up.
I knew that no matter what time I got back I would be greeted with some sort of smarmy comment, either I was too late or too early but that was the Jeff way.
I got back to my office and sat down for a minute to catch my breath, there was nothing wise about walking great distances in this heat. I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed out of the office.
It was here that I made what would turn out to be one of the worst decisions of my life. For some reason, rather than heading straight back to Jeff’s office I decided to have one last look at the foetus trophy case just to keep myself pissed off about it.
And also the boys had asked me to take some photos.
My school shoes squeaked quietly with every step I took down the empty corridors. That was one of the weird things about schools, the second it was time to go everyone went. No one liked to hang around a school in the same way no one likes to hang around a cemetery.
I entered the science lab area and saw the trophy case at the opposite end. I approached it hurriedly, reminding myself that everything inside it was dead and not going to attack me but I still moved quickly just to get the initial shock of seeing the jars again over with.
There was no shock this time though only a sense of familiarity. There were the animals and the four foetus jars and has horrendous as the whole thing was, it was also strangely reassuring to see them all here un-tampered with.
And then it hit me.
There were only four jars so one of the foetuses was missing. The smallest one, the jam jar, was gone. The trophy case was locked so whoever’s taken it must have picked the lock or something. Or it’s someone from the school. Maybe they are using the specimens in lessons. Okay, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever thought about in my life. Thirty students all clamouring around for a look as the teacher dissects an aborted human foetus.
‘Man, I gotta sort this out,’ I said, possibly towards the other four specimen jars. ‘I better go and tell Jeff.’
POP!
It was a noise like when you put your finger behind your cheek and pull it out and it makes a popping noise. Only this noise was made loud by the silence and the emptiness of the corridor.
I moved slowly towards the sound’s origin. It seemed to have come from the room at the end. If there were students in there I would have to kick them out and if they gave me crap about it I was just enough of a bad mood to dish out some punishment, contrasting my reputation as an easy going teacher.
The curtains were drawn on the last lab. I reached for the door but decided it might be safer to have a peek through a gap in the curtains just in case it was two teachers up to something, then it wouldn’t be great if a barged in. Though if it was two teachers doing the wild thing, what the hell was that popping noise?
I found a gap in the curtain and peered through.
The desks in the science labs are all equipped with little sink units. Standing next to one of these sink was Jeff Colis.
He was wearing his usual get-up of smart slacks and a strangely coloured Lanna shirt. His face looked drawn and there were a few more lines on it than I remembered him having, if anything the best way to describe him was that he was starting to look his age.
The lights were off but there was enough light filtered in through the curtains to see what he was doing. He was pouring something out into the sink, using the lid to make sure only liquid came out because there appeared to be something solid in the jar he was holding. He moved his hand slightly and I saw what the solid thing was.
‘Holy. Fucking. Shit.’ I breathed the words, not quite able to create sound.
He was draining the formaldehyde out of the small foetus jar. The liquid slopped into the sink, seemingly reluctant to leave its jar. Jeff removed the foetus (with his bare hands!) and carefully began washing it off underneath the tap.
It was strange, when I thought back to this moment, I always imagined that I’d seen Jeff with big sharp teeth and glowing red eyes, but that wasn’t true. He was just a fat bloke washing something under a tap.
When he was happy the foetus was washed he began to eat it.
First he chewed off one of its legs, then the other, then its arms one by one then he really sank his teeth into the torso, really had to give that a chewing, and then devoured the head in three pretty big bites.
This all happened so fast my mind couldn’t catch up with my eyes. I knew something that just happened, something horrendous, something that no one should ever see, especially in a school, but I couldn’t seem to remind myself of what it was.
Jeff licked his lips and actually patted his stomach before he began to wash his hands.
My brain switched back on and I ran as fast as I could out of the school.
But there was a problem. I had left a note on Jeff’s desk, I had spoke to his secretary, if I didn’t show up for the meeting question would be asked, questions that I wasn’t prepared to answer. I already felt like I was about to have a stroke.
I would have to go back to Jeff’s office and have the meeting with him even after what I had just seen.
I started to walk towards his office hoping that I would have stopped shaking by the time I arrived.
Nope.
I sat in his office, gripping the armrests of my chair so tightly I couldn’t feel my fingers.
Jeff had yet to arrive but I knew any minute now he would walk in. My mind painted pictures of the event and I saw him walk in, blood around his mouth or he would come in with a little tiny finger stuck to his cheek.
The door behind me opened and I started, letting out a sound something like, ‘Yah!’
It was Jeff, ‘Wow, Eric, sorry to startle you, maybe you need to cut down on the caffeine.’ He chuckled and I forced a laugh out from some depth of my body.
He sat down behind his desk. I scrutinised his face: no blood, no little finger. Behind his chair was a clock mounted above a large photo frame with nothing inside it, which always caught my eye but today didn’t seem so important. I watched the clock, every second I was in this room was a second closer to me letting something slip or him revealing that he knew I had seen what he had done before ripping my throat out with his fat hands reeking of formaldehyde.
‘Are you okay, Eric? You look unwell.’ Jeff looked fine; he looked like a man who was a third of his age.
‘I don’t feel too good Jeff, long day and I haven’t eaten much and you know with this heat and teaching –‘You’re rambling, stop it ‘- and anyway I may just need a lie-down at some point.’ I had mentioned illness and hinted at the need to get out of the room, that may have cut fifteen minutes off the meeting considering that Jeff couldn’t read between the lines so wouldn’t realise that I was actually asking to leave as soon as humanly possible.
‘Well, we’ll make this quick then shall we?’
Did he mean real quick? Or Jeff quick? Jeff quick meant the exact same amount of time as real slow.
I had to calm down I felt like my brain was unraveling, conscious thought being replaced by sheer bollock-crushing terror.
‘So, what did you wanna talk about?’ His voice sounded less papery but still lacked any evidence of emotion.
Shit! What did I want to talk about? I couldn’t mention the foetuses now, he would know that I would know one was missing, he would put two and two together and realise that I know more than I should then he would kill me and I would be forced into a jar half my size and displayed to Thai students or maybe dissected or just left in some trophy case somewhere to gather dust until eventually somebody ate me.
‘Eric?’
‘Yeah, sorry Jeff,’ my voice broke slightly but not enough to show how scared I was. ‘I wanted to ask you about…’ Well this is it, Eric, death or possible escape. You better stand up if you’re going to pull an idea out of your arse. ‘I wanted to talk, talk to you, about…about…the…the high school musical.’
His brow furrowed slightly, ‘but you weren’t working here when we did the musical.’
‘I know but I’ve heard such great things about it, I was wondering if you had a DVD I could borrow or buy cos I’m just so intrigued to see what all the fuss is about.’
An hour later I knew everything there was to know about the musical, which I now owned on DVD. On the plus side I was still alive and had managed not to shit my pants.
I went back to my room and sat on the end of my bed.
I was still shaking and struggling to breathe, I felt like no matter how much I tried there just wasn’t enough air getting in. The adrenaline that had got me through the meeting with Jeff was draining out of my system leaving me weak and scared.
My mobile phone began to ring. The screen said it was Dave calling.
‘Hello,’
‘Hey slag, where you been? Me and Zed were waiting in Ears for ya to hear about your meeting.’
‘I’ll be honest it didn’t go as I planned.’ Before he could speak I cut him off. ‘You two better come round to mine; I’ve got something I need to tell you both. Oh and bring me a bottle of Sangsom and a bottle of Coke.’
After about twenty minutes they showed up, Zed carrying a 7-11 bag with my whiskey and Coke in it and Dave looking apprehensive.
‘What happened? You get fired?’ Said Dave.
‘No.’ I reached out and took the bag from Zed, then poured myself a healthy glass of whiskey with a splash of Coke. ‘Okay boys I’d advise having a drink for this cos it’s not the nicest story I’ve ever had to tell.’
Two drinks later and I was done.
‘I can’t believe you went to the meeting,’ said Zed. ‘If I’d seen that I would have burnt the school to the ground with that sicko inside.’
‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t wanna get home and then get a call from him wondering where I was. I sorta assumed if I didn’t show up he’d see the note, know I’d gone back to my building and somehow work out that I’d seen him or something.’ Now that I thought about it there were about five billion excuses I could have used to get out of that meeting.
‘Are you sure he ate the foetus?’ Said Zed, ‘cos it could’ve been something that looked like a foetus maybe.’
I shook my head. ‘The jar he was emptying was the same as the missing jar and anyway why would anyone wanna eat something that looked like a foetus, and saying that, why would anyone wanna eat a real foetus?’
A cavalcade of memories flashed around my mind. The minging orderly. The foetus jars. The orderly taking Jeff to the maternity ward. Jeff eating the foetus. The picture frame with nothing in it. The orderly dying. Jeff looking younger. How old was Jeff? Jeff’s voice droning in my ears in that lifeless voice of his.
‘Okay boys, this is either an elaborate practical joke or we’re gonna have to face up to a nasty fact.’ I sipped my whiskey.
‘What fact?’ Said Dave.
‘Well, it seems as though Jeff Colis eats babies in order to stay young.’
Dave finished his drink, 'I'll be honest, I didn't expect that.'
End of Part One
By
Sean Fallon
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
George Bernard Shaw
Part One
I had been working at the Naga Academy for nine weeks when they sent me for a check-up. The check-up was a necessary requirement for applying for a work permit to work overseas. Now even though I had been working in Thailand for just over two months, they had only recently pulled their finger out and started preparing the paperwork in order to make the arrangement legit.
I strolled the short distance from the school to the hospital during my lunch hour. The sweat poured down my face, making my sunglasses keep sliding down my nose and parts of my shirt were turning see-through. I avoided the trees that grew straight up out of the pavement and stepped over a sleeping dog, all the while humming tunelessly to myself. A few months ago I had been working in Manchester at a clothes shop struggling to make ends meet. Now I was a teacher earning half what I would in England but enjoying my life a hundred times as much.
The hospital appeared on my left and I sauntered towards the patient entrance, past an ambulance unloading a man on a stretcher who seemed to have been in a motorbike accident judging from the amount of skin scraped off his leg. The guy was simply moaning to himself whereas I think I would have been screaming the place down but maybe they had given him something in the ambulance to keep him quiet.
I entered the hospital, the cold air of the ceiling fans stroking my face like an over-zealous bar girl. The man behind the counter was short and fat, wearing a blue shirt with a nametag that bore a name I don’t think human tongues were designed to pronounce.
He said, ‘Sawadee krub,’ and wai-ed me.
I returned the gesture and said, ‘check-up.’ Then made a strange hand motion that I think was supposed to mean check-up.
He looked at me blankly for a few seconds and my heart sank. I had been in Thailand for over two months and I still had yet to master conversational Thai, I could greet people, thank people, order food and drinks and all those other necessities but I couldn’t banter with natives or help them understand me with a few choice Thai words.
Finally he said, ‘You want check-up? Go to booth 23 and wait to be called.’
I thanked him and wai-ed again feeling somewhat of a tit for doing that horrible tourist thing of the loud talking and stupid hand gestures. I sheepishly walked to a line of benches under a fan and sat next to a thin Thai man in a Chelsea shirt.
Next to me on the bench was a copy of the Bangkok Post. My local newspaper was the Chiang Mai Gazette, which was an easier paper to read, mostly because it was written in English. The Bangkok Post however usually had the most interesting pictures on the cover. In England most tabloids will show a certain degree of restraint when it comes to stories about murders or grisly accidents, usually hinting at the details and keeping the pictures discreet.
Not in Thailand.
The Bangkok Post printed the most horrendous things on its cover. Today it was an image of a man in an orange jumpsuit loading/removing what appeared to be severed heads into/from a set of cardboard boxes. The pictures weren’t blurred out or black barred. No, this severed head had a face and a pair of eyes that stared at the reader seemingly begging them to read the story.
A large man in a claret red Lanna shirt sat down next to me. I carried on looking at the pictures in my paper but they usually saved all the interesting pictures for the first page, the rest was simply pictures of the king and pictures of celebrities I didn’t know. I folded the paper up and put it on my lap. The man next to me was humming a song under his breath and it took a few seconds before I realised it was the Naga Academy song: ‘Naga give me wings.’ I turned to look at the man.
The humming stopped and the man said, ‘Ah, Eric, what are you here for?’
It was my boss, Jeff Colis, his Lanna shirt stretched out across his large belly.
‘Morning Jeff, I’m here for my work permit check-up. It’s stupid cos I had a check-up when I first got here.’
‘That was for your teaching license.’ He was American but I couldn’t place the region, his voice was a seemingly constant monotone, which had caused me to contemplate suicide twice during the week long orientation he had held for the new teachers when we first arrived at the school.
‘Couldn’t they just photocopy it?’ And even before I finished speaking I knew instinctively what his reply would be. Four words that he seemingly thought answered all questions about this country.
‘That’s the Thai way.’ He chuckled as though that strange piece of overt racism passed for wisdom.
‘Yeah….so what are you here for?’
He paused for a second then said, ‘What?’
‘What are you here for?’
‘Oh, I’m here for a check up too. When you get to my age you gotta make sure everything’s in full working order.’
‘Yeah, totally.’ That appeared to be the end of the conversation and we both lapsed into silence. I opened my bag and took out the first thing my hand touched: my camera. I turned it on and pointed it at different parts of the hospital, watching the scene on the little screen on the back of the camera.
The screen was suddenly filled with white as an orderly walked past me and started talking to Jeff.
The orderly was wearing a classic white hospital uniform only this one was slightly off-white. Everything about this guy was strangely grubby. He had crooked brown teeth and a cold sore on his lip that he had clearly been picking. He had dirt under what was left of his well-bitten nails and I’m pretty sure that there was blood on the cuffs of his shirt.
Jeff and the sleazy hospital guy conversed in rapid Thai then Jeff stood up and followed the guy away from me. I watched them through the camera trying to get a picture of the sleazy guy to show my friends but in the end I only managed to get a rush shot just as he and Jeff turned a corner and were out of sight.
Something about the whole thing freaked me out but before I could dwell on it more I was called into the doctor’s office for my check-up.
After school I met up with Dave and Zed at Ears, a restaurant near the school. It wasn’t called Ears but the waitress who always served us had big ears and the name stuck. Actually calling it a restaurant was a push, it was like the inside of a mechanics filled with chairs and serving food. The huge ceiling fans seemed designed for industry as opposed to making one’s dining experience comfortable. However the food was gorgeous and the big-eared waitress was a cutie so we went there every day.
I ordered my usual: Khao Pad Gai with a Khai Down on top, which was basically chicken fried rice with a fried egg on top.
‘You get your permit sorted?’ said Dave, sipping an ice coffee.
‘Yeah I got my check-up and gave it to Pacman.’ The woman in the admin office was fat to the point that she was completely circular, hence Pacman. Most of the Thai people we knew were simply given nicknames by us that we never said to their face, simply because most of the time we did not know their names or couldn’t pronounce them.
‘Right, she’ll take you to immigration next week probably to finish it all off.’ Dave taught at the Academy as well but had lived in Thailand longer than me so his work permit had needed to be sorted faster before his visa ran out.
Zed pushed his plate away with a satisfied sigh. ‘That was the shit.’
His plate had been cleaned of food in less than two minutes. ‘Jesus, you fucken inhaled that.’
He laughed and downed his orange shake in one gulp. ‘I was hungry.’
‘From what? I believe it was only yesterday you said that you do fuck-all all day.’ Zed didn’t work at the school; in fact he didn’t work anywhere. He had traveled around Asia for a bit then went to Australia and hated it so much he moved back to Thailand. I had met him last year when I was traveling around Thailand and we had agreed to meet up again after I had got the job at the Academy.
‘Its hard work doing nothing, anyway I’ve been editing my film, playing on the computer, fucking ya mum.’
Ice coffee sprayed out of Dave’s nose as he roared with laughter.
‘Fuck you, guys.’ Not my best retort but I’d had a long day.
Once my friends had stopped laughing I said, ‘Oh I saw Jeff in the hospital today.’
‘What was he doing? Looking for a personality donor?’ said Dave.
‘Well he said he was going for a check-up but then went off with this horrible hospital dude. I tried to get a photo of this guy cos he was fucken mess.’ I pulled my camera out of my bag and showed Dave the picture on the little screen.
‘It’s not a great photo but he doesn’t look like someone I’d want looking after me.’
I handed the camera to Zed.
‘Yeah I was just sat next to him and luckily he didn’t try and tell me any stories but I did complain about something and-‘
‘That’s the Thai way,’ said Dave in a perfect Jeff monotone.
‘Exactly.’
‘Dude, this is odd,’ said Zed turning the camera so I could see the picture.
‘What’s up?’
‘Well, the sign behind Jeff.’
On the picture behind Jeff’s head was a green sign, all in Thai, indicating the direction they were going and probably saying which area they were heading to. ‘It’s in Thai.’
‘Yeah, but I can read Thai and it seems like this sleazy dude is taking Jeff to the maternity ward.’
‘You sure?’
‘Pretty sure.’ He translated the words for me from Thai writing to English style writing then the words from Thai to English.
‘Why the hell would he be going to a maternity ward?’
‘He’s got a wife,’ said Dave.
‘And she’s, like, seventy.’
‘Maybe he got a student pregnant,’ said Zed.
‘Doesn’t seem likely, seems too religious and also too boring for that kind of thing,’ said Dave. ‘And also he’s probably too old.’
This statement stuck in my head, how old was Jeff? I had been to his house when I first arrived in Chiang Mai and his wife was pretty old, about sixty or maybe seventy but Jeff was fairly sprightly. By no means a young man but not an old one either. He had once said he had lived in Thailand for thirty years and someone had told me that he had owned a business in America before that, maybe he was sixty and just took good care of himself.
‘Actually, saying that, Jeff might just be boring enough to have a really dark secret like that.’ Dave pushed his plate away and signaled the waitress over. ‘If he was really exciting and outgoing then chances are he’d have nothing to hide but he’s not, he’s not in the slightest bit interesting which makes me think that that motherfucker has got something to hide.’ The waitress arrived and we flirted with her for a bit then paid our bills and headed home.
Home was a hotel room on the third floor of the Nunta Watsa Lodge. It was quite expensive for a place in Thailand but it had a T.V., a fridge, maid service, room service and a swimming pool.
Dave lived in the room above mine and Zed lived on the other side of the city. Zed had left his bike at the Lodge so came back with us to pick it up.
Once I was back in my room I got the air-con blasting and got changed out of my school uniform and into my civvies. Though having a T.V. was a perk the problem was that ninety-nine percent of the channels were solely Thai language which was a problem considering that not only was I not fluent in Thai but all the shows looked really weird. I just left a music channel on with the volume low and had a nap.
I had been asleep all of five minutes when there was a knock at my door. I knew straight away it was Amie by her distinct knock: three loud bangs on the door. Even though I knew it was her I always had a brief image of a policeman outside my door about to burst in and bust my ass for some reason.
I croaked, ‘Come in,’ and she entered.
I had met Amie at the same time I had met Zed. Last year when I was holidaying in Thailand I had been pick pocketed on the Khao San Road and forced top spend my last eleven days there. Luckily after I had been there six days and teetered on the brink of madness I met Zed and Amie and we had hung out together and to be honest when we parted company I had never expected to see them again, but that was not the case. We had kept in touch on the internet and eventually they had lured me back to the Land of Smiles.
‘Hey,’ she said, walking into my room and standing at the foot of the bed. Amie was an American but I didn’t hold that against her.
‘Alright, what’s up?’
‘Nothing, just a bit bored. What you been upto today?’
‘Taught for a bit then had to get another check-up for my work permit.’
‘Shut up! They still haven’t sorted that out for me.’
‘Did you just tell me to shut up?’
‘Yeah, oh well, hopefully they’ll do it next week, how was it?’
‘Same same really, only I was sat next to Jeff in the waiting room.’ She winced, ‘and then some minging hospital orderly led him away to what I later discovered was the maternity ward.’
‘Minging?’
‘Oh, English slang: disgusting, horrible, ugly.’
‘Oh right,’ she shook her head slightly and I had the feeling the words “those wacky Brits” was flashing through her head.
‘I can show you how minging he was.’ I showed her my camera.
‘Wow, he looks horrible even from that angle, I’d hate to see his whole face.’
‘Yep. No idea why they’d let him work in a hospital or why he’d be mates with Jeff.’
‘So why’s Jeff going the maternity ward, think he knocked up a student?’
‘Nah, too boring.’
‘You never know, he may have a secret life we don’t know about. Maybe he just sits in his office all day smoking dope and fucking students.’
'That would explain the monotone voice if he was just baked all the time.’
‘Yeah he, like, walks into a meeting and says, “Sorry I’m late, I was high on crack! Let a playa play!'
'I can’t work it out, he is just too boring to have impregnated a student so why the maternity ward?’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll work it out. Okay just popped in to say hello and now I’m off to get some food. I’ll seeya later.’
‘Yeah you too, honey.’
When she left I lay on my bed watching T.V. until I fell asleep.
After a week I stopped thinking about the hospital thing and focused on my work. Being a teacher in Thailand is a mixture of bone crushing misery and unprecedented joy. The misery usually comes from the fact that the other teachers in my office never tell me anything until the last minute so I’ll be forced to give tests I haven’t prepared my students for which makes me the bad guy in their eyes. The joy comes from the fact that I get paid an inordinate amount of money for what is essentially very little work.
I was sitting at desk writing next weeks lesson plans when the office phone rang. I usually don’t answer it because I don’t speak enough Thai to get any messages across but recently I was being encouraged to try and have a go. So as the phone rang the other teachers in my office looked to me.
I picked up the receiver, dreading hearing Thai, ‘Hello.’
‘Hey, Sean?’ It was Amie.
‘Hey, thank God it’s you, thought I was about to have another Thai phone call disaster.’
She laughed, ‘Well I was tempted to start speaking Thai just to hear you panic but I’m not that much of a shit.’
‘Oh that’s good to know. So what’s up? Becky’s teaching if you want to speak to her.’ Becky was the other English speaker in my office, she was also American and sometimes I was forced to hold that against her.
‘I’ll speak to her later, but the weirdest thing happened to me today. Went for my check up and while I was walking up to the hospital an ambulance was dropping off a guy on a stretcher who looked like he’d been in a motorcycle crash. His chest was just pouring blood and he was yelling and crying and one of his legs was completely fucked. Anyway, it was your minging hospital guy.’
‘No way.’
‘Yep and that dude was fucked up, when my check up finished and I went back past the front of the hospital there was blood everywhere. I would not be surprised to see him on the front of the Bangkok Post in the near future.’
And she was right.
Two days later on the cover of the newspaper was a picture of the minging orderly with some of the nastier gore vaguely blurred out but not blurred enough that you couldn’t pretty much see what it was.
I was sat in Ears with Dave and Zed. Zed had taken the paper and was trying to decipher the article.
‘Basically it says that hospital worker, Kiet Tanvisut, was killed in a motorcycle accident when his bike collided with a wall.’ Zed put the paper down, ‘that is a shit way to go.’
‘Yep,’ I said, turning the paper over so I couldn’t see the picture.
The three of us sat in silence for a few moments, possibly contemplating mortality, possibly waiting for someone to speak.
Eventually Dave made a noise as he started shuffling a pack of cards he had taken from his bag.
I closed my eyes, ‘Please tell me they aren’t what I think they are.’
‘What? These? They’re my Tarot cards.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You do realise that its complete bollocks, right?’
‘Really? And why is it bullocks?’
‘It’s bollocks cos its bollocks. You can only give people vague ideas about the future which they interpret to mean whatever they want them to mean.’
‘Exactly,’ said Dave, a lightly smug look on his face.
‘What?’
‘I never tell people I can tell their future I just offer them what the cards have to say and its up to them to decide to follow them or not.’
‘And how is that not bollocks?’
‘Dude, I didn’t invent them, I just like them. You wanna reading, ask for one, if not, don’t.’ He put the cards back in his bag. ‘Just don’t be an arsehole about it.’
‘Okay, sorry, dude, I just don’t get it, that’s all.’
‘Okay.’
Zed sighed loudly, ‘Can we pay the bill now?’
The next day I was in school again, sat in my office playing naughts and crosses against myself when Ajarn Pichaya came over to my desk.
‘Hi,’ I said surreptitiously moving my naughts and crosses game under some homework I was supposed to be marking.
‘Hello Eric, are you ready for our lesson?’ She was carrying a large pile of worksheets that gave the students vocabulary words about describing their own house. For this lesson we split a class of sixty and Ajarn Pichaya took one half, myself the other.
‘Yeah, ready to go.’
She dropped the worksheets on my desk. ‘This is your half. Oh and you won’t be teaching in your normal room, Ajarn Jeff has taken that so you’ll have to find a free room.’
Fucken Jeff! ‘Oh that’s alright, do you know any free rooms?’
‘There’s possibly some on the science floor.’
I had been looking for an excuse to teach in the science labs for ages as they were the only rooms that had air conditioning instead of fans. ‘That’s perfect.’
When my lesson was over the class slowly bled out of the ice cold science lab and I stood behind the raised dais at the front for a while soaking up the beautiful chilled air.
Today, much like every other day, had been a hot one and the chance to be able to stand around without sweating out half my body weight was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Eventually, however, I had to make a move back to my office; those homework assignments weren’t going to mark themselves.
I walked down the empty corridor humming the Thai national anthem, which had a habit of getting stuck in my head. This was possibly because the school had to sing it every morning at eight a.m.
Almost as soon as I had left the science room I had begun to sweat. I stopped and removed my new glasses I had bought over the weekend. They had thick black rims and I was currently in love with them. I wiped them lovingly with a cloth I kept in my pocket, trying to get every speck of perspiration from them. I raised them so I could look through the lenses to check how clean they were. Through the lens I saw that I was standing next to a large wooden case with glass doors. It looked like a trophy case with each glass panel showing shelves laden with jars.
I put my glasses back on and peered through the glass.
Each jar contained a dead animal floating in formaldehyde.
There was a rabbit, a rat, a turtle, a bird, a variety of lizards and a snake. The snake made me take a few steps back. I was terrified of snakes and just being in close proximity to one, even a dead one in a jar behind a pane of glass made me feel uneasy. It was black and white, coiled in a circle, its head resting atop the coils. Part of my mind was trying to convince me that any second now it was going to move or I’d look away for a second and look back and it would be gone then I’d feel a strange slithering sensation across the back of my neck before the teeth sank in.
I shuddered and felt cool sweat coat my arms and back.
I looked away from the snake down to the next shelf, which may not have been my best idea.
There were five jars on the next shelf. They were arranged from smallest to biggest like an opened Russian doll. The smallest was about the size of a jam jar while the biggest was the size of a football. The three in-between bridged the sizes.
They were all filled with formaldehyde and contained dead specimens as well the only difference being that these five jars contained dead human foetuses.
Dave dropped his fork back onto his plate. ‘You couldn’t have told me this story when I wasn’t eating?’
‘Sorry chief, still a bit wigged out by the whole thing. I mean there are dead babies in jars in the school. It’s offensive on so many levels.’ I hadn’t ordered food and sat in Ears sipping a glass of water.
‘Offensive?’ asked Zed, calmly eating his food.
‘Hell yeah, there are dead human beings on display in a trophy case in a school. Why are they there? The science classes don’t do experiments on them so what purpose do they serve?’
‘They show what a foetus looks like,’ ventured Dave.
‘Bullshit, the little ones might do that but the big one, that big one is a baby. It’s got hair, fingernails; it’s got a fucken facial expression for fuck’s sake. There is no reason why that should be on display anywhere.’
Zed pushed his plate away. ‘This has really got to you, hasn’t it?’
‘It’s a baby crammed into a jar half its size and when you look at it, it looks back at you. It’s the most horrible thing.’
‘Well, what are you gonna do about it?’ Said Dave.
‘The only thing I can do. As distasteful as it is, I’m gonna have to go and speak to Jeff.’
‘Fucken hell, this has got to you.’ Said Dave, ‘you’re willing to enter Jeff’s office and endure a conversation with him. That could take hours just for him to eventually say the four magic words.’
‘I know but I feel as though I gotta do something, cos there’s something wrong about those jars. Something very wrong.’
The next day I got Jeff’s mobile phone number from Becky and rang his mobile. As the phone rang I forced all negative thoughts to the back of my mind and reminded myself that having to phone Jeff was for the greater good.
‘Hello,’ and there was that monotone I knew and loathed, only today he sounded slightly croaking, as though while talking to me he was chewing paper.
‘Hi, Jeff, it’s Eric.’
‘Hey Eric, what’s up?’
‘Erm, I was wondering if you had any time after school I could come see you about something.’
‘Well, yeah, you finish at half four and I have some stuff to do so come over to my office about five.’
‘Yeah, that’s great, seeya later.’
‘Yeah, bye.’
I hung up, admittedly that could have been more painful. So if I was meeting him at five that meant I wouldn’t get out of his office until at least half six and chances are the foetus thing would be resolved in the first ten minutes and the rest of the time would be filed with handy teaching tips or anecdotes that don’t go anyway. Still I kept reminding myself it was for the greater good.
Gradually half four arrived and the teachers began to leave. I headed over to Jeff’s office just in case I could catch him and quickly tell him my problem, saving me the horror of the planned meeting.
I crossed the vast school grounds in fifteen minutes and arrived at his office. His secretary was behind her desk eating a bag of fruit.
‘Sawasdee krub, Ploy, is Ajarn Jeff here?’
‘No, Mister Eric, he go to meeting.’
‘Thanks, Ploy. I will leave him a note.’
I entered his office and quickly wrote a note explaining that I had missed him and the journey across the school and back would probably make me late for our planned time but I needed to get my bag before they locked everything up.
I knew that no matter what time I got back I would be greeted with some sort of smarmy comment, either I was too late or too early but that was the Jeff way.
I got back to my office and sat down for a minute to catch my breath, there was nothing wise about walking great distances in this heat. I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed out of the office.
It was here that I made what would turn out to be one of the worst decisions of my life. For some reason, rather than heading straight back to Jeff’s office I decided to have one last look at the foetus trophy case just to keep myself pissed off about it.
And also the boys had asked me to take some photos.
My school shoes squeaked quietly with every step I took down the empty corridors. That was one of the weird things about schools, the second it was time to go everyone went. No one liked to hang around a school in the same way no one likes to hang around a cemetery.
I entered the science lab area and saw the trophy case at the opposite end. I approached it hurriedly, reminding myself that everything inside it was dead and not going to attack me but I still moved quickly just to get the initial shock of seeing the jars again over with.
There was no shock this time though only a sense of familiarity. There were the animals and the four foetus jars and has horrendous as the whole thing was, it was also strangely reassuring to see them all here un-tampered with.
And then it hit me.
There were only four jars so one of the foetuses was missing. The smallest one, the jam jar, was gone. The trophy case was locked so whoever’s taken it must have picked the lock or something. Or it’s someone from the school. Maybe they are using the specimens in lessons. Okay, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever thought about in my life. Thirty students all clamouring around for a look as the teacher dissects an aborted human foetus.
‘Man, I gotta sort this out,’ I said, possibly towards the other four specimen jars. ‘I better go and tell Jeff.’
POP!
It was a noise like when you put your finger behind your cheek and pull it out and it makes a popping noise. Only this noise was made loud by the silence and the emptiness of the corridor.
I moved slowly towards the sound’s origin. It seemed to have come from the room at the end. If there were students in there I would have to kick them out and if they gave me crap about it I was just enough of a bad mood to dish out some punishment, contrasting my reputation as an easy going teacher.
The curtains were drawn on the last lab. I reached for the door but decided it might be safer to have a peek through a gap in the curtains just in case it was two teachers up to something, then it wouldn’t be great if a barged in. Though if it was two teachers doing the wild thing, what the hell was that popping noise?
I found a gap in the curtain and peered through.
The desks in the science labs are all equipped with little sink units. Standing next to one of these sink was Jeff Colis.
He was wearing his usual get-up of smart slacks and a strangely coloured Lanna shirt. His face looked drawn and there were a few more lines on it than I remembered him having, if anything the best way to describe him was that he was starting to look his age.
The lights were off but there was enough light filtered in through the curtains to see what he was doing. He was pouring something out into the sink, using the lid to make sure only liquid came out because there appeared to be something solid in the jar he was holding. He moved his hand slightly and I saw what the solid thing was.
‘Holy. Fucking. Shit.’ I breathed the words, not quite able to create sound.
He was draining the formaldehyde out of the small foetus jar. The liquid slopped into the sink, seemingly reluctant to leave its jar. Jeff removed the foetus (with his bare hands!) and carefully began washing it off underneath the tap.
It was strange, when I thought back to this moment, I always imagined that I’d seen Jeff with big sharp teeth and glowing red eyes, but that wasn’t true. He was just a fat bloke washing something under a tap.
When he was happy the foetus was washed he began to eat it.
First he chewed off one of its legs, then the other, then its arms one by one then he really sank his teeth into the torso, really had to give that a chewing, and then devoured the head in three pretty big bites.
This all happened so fast my mind couldn’t catch up with my eyes. I knew something that just happened, something horrendous, something that no one should ever see, especially in a school, but I couldn’t seem to remind myself of what it was.
Jeff licked his lips and actually patted his stomach before he began to wash his hands.
My brain switched back on and I ran as fast as I could out of the school.
But there was a problem. I had left a note on Jeff’s desk, I had spoke to his secretary, if I didn’t show up for the meeting question would be asked, questions that I wasn’t prepared to answer. I already felt like I was about to have a stroke.
I would have to go back to Jeff’s office and have the meeting with him even after what I had just seen.
I started to walk towards his office hoping that I would have stopped shaking by the time I arrived.
Nope.
I sat in his office, gripping the armrests of my chair so tightly I couldn’t feel my fingers.
Jeff had yet to arrive but I knew any minute now he would walk in. My mind painted pictures of the event and I saw him walk in, blood around his mouth or he would come in with a little tiny finger stuck to his cheek.
The door behind me opened and I started, letting out a sound something like, ‘Yah!’
It was Jeff, ‘Wow, Eric, sorry to startle you, maybe you need to cut down on the caffeine.’ He chuckled and I forced a laugh out from some depth of my body.
He sat down behind his desk. I scrutinised his face: no blood, no little finger. Behind his chair was a clock mounted above a large photo frame with nothing inside it, which always caught my eye but today didn’t seem so important. I watched the clock, every second I was in this room was a second closer to me letting something slip or him revealing that he knew I had seen what he had done before ripping my throat out with his fat hands reeking of formaldehyde.
‘Are you okay, Eric? You look unwell.’ Jeff looked fine; he looked like a man who was a third of his age.
‘I don’t feel too good Jeff, long day and I haven’t eaten much and you know with this heat and teaching –‘You’re rambling, stop it ‘- and anyway I may just need a lie-down at some point.’ I had mentioned illness and hinted at the need to get out of the room, that may have cut fifteen minutes off the meeting considering that Jeff couldn’t read between the lines so wouldn’t realise that I was actually asking to leave as soon as humanly possible.
‘Well, we’ll make this quick then shall we?’
Did he mean real quick? Or Jeff quick? Jeff quick meant the exact same amount of time as real slow.
I had to calm down I felt like my brain was unraveling, conscious thought being replaced by sheer bollock-crushing terror.
‘So, what did you wanna talk about?’ His voice sounded less papery but still lacked any evidence of emotion.
Shit! What did I want to talk about? I couldn’t mention the foetuses now, he would know that I would know one was missing, he would put two and two together and realise that I know more than I should then he would kill me and I would be forced into a jar half my size and displayed to Thai students or maybe dissected or just left in some trophy case somewhere to gather dust until eventually somebody ate me.
‘Eric?’
‘Yeah, sorry Jeff,’ my voice broke slightly but not enough to show how scared I was. ‘I wanted to ask you about…’ Well this is it, Eric, death or possible escape. You better stand up if you’re going to pull an idea out of your arse. ‘I wanted to talk, talk to you, about…about…the…the high school musical.’
His brow furrowed slightly, ‘but you weren’t working here when we did the musical.’
‘I know but I’ve heard such great things about it, I was wondering if you had a DVD I could borrow or buy cos I’m just so intrigued to see what all the fuss is about.’
An hour later I knew everything there was to know about the musical, which I now owned on DVD. On the plus side I was still alive and had managed not to shit my pants.
I went back to my room and sat on the end of my bed.
I was still shaking and struggling to breathe, I felt like no matter how much I tried there just wasn’t enough air getting in. The adrenaline that had got me through the meeting with Jeff was draining out of my system leaving me weak and scared.
My mobile phone began to ring. The screen said it was Dave calling.
‘Hello,’
‘Hey slag, where you been? Me and Zed were waiting in Ears for ya to hear about your meeting.’
‘I’ll be honest it didn’t go as I planned.’ Before he could speak I cut him off. ‘You two better come round to mine; I’ve got something I need to tell you both. Oh and bring me a bottle of Sangsom and a bottle of Coke.’
After about twenty minutes they showed up, Zed carrying a 7-11 bag with my whiskey and Coke in it and Dave looking apprehensive.
‘What happened? You get fired?’ Said Dave.
‘No.’ I reached out and took the bag from Zed, then poured myself a healthy glass of whiskey with a splash of Coke. ‘Okay boys I’d advise having a drink for this cos it’s not the nicest story I’ve ever had to tell.’
Two drinks later and I was done.
‘I can’t believe you went to the meeting,’ said Zed. ‘If I’d seen that I would have burnt the school to the ground with that sicko inside.’
‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t wanna get home and then get a call from him wondering where I was. I sorta assumed if I didn’t show up he’d see the note, know I’d gone back to my building and somehow work out that I’d seen him or something.’ Now that I thought about it there were about five billion excuses I could have used to get out of that meeting.
‘Are you sure he ate the foetus?’ Said Zed, ‘cos it could’ve been something that looked like a foetus maybe.’
I shook my head. ‘The jar he was emptying was the same as the missing jar and anyway why would anyone wanna eat something that looked like a foetus, and saying that, why would anyone wanna eat a real foetus?’
A cavalcade of memories flashed around my mind. The minging orderly. The foetus jars. The orderly taking Jeff to the maternity ward. Jeff eating the foetus. The picture frame with nothing in it. The orderly dying. Jeff looking younger. How old was Jeff? Jeff’s voice droning in my ears in that lifeless voice of his.
‘Okay boys, this is either an elaborate practical joke or we’re gonna have to face up to a nasty fact.’ I sipped my whiskey.
‘What fact?’ Said Dave.
‘Well, it seems as though Jeff Colis eats babies in order to stay young.’
Dave finished his drink, 'I'll be honest, I didn't expect that.'
End of Part One
posted by sean_fallon at 8:08 AM
0 comments
