Downpour
The downpour had just stopped but the monsoon winds were swaying the huge trees besides the chalet. Dawn was about to break open when a pager beeped. The incesant irritating beeping tore through the silence and the four bodies on the bed stirred.
It was a class gathering for class 3E. Two chalets were booked, one for the ladies and one for the guys. The teacher who with them till twelve a.m. left with her fiance, leaving the respective student councillor to be in her charge. Everything was normal, the BBQ, the food, the usual teenage jokes, crushes and partying. It was late when everyone went to sleep.
"Goodness! What time is it now?" Whose pager is it?" Jiahui was the first to wake up. She was a sporty kind, full of energy and zeal.
Lisa who was lying next to Jiahui simply pulled a pillow over her head, rolled over and went back to sleep. Nothing could wake Lisa when she was asleep, not even an earthquake.
"Shut it off!" Belinda yelled, her voice chilled the room. No one knew whose pager was beeping and it just went on and on. After a while, Belinda sat up in bed and glared at everyone. She was so angry that she would have punched someone.
Jiahui had checked her pager. It was not her pager that beeped. Apart from Jiahui, Lingmei was the other in the room who owned a pager.
"Lingmei! Your pager's gone off! Wake up!"
Lingmei was dreaming. In her dream, she saw a lipstick, she saw a mirror, she saw a see-saw, she saw the ocean, and she saw fire. She saw herself stretching her hand out and touching the fire. She felt a sudden shock and her dream faded.
"Lingmei! Hurry up! I want to sleep." Belinda screamed as she shook the sleeping Lingmei roughly.
"Huh? What?" Lingmei slowly came awake. It took her a while to realise what was happening.
When she checked her pager, the screen on her alpha-numeric pager read, "Call home now. CALL HOME NOW."
Lingmei was puzzled. She checked the time of the message. It was sent at three a.m. "Is something wrong?" Her face showed her trauma. She was beginning to panic and Belinda and Jiahui knew that Lingmei was always the weak-hearted.
"Do you want to return the call? I can accompany you to the phone in the lobby." Jiahui volunteered, seeing Lingmei's worried expression.
"I thing I should call back. Something must have happened at home. My family does not normally call me like this." Her voice quivered as she garnered her courage.
They had to walk very far to the public phone. The nearby ones were all vandalised.
"Hello? Sis? Did you page me?"
"Yes, Lingmei, I paged you. Are you still at the chalet?" Her sister sounded very worried, her voice slightly hoarse and the tempo of her sister breathing made Lingmei worried.
"Yes."
"Very bad, very bad. Anyway, I want you to get out of there immediately. I just dreamed that something terrible is going to happen, some accident in the bathroom or something like that."
"Are you joking, sister? It's only a dream."
"Lingmei, listen to me. Have I shared my dreams with you? This one is real. How can I convince you to believe me?"
"But it's three in the morning. There are no buses at this hour. Anyway, its just a dream."
"No, I have a bad feeling about this. Why don't you take a cab?"
"Sis, my chalet is located some distance from the main road. I have to walk out to hail a taxi. Besides, I'm not sure whether if I can get one. Can this wait until morning? It is only a dream."
"Stop saying it is only a dream. I hate that. You are making my angry." Her sister was losing her patience. Maybe it was the wee-hours, maybe it was the nightmare, but Lingmei knew her sister was not her usual self.
"Do you really want me to leave?" Lingmei spoke softly, clearly reluctant.
"I want you to get out of there now. I dreamt that there were you and your friends were sleeping eight to a room, right? The boys were sleeping in the next chalet. And you were wearing your favourite red T-shirt, and all of you had just dyed your hair blond right?"
Lingmei was shocked. The girls had a wild party the night before. One of them had brought along a hair-dying kit and by the time they were done, none of the girls had a stitch of black hair left on their head. Her family was not supposed to know about this yet, not ever her sister.
Her sister started talking about what she dreams, and what everyone did, including what they wore was exactly as she described. She even mentioned that Lisa, in her polka-dot pyjamas was sleeping with her Garfield toy.
Lingmei listened in silence, inwardly shocked at how her sister knew for her dream was uncanny. When she revealed to her sister her dream was spot on, her sister freaked out.
"Look, I'll come and pick you up myself. Wait for me at the main road. See you half an hour later. I cannot believe my dream is so spot on."
"What about my friends?"
"I only saw you in danger. No time to talk. Be there because I'll be there in half an hour."
Before Lingmei could protest, the line went dead. She turned around to face Jiahui. Jiahui was trying to absorb what she overheard.
"You have to go home now, huh?"
Lingmei nodded resignedly. She had never disobeyed her sister, and did not plan to start now. Together, they walked back to the chalet to pack her things and she told the others about her sister's dream.
"See why I did not want to own a pager or a handphone?" Belinda looked at her. "One of the advantages of being 'un-contactable'."
Lingmei shrugged as she packed her belongings. She trusted her sister. No one believed her.
The chatter of the ladies caused a commotion, and the boys next door soon came over.
"Hey! I heard that you have to go home." Columbus said as he entered the girl's chalet, with Guo Wei and Joshua following behind.
Jiahui told the boys that Lingmei was leaving. The boys laughed heartily at first, thinking that it was a joke, but on seeing that Lingmei was dead serious, they became solemn.
"Come, we'll see you off together." Joshua offered.
Lingmei protested that no one should be bothered or troubled by her leaving. But Joshua announced that it was a chalet etiquette that no one should sleep. And walking Lingmei in act was just part and parcel of keeping awake. Everyone knew Joshua was talking shop but he had a charming way of saying it.
Half an hour later, she was still standing along the main road. Her sister had not arrived. Everyone except Lisa, was waiting beside her. No one could rouse Lisa from bed and so they gave up, leaving her in bed to sleep. The cold was punishing but no one budged.
They waited and waited. Lingmei's sister was not in sight. The group became uneasy.
Ten minutes had passed. Twenty minutes.
"Maybe we should call your house. Just to see whether if your sister had left." Jiahui suggested.
"Hello?" Her sister's voice sounded sleepy.
"Hello, sis? Are you coming to pick me up? Why are you still at home?"
"Lingmei? Why are you calling home at this hour? Why am I picking you up?"
"How would I know? You paged
me earlier, and told me to wait for you along the main road because you are
coming to pick me up."
"No, I didn't. I have been sleeping all the while. Is there anything wrong
there? Are you okay?"
"I'm okay, sis. Maybe a bad nightmare, sis."
"Are you sure? Take care okay?" Her sister consoled her.
"Goodnight, sis."
Lingmei put down the telephone receiver and looked at everyone with shock.
Everyone standing beside Lingmei was shocked. They too had heard the paging, they too had seen her house number. There was something uncanny going on that they do not know about. All the girls were silent as they walked back to the chalet. The boys were not in their normal boisterous self. All of them knew that Lingmei was not a prankster. She was a soft-spoken person at school. What was gnawing in everyone's mind was who paged Lingmei?
The guys sent the girls back to the chalet and went back to theirs shortly after.
"Okay guys, which one of you did it?" Columbus was laughing.
Everyone was silent.
"Come on, guys. One of you must have done it."
"I didn't page Lingmei. We were playing 'poker' then, remember? I was at the table all the time." Joshua said.
"Why should I page Lingmei?" Columbus asked defiantly.
"Look here, I dared someone to date Lingmei and I told everyone her secret pager number, and you guys are telling me no one did it." Soon Huat asked.
"Maybe you did it." Columbus accused him.
"You are terrible, Soon Huat. Pity the girl okay."
"Hey guys, if I did it, I'll be broadcasting it. Anyway, what I want to know is how you guys got someone to imitate Lingmei's sister voice."
All of a sudden, someone flushed the toilet.
"Who was it?" Columbus asked, knowing fully well that all five of them were in the hall.
Soon Huat got the courage to go to the toilet. He opened the door slowly. There was no one there but the smell of jasmine pervaded the room. The others joined him. It was then Columbus spotted it.
Right there on the mirror, Lingmei's number was written with soap on it. "9-714-776-".
"What is happening?"
All the boys looked around. There was no sign of anyone entering but the smell of jasmine and the number on the mirror was spooky. Before anyone could answer, a cry shook the toilet. Someone had just screamed from the girl's chalet.
All the guys ran out and went to the girl's chalet.
Everyone was awake there and Lisa was sweating profusely. Belinda told them that Lisa had a nightmare, and she was the one who screamed.
"Something is wrong here," Columbus added.
Soon Huat related what had happened in the toilet in the boy's chalet. The girls were squemish about it but they got their courage to see it for themselves. The most reluctant one was Lingmei.
All of them went over the boy's chalet. To their surprise, there was no writing on the mirror. It looked like someone had washed it with water. The bubbly foam was still there on the mirror.
What really shook all of them was the toy left in the toilet. All the boys knew that there was no toy when they left the chalet to go over to the girl's chalet.
Till today, they wondered how on
earth did Lisa's Garfield toy land up in the boy's toilet
...that night.