Duyung

*

From ‘The Pipeline’, a tabloid newspaper based in Kuala Lumpur.

DISAPPEARANCES BAFFLE AND WORRY ISLAND FOLK

By Shuib Nordin

Kuala Terengganu, 20 March – An 18-year-old boy is the latest disappearance from a village on Pulau Sawa, a small island six hours from Pulau Kapas.

Hussin bin Hamzah was last seen on 16 March as he went out alone on a small boat to catch squid. His boat was found drifting 800 meters near the shore. There was no trace of him on board. Police have speculated that the young man had fallen off, drowned and been swept away by currents.

The island folk, however, point out that this was the fourth sudden disappearance from the three main villages located on the island in as many weeks and are demanding answers as none of disappearances have been successfully explained.

Prior to the disappearance of Mr. Hussin bin Hamzah, three have been reported gone from the island. More worrying is the fact that three of those disappearances have been children aged between 8-12 who simply vanished overnight. No signs of forced entry were observed in these cases.

Police have so far refused to comment further regarding these disappearances, but assuring the inhabitants of the island that an investigation is ongoing.

Current speculation is rife with theories that a serial murderer is on the island, and even that a supernatural entity is at work….

March 21, on a boat, heading towards Pulau Sawa

Shuib Nordin was on a boat, heading towards Pulau Sawa. Four hours earlier he had embarked on this long wooden sampan, one built using traditional methods but powered by a modern 200hp Honda outboard marine engine from a small, almost rickety jetty in Kemaman.

He smoked a kretek, which was burning faster than usual as the wind smacked him in the face. There was no one else on that boat except the tekong, an elderly man only known to Shuib as Pak Leman. With him, he had brought a laptop, a camera with extra memory cards and batteries, a voice recorder and a bag of clothes, as well as several notebooks and a manila file containing snippets of what would be his latest assignment for ‘The Pipeline’.

“Jauh lagi ke Pak Leman,” Shuib called out and tossed the stub of his kretek into the deep blue of the South China Sea.

“Lagi dua jam sampai lah,” Pak Leman said in heavily accented Malay. Shuib decided to go inside the basic cabin of the sampan to go over his notes again. This was his first assignment outside of Kuala Lumpur  in years. Finally, he thought. Back in the field.

He recalled the conversation he had with his boss thirty-six hours earlier. The conversation that had sent him to this small island off Terengganu.

Thirty-six hours earlier

“Shuib you haven’t been pulling your weight, lately. What are these stories? These are boring even for us! And we’re The Pipeline!” said Mr. Balabikasubramaniam, or better known as Mr. Bill.

“I haven’t got anything interesting, Mr.Bill,” Shuib said. He was very disinterested in this conversation. He was bored. After fifteen years as a ‘journalist’, Shuib had still to make it big. Fifteen years as nothing but a pulp news writer. This was his seventh year at The Pipeline. Every year he said he’d crack a story that’ll make all the major broadsheet and tabloid papers, the ones that really matter, take notice and offer him a job. Every year that call never came. So here he was, at The Pipeline, in his seventh year, again writing about which local actress was fucking which Dato’, and which drunk teenager raped his fifteen year old girlfriend etcetera etcetera etcetera.

For that was what The Pipeline specialized in; pulp. Stories about monsters, about rapists and murders and scandal and medical scams. Their team of photographers are the hardest working when it comes to getting the most gruesome, disgusting photos and so too, are their writers. Mr. Bill wanted these stories because he knows that they sell. And that was the most important part; they sell.

So when Shuib has been slacking off lately, it came to Mr. Bills attention.

“Look, Shuib,” he said, stroking his thick moustache. “There is always something interesting. You must not be looking hard enough.”

“What? Come on!” Shuib said, angered. “I wanna do real news, not this crap. Seven years of crap! This isn’t news, this is.. is…”

Mr. Bill raised an eyebrow. Shuib sighed. “Mr. Bill, I just don’t know what to report on anymore. Murder this, murder that, rape here, bomoh there. I think our readers are getting bored with the same shit. What else is new? And I’ve been reporting city things for so long. I want to be back out there. Looking for stories outside KL.”

“I see, I see,” Mr. Bill said and suddenly pulled out a manila folder. He tossed it to Shuib.

“What is this?” Shuib had asked.

“About a year ago I caught wind of this island off Kemaman called Pulau Sawa,” Mr. Bill said as Shuib began to thumb the contents of the folder. “It’s a small island, with a small, fishing village. Mostly Malay. It seems that there’s been a string of unexplained disappearances on that island.”

“Unexplained?” Shuib asked.

“Yes. Mostly happening in or around water. On boats, on the beach. Mostly at night. And not one of the disappearances have so far been explained. As if the people just vanished. Like they were swallowed by the sea.”

“Then that explains that, right? So what’s the story?”

Mr. Bill had leaned forward on his desk, his ample belly pushing some stacks of paper and pens. “Go through the file again, and tell me what you see.” Shuib had gone back to his desk.

Shuib took an hour to go through the contents. He was trained to spot little details and bites from any case or story, lest it could lead to bigger things. As he went through the contents, which were mostly compiled police reports and local newspaper clippings, he saw a pattern emerge. He had went back to Mr. Bills office.

“Huh,” Shuib remarked. “There’s been six disappearances annually since five years ago. Always six, never more, never less.”

“What else?” Mr. Bill said.

“The disappearances always happen on a full moon. During high tide. Always near water, like you said.”

“And?”

“And no one has seen this pattern so far, and you want me to find out why?”

Mr. Bill had smiled, satisfied. “As to why, it’s a small island, mostly nelayan or ocean going folk. Disapperances, therefore, are sometimes expected due to adverse weather or boat accidents or drowning. Maybe people didn’t pay attention enough; after all, what is a tiny island in Terengganu compared to the thousands that go missing in KL, right?”

“But you think there’s more to this. Because nothing is coincidence. Six disappearances every year. Every full moon. Every high tide.”

The two men shared a silence together.

“You think these disappearances are deliberate,” Shuib said.

Mr. Bill leaned back in his chair. “Go get back on track, Shuib. This could be big. I want you to find out how these people are going missing. Be it serial killer, a were-lobster or fucking Jaws, go find out.”

So Shuib had written that preceding article on the twentieth, and was now already on his way to this island. He didn’t know what to expect. The pattern was intriguing, indeed. It was more intriguing that the police and authorities haven’t cottoned on to it. But maybe it was as Mr. Bill had said; who gives a shit about a little fishing island in Terengganu? There were politicans and scandals and murders enough in the Klang Valley.

He had gotten on this sampan at early morning, and now, as it approached noon, he could finally see the outline of a small island ahead of him. Thirty minutes later, the sampan breached the shore and Shuib jumped off, his feet hitting the hot, powdery sand. Pak Leman had helped him unload, accepted his payment, and immediately left without a single exchange of words. Shuib watched the sampan disappear into the blue beyond. Then he looked around him.

The first thing that struck him was how beautiful the island was. The beach he was standing on was the main beach, and there were several long fishing boats with traditional nets strewn on their decks. But the sand was white and as smooth as talcum. The waters were so clear Shuib could see schools of fish, trevallies and snappers, swimming about. Palm trees lined the shore and low hanging trees stretched out as far as the eye can see. Only when he looked closer did he see the well-hidden cables that probably came from an industrial-strength gas generator somewhere. Several children came ashore and Shuib asked them to bring him to the village elder.

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting on the floor of a lovely hand-built verandah with Tok Mail, the village elder to Kampung Siput Berangan since thirty-six years ago. Kampung Siput Berangan was only one of three kampungs on this island, and all of them were within cylcing distance. A small shop served as the commercial hub of this place. Seated in Tok Mails home, Shuib got right down to business. He immediately asked Tok Mail about the disappearances.

***

Tok Mail’s Account, as documented by Shuib Nordin

“Yes, I’m aware of the disappearances. But I don’t know how they happened. As the village elder, of course I’m one of the first to know about these disappearances. Our village is small, and our population is below a thousand people. Almost everyone knows each other. If you’re not from Siput Berangan, you’re from (Kampung) Rumpai Jadi or (Kampung) Gelama Bersiung.

What I thought? Does it matter what I thought happened to all those missing people? They’re missing anyway, and nothing can be done about it now. You know, there weren’t even bodies? All we have to remember the missing are empty graves with anonymous gravestones.

 But if you really ask me what I think, it’s simple. The ocean took them. God took them. To whereabouts, I wouldn’t know. I just pray that it was a good place.

I knew few of those missing closely, but the one I really did know real close was Sujud, my cousin. We had been close since we were very young. Played together, fished together. I remember the night he went missing. That night, he had told me that he wanted to go out jigging for sotong. Was the moon out, you ask? Yes, yes, that’s when the sotong go wild.

But on that night I chose not to follow him. He went alone, I think just after Isya’ prayers. He went out alone.

When he didn’t come back the next morning, I got worried. His wife came over to my house to let me know that he didn’t come back after Subuh like he normally would have. I remember asking Tijah, the wife, to wait until noon. If Sujud wasn’t back at that time, I would take a boat out and look for him.

So noon had come and there was no sign of my cousin. I finally decided to take a boat out, with Derus, that man you see smoking over there [points out]. We knew the jigging spots as well as any fisherman should, so we immediately scouted those hotspots.

After an hour or so, we finally found Sujud’s boat anchored over a sandbank. The water must have been about 10 meters deep at the time. But Sujud wasn’t there. Derus had jumped into the water and swam to the boat. He saw two buckets full of sotong. But no sign of a person. Derus even dived down, as the sun was strong and the water clear; we didn’t want to think about it, but sometimes even the best fisherman might fall into the water and drown, or worse, get attacked by sharks. Yes? Yes, there are sharks. I’ve been bitten myself [shows scar].

But anyway, no sign of Sujud, even after an hour waiting in the hot sun. His sotong had gone smelly so we poured it back into the water. That was when the sharks came. But we ignored them, tied Sujud’s small boat to ours and towed it back to shore. When we arrived, we had checked it out. Nothing out of the ordinary, except this long, groove in the hull of the boat. Sujud must have struck a reef or something.

His wife had gone nuts by that time. I had to make the call to the mainland, and later that evening the police came over and we lodged our report. But we haven’t heard from the police ever since. Sujud was gone. Only his boat [points out] remains. You can check it out, though I doubt you’d find anything of interest.”

So Shuib indeed went to check out the boat, and indeed, found nothing particularly interesting except for that long groove in the hull of the boat. It looked like it had been carved in, but the angle was too circular for it to be a tool. Must have been coral, indeed. Or something natural anyway. He noticed a wiry old man observing him from afar.

Shuib had borrowed a bicycle from Tok Mail to explore the other villages, Rumpai Jadi and Gelama Bersiung. He found those names amusing. The villagers gawked and stared at him, with his cameras and notebooks. He didn’t mind. He asked around for people with information regarding the disappearances. Plenty were willing to talk, so Shuib had to filter which ones seemed most reliable. He preferred witnesses, but that was scarce. It seems most of the disappearances had happened when the person was alone. He had enjoyed Tok Mail’s account, despite the lack of information.

He expected to interview at least a dozen people over three days before heading back to KL. Hopefully he’d have enough interesting or at least revealig information about the disappearances by then. And hopefully, with his future article regarding this, Malaysia would take notice and his name would be well known.

After an hour cycling, he managed to get to speak to a young lady by the name of Hasaniah. To his delight, Hasaniah was a very pretty girl with fair skin and curly hair. Even better, her sister had disappeared within earshot of her (not that that was good, but at least this one had the potential to provide more information and clues). Hasaniah told the tale in a somber voice, shedding tears twice. But she was willing to talk, and that was important.

Hasaniah’s account, as recorded by Shuib Nordin

Haslinah was my sister and I loved her very much. I miss her so much even now, a year after she went missing. We were so close; we went to the same school on that small sampan every morning, we played together, learned how to cook from our ibu together. Not a moment passes by that I don’t think about her. Now, next year I’m leaving this island to go to a university, and I suppose I will bring her spirit with me.

About that day? Yes, there was a full moon. How did you know? Oh? They all happened during a full moon? That is frightening. But yes, it happened during a full moon.

It was Haslinah’s idea to go walking on the beach that night. Actually [looks around], she wanted to see Abduh, her boyfriend. They had only been seeing each other a month, but I think she was in love with him. I agreed to accompany her that night. We brought a torchlight and told ibu we wanted to see if any turtles came to shore. Ibu said that was alright.

I think it was around 9pm and we were walking along the shoreline, letting the waves lap at our feet. It was dark, yes, very dark, but living here on this small island, we were used to it, and besides what was that torchlight for?

Soon enough, from, I don’t know, 500 meters away, we saw a torch light flash twice. Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you. That was Haslinah and Abduh’s signal to each other [laughs]. Like orang dulu-dulu. She squealed when she saw those light flashes.

‘Nia, I am going to see him first,’ she had told me as she flashed the torch light twice to indicate she was coming towards him. I sat on the sand and let her go. Even with a bright moon, it was still very dark on the beach because of the shade from the trees. I listened to the sound of the waves and almost drifted to sleep when I heard a loud splash. I thought it must have been a turtle, but then I saw a light flash twice, and the light kept coming closer.

Turns out, it was Abduh.

‘Where is Haslinah?’ he had asked me. This made me curious. I said, ‘She was walking towards you not five minutes ago, right? Didn’t you catch her?’

Abduh shook his head and said, ‘No, that’s why I flashed my light again. Because it couldn’t have taken her long to meet me up in the middle. I saw her flash.’

I immediately got to my feet and dragged Abduh along. We turned on our torch lights and began calling for Haslinah. ‘Haslinah, Haslinah’ we said. We paced the length that she was supposed to traverse.

It was then we took notice of the footsteps; I saw Abduh’s when he was coming our way, and then mine, and then Haslinah’s. We retraced the steps, difficult because some had already been washed away by waves. Her steps ended abruptly; but there was something else [eyes become distant].

When her footsteps ended, there were drag marks in the sand. Ten of them, I saw. Abduh saw too. We became frightened when we saw the drag marks led to the ocean. And then…

[pauses]

And then I could have sworn I saw eyes… but that must have been my imagination.

What kind of eyes, you ask? I don’t know. And Abduh wouldn’t agree with me. But in the moonlight, I thought I saw a pair of yellow eyes in the water. But I got scared at that point, and me and Abduh ran towards home to tell that Haslinah was missing…”

Shuib underlined the part where Hasaniah had mentioned ‘yellow eyes’ and ‘grooves’. IT seemed, from that girl’s account, that Haslinah had been dragged into the ocean by some sort of animal. But what kind of animal exists in the South China Sea that does that? Shuib made a note to consult a friend from UPM and to wiki ‘ocean predators’. The girl had also said Abduh had gone to Kuala Lumpur shortly after her sister was missing. She has never heard of him ever since.

This was getting interesting, Shuib thought. Yellow eyes? Drag marks? He thought for a moment… and then dismissed this thought. The girl must have imagined things. It was dark, she was frightened. The mind could play great tricks. Shuib has trained himself to be cynical and to not believe all the leads he can find. Skepticism is a great asset as a journalist, which he sees himself as. If not, he’d have ended up believing every single scam bomoh or stupid ghost story that had come his way in the past. So he chose not to believe the Hasaniah girls account, thought he admitted it’d make ‘interesting reading’.

He spent a few more hours cycling Kampung Siput Berangan before exhaustion took over. He went back to Tok Mail’s house, where the wife of the elder had prepared a lovely kampung meal. He then saw the wiry old man he’d seen earlier, at the beach, pass by on a rickety old bicycle. The man had a scowl on. Shuib wondered if he had a reason to look so mean.

After maghrib, Shuib fell fast asleep, but not before preparing for his trip to Kampung Rumpai Jadi the next day.

March 22, Kampung Rumpai Jadi

Rumpai Jadi was the second largest village, which wasn’t saying much, and the village elder here was actually Tok Mail’s brother in law, Pak Yusof. Pak Yusof had Shuib have breakfast over first, before small talk and pointing him out in the direction of a man named Ramlan. Ramlan’s wife disappeared two years ago when she had gone out of their house late one night because she had left something in her husbands boat. Their house, Shuib noted, was right at the waters edge, and the walk to the boat moored on the sand could not have taken anyone anymore than five minutes. This case was important, Shuib deemed, because apparently Ramlan had seen something when he heard his wife scream that night.

Ramlan’s Account, as recorded by Shuib Nordin

“You’ve seen where my boat is, right? You saw how anyone with even half a leg could take, what, four or five minutes to walk out there?

My wife told me that night that she had left something in the boat after we went fishing earlier that day. Our son was asleep by now, and we were about to have, you know, husband-wife relations. But she said the thing she left, whatever it was supposed to be, couldn’t wait until tomorrow, so I relented and let her.

Did I think of accompanying her? No, no. It was a trip both of us made thousands of time. What could happen, right? [sighs]. So I let Salmah go, anticipating her to come back after five, six minutes or so.

[shakes head]

But when I couldn’t even glimpse her batang hidung, I decided to check up on her. I put on my sarong and baju and followed the short trail that brought us to our boat. Everything seemed normal, and quiet.

Then the scream came; it was so near but sounded, well, far. It must have been the darkness. I ran, I ran to the boat and in my head I was thinking, what the hell happened to my wife? Better not be something trivial.

[closes eyes]

I loved my wife, you see. She was a kind woman, a gentle woman who was tough enough to help me earn a small living fishing. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world, God no, but I loved her all the same. She gave me this boy here [tousles the hair of a young boy, not more than six years old] and now he’s all I have left that reminds me of her. He looks like his mom, Hafiz here.

[sighs again]

So anyway.

Anyway when I climbed into my boat, I didn’t see anything at all. And that’s the thing right? You would expect, hearing a scream from your wife, to see her cowering from something or hurt or whatever. But there was no trace. No trace at all, except a small bit of blood. Yes, it was her blood, the police had come to do whatever tests they do. What they concluded? They said they couldn’t determine. They could tell me the small bit of blood was from my wife, but as to where she was, not a clue.

There were no signs of a struggle, no broken wood or torn whatever.

[hesitates]

I suppose I could have told the police what I’m about to tell you now. But when I had arrived at the boat, which was partly in water, and it was high tide, I saw…

… I saw something swimming in the water at the hull. But I… I couldn’t tell what it was. It was dark, see, with only the light from the full moon.

[looks around]

I saw a set of spines, like those on the fin of a garoupa. You seen those? They look like short, stubby spikes. I saw these spines slice through the water, but quiet as a feather, and disappear. I thought it was my imagination. But I don’t know. I know what I saw. Must have been a big fish… except that…

[he pauses. After a few minutes leans over nearer]

Except, so help me God, fish don’t have hands and arms that look like these right? [holds up his own arms and limbs]

But that is what I saw. Wallahualam. As for my wife… not a day goes by that I don’t miss her, or say a prayer for her soul.

Shuib read the accounts he’s recorded so far. They were… baffling, to say the least. Clearly the kampung folk had seen something. But yellow eyes? Fish with arms and hands? Bullshit, Shuib thought. The last thing he needed was yet another old wives tale or monster story. He’s done them before; a ‘flying monkey’ in Temerloh, the Talking Pokok Ketapang, the Cursed Child Turned Into A Cow; he’s done those stories, recorded the so called eye-witness accounts and hearsay. But never, in any of those cases, has anyone ever managed to provide him with concrete, hard evidence. It’s always a cousin saw this, a friend told me that. Hundreds of stories, zero proof.

Yes, those stories always sold papers. But Shuib wanted to prove he was above that kind of pulp. He wanted to prove he can do real investigative journalism that would actually be important. He thought he could do it with the missing people on this little island; his own personal hunch was that they were the works of some deranged, lunar serial killer. But no evidence of foul play has ever turned up, nor, from his talks with the kampung folk, does anyone seem to be capable of bloody murder. Besides, there were no bodies ever found. And the missing have gone missing from random places; on a boat, in the sea, on the beach. The only common denominator was the presence of water.

Shuib shook his head as he went through the manila folder regarding the case. There was no discernible link between any of the missing.

He did think something strange was going on. And he suspected the kampung folk probably believed in some sort of oceanic monster stalking their little island. But Shuib knew, knew, that a more logical answer was available. Maybe, just maybe, the island folk were hiding some sort of weird religious cult? One that required human sacrifice every couple of months? That was a possibility… but even that, Shuib thought, would be outlandish. Nothing seemed off on this island. Nothing seemed to suggest weird practices or anything.

Maybe the kampung folk were just pulling his leg? Maybe they have been on the island so long that they made up some sort of weird aquatic creature as a way to explain the disappearances? Heck, maybe the people didn’t so much disappear as left the island.

As he wrote notes and read the accounts he’s gathered so far, he saw the old, scowling man again. This time he got a clearer picture; the man was maybe in his fifties, but looked older due to the living conditions of this island. He had thin grey hair, deeply tanned skin and a permanent scowl on his face, like he was unhappy about something.

Later that evening, he asked Tok Mail about the man.

“That would be Pak Jusoh. He’s been living alone ever since his wife and children died, six years ago.. Well, not died, but went missing. He never talks to anyone.”

“Jusoh?” Shuib said as his mind scanned the files in his memory. “Jusoh Saleh? The husband of Zaiton Roslan and father of Jaki Jusoh? They were the last two people to go missing, right, that year, five years ago? The first string of disappearances.”

Tok Mail looked surprised. “You know about it?” Shuib explained he had access to the disappearance records. Tok Mail shook his head as if deeply regretting something. “Yes, his wife and son were the last to go missing six years ago. It was after that he became a hermit, you could say. Must have been hard on him. Especially since the boy was only ten years old.”

Shuib asked Tok Mail where Pak Jusoh stayed. Later he would go visit the scowling old man. Maybe his story would be better.

That evening, Shuib cycled to Pak Jusoh’s house, using the directions Tok Mail had given him. He reached the house just by sun-down. It turned out Pak Jusoh lived on a pretty remote beach on the island; the only way leading to his house was a small path, sandy and overrun with weeds. Shuib cycled, crossed path with a six-foot python and after about half an hour cycling, he came across a small wooden house, sheltered by large trees. About fifty meters away from the house was a small, pristine beach. A fishing boat lay beached, looking sad and decrepit. Shuib guessed Pak Jusoh never went to see anymore.

As he approached the house, he saw the old man standing by the doorway to the house. Shuib gave his salam, introduced himself and stated his intentions.

“I know,” Pak Jusoh said. “I heard from the kampung folk. You’re looking to see about the people that have gone missing.”

“Yes, Pak Jusoh. I was wondering if you could shed some light upon what happened… that is, if you don’t mind.”

Up close, Pak Jusoh no longer looked like a scowling man; instead, he just looked tired and grieving. Pak Jusoh produced a rokok daun, lit it and said. “It’s been five years that my wife and young boy left me. I’ve been grieving as long. But perhaps I could tell the story.”

Shuib smiled. “I’d appreciate that, Pak Jusoh.”

The old man invited him up. The house was small, but neatly kept. Shuib noticed there were no wirings. Curious, he asked Pak Jusoh about it.

“Wires? No, my house is the only one without a generator on this island. I still light candles. I even draw my own water from my own well.”

Shuib wanted to ask why he chose to live that way, but opted not to.

“Come, I’ll make you coffee and we can sit down by the porch and I can tell you my story.”

Pak Jusoh’s Account, as recorded by Shuib Nordin

“How do you like the island so far? Quaint, isn’t it? Maybe even beautiful to a city boy like you.

I guess some people like you have an idea that living on an island like this is some sort of heaven, or getaway. But beauty sometimes has a price. Even tiny islands. On this one, I lost my family.

Have I told you about the duyung, yet? No? Well, I can tell you a bit.

The people on this island believe a duyung lives in the water surrounding ours. But instead of a pretty lady with a fish-tail, they think the duyung is some sort of evil spirit that stalks on the living. They don’t tell the police this of course, but I betcha most of them think that the people that disappeared were taken by the duyung. I guess it’s just an island superstition. Maybe living isolated has it’s effects, eh?

They say the duyung looks like, I don’t know, some sort of monstrous ikan belacak? What do you call those? Mudskippers, right? Yes, they say the duyung looks like that.

[stop recording]

Shuib stopped the recording, abruptly, as Pak Jusoh began to talk about this weird duyung. Shuib knows the story of course; it’s present in almost every culture. The mermaid, the merman, the half-human half-fish creature, sometimes depicted as beautiful, other times as evil sea-witches.

“Pak Jusoh, you were going to tell me about the disappearance of your wife and son?”

The old man looked at Shuib. “I was.”

“So, why are you talking about this, this duyung thing?”

Pak Jusoh took a long drag on his rokok daun. “Have the other people you talked to mention anything strange?”

Shuib nodded. “Yes, they mentioned yellow eyes and a big fish with arms. But I’m pretty sure it’s just fevered imagination, or trauma, causing them to think they saw some sort of weird animal.”

“So you don’t believe them?” Pak Jusoh asked.

“I believe there is a rational, logical reason to the missing people on this island. And it’s not some mythical creature.”

Pak Jusoh seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he shook his head. “City folk think they know everything. They think, because they’re more modern than us, that they have all these computers or whatever, that they know all there is to know. But I’m telling you now, there are things which are beyond what you can read in books, or newspapers. There are things, perhaps, that maybe you don’t even want to know.”

Shuib, apologetically, and slightly condescendingly, said, “Pak Jusoh, I’m pretty sure no such thing exists. I believe something strange happened to the folk that went missing, including your family. But a duyung? And you’re telling me you know this duyung took your wife and son?”

Pak Jusoh leaned closer to Shuib. “I know so.”

“Pak Jusoh, I’m sorry, but I can’t believe in a creature from legend, not unless I see one with my own eyes.”

Pak Jusoh shrugged. “I can give you this,” Pak Jusoh tossed Shuib a small, shiny object. It was grey, hard, shaped like a diamond, and had sharp edges.

“What’s this?” Shuib asked.

“It’s a scale, from the duyung,” Pak Jusoh said.

“Come on, it’s just a fish scale. A big fish, but a fish nonetheless,” Shuib said.

“I can’t force you to believe me. But I can tell you to go to the boat and look at the hull. You’ll see a long, groove, made by the duyung. It has a huge claw on each of its two ‘hands’ you see. Go ahead. I’ll wait here. I hate looking at that boat. It reminds me of the night the duyung took my family. I only keep it to go fishing, and I can’t afford to buy a new one.”

There was something in the tone of what the old man was saying that made Shuib feel insulted. So despite himself, he got up and walked down to see the boat. It was already dark, and a bright full moon had risen mercurially in the sky, flanked on all sides by shining stars. Shuib felt irritated. He thought Pak Jusoh would tell a legit story. But instead the old man seemed crazier than the others; the others had only seemed to mention glimpses of a creature. But Pak Jusoh actually told him it was a duyung! Maybe the kampung folk were trying to scam a city guy like him.

Mermaids! What bullshit.

Shuib approached the hull of the boat. Indeed, there was a long gash running down the side. In fact, it looked like the gash he saw earlier, just yesterday. He studied the gash carefully, and fiddled the scale in his hand. He glimpsed towards the house, saw Pak Jusoh calmly smoking on his porch. The old man seemed disinterested and wasn’t even looking Shuibs way.

Suddenly Shuib noticed how quiet this beach was. And how remote it is compared to the villages. He studied the gash in the boat again, feeling sure it was probably from a rock the boat had grazed, and not from some giant claw belonging to some mythical creature. Shuib sighed, feeling annoyed he had actually been compelled to check out the boat.

He was about to make his way back to Pak Jusoh’s house when he felt a stabbing pain at his heels, and when he tried to take a step, he stumbled instead. He looked down and saw his ankles had been impaled horizontally by a long, bony spike. His mind failed to register the scene, until his eyes traced the spike, and Shuib felt his heart go up to his throat. The spike was attached to the hand of this, this thing, this thing that was crawling out of the sea, this thing with slimy, grey skin and hard, diamond shaped scales covering a head that looked like a horrible hybrid of a fish and a monkey; on this face, two orbs, frighteningly yellow and rimmed with black, stared back at him. This thing opened it’s jaws, and it extended long and wide, like a deep-sea fish, and the jaws were lined with fangs and spikes; Shuib saw how this thing had almost human-like arms that terminated in ‘hands’ with three appendages, one of which was a long, bony spike, like the one that had impaled his ankles; Shuib saw the things bloated, blubbery body and crazily he thought about an elephant seal, such was the similarity.

Then his mind snapped; Shuib screamed as the creature lunged forward and begin to tear at his flesh. Soon, Shuib would know no more.

Pak Jusoh calmly smoked his rokok daun, even as the screams from that city boy echoed in the background. Soon the screams would end, anyway. They always did, once Comel was done with them.

Instead Pak Jusoh thought about how, one day, five years ago, he had gone to the sea a bit further than usual to fish. He had used hand-lines with hooks and sinkers, and sotong as bait. On that day five years ago, he hooked up an unusual looking creature that looked like a small, cute cat with two arms and hands, but the body of a fish. The thing had mewled and looked at him with huge, yellow eyes, and elicited sympathy in him. So Pak Jusoh had put it in a basin with sea-water, and went back home. He had given the strange cat-creature to his then four year old boy as a pet. His son had named the creature Comel, and they kept it in a big basin underneath their house. The thing turned out playful, and ate sotong or whatever excess fish Jusoh and his wife and son tossed its way. The whole family learned to love this unusual creature, but decided to keep it a secret. They didn’t want their strange pet to attract too much attention.

Comel grew bigger everyday, and so did its appetite. Soon, sotong and fish no longer sufficed. Jusoh resorted to giving Comel stray cats, and soon that became insufficent as well. He decided to release it back to the sea, and would have done so, except his son had protested and he, himself, could not bear to throw the creature away, this very creature that the whole family had grown to love.

After just six months Comel grew to be as big as a full grown man and Jusoh had run out of options on how to feed it; the creature didn’t seem to know how to hunt. And Jusoh had seen that Comel was no longer keeping to its namesake; it had grown to look like a terrible mix-up of a monkey and some sort of deep sea fish, with hands that had spikes and fangs in its jaws; even those yellow eyes, once cute and shiny, had turned malevolent and predatory. Jusoh shuddered to think about what this thing would be like in the wild.

But because he could no longer keep Comel near his house, he let Comel into the sea. First he thought Comel would swim away into the deep. But instead, the thing seemed to patrol his shores, and stuck close to the beach.

Then one day, five years ago, a small sampan passed by Jusoh’s beach at night. There was a full moon. Jusoh was just about to check who it was in the small sampan when Comel had come bursting out of the sea and snatched the man off the boat. Jusoh had been in shock; he had run to the shore and Comel had come swimming to him, with the mangled remains of whoever it was had been on that sampan.

He had kept that incident secret from his wife and son; and after that night, every two full moons, someone would go missing from the kampungs. Jusoh had already accepted the ugly truth by this point… he knew Comel was responsible, and had even heard the kampung folk began to talk about this strange predator prowling the shores.

One night, five years ago, Jusoh had come back from Isya’ prayers to find his wife and son were missing from home; where could they have been? Instinctively, he had walked down to the beach. He saw drag marks, drops of blood… and the severed hand of his wife.

His fear had spiked and he called out, “COMELL!!”. On cue, the thing had raced to shore with its ugly grey body and Jusoh had been stunned into silence when he saw the remains of both his wife and son in the creatures huge jaws; Jusoh had fallen down kneeling on the beach, crying.

And Comel had nuzzled against him, not understanding why its master seemed distressed.

Jusoh had vowed to get rid of the creature then… he even took out a parang, intending to stab the things head and be rid of it… but when it came to that, he didn’t see the grotesque monster Comel had become; instead he saw tha cute cat-creature he had pulled out of the deep. His will had faltered, and the parang didn’t do it’s job…

That was five years ago. Jusoh had learned the things feeding patterns; every two months, on a full moon, the monster would hunt and take one of the villagers. And Jusoh had let that be for the past five years…

A nuzzling at his feet snapped him out of his memories. He noticed the city boys screaming had stopped. Comel was at this feet, its body now roughly thirteen feet long. It nuzzled its head against Jusoh’s feet, and Jusoh saw a hand stuck between its fangs.

“Kau nak apa lagi? Dah makan kan? Pergi balik air tu,” Jusoh said.

Comel, like a child reprimanded, quickly turned its seal-like bulk, obeyed its masters order and slithered back into the sea.

Pak Jusoh lit another rokok daun and sighed, wondering if he would ever be rid of this monster.

*