(It is Vampire Weekend! Have a pontianak-themed urban-horror investigative adventure. I wrote it with Kuala Lumpur in mind, but it should work for any big city just fine.)
An inner-city neighbourhood, too ugly for gentrification. Refugees have settled here. They fled war in their own country. But they have not escaped violence.
People work basement sweatshops, or clean toilets in nightclubs. They stumble home in the morning dark. At dawn, their neighbours find gore blotching the dumpsters.
The first disappearance was a year ago. Now it happens with alarming regularity—every fortnight. The neighbourhood is tense. Most agree the following precautions work:
Cross the road if you spot rats.
Walk on if your name is called.
Do not look for the baby crying.
A school for refugee children. A girl in pink polka dots tugs the sleeve of a hijabi woman. “Shingalong time, Missh Shara?” she asks.
Sara gives in. Poor Yinyin! Her father vanished over the weekend. Sara offers cash for information about what happened to him. The authorities don’t seem to care.
Sara cares. She teaches English here, weekdays. Last year, when she miscarried, she bled all over the felt carpeting. She paid to have it cleaned. A faint stain remains.
YINYIN, THE ORPHAN
Sniffling, hiding, remembering.
A bundle of giggles, playing with her friends—but as soon as she is allowed a moment on her own she crouches, hugs herself, sobs.
Yinyin tells you her Papa is short a finger on his left hand, and has a picture of a scary black cat on his right arm. Yinyin tells you she loves her Papa.
“Shaturday night, Papa wentsh out to buy shtuff at the shop. Papa hashn’t come home. Will you ashk Uncle Yat when Papa will be home?”
SARA, THE WIFE
Literature, pastry arts, embroidery.
At brunch her friends coo: “Look. At. You! You’re glowing!” Then they smile, half-cringing. They know she knows they’re lying.
Sara has not been sleeping well. Hormones, she thinks. She is six months into her second pregnancy. This will be her firstborn child. She will not disappoint her husband the doctor again.
She has a nail embedded into the back of her neck. She cannot feel it. Her hijab means nobody else sees it.
Shop signs in a language you cannot read. Even the thoroughfares feel like alleys. Whenever you turn a corner, roll an encounter:
Music blaring from a phone. A gang of six 38-ers. They whistle passers-by over, to squeeze for snack money.
Excited yaps. Seven dogs, four puppies. An elderly man has brought them rice and curry, in styrofoam packets.
The flutter of yellow paper. Ideograms and a tiger, drawn in red ink. Somebody has lost their protective talisman.
Squeaks from a smelly drain. A rat pokes its head out, peers at you for a full minute, then continues on its way.
Police tape. “Move along, move along,” Sub-inspector Rafiq repeats, bored. A severed finger has been found.
“Eh-hek, eh-hek, eeeeeeeeeh!” A baby has begun to cry, close by. Just behind that pile of boxes. Sara’s baby.
38-ER, GANG MEMBER
Machete use, boasting, escaping.
Tattooed on their bare shoulders: the number “38”, stylised to look like the symbol for the sacred sound Aum.
Are these disappearances the work of some rival triad, trying to take over their turf? They were protective amulets. They move in groups. One in every group carries a gun.
They are still losing. Three senior members have gone missing. Their boss Uncle Day has not left his club in weeks.
SARA’S BABY, THE GHOSTLING
Stalking, mimicking, exsanguination.
There was no funeral because she lost them so early. She buried their remains, mourned them in private. She doesn’t know their spirit is still abroad.
Usually invisible; materialises to attack. Appears as a child with corpse-green pallor; talons; and proboscis-like umbilical cord.
Will never harm Sara. Hungers for her affection. Often spies on her at the Community Centre. May copy her teaching voice: “Quiet please!” “Sit down, children!” Make a check, or obey.
As resilient as an ordinary five-year-old. Harmed by mundane weapons. If slain, reappears the next new moon. Even full funeral rites will not put them to rest.
The wrong that made them was done to their mother.
It is a close-knit neighbourhood. Folk gossip about your business. Some are becoming familiar faces. At every location, roll to see who also happens to be here:
An eleven-year-old. Suki. Organising, hauling, shortcut-taking. With five siblings to support, she has stopped school. Is a gofer for most businesses. Has keys to most back doors.
A one-armed man. Uncle Tin. Marksmanship, bushcraft, forgetting. His panther tattoo marks him as a former resistance fighter. Cheap rum in his pocket. An assault rifle in his flat.
A woman, heavy makeup. Sanda. Dancing, drinking, scrimping. Go-go dancer. Annoyed that the the new girls at the club pinching her regulars. Uncle Day’s favourite niece.
A bald head, robes. Brother Pha. Selling, haggling, spellcraft. Peddles a camphor liniment. “I bless, I bless!” Claims it wards against evil. It stings spiritual entities like pepper spray.
Always taking a call. Mr Nong. Spying, deception, pistol-use. Seems helpful, but feeds you bad leads. Actually a private investigator keeping an eye on things for Dr Azman.
Waddles like a duck. Mya. Cooking, scolding, knife-use. She is expecting twins—two boys. “My hubby’s so happy.” Unless you get involved, will be the next person to disappear.
No signboard; doesn’t need one. Sells cosmetics; produce and spice pastes for dishes from the old country; third-hand phones.
Also roasted sunflower seeds; cheap rum; smuggled cannabis—enjoyed at tables in the alley out back.
UNCLE YAT, THE SHOPKEEPER
Smuggling, gossiping, electronics.
“See this panther here?” He points to a tattoo on his left arm. “We fought. We believed! But we lost. That’s life.” He takes another drag of his spliff, and chortles.
Yinyin’s father was here, Saturday, drinking. “Putting the charm on some girl. Real pretty! And getting real close, touching his face, all that. They left together.”
Yat gets quiet. “After what we’ve been through? We all deserve some happiness.” Yat thinks she was a go-go girl. “They work at the club. Go ask Day.”
Community board: empty. Front desk: empty. Air-conditioning: freezing. You have to press the call buzzer four times before an officer appears, irritated.
Whatever you say, she will ask if you want to make a report. “Here, the form. Write. Sign.”
SUB-INSPECTOR RAFIQ, THE OFFICER
Report-writing, delegating, pistol use.
Takes cigarettes breaks to escape the kiosk’s chill. Obliged to set up a cordon around any scenes of obvious violence. Treats his job as a pensioner’s hobby.
A grey moustache, holding your attention. Friendly but unhelpful. Mention Sara and his eyes narrow; he asks whether you know Dr Azman.
“Because I do. The doctor’s wife has pure intentions, yes. But she is naive. These refugees? They are bad people. We should protect pure women from bad realities.”
A poor person’s idea of what wealth looks like: lots of glass; lots of pleather. Driving dangdut. Dancers gyrating on stages in front of murals of elephants, phoenixes, panthers.
Upstairs, a 38-er with a shotgun guards an armoured door. To meet the boss, you must be vouched for.
UNCLE DAY, THE BOSS
Speechifying, martial arts, rifle-use.
A fifty-year-old veteran with hippie dreads. Panther-themed ink. Day was a military commander. Now he fights on a different plane.
“My people’s true war is spiritual. You appear on a lucky day—very lucky. It is fate. Preordained! What insight do you bring, heavenly messenger?”
Confirms that there are many fresh faces on weekends. “Beautiful girls are sacred animals, you understand? We cannot turn away beauty!”
This happens on the next weekend night, to the most cishet male person among you:
Maybe she is in some sort of trouble, and her car won’t start. Maybe she is on a corner, smoking—one black eye. Maybe she is on the podium, enduring gropes and jeers.
She is beautiful. Exactly your type. You can save her, be her hero. She will be grateful.
There are warning signs. There is no car. She will not describe her assailants. She leads you down a dead end. Her fragrance is sweet, like rotting flower garlands. Every dog in the neighbourhood bays.
She lowers her eyes, bites her lip. How can she repay you? she asks. This is a game she likes. Gratification delayed. It makes the end delicious.
Show suspicion, fear? She gets annoyed. Why aren’t you playing along?
Her neck twists around. She grins, chin over the nape of her neck. Arms at wrong angles, fingers ending in talons. She lopes after you, running backwards with a digitigrade gait.
SARA, THE PONTIANAK
Pretending, pursuing, disembowelling.
The pontianak is a nightmare: born when an unhappy mother dies at childbirth; made when life is destroyed, trying to satiate the demands of the patriarchy.
The pontianak is a predator: she eats men. Women are exempt—except when they are pregnant with a male foetus. Baby flesh tastes best.
The pontianak is reversal. In human form, her physical features are tailored to appeal to potential victims. She must reveal her monstrously twisted form to feed.
The pontianak is fear. She wants her victims to know. She has tells. She always smells of rotting flowers. Dogs hate her: one will flee; a pack will attack.
She may whisper to any man she can see. The target hears this whisper over any distance. She materialises by his ear.
She may laugh, a high-pitched cackle. Men who hear this laugh develop debilitating fever a day later. Breaks after a week.
She may touch your clothes. Unerringly locates any man wearing any article of clothing she has previously touched.
She may fly. Moves through the air as if running on solid ground.
She may change shape. Besides taking human woman’s shape, she may also transform into a bay owl.
As resilient as three human persons. Harmed by mundane weapons. If slain, reappears the next new moon.
A known solution is imprisonment: a specially-prepared nail, stabbed into the back of her neck. This transforms the pontianak into a human woman.
Unaware of the nail, amnesiac, she is easily groomed by her captor. Often she is made to perform sanctioned gender roles—marriage, family-making—roles she previously abandoned.
The pontianak remains within. Her children may be born as monsters. If the nail is removed, she remembers what she is, and once again goes free.
A pontianak always has a nest—typically a banana plant, banyan, or frangipani. This is where the root of her spirit resides; where she retreats if her body is slain.
Kill the pontianak, wait for her to retreat to her tree. Trap her inside with mystic wards. Burn the tree. This destroys her permanently.
Sara’s banana plant is in the back garden of her house.
A two-storey bungalow, in one of the city’s oldest suburbs. The neighbours are cousins of sultans, hedge-fund managers, architects.
The perfectly manicured back garden has spider lilies, frangipanis—and a single banana stem, in a person-sized urn. “Easier to control the corm, so it grows neat,” Dr Azman explains.
The banana’s trunk has a girdle woven from coarse black thread. Look closer: the thread is human hair.
DR AZMAN, THE HUSBAND
Gardening, surgery, spellcraft.
Has a driver with a concealed-carry licence. Went to boarding school with the current Defence Minister. Framed: doctorates in a variety of medical fields; a masters in anthropology.
“Black magic? Bloodsucking spirits?” He shrugs. “Charlatans, placebo effect, criminal types using spooky stories to hide trafficking operations.”
You notice a vial on a cord around his neck. Inside: a single hair, suspended in dark oil. He buttons up his shirt without a word. He asks Sara to bring tea. “You’ve met my wife?”
Dr Azman wanted a wife. He did not leave such a thing to the vagaries of love; he made one for himself. Etched the nail in her neck; wove the girdle around her tree.
Dr Azman wants a son—though he is willing to accept a daughter. His first try failed. His perfect wife does have some downsides.
Dr Azman is trying again. Curious how gestation goes easier if his wife’s spirit is let out, given leave to feed. Nourishment for the foetus? Once every two weeks.
When he removes her nail she blusters and threatens. She doesn’t mean those things, he knows. He wears protection, as a precaution.
Dr Azman’s vial contains oil distilled from the flesh of Sara’s original corpse. Sara may never harm the person who wears this vial.
This was written with page references---ie: "turn to pg xx"---because that's what I do as a matter of course in drafting. But I couldn't get internal hyperlinks to work with Tumblr's text editor; my html-fu isn't good enough. Sorry. Hope it is still legible nonetheless.
The original version of this was written as a monster entry for an urban fantasy game. Stripped the system-specific stuff out; expanded the adventure bits (locations, characters, shape of What Is Going On). Basically rewrote the whole thing.
Writing for a contemporary setting is interesting. Felt okay to use an even more basic version of the system-neutral "stat block" I usually use. Mechanics aren't a prerequisite to contextualise action in modern-day reality, consider we (most of us, anyway) actually live here.
Malaysian hantu / monsters are overwhelmingly gendered female; most are created from childbirth and its horrors. They are nightmares of the patriarchy (and its callous treatment of women's bodies) made manifest.
Every Malaysian writer eventually writes a pontianak story. This is mine, I guess? The one bit in the pontianak mythos that arrests me most is the idea that she can be captured, turned into a "proper" woman. And that this is spoken of as some sort of victory, some sort triumph against evil---men win, in the end, always and forever.
The refugee angle is me working through Malaysian society's xenophobia towards of asylum seekers. I have written about it before; it is still relevant now.
This adventure explicitly casts the husband as the villain. He should get his comeuppance. Any way the situation develops, Sara---an innocent woman---will not come out of this unscathed.
Felt okay to sketch the NPCs, but not the monsters, because I'm not a good enough artist. Your imagination is better than I.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/ufb8de/random_alley_in_cheras_kuala_lumpur_malaysia/
https://www.sabahpost.net/2019/12/06/polis-tembak-mati-3-pengedar-dadah-rampas-syabu-dan-senjata-api/
https://www.hmetro.com.my/mutakhir/2021/08/747004/balai-polis-sungai-besi-dihias-indah-sempena-hari-kebangsaan
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Flmb0m4v472n81.jpg
https://naturerules1.fandom.com/wiki/Oriental_Bay_Owl
https://www.bikemap.net/en/r/7659968/
https://www.secret-retreats.com/blog/general-info/list-of-edible-flowers-in-asia-floral-delights-in-asian-cuisine-part-1.html
