don’t mind telling you. I followed in Maew's footsteps. I had no intention of putting up with any more of this juvenile crap. In fact, I felt as though I should have put a stop to it far earlier, though this was hardly my job. With the darkness, the stray cats had emerged, and they watched from a discreet distance as I stomped over to the dispatch centre.
"Upstairs in the control room, Maew had Tuy up against the wall, one hand at his throat. The man’s toes were barely touching the ground. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as angry as Maew right then. Lek had clearly tried to wrench him off, and been thrown up against the consoles. Maew was like a thing possessed. I have no idea what he'd just said, but Tuy was shouting—or rather wheezing—a reply. He was protesting, in so much as he was capable of protesting, that he hadn’t seen us out on the tracks. Maew was slowly tightening his grip. As I stood there, staring, Lek dragged himself to his feet and tried to pull Maew back again. He had long fingernails like a lot of the old peasants out there, and he'd already left a set of deep scratches down Maew's face.
“I was out of my depth. I had no idea what to do, so I just tried to sort of prize Maew away from Tuy. At first I think he didn't even notice I was there. He was so tense that I certainly couldn't have pulled him off the poor man if he hadn't wanted to come. Thankfully, he started to relax, and finally to let go of Tuy's neck, one finger at a time. Tuy was bleeding quite badly where Maew's nails had dug in.
"Maew looked around, seeming almost confused for a second or two, before turning to head back downstairs, not addressing another word to any of us. I felt that something could do with being said, however. I stared Tuy and Lek down, just about managing not to wag an admonitory finger.
“I can’t remember exactly what I said, but there was a lot of swearing in there. The basic message was that if they wanted to kill each other that was fine by me, but I had been on the tracks with Maew, and they could quite easily have ended up crushing me between the carriages instead of him.
“I was getting more and more irate as I spoke – by the end I felt almost as worked up as Maew. Tuy was almost weeping by this point, still trying to insist that they hadn’t seen us, but I just stormed out.
"I don't know what happened in the immediate aftermath. I had to go into Udon Thani the next day to speak to some of the Chinese project reps. Bounmi drove me into town. He'd already heard about the incident the previous night, via the rural rumour osmosis system. He spent most of the journey muttering about how Station 58 always had been a bad one for accidents. I had trouble concentrating on the technical briefings I had to give, and went to bed early with a headache on both of the nights that I spent in Udon Thani, much to the disapprobation of the Chinese and the Thais, who had planned various excursions to karaoke bars. All in all, I was oddly relieved when Bounmi showed up a couple of days later to take me back to his place. We arrived around ten that night, and I went straight up to bed.
"We were woken around five the next morning by Ice, banging on the door and screaming. I had an odd sensation of déjà-vu. Unlike Pink, however, it seemed that he had run all the way from the dispatch centre to Bounmi's house. He was nearly out of his mind with terror, and we had trouble getting anything coherent out of him. According to what we could make out, it seemed as though someone was dead. I wanted to palm Ice off on Bounmi's wife and head down there right away. To be perfectly honest, I suspected that one or other of them had had another go at Maew and been more successful second time around. Bounmi categorically refused to go there with only myself for company, however. He decided that the thing to do was to form a posse, or at least bring along a few of the local good old boys as backup.
"By the time he'd managed to collect together a few friends with pick-ups and crates of beer and ancient revolvers for moral support, the sun was already rising. We realized then what had happened. The mist that covered the rice fields was thicker and darker than usual, and we could see the a of smoke rising above the trees.
"The realization that the dispatch centre may well have burnt to the ground while they were busy admiring each other's artillery and polishing off a few Singha Beers for the road smartened Bounmi's Duck Dynasty friends up a bit, and we finally set off around seven.
"In light of the emergency, we went the short way, though most of the men looked profoundly ill-at-ease to be passing the Cat Spirit House, even in the pursuit of an urgent mission. The sun was shining brightly through the trees, but the mixture of smoke and mist was still thick. I remember the creepy way that the clumps of forest loomed out of the fog as we rattled on down the track... The fog was thick enough that we couldn't see the dispatch centre until after we'd passed the Cat Spirit House.
"Our initial diagnosis had been correct. There was little left of the building: a few charred joists sticking up here and there, and a thin coating of ash over the trees nearby. After a long dry season it must have gone up like tissue paper.
"Pink was standing a little way back, staring hopelessly at the wreck. A little further down, alone and apart, Maew was sitting on one of the rails, nursing a burnt hand, sucking his fingers.
"It took us a while to get all the information out of them. By that time, one of the hillbillies had called the Udon Thani police, and a few hours later an ambulance and a couple of cars rocked down the gravel path and ground to a halt in front of the remains of the building. Someone had gone back to Bounmi's farmhouse and fetched Ice to give his witness statement, such as it was. The police interrogated all of us. With Station 58 gone, there was no shelter, so they just stood in the lee of the trees, holding their clipboards above their heads for some protection against the sunlight.
"It turned out that Ice and Pink had been due to take over from Lek at 4am. They had arrived to find the place in flames, with Maew staring helplessly up at the building. According to him, the first he had known of the fire had been when a burning chunk of the ceiling had fallen on his bed and woken him up. He had only just made it out before the whole thing collapsed.
"The police seemed to be leaning towards the conclusion that Lek had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand, and the blaze had started like that. The wreckage had cooled a little by then, and a couple of officers made their way gingerly into what was left of the building. They could find no sign of Lek, but they hadn't expected to. Anyone who'd been inside when it went up would have been turned into a thin coating on the acacias in short order. The ambulance left empty. After a while, a couple of the hillbillies' wives came down with a folding table and a cooler full of beers, and an impromptu wake began. I sat down next to Pink and she cracked open a beer for me. Maew stood a little way to one side, sucking the burns on his hand, until finally one of the wives called him over. Ice and Pink looked uncomfortable, but they shifted up to let him sit down. He took one of the chairs, very carefully and politely. One of the wives passed him some ice for his injuries.
"I think that the traffic on the Isaan line was being run by the Bangkok office for the time being. Certainly, no trains passed while we were there. The hillbillies got thoroughly drunk in the wreckage. The sun went down and they got out a set of cards and played Beat the Landlord way into the night, shambling off into the bushes for a pee every now and then..." Benedict’s eyes had lost their focus, the memory filling his mind.
"And…?" d’Aumetz asked.
"And what?"
"No mysterious ghostly meows?” he asked cynically. “Bloody paw- prints? It's not very conclusive, is it?" Benedict looked slightly affronted.
"Life's not very conclusive. What do you want? Jam on it?" D'Aumetz shrugged, and knocked back the last of his whiskey.
"I'm just saying that I probably shouldn't read too much into it." Benedict shrugged and finished his beer. A waitress hovered quietly. He stood up.
"Well, I'm meeting some people for dinner…" he said vaguely, dragging himself back to the present.
"It was nice—" d'Aumetz began, before pulling himself up short. "Wait a minute… 'Maew' ..?" "Yes?"
"I was
assuming it was jokey reference to northern origins. They call Thaksin Shinawatra 'Maew', don't they?"
"I stay out of politics, personally."
"But it's not, is it?" He glanced up, looking inquisitive, challenging. "It has the same meaning as in Lao." Benedict appeared to have lost interest, busy scanning the doorway through to the dining room.
"'Cat'? Quite. But then, I probably shouldn't read too much into it…”
The Bit at the End
If you enjoyed this book, I can be found on Goodreads as D.Z.C., Twitter as @TheOtherDZC and Facebook as Deng Zichao. I always like receiving pictures of cats, or, if none are available, reviews of my work.
As well as ghost stories, I also write contemporary crime novels (People Like Us and Xanadu) and historical murder mysteries (A Star in the Sky), which are available on Amazon.
For the first chapter of the People Like Us, read on...
People Like Us, Chapter One
Saturday 5th November
I met Estrade at a petrol station in Morbihan. I was just filling up my little hired Renault when I noticed someone that I was almost sure I recognised standing on the other side of the forecourt. He seemed to be discussing correct treatment for a fat,