CW: car accidents, blood, death.
Krungthep means “The City of Gods.” A much more charming name than the bawdy Bangkok that foreigners joke about. But to Somsak, it is the city of ghosts.
He drives his taxi slowly along through the glittering blocks of shopping malls, the neon signs of Yaowarat restaurants, the pulsing beats of Soi Cowboy, looking for customers, loitering in traffic to make sure he is seen, until he’s chased away by security guards or traffic police.
Sometime after midnight, two girls hail him in front of the alleyway that leads to the hip and hidden bars near the Chinatown herb wholesalers. The one in front is waving, the other leans her head out into the road. He stops beside them and they get in the backseat.
“Where are you two ladies going tonight?”
“What? It’s just me.” The girl who waved looks around, shuddering. She has big round glasses and bangs. “What joke are you playing? Don’t spook me like that!”
Somsak glances at the rear mirror. Ah yes, he should’ve noticed. The other girl’s head is bent ninety degrees on its side. Hanged, most likely. She rasps, “Chulalongkorn University. Faculty of law.”
To the living girl, he smiles. “Sorry about that. Thought I saw someone with you. So where’re you going?”
“Home. Soi 44, Prachachuen Road. My mum’s waiting for me.”
He starts the meter and sets off.
“You must be scared of ghosts,” the girl says, staring at . . . everything in his car. Charms tied around his manual gear stick, amulets hanging from his rear mirror, yantra cloth taped to his ceiling. He has a little statue of the guardian spirit, Mae Yanang, by his windshield and a prayer book from Venerable Monk Toe under his speedometer.
“These things work, you know? Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of ghosts and they haven’t strangled me yet!” He laughs.
She hides her scoff, her face lit up by the light of her phone. That kind of passenger, huh? He turns on the radio to fill the silence. It’s a news segment about a bad car crash on the Rama IX motorway and apparently an investigation. There’s sure to be a ton of cones and tapes, not to mention a disoriented and potentially vengeful ghost; he’ll avoid that route for the next few days. He reaches for the knob to change the channel.
“Wait,” the girl says. “A hit-and-run?”
“What do you get from knowing? It just sits heavy in your head. I don’t even want to turn on the radio these—” Somsak says.
“One moment, pi, I want to listen.”
Somsak looks at them; the living girl is frowning, enraptured, while her ghostly friend stares up at her from where her limp neck droops over her shoulder. He shivers and turns his eyes back to the road.
“Ugh, they’ll never find the perpetrator,” the living girl says. “I bet it’s someone important if the news is so mysterious about the details.”
“See what I’m talking about?” Somsak switches to a country-child song channel.
“Hey, why are you taking this route? Why aren’t we taking the tollway?”
“I’m saving you some money. There won’t be any traffic at this hour.”
The broad, sombre buildings of Chulalongkorn University loom stark in spotlights while the trees pose as manicured shadows. The campus gates are closed so Somsak parks at the entrance. With his rear mirror, he watches the dead girl drift through his car door.
“Drop me off now,” the spectacled girl says, her phone raised. She’s been filming him for a while. “You’re trying to scam me, aren’t you? Driving me around to inflate the meter. This is a live video. Just you wait. The drama bus will pile on you. Say goodbye to your license.”
“Calm down, girl. I was just dropping off your friend. There she goes, heading to the graduation hall. And there, she disappears. What a studious girl. She never got to graduate in law, did she?”
She lowers her phone, becoming very still. “W—What? How did you know?”
“Long hair, tall, so skinny she looks like a model?” Somsak watches her eyes flare wide. “She’s been following you all this time. A shame about what she did. I’ll take you home now. Call your mum. Tell her we got held up by an accident or something. So she won’t worry.”
The girl stares out of the window, silent, her face punctuated by strips of orange streetlight. She sobs, fighting not to burst into tears. “Is she gone? Is she really, really gone? Happily?”
“As happy as any ghost who gets to be reincarnated.”
“If only I’d checked up on her that evening, when she called me to say goodbye. We had a fight, but how could I know she’d commit suicide? Everything was perfect for her. Rich family, good looks, stellar student!” She presses at her eyes behind the glasses, her cheeks shining with tears. She sobs, “I don’t know what you did but thank you. Thank you so much, uncle.”
“Who are you calling uncle? I’m forty!”
• • • •
Like Somsak was saying, ghosts are everywhere.
Beside trees or electric poles of Chatuchak Road. At street corners in the slums of Khlong Toey. In front of election campaign posters for the next Bangkok governor. On railway intersections. A few even on the motorways—these ones look the worst.
They never leave, they can’t leave. They seem to haunt the location they died at, their last possessions, or a person who might release them. A monk’s prayer and holy water also seem to work, or a cleansing ritual organized by big businesses with roadblocks and police officers to zone out their offering tables. It’s no surprise why the taller, shinier parts of Bangkok have so few ghosts. Meanwhile the sprawling roads and alleyways with their uneven pavements, trickling gutters and sour whiff of days-old rubbish remain crowded with the living and dead. Even ghosts have to respect the conglomerate’s real estate.
Somsak isn’t a monk (he was ordained for a month to make merit for his deceased mother). He isn’t a medium (though his village elders in Sisaket told him he had a gift). He has only his car (on rent) and his LPG tank (the already cheap fuel gets ever more expensive). His greatest moment of fame is when his voice was featured on The Ghost Radio Youtube channel (least viewed video of the month, the comments said his scare moment was too tame, too mundane). Yet, he has been ferrying ghosts to their final destinations for ten years. Not because he wants to. Rather because he’s mistaken.
When you’re stripped for cash, any figure hailing half-lit in the shadow is worth a gamble. Best case scenario, he gets a substantial fare to drive a late-shift worker to their suburban home. Worst case, a ghost wants him to go there for free. It’s not like he can refuse them. To make up for lost business, he’d sometimes charge tourists 300 baht for a trip from one shopping mall to the next, instead of the fifty baht by meter. Not a pretty justification, but still better than other taxi drivers who scammed for the money to get a few bottles of lao khao.
He supposes he’s making merit at least. His mum used to tell him: If you can’t do anything, be a good person.
His schedule makes it hard to find a girlfriend, or any friend at all. He talks to the auntie at his favourite rice-and-curry cart, the stingy, loud-mouthed landlady of his boarding house, and the other taxi drivers lining up to rent their car from the workshop. But they don’t include him in their circle because he doesn’t drink. He’ll never touch the stuff again. Not after his mum died.
Funnily enough, he finds himself most comfortable among his grisly late-night passengers.
Sometimes they look so pitiful, standing there month after month, like lost children. He has picked up ghosts of bargirls from Patpong and dropped them at the bus terminal so they can return home to their families in the rural heartlands. Scantily clad but not always naked, he hung his jacket over his rear mirror so he wouldn’t see their exposed skin, sometimes splotched with cuts and bruises. Partly for their modesty, but mainly so he doesn’t get turned on by ghosts. Feels like a very bad line to cross.
He has picked up road racers and returned them to their mothers. Gangly teenagers wearing shorts and football shirts, their heads of highlighted hair cracked like watermelons. Their road code reveres custom-modified motorbikes but forbids cowardly helmets. Somsak gives them plastic bags as offerings to cover their splattered heads. It also hides their tears. They always cry, perhaps for their wasted future.
Whenever he drops off these kids, he feels his throat twisting like a cobra. He is reminded of his teenage years in Sisaket, when he rode double on his friend’s wheels to their after-school movie drive-in. It was their Wednesday ritual, when they traded their lunch money for a ganja blunt or some rice wine from the uncle who ran the projector. Somsak’s mum always gave him an earful when he went back home, stinking green and alcoholic. But on that day, out of all days, she decided to turn up at the drive-in to drag him back.
What would have happened if he’d let her pinch his ear and drive him home on her scooter? Maybe it was The Terminator on show at the time, maybe it was the alcohol hot in their empty stomachs, maybe it was her rattan cane on his buttocks the day before when he failed maths for the hundredth time, but he urged his friend to flee. Who’d have thought his mum would actually give chase? When he and his friend were stopped by a police checkpoint, they shouldn’t have panicked either. They shouldn’t have made a dramatic U-turn and sped back the way they came with a cop’s siren and his mum at their heels.
In truth, Somsak didn’t even see the junction, nor the glaring red on the traffic light. He was too busy shouting at his friend that their pursuers were gaining on them. He thought they’d won when the cop braked. But his mum didn’t. She came after them. She was shouting something. He thought he’d die when, for an instant, both he and his friend were bathed in white headlights.
They pulled through.
But the crash behind them.
The squealing of tires, the crunch of steel, the shards of glass and tinkling of metal pieces. A thud of something flung onto the ground.
He didn’t see it. Did he turn around to avoid witnessing it? Whatever happened, he didn’t even look back. His friend kept on going for half a mile until Somsak threw up all over his back. Of course, none of them were wearing helmets. Only the cop did.
After that day, he began seeing roadside ghosts everywhere.
• • • •
Every Songkran festival, Somsak goes back to his hometown.
At his dad’s in Sisaket, he spends his days wagging his foot from the hammock under the stilted home, feeling the breeze blow with the scent of ripening mangoes while the busted radio coughs out songs of country-children. The dust feels honest here, the world feels real and he can actually see stars. He’s no longer contained in the squalor of his car, his boarding house, or streets choked with metal boxes and a purgatory of rear lights.
Back home, he never drives. He always asks his dad or brothers for a ride if he has to go somewhere. He claims that he wants to take a break from driving.
The real reason is, if he drives, he can’t close his eyes at the junction.
If she remains, he’ll be haunted for the rest of his life.
When he comes back to Bangkok, he always spots a new crop of ghosts. The government spends millions on posters and mascots dancing to the “Seven Dangerous Days” campaign, even broadcasting CCTV clips of horrendous crashes to deter drink-driving during the annual party season. Yet the number of accidents climbs steadily every year. Somsak doesn’t need statistics to prove it.
There’s this one ghost leaning against the motorway railing. The ones on the motorways are always mangled, but this particular one has his torso nearly shorn off, the guts in plain view. What remained of his white t-shirt is soaked red, his jeans a dark shade of betel nut juice all the way down to his knees, face contorted in agony.
Somsak is pretty sure the ghost has stuck around since before Songkran. He makes sure to look away each time he zooms past, but during the evening rush hour, he has no choice but to morbidly stare.
One night, when he is tired of losing his appetite, he stops beside the anatomy-lesson ghost and lowers his window. “Where you going, pi?”
The ghost hobbles into the front seat. Somsak grimaces. His most troublesome customers always take the front seat.
“Police station,” he says in the same monotone that all ghosts share. “Thonglor office.”
“A bit late to report your accident,” Somsak chuckles as he drives.
Thonglor is one of the many spots of the city that’s more alive at 1 a.m. than at 1 p.m. Lots of his fellow drivers make their rounds here ferrying home drunk rich kids or entitled business jerks who don’t even let them keep the change.
“Here we are,” he tells his passenger. “Time to be reincarnated.”
Instead of getting off, the ghost twists around to face him, his barely contained guts squelch, bits of intestines popping out like sausages.
“Oof . . .” Somsak turns away. “Don’t do that. I’m gonna be sick.”
He says, “My name is Sergeant-Major Asawin. Tell my boss that I died. Tell Inspector Kosipong that Governor-Candidate Prasit’s son ran me over.”
Oh shit.
• • • •
Somsak’s been an idiot.
Never pick up ghosts in uniforms. (Also never pick up those wearing ancient Thai dresses. Their addresses are bulldozed over and he’s not going to take the blame for it.)
Like most Thais, he hates getting involved. Sure, he likes scandals, being in the know, hoarding his fair share of open secrets. Sometimes he even has an opinion. But being involved? Oh, then his neck is on the line. And who knows how high up the whole thing might go?
And now the ghost of Asawin won’t leave him alone. Wherever he drives, the road accident victim sits beside him, the unluckiest charm in the world, each day asking him to rat out the son of an influential man to a cop.
There are easier ways to commit suicide.
He should’ve seen it coming. It’s the case that law student was listening to last month. If he’d listened any better, he would have known it was a cop who was killed in the hit-and-run. Now that he’s tuned in, the people are criticising the metropolitan police’s efforts to find a suspect even after half a dozen press releases. Apparently, there were no cameras, no witnesses, no evidence whatsoever.
Yeah, right. That’s when Somsak knows for certain that Prasit’s son is guilty.
When the media gets nothing from the police, they decide to hound after the victim’s family to ramp up some morbid social pressure. What’s worse is the mother obliges to an interview out of some last-ditch effort to get justice done. Somsak avoids watching it.
Instead, he tries every other way to be rid of Asawin. He went to Hua Lamphong Temple to donate coffins to nameless corpses, bought big merit-making baskets for the monks at Mahabut Temple, famous for exorcisms. He even went to one of the spirit shaman stalls outside the temple and bowed awkwardly as the shaman grabbed his head in a shaking, frothing trance, telling him to stop wearing red, avoid the number “3,” refrain from sex on Wednesdays, and change his name to Maṇjāti. Okay, maybe that last attempt had been a mistake.
He did major redecorations within his car. He doubled his talismans. New yantra symbols are written in chalk across the dashboard, steering wheel, and ceiling. He even bought a ritual knife from Mahabut Temple and threatened to cut the ghost with it. But Asawin ignored all his threats.
Being haunted is bad for business. Most customers could tolerate the spiritual paraphernalia but the sheathed knife under the handbrake was too much for them. His braver (more desperate) passengers stuffed their noses with inhalants against the corpse-stench in his car. He tried buying flower garlands and air freshener but the odious mixture was making even him nauseous.
Everywhere he goes, Prasit mocks him. His campaign posters fill every street, cheap vinyl on wooden frames. Sometimes he forgets that there are five candidates. They all look the same, wearing the same smiling faces, hands pressed together in humble wais, begging for votes.
“Who’re you voting for this time?” Somsak asks the auntie at the food cart while buying lunch.
“My daughter tells me to vote number four, because he’s handsome,” She laughs. “You?”
“A customer once told me to vote for number three, for Prasit. A rich office lady from Sathorn. She said he’ll clean up everything that’s wrong with Bangkok, if you can believe her.”
“Haiii, they’re all the same. Empty promises to get votes, only to rake in corrupt money once they get the position.” The auntie scoops steaming rice into a foam bowl and ladles chicken panang over it. “Are you ill? Looks like you’ve lost weight.”
“Got this troublesome regular.” Somsak sighs, counting two of his folded twenties. “He’s driving me crazy.”
“Ditch him then. Drive somewhere else.”
“If only I can . . .”
“Here.” She adds an extra serving of curry. “Look after yourself.”
Somsak is squatting in the shade with his grateful bowl, digging in. But when he looks up, he is staring at the familiar innards of Asawin, exposed like an exhibit at Siriraj Medical Museum. Rice turns sour in his mouth and he throws down his plastic spoon.
“Can’t you see some people are trying to eat?” Somsak snaps. “Go feast on the lady’s streetside offerings. Look, she got incense and red Fanta set up for you. Get your guts out of my face.”
Asawin remains where he is. Somsak has to concede, “Say I get to speak to your boss, who’s going to believe me? They’ll drag me off to a drug test, then maybe throw me into an asylum. Ghosts aren’t good evidence. Weren’t you a cop?”
Because he engages in a conversation this time, the ex-cop (post-cop?) tells him exactly what he should do. Unfortunately, the plan sounds too reasonable. This stubborn, idealistic, goody-two-shoes cop. Somsak roots for them in movies, but in real life, they are insufferable. Some people actually want to live in peace.
A different tactic then. An appeal to cynicism.
“You know how witnesses are treated in Thailand,” Somsak says. “I’ll be silenced. They’ll kidnap me. I still want to live.”
“My boss will protect you,” Asawin replies. “He is a good cop.”
“I might believe in ghosts, but I won’t believe in just anything.”
• • • •
Somsak indulges in an occasional good deed. But only when it is anonymous, untraceable. It’s plain inconvenient when the recipient of his good deed can find his address and ask for more.
So how on earth did he end up in front of the Thonglor police station?
It must have been that public plea made by Asawin’s mother. Facebook’s algorithm blindsided him with a video of the old woman crying. It squeezed his heart, but what really wrung it dry was seeing how much the media was harassing her, zooming in on her teary eyes, cornering her until she has to bring up her hands in a wai, as if to defend herself.
“Please, police officers,” she said into the camera. “Please find my son’s killer. He’s my only child, a strong and upstanding citizen. Help us find justice, otherwise he will never find peace.”
Well, she is correct. Too bad she raised him too well.
Somsak wonders if he himself would rest any easier knowing who ran over his mum. Would she find peace if he does?
When you can’t do anything, be a good person.
Somsak hoists his trousers. They’ve gotten so loose, but he didn’t bring his waistsash. Can’t have any cops think he’s a bumpkin now.
“Here to pay a fine, uncle?” a bored constable snaps at him behind her counter.
He struggles to find words; he already felt out of place with a bank teller. She also struggles to acknowledge him, her eyes gravitating toward the Korean drama playing on the phone hidden under her paperwork. “I want to talk to I—Insp . . . What’s his title? The B—Bossman Kosipong.”
“Huh?” the young woman blurts, taking out one earbud. “He’s not around. Who told you his name?”
“No, I . . . Can you pass a message to him?”
“Why? I’m not some courier. Who’re you to him?” she snaps, beginning to put the earbud back in.
He’s losing her. The K-drama scene is focused on a handsome CEO with sparkling skin about to make a confession. Somsak has to take the plunge himself. “Witness. I am a witness. Heard you were looking for witnesses.”
“What for?”
“The hit-and-run. On the motorway.”
Her eyes widen. She sees him for the first time. “The case?”
“Thank you for your help, Wilai. I’ll take it from here,” a police officer says, stepping out from the desk behind her. He walks around the counter. “Please come with me.”
Somsak follows him into a plain meeting room and he closes the door behind them. The man takes a seat opposite him, looking like the ideal image of a cop, complete with cropped hair and moustache.
“I am Inspector Kosipong. Now, tell me about what you saw,” he says, hands woven in front of him. His intense stare is strangely reassuring. It’s good to be taken seriously. Right?
“I was driving down the motorway when I saw the Ferrari crash into a police motorcycle at high speed,” Somsak recites everything Asawin told him to say. “But the car didn’t stop. It dragged the body for a long way down the road. There was blood everywhere.”
The inspector doesn’t say anything, his face like a mask. Reassurance quickly turns unsettling.
“I think the car was damaged,” Somsak continued, hazarding a nervous smile, the Thai defence mechanism. It relieves tension for himself, if no one else. “Are there CCTV cameras further down the motorway, boss?”
“Do you remember the number on the license plate?”
“Uh, no, didn’t catch it.”
Kosipong looks at him with an impassive face. Somsak’s smile suffocates. How can someone be so serious? Is he even Thai? Is this what a good cop looks like? Is this what goodness does to a man?
The inspector allows himself a long sigh. “Do you have any idea what you are getting yourself into?”
Carefully, Somsak says, “No?”
The cop glances around the empty meeting room. Except it isn’t so empty with Asawin sitting on the far end of the room. “A license plate was dropped on the scene, torn off along with the suspect’s bumper. One of our officers picked it up and it’s being kept in evidence right now, off the record, because we know who the suspect is. He’s a . . . son of an influential man. Some cops are approaching him with a deal. The plate can be ‘lost’ at any moment.”
He speaks as if it explains everything. Somsak holds his breath, knowing it’s not over.
“Blackmailing. There is a . . . faction in the force who wants to use it as blackmail material. They can get rid of the evidence in exchange for favours. But me? I just want some shred of justice to exist in this world. The cop who died was clean. He worked for me, one of those good men that gave me hope for the force. Ran over like a fucking stray.” He shook his head. “If you do come forward, I need a favour. Say that you picked up the license plate and turn it in to the police as a part of your testimonial. That way, the evidence won’t be brushed under the carpet. It’ll provide a watertight case. Then we’ll carry it on from there.”
Asawin is nodding, grinning with too many teeth.
“If I’m—” Something lodges in his throat, he gulps it down. “If I say yes, what will happen to me?”
“No one will know who you are. I’ll try my best to keep your name from going to the media. You just sit tight and watch us work. Trust me, we protect our own. With your testimony, the bastard will get what’s coming.”
He thinks of Asawin’s mother, her desperation as she begs for closure. Then he thinks of his own mum, whose ghost he still can’t bear to see. Be a good person.
“Okay, boss. What do I do?”
Kosipong smiles. The true, genuine smile that breaks open his stoic shell and transforms him into a kind of dad, or uncle, or teacher. A protector. A world-weary figure of authority. He brings out a voice recorder, presses a button and the device’s red light gleams like a jewel. “Now, please repeat everything you told me into the recorder.”
Out of the corner of Somsak’s eyes, Asawin fades away.
• • • •
Somsak is not a suicidally brave man. He’s the type of guy who flashes his headlights at a careless, selfish driver, instead of banging on his horns. Anything to avoid the risk of a road rage that might get him stabbed. He never wants trouble.
Yet, he has been sleeping better than he thought. A few more visits to the police station to fill in forms and do interviews, he begins to believe he is actually the witness.
Somsak gives live commentary to his passengers about the ongoing investigation. “Look at how Prasit squirms. He’s obviously hiding something. Just wait until they expose him in court.” When they make phone calls to avoid his chatter, he murmurs to himself and glances at the empty seat beside him. Asawin would have loved to hear it. What is he going to be reincarnated as, Somsak wonders? Hopefully something good, given his karma.
Somsak’s new hobby is to sit on his tiny balcony, listening to live broadcasts of Prasit’s latest scandal on Facebook. The sun is blocked out by an improvised tarp made from an election poster last season. A suited man’s face is great at deflecting gutter water from falling on his laundry. He didn’t take it because he was a contrarian, not then anyway. It was just a waste of good plastic headed for the landfill.
It gives Somsak little jolts of joy to hear Prasit and his lawyer address each scandal. Today, there’s an exposé on how Prasit has a finger in a VIP massage parlour that offers prostitution (gasp). It’s common knowledge that all VIP ones do but no one cares until a high-profile person is involved. There’s truly no end to the dirt. It’s like Somsak has kicked over a termite mound, and no one would ever know that he started it all. This is probably what it feels like to be Batman.
There is a knock on his door.
“Answer the door, you lazy bastard.” More banging. Somsak recognizes the voice. It’s the landlady. “Come talk to me or I’ll kick you out. There’s a Russian boy looking to rent this place for twice the price of your sorry hide.”
He goes to the door, groaning, “I’ve been paying on time, you can’t kick—”
He opens it to find a crowd of people, filling the corridor. No, not people, ghosts. Except the three in front of him. A sinewy man in a wife-beater. A well-dressed man with a pasty, slippery face, eyes wide apart, froglike. The landlady behind them with curlers in her hair, putting something into her pocket.
“Khun Somsak.” The well-dressed man smiles. “Can you please come with us?”
Somsak’s seen him before. He’s the celebrity lawyer working for Prasit.
His heart chokes against his throat, thudding as if trying to slip through his ribcage. His palms sweat, his eyes sweat, even his mouth sweats salty saliva. He wants to crawl out of his skin.
They lead him to the black minivan. The auspicious license plate of AA888 gleams, more powerful and expensive than any police badge. The ghosts follow them dutifully like a gloomy retinue, his funeral procession. All into the van.
Inside, it is like night, blue, black and cool, the hot day separated by the dark-tinted windows. The engine is running, there is a driver. Somsak is told to sit right at the back, trapped by the henchman and the lawyer. And the dozen staring faces that cram every space in the seven-seater. The henchman shifts, one side of his shirt hiking and—oh fuck, he has a gun.
Somsak begins to shake.
“We’d like you to withdraw your testimony,” the lawyer says. “What happened was a mistake that Khun Prasit’s son will seek to rectify. It’s regrettable that this small offence can distract Khun Prasit from his Bangkok governor campaign.”
Somsak can’t breathe. The car reeks like a slaughterhouse, cold like a morgue. Between the lawyer and the henchman, there’s a ghost with bulging eyes, suffocated. Then there’s another one, bloated and waterlogged, drowned. Then another fallen from great height, and another, hanged. So many ghosts like it’s a graveyard.
“We won’t hurt you. We only hope there is a way we can resolve all of this peacefully. I can arrange a little something for your trouble.” He points at a heavy envelope in the cupholder. “All you need to do is say you were mistaken.”
“Pay attention,” barks the henchman, clapping a heavy hand on Somsak’s shoulder. Beneath it, he feels compressed, crushed, flattened. The lawyer is still smiling without a care in the world. Doesn’t he know that all of the ghosts are glaring at him?
“I am responsible for protecting Khun Prasit’s reputation. What you have insinuated can be interpreted as defamation, especially when there is evidence against you. I have inspected the CCTV camera near the accident. We didn’t see any taxis. It is the police who arrived first at the scene.”
The realisation guts him. If Somsak dies, will he be a part of the ghostly caravan, helpless baggage to be dragged along, witnessing new victims to join them.
“The repercussions of being a false witness are most severe. So let us settle everything here peacefully, now.” The lawyer picks up the envelope with a gloved hand and offers it to him. “Please see if it is to your satisfaction.”
Numbly, the packet finds its place in his hand. So thick it’s like a sheaf of documents. So heavy he drops it. So dirty he can still feel it sticky on his fingers.
“I—I—I cannot,” Somsak answers when he finds his voice.
The lawyer cocks his head. “Why not?”
“I—It’s . . . Just let me go. I want to go.” His voice breaks. “Please.”
“Will you drop your case against Khun Prasit?”
“Yes, yes. Anything. Just let me go.”
“Then make the call.”
Fingers trembling, Somsak finds Kosipong’s contact and calls, each dial tone a hanging eternity. “Kosipong speaking.”
“B—Boss. I can’t do this. I’m not your witness. I take back everything. A ghost told me to do it. He made me do it. Please leave me alone.” Beep.
The lawyer’s face breaks into maddening laughter. “All this inconvenience because of a ghost? Dear, dear, countryfolk and all your drugs and superstition. I can’t believe it. Just go.”
Somsak steps on the envelope, stumbles, scrambles out through the pressing ghosts, their gaze prickling his skin. He wrenches open the door and falls over the threshold, into concrete and sunlight.
• • • •
Everyone believes they’re the exception because they’re allowed to believe it. Allowed to feel justified for it.
The right-turning lane at a junction has a queue of left-signalling cars that “ended up in the wrong lane.” Cars continue tailing each other after the traffic lights turn red because “they had already spent time stuck at three red lights.” A car bumbles on without a rear license plate because they’re “too busy to fix it.” Don’t you dare question them. Complaining is inconsiderate.
The police too are understanding of these justifications. Leniency is a virtue. It’s not a good look to be too harsh, otherwise people might call you square-headed or blackhearted.
But if exceptions became tolerated as a rule, then what’s the point of laws? An opportunity for bribery. A trap lying in wait, choosing when to be enforced. A matter of discretion, not absolutes.
The sudden withdrawal of the witness surprised no one. To salt the wound, Prasit’s lawyer disclosed Somsak’s face and name at a press conference, discrediting him as an unreliable, delusional madman who would fake evidence for some media attention. The kind of person who’d claim that he can speak to ghosts and use them as evidence. Soon, Somsak’s blurred face was broadcasted everywhere, dark-skinned, broad nose, pronounced cheekbones. The typical face of a scapegoat.
The case should have died quietly, ignobly, in darkness. That was what everyone expected. Until a mysterious law student posted a video clip, catapulting a jaded political reporting into a national sensation.
The viral clip showed Somsak dropping off a ghost in front of Chulalongkorn University. The footage was dark and grainy but the distorted figure was too consistent to be photoshopped, stumping even the most dedicated internet sleuths
“It’s true! He could see ghosts!” the law student claimed in an interview. “My friend died last year. When he dropped her off, he told me things about her that no one could have known. If there’s someone who would know anything about the case, it would be him. Please don’t let the investigation end. Let the justice system work for once. Don’t let corruption win again.”
Her plea became a rallying cry, giving birth to a trending hashtag #lettheghostspeak. Smelling blood, reporters countrywide tried to track down the witness but reached only dead ends. To them, Somsak might as well have been a ghost.
Because of the huge social momentum, the hit-and-run case managed to go to court. Prasit’s son was absent from all proceedings, so the family’s lawyer made an impassioned case on their behalf, but even he couldn’t reject the damning license plate. An unsmiling inspector led the investigation into the authenticity of the evidence with uncommon ruthlessness and efficiency. The damage was indeed consistent with the suspect’s Ferrari.
The months went by. The prosecution went ahead but the inspector was gone, transferred to a station in the deep Southern provinces, known for the perilous task of quelling armed insurgents. When the court summoned the parties to reconvene, Prasit’s son was apparently in Dubai, overseeing some family business there. By this time, new evidence presented itself. It revealed that Prasit’s son was not the driver that night, but rather his hapless, northern chauffeur who sat bowed, silent, and trembling in court. Things went smoothly in the light of new evidence. The chauffeur was convicted of manslaughter and got sentenced for fifteen years in prison.
But outside the court, there was an outcry. The public didn’t buy any of it. Why would a chauffeur risk speeding in his boss’s Ferrari at 1:30 a.m., not to mention smearing a police officer into asphalt? Why would this convenient evidence surface after the son got to live his new life blameless in Dubai? He was even posting pictures of his shopping and fine dining on every social media.
But like they say, there are always exceptions. Always an opportunity for people to come to an understanding.
Prasit did not manage to win the governor’s election. In fact, he’s faded from all media attention. Somsak doesn’t even know who the governor is now because he decides to return home to Sisaket to help his father at the farm.
Somsak left the city of ghosts the very week he realised it was also a city of witnesses.
He’s decided to change his luck by consulting a fortune teller for a more auspicious phone number. He’s also closed his Facebook account for fear of getting hacked by the lawyer’s people. He still has nightmares of that chilling tomb-like van.
On his first week back, he asks his dad, “Can I borrow your car tonight? I need to head out.”
It is unconscious, it is spontaneous, and even his dad raises an eyebrow but doesn’t ask why.
Somsak doesn’t know why he let his mum wait for so long.
Maybe he’s afraid of her anger, her blame. Maybe he dreads to see the pain in her final moments. Each of these thoughts used to feel like hot stones, burning his hands if he holds onto them for too long. But suddenly, they don’t feel so terrifying anymore.
What’s changed? He wonders as he drives, endless stretch of rice paddies on either side, dark green in the sparse streetlight. His dad’s truck sputters, going slowly, but he enjoys driving with his windows open, the air fresh with recent rain. He doesn’t mind the bugs; at least he’s not choking from the dust and pollution. On the backseat rests a plastic bag of red Fanta, incense sticks, lotus flowers, and his mum’s favourite grilled chicken. Incredible that the cart still opens at the same place after all this time.
Be a good person? That’s much too lofty. How about start by being a good son?
The junction is coming up. He closes his eyes instinctively and realizes what a bad idea it is with the steering wheel in his hands.
He opens his eyes.
There is a lone woman standing by the crossroads. She wears a sarong and t-shirt that he immediately recognizes. There is no blood that he can see, and he tries not to notice that one side of her is more crumpled than the other.
Somsak wants to turn around, to drive back home, but he cannot bear the sight of the solitary figure, waiting, waiting, until the end of time. He continues on, holding his breath as he stops beside her.
“Hi there, can I take you somewhere?”
She looks up, pale skin in the moonlight. Long hair, tired eyes within a sun-beaten face. She hasn’t aged a day. It’s like seeing a face from memory, except he must be around her age by now.
The ghost of his mum smiles gently. It’s like that one time he finally got good grades for maths. She was so proud of him that day.
And she fades away.
