You are a crow in Klang, and you wake up trembling again.
The sun is rising, but the sky is still gray. You stir in your nest of twigs, looking out at the Ng house just across the road. You flap your wings, and your brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors start waking up all over your tree. The residential area you live in is still quiet and sleepy, but something in the air does not feel right.
Mr. Ng comes out from his house, dressed for work. He is about to enter his car when he notices a small white mark on the windshield of his Proton Wira—a drop of bird poop.
“Fucking crows!” he roars. He disappears into the house and bursts back out, clutching a long broom, going off in a Hokkien tirade. “These fucking birds—go away!” He slams the broom repeatedly on his metal gates, raising an awful ruckus. “Si oh ah! Go die!”
All the crows in the nearby trees scatter into the sky in a cloud of feathers, squawking and cawing, causing a terrible din of their own. You hear the cursing of Mr. Ng’s neighbors and the slamming of windows. You hang around to watch, a sinking feeling in your heart. Is the curse manifesting itself today as well?
Mr. Ng’s wife appears in the doorway. “So early, why bang bang bang?” she shouts at her husband. “What’s your problem?”
“You’re the one who made us move to Klang!” retorts Mr. Ng. “What the hell, not just the crime rate so high, crows everywhere also. I’m going to complain to the town council, shoot them all! What kind of town is this?”
“Oh, now you blame me? I am the problem?”
You have heard enough. You spread your big black wings, feel the wind currents and leap into the sky, climbing higher and higher until you are soaring above the tiny rooftops and looking down over the town.
From above, Klang is a labyrinth of houses and shops and streets and schools and offices stretching for miles and miles around. You let the wind carry you as you drink in the scenery with equal parts wonder and sorrow. The morning sun touches the tips of the buildings, reflecting off a million windows with a sparkling glimmer—but you feel no joy, only a creeping apprehension.
Gwa!
You veer off course, hearing someone call your name.
It is Rokk, your third-in-command, flapping his way up to join you. Behind him are the rest of your team. You, Gwa, are the leader of fifty crows, and you silently vow to keep them all alive today.
Did you feel it too? cries Rokk. The curse?
You clench your talons and nod.
Give us orders, Gwa!
Where is Ungu? you almost ask, before you remember. Rokk, you are the new second-in-command. Take half the team, spread wide and search! We need to calculate how much food we need!
Shall I call Hanuk? asks Rokk.
Yes, call him!
Rokk acknowledges and cups his wings, going off towards North Klang, taking half the team with him. Klang is split in half by the meandering brown river that crawls across the plains, and the south side is your jurisdiction. Hanuk is in charge of the reserve unit—juveniles, old decrepit birds and such—based in the north. On bad days, they drop in to provide support.
You glance at the sun. Twilight is at seven pm, so you have around twelve hours. You have been doing this for years, but the curse has been manifesting itself more frequently, and the fear grips you harder every time.
Let there be no blood today, you pray.
At noon, you run into Traak’s team at the southern end of Klang, in Taman Sentosa. You can hear their loud and raucous cawing from far away. You hone in on their voices and dive into the back alleys among rows of workshops and restaurants.
Traak is perched on a rooftop gutter, watching his crew rummage through the humongous pile of black rubbish bags that have overflowed out of the dumpster. He cries a greeting as you alight on the gutter beside him. Many of the bags have ruptured, and the crows are plucking edible scraps from the spilled contents. The smell that wafts out of the mountain of rubbish stings your eyes.
The curse feels bad today, Gwa, says Traak. He is a senior and experienced bird, grizzled and deft of beak and claw.
You nod. Yes.
A woman comes out of a shop’s back door, cursing at the crows in Tamil, and tosses a squishy plastic bag into the heap. The crows hop away but return once she has gone back into the shop. They peck and tear open the plastic—there is some rotten meat inside, and some rejected parts of food.
That won’t do, observes Traak. We’ll need more than that. A body, at least.
Was blood spilled? you ask. You have scanned the wealthier neighborhoods all morning. People have been arguing everywhere, fights started and punches thrown, but so far no terrible news.
There was an armed robbery at dawn, says Traak. Some small gang altercations among the Indians. A few people were wounded.
Your heart sinks further. So it has begun.
You’d better check Pandamaran, says Traak. I’ll handle the search around this area. Call Hanuk from the North—you’ll need more help today.
I’ve sent Rokk, you say. You salute Traak with a flap of your wings and fly west—towards Pandamaran.
Traak’s Taman Sentosa might have one of the highest crime rates in all of Klang, but Pandamaran is the most violent and dangerous area in town. Since olden days, the power of the Chinese gangs or ‘secret societies’ has never fully left the area, and it is still the hub of everything unlawful. As you soar and ride the wind, you pray that the curse has not reached them.
Not today, please not today.
There are many high-rise apartments in that area— cheap and affordable housing for undesirable characters. You arrive to find that the flat apartment roofs and the nearby roads are swarming with crows. Kaww Kaww’s troop, no doubt.
You see a particularly large huddle of crows on a sidewalk, so you dive in among them. Please be a body, please be a body.
It is a dead dog. Perfect.
Kaww Kaww and his core group of lieutenants appear around the bend of the road, hopping along with total disregard, picking at the scattered rubbish that had been thrown out of cars. Pedestrians and drivers even steer out of the way of the crows. You silently resent them for their boldness, for they may contribute to the curse.
Kaww Kaww hops up to the dog. It is a pariah dog, dead since last night, eyes already pecked away by some overeager crow. It seems to have been beaten to death by a stick.
Is the curse bad? We need this dog today? cries Kaww Kaww to you. He is a youngster with shiny black wings and strong claws, one of the newly-appointed leaders, still learning the ropes.
His crows are flapping around, excited by the corpse but unsure what to do. Typical of the roadside crew. They get lazy and stop thinking for themselves after too many easy roadside rubbish pickings, and they wait for a leader like you to give the order.
Yes, we need it, you say. Get to work. Use the nearby drains for shortcuts.
Kaww Kaww flinches at the mention of drains. You see the nervous ripple that spreads throughout the troop. You ignore it and continue speaking. Use the drains. Did you see any crime today? Was any blood spilled? How is the gang war?
No blood spilled, but there was a snatch-theft, says Kaww Kaww. But I think the gangs went over to the North today. Didn’t see them around here.
You breathe a little easier, but you remind yourself to check the North.
Some car starts blasting its horn at a few idiotic crows who are blocking the road. “Oi, gagak, pi mampus!” you hear the driver yell. The crows scatter, and you propel yourself into the sky again, heading north. You see Kaww Kaww and the others hopping back to start butchering the dog.
Cars and their drivers are the biggest problem.
Second to the cawing of crows, if there is a sound that defines Klang, it is the car horn. The effect of the curse waxes and wanes, but it seems to have a permanent effect on the drivers on the road. There is not a day that thousands of people do not devolve into road-raging maniacs while stuck in phenomenal traffic—and the moment it starts loosening up, they drive like maniacs too.
Rokk meets you in the sky above the Road of Schools. You can see he has a lot to tell you, so you lead him down into one of the nine high schools lining the Port Klang highway. It provides a chance for you to check on the school gangs as well. You settle on a red-tiled roof over a school courtyard, and Rokk lands beside you.
Six car accidents today, Gwa, reports Rokk.
You groan. Any deaths? Any fights?
One death, two fistfights. The traffic in the Old Town is horrible.
You bury your head in your wings.
Do we have enough food yet? asks Rokk nervously.
One dog.
Is that enough?
A boy shouts.
You and Rokk look down into the courtyard. Two school gangs are advancing on each other, some armed with sticks and plastic chairs and one boy swishing a thick rotan. Many just roll back their sleeves and bare their fists.
“Come on!” shouts one Malay boy. “Your father is a —”
A chair flies across the yard and slams into his face, ending his insult. The boys yell and break into a charge. For a moment they are running, shouting wordless cries of fury, waving their weapons, and then everything becomes chaos.
You turn to Rokk. No, one dog is not enough.
Does that mean—we have to hunt and kill again?
I hope not. But if we must, we must. We cannot afford to run short again.
Rokk shakes his head. I wish Ungu was here.
You bite back the urge to snap at Rokk. He is young, but you have seen many crows live and die under the curse. Ungu was your stalwart second-in-command before he died, but now Rokk has taken his place, and Rokk must learn to be strong. You are going to say something, but the flapping of wings distracts you.
A female crow swoops down towards you.
Gwa! Gwa! Hanuk has news of a murder!
Where?
In Kapar! Hanuk says to meet beside the river!
You and Rokk exchange a glance.
Gather the crew and join Hanuk, you say. I’ll drop by the Sultan’s palace and rendezvous with you at the river.
You pass over another traffic jam near the Sultan’s palace. You can hear the honking from far away, and the intense red glow from the car lights makes your eyes hurt. Maybe the red color contributes to the curse, making people more angry, you think.
Klang is the royal town of Selangor. You find the palace peaceful as ever. That gives you a momentary spring of relief, but the palace is at the top of a hill, and at the bottom of the hill is the famous Little India street. Clouds of pigeons and gray feathers fill the air as you try to pass through. You dive and weave through swarms of stupid squawking birds, knocking them aside with your wings and claws.
There are a few young crows behind a Bombay Jewelry shop trying to drag a dead rat into a drain, so you help them shoo away the curious pigeons that crowd around. You try your best to stay away from the drain, but you find yourself near the edge, and you look inside.
It is almost like a small creek, flowing under the surface of the town. The drain is more than a meter wide, clogged with rubbish and filth, but the black and oily water is still drifting downstream. You know it will inevitably lead to the river. You shudder and look at the sun to gauge the time.
Five o’clock. Time to meet Hanuk.
Hanuk and a hundred crows are waiting for you on the north bank of the river. They are lined in black rows along the telephone wires and roadside railings, raising a deafening clamor with their cawing and arguing and jostling. Even the crows are not immune to the curse. You have previously seen two crows battle each other to the death on a particularly bad day.
Rokk is among them. You dive and land beside him and Hanuk in a tree.
Tell me about it, you say.
The murderers are bringing the body to the river, says Hanuk, ruffling his old graying feathers. I have two youngsters trailing their truck.
This man, killed in the gang wars?
Most likely.
Any last vestige of your relief dissolves into ash.
There they are! cries Rokk.
A nondescript lorry rolls off the road and into the cover of the thick trees and bushes along the river, with two crows sitting on the canvas roof. At your command, all your crows hop off their perches and creep closer to the truck.
A lean Chinese man jumps out of the truck. He squints at you and your comrades. “These crows look like they know what we’re carrying,” he says in Hokkien. “I swear, they seem too smart for their own good. Shoo! Go away!” He waves his arms.
“Don’t care about them,” grunts his stocky partner. “Quick, drop it in.”
You watch as the men toss a few trash bags and an abnormally long sack into the brown water. No human is there to witness, only the crows.
Good thing they decided to throw it in the river, Hanuk says. If they burnt it like the last time, we might have to kill a random dog or cat again, and she doesn’t like substitutes.
The men leave in their truck.
Get the body, you command.
The sack has sunk into the river, clearly weighed down with rocks. Fortunately, many of your crows are good divers. They dive in and slash the sack apart with their beaks and claws. It takes almost an hour to get the sack open.
The corpse finally breaks free, drifting just below the surface, barely noticeable from above. It is a man, and his throat has been slashed open.
Normally they don’t float so fast, you say.
He was killed in the morning, kept in a hot truck all day, answers Hanuk.
You direct your crows to search for pieces of discarded wood and floating styrofoam or plastic objects—all of which are abundant in the murky Klang river. They collect the materials quickly, and you try to insert them under the body to float it.
With a beating of wings, Traak arrives to join the party, followed by his team. He is carrying shreds of unknown meat in his beak. I was almost about to start the pigeon hunt, he says. I was afraid we could not appease the curse.
She’ll want this body, not forty dead pigeons, you answer.
Fifteen minutes later, you have the corpse lying on a raft of styrofoam. You get thirty crows to straddle the body, semi-concealing it from any inquisitive passerby, and then you and Rokk shove off the bank, heading downstream. Traak and Hanuk take wing to watch from above.
Sailing on the corpse-raft, you watch the sunset.
The setting sun is a ball of orange fire, suspended above the horizon among splashes of pink and purple that color the evening sky. The clouds hang low, glowing with twilight. The brown water of the river reflects the dying light in shimmering shades of gold. For a moment, Klang makes you smile.
Crowds of crows are circling overhead. Rokk is shouting beside you, urging the rowers as they beat at the water with their wings, propelling the raft forward. Steadily you move down the river, passing underneath the Klang bridge, hearing the din of thousands of car horns honking at each other. You watch for debris and call directions to the rowers, steering the raft, always watching for the cave opening.
Steer left! you shout when you see it. Left! Left!
On the southern bank, there is a gigantic drain that flows out into the river. You can see the cavernous circular opening where black water and rubbish slowly ooze out into the weak current. With lots of flapping and diligent wetting of wings, your crew guides the corpse-raft toward the drain. Piles of garbage and trash are heaped like sediment around the opening, so your raft is beached easily.
Dimly, you hear a crow’s call echo from deep inside.
Hordes of birds drop out of the sky and dive into the tunnel. You see Kaww Kaww and his troop fly in with the dog’s parts, and you focus on your task. It takes sixty birds to grab the corpse’s clothes and lift it with the power of their beating wings. Slowly, inch by inch, you and your crew flap your way into the drain system.
Inside is pitch black, but the cawing of countless crows echo along the sides. The drains of Klang are a maze under the surface of the town, and you head deeper and deeper, followed by your faithful troops and your gruesome burden. Your eyes adapt easily to the dark, and your good hearing guides your way. You slip and skid on the slimy, dank inner surface. All the way you are praying, Let the food be enough.
It feels like hours before you reach the cavern with the open drainhole.
Every few hundred meters, there is a wide space where numerous drains combine into a single tunnel. A drainhole in some neighborhood was left open and never covered, so there is a shaft of light shining into the dark halls of the underground. Now, at twilight, the light is dimmer but still shines like a sun for the lightless depths. It illuminates a flat rock in the center of a pool of filth.
You manage to get the corpse onto this rock, then you back away, putting a good distance between you and the rock. The crows scatter and settle in perches all over the walls. Rokk stays close to you.
The cawing dies down. All grow quiet.
You wait.
Deep in the darkness, the Great Crow moves.
She drags her feathers along the sides of the sewers as she inches her way forward. Her claws slosh through the cold, dirty water—they are like curved spears attached to her gnarled feet, and they send clicking sounds echoing through the tunnels. You tremble and lower your head.
She comes into the spotlight—her misshapen crooked head with milky white eyes and a razor-sharp beak, with feathers like oily leaves tacked to a rotting tree. She opens her wings, extending her gargantuan wingspan to fill the cavern. The Great Crow has awoken, and she is hungry.
She raises her head and screams.
The fury and anger in all of Klang, channeled through half a million souls, pours out of her harsh voice. You and your comrades cower under her ghastliness. She has been here for centuries, since the days when wars were waged between power-hungry princes and blood watered the ground. In those times, the Great Crow fed on the corpses of men slain in battle.
Klang was placed under an eternal hex by a foreign prince who was betrayed by a Klangite; the town would be constantly plagued by anger and hostility, doomed to spill blood on the ground forever. Sometimes the curse grows weak. But it always comes back stronger, and when it does, the Great Crow awakes. She is the spawn of the prince’s vengeance, born to ensure that death and slaughter will always torment this town.
And you—the crows of Klang—are the only ones who have kept this memory since the old days, and you are all that stands between her and a destructive rampage.
Kaww Kaww is the first to come forward. He lays the innards of the dog before her on the rock. His crew presents the rest of the dog in bits and pieces. Traak and his crew bring shreds of meat and rotten slices of pork. The young crows lay their dead rat beside the dog.
The Great Crow sniffs at the food, but she looks expectantly at you.
You clear your throat. Tuanku, here is the proof of blood, spilled on account of the curse. Eat your meal, and be satisfied.
For a second, you remember Ungu. Please Tuanku, be satisfied, you wish silently.
The Great Crow lowers her head to the human corpse. She pokes at the body with a large talon, scrutinizing it. She takes the man’s head in her beak, pulls it off and crunches it, swallowing it in the next gulp. She grunts with delight, opens her wings and lets out a great caw.
You shudder. Today she will not eat any of your comrades.
You are a crow in Klang. When the humans see you, they curse and throw objects and telephone the town council to shoot you down. You dread the day when they finally drive you away, and the Great Crow is left hungry under their feet.
Originally published in The Big Book of Malaysian Horror Stories, edited by Amir Muhammad.
