Venetian Blind Ghosts and other Stories

a collection of original local (Malaysian) ghost stories written in the style of Sheridan le Fanu and M.R. James. An excerpt:"Thus I was deep in confidential self-talk, and did not realize it until I was standing directly over the old man’s bed. But of his head, or limbs I could not see because a white drapery had been thrown over his entire body. It seemed to have been carelessly flung over him – the contours of him, being, corpse-like in shape – till, suddenly – the old man kicked out his legs from under the cloth. Then the pall rose up at both ends – like the snapping motion of a sprung mousetrap (but rather slowly). I mutely knew, but with a sense of dread, that it was a black rotted thing that now peeped through the disturbed cloth; and then, old, dead Mr. Li lacked solidity and melted right before my eyes, winding sheet and all, and the plank cross-pieces of the bed with its rattan-leaved matting was all bare. Now, crept into my nostrils a pungent and musty smell which was difficult to shake off; and I found myself walking out of the dim room like a lunatic somnambulist: I could not see where I was going. My body ached with weariness and I had to lie down on the floor in an earlier room, staring at the fluorescent lamp; and how long that was, I had no idea; because my mind was excited by what I had seen and in my imagination the earlier impressions were ever rushing on and on and being repeated time over time again. My muscles felt languish and weak. In that room, with the light on, I could see long misty shapes moving all around me… and this was the way this shapes entered the room: A flash of soundless lightning would precede an electrical surge and suddenly, as if ejected from the realm of hearten-less light, paper-thin ghosts would scroll down from the fluorescent tube, like paper onto the tray of a Photostatting Machine; and enter the world of living men – at a jump and jerkily – just like that…! These apparitions seemed to be individualized entities with a distinct aura; and they were white and satiny… They seemed two-dimensional and hung in the moisture-laden air like conglomerated dust-particles, but menacing! That was how I saw the venetian blind ghosts!"

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