My father was obsessed with this one banana tree.

Yeah, it’s true. You might think I’m crazy, but trust me, I’m not. It is not like how a gardener would tend to his flowers with love and care, watering and weeding them until they bloomed.

Nope.

He worshipped that tree like a god. He had set up a makeshift shrine against it, with a portrait of my mother, and some oranges and flowers scattered around it.

Gifts to the dead.

Every night he would pray to the tree. Pale, shaking face. Asking for forgiveness.

If you asked me why he did it or how it all started, I had no idea. But it definitely started when I was 5 or so. I still remember those moments behind closed doors, those screams and snivels that made the hairs on my young body stand on end.

I still had nightmares about it until this day. Even more than the events in this post that happened later on in my life.

I still remember, although my mind was hazy, what my mother looked like after those…episodes. Bruises covering every inch of her head, chest and torso, and a smile as broken as my puzzle pieces.

She soothed me and my brother, Colin, with tears in her eyes, and whispered we were going to have a new baby brother. And she let us feel her tummy to prove it.

The day after she told us that, we had found her swaying from the ceiling. The rope was frayed, hanging loose. The candles flickered around her in a pentagon drawn with blood dripping to the floor. The evening breeze blew in without a care in the world.

That was my second nightmare. The worst part about it was that we weren’t allowed to grieve. My dad decided against a funeral. When I asked him why, he would look away, avoiding my eyes. Ashamed.

But the day after she died was when he started to build the shrine. When he started to pray.

When he died, so many years later, he insisted I take care of that banana tree. He had stared at me, dead in the eyes, his voice crackling like the dead leaves on the ground, but with so much conviction I couldn’t say no.

I promised, and then he closed his eyes for the last time.

I ended up sharing the house with my brother, which included the grounds and that banana tree. Colin was still praying at the shrine. Leaving gifts and stuff.

Meanwhile, with my degree in business and my connections in real estate, I started selling some land and expanding the grounds. Soon I had a nice village to call my own.

I was the Landlord.

The Mayor.

The King.

Yet that tree vexed me. I stared at it every day, watching its long shadow stretch out against the side of my house in the setting sun, its fronds swaying in the evening breeze. It was guarding a particular piece of prime estate I was hoping to sell, and for the first time ever, I was at a loss.

I felt someone tap my shoulder.

“Jason.”

It was my brother. He was dressed in a simple white garment, but his face was as pale as the cloth. He shook his head.

“I know what you’re thinking. Don’t do it.”

“But—“

Colin shook his head again.

“Don’t you remember her?” He asked quietly.

Yes, I did remember her. I was 8 at the time; Colin was 10. We were playing hide-and-seek in the mansion, darting around corners and through endless hallways. We felt like ants under giant tables and humongous beds, wrapping ourselves in the darkness of wardrobes and closets.

Colin was counting this time. He turned away from me, his face scrunched up against the wall, the full moon dancing down his back.

“One, two…”

I giggled.

“Three…four…”

I rushed away and began to look. The rules stated he must count to twenty, so I didn’t have much time. I immediately flung open doors, then spotted a wardrobe in the corner of a grand bedroom, decorated for an ancient Chinese emperor. The banana tree peered over the window, and giggled in the wind.

I opened the door, and squeezed within the crack. I could still hear Colin in the distance—sixteen…seventeen…—and I knew he would never catch me here. I would win this round, and then I could brag to him about it when his bumbling footsteps came up here. There’s nothing I loved more than telling my brother I’m better than him.

Hell, I was always better than Colin. Every time. No matter what he said.

The door creaked open.

The smug smile slipped off my face.

“Cheater!” I whined, but I stopped short when I realised who was in the closet with me.

It wasn’t Colin.

It was a figure, long and slender and slim, wearing a white dress that sparkled in the moonlight. Long, black hair cascaded down her face.

She smelled fresh, like the frangipanis growing around our garden.

She reached out, and stroked my small frame with spindly fingers, and every muscle froze.

Sweat beaded on my forehead.

She lifted her face. She had no eyes.

I screamed.

I heard footsteps thundering towards the closet, and Colin burst into the room.

“Found you!” he cried, but he stopped when he saw her too.

She looked between our pale, trembling faces, smiled with pearly-white teeth, and then floated away through the window.

I spent the rest of the day in our bedroom. Colin spent the rest of his day talking to my father.

The next night was the first time I saw him pray with everyone else.

“I’ve been seeing her,” Colin said quietly, snapping me out of it.

His face was pale, trembling. Just like that day when he saw her in the closet when we were boys.

“In my dreams. Everywhere. She’s upset you haven’t been praying to her like I have. So please, out of respect for everyone in our family, don’t do it.”

“Please,” I scoffed. “What is she going to do? Scare me? Pretty sure we have been imagining it, that is all.”

Colin looked like I just transformed into that woman from the closet. He shook his head for the third time and left.

I took a deep breath and said the words I'd been dying to say since I inherited this place into the phone:

“Cut down that banana tree.”

---

The reports came a month later.

Men were starting to disappear, some as young as 16. It didn’t matter who they were, married, single, divorced. But they would walk straight out of the house as late as midnight and that was the last they saw of them.

But what made me shiver deep into my bones was when they described smelling fresh frangipanis on the nights leading up to the full moon.

Frangipanis…

I thought again of the woman in the closet, then forced the memory deep into the recesses in my mind where it couldn’t hurt me.

I flipped through the reports, assessing the damage. Fifteen men, gone. Fifteen, healthy men. All reported missing.

That was the bad news.

The good news was that they found one of the missing men today.

I slammed the binder shut and hurried down to the town square.

A crowd was already gathered, feet shuffling, heads turning. Whispers floated around the square. Speculating.

I pushed through all of them, and instantly wished I hadn’t. Wished I stayed in my office and far away from another nightmare I was getting myself into.

He was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. His body was ripped apart into two, sinew and entrails still barely holding him together like long trails of glue. In the centre of the chaos his heart was still beating.

Slowly. Weakly.

In fact, he was still breathing.

Then my eyes moved to his face, and my breath stopped in my throat.

His eyes were gone.

His mouth quivered.

“Give us room!” I demanded, and the crowd parted.

I knelt beside him, and listened close.

“No…regrets…”

He was fighting to get that out.

“What?”

“Beautiful…very beautiful. No…regrets…”

I still didn’t know what he meant, but I got nothing more out of him, for his heart stopped beating then.

“She’s still out there.”

One of the women pointed towards my house with a shaking finger. I swore she was pointing directly at where the banana tree used to be.

“I hear her. Crying. And then my husband…”

I placed my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll help you, ma’am. Don’t worry.”

Everyone went quiet.

I avoided their gaze and stared at the banana tree again. I thought of the woman in the closet, the one in a white dress and no eyes, and my courage wilted.

I spent the next few days pacing back and forth, thinking of the promise I foolishly made. It wasn’t like me at all. There was no way I could go back and face that woman in the white dress again. Or whatever she was or might be.

One time as a child was bad enough.

Google hadn’t been invented yet at the time, but I did find a library. I spent days reading and researching, but I didn’t find much. The closest was the pontianak—the spirit of a woman tied to a banana tree, but the books also said they were usually found in plantations and forests.

We definitely didn’t live on a plantation or a forest.

As the moon filled in as the nights passed, I consumed myself with research. There were many times when I found myself passed out in my books, and I dreaded those times, because that was when the nightmares started.

I would dream I was lost in a forest full of banana trees. They all looked exactly the same, not a branch different, not a banana alike. I wandered through the maze of trees, calling, calling, calling, but I did not know what I was calling for.

They hunched together, bundled up close like stacks of hay. It was so dark it was a miracle I could see where I was going. Once in a while the trees would open up and I caught a glimpse of the moon.

The full moon.

Then I would hear someone crying, and when I looked around, I saw all the banana trees were crying. Sticky blood flowed out of holes in their trunks and rose up to my knees.

I woke up sweating, still screaming my lungs out. My nose was bleeding. I could still see her in my mind, her long black hair over her face like a veil.

Colin was right. She was there, always there. Always around. Waiting patiently like my nightmares every night.

When would it ever end?

There was a knock on my door, and I turned around to see Colin walk into my study. Yet he did not look like himself. More like he just rolled out of bed and then threw on the first things he saw from his closet. His hat was askew, and his pants and jacket were not buttoned up.

“I’m going out,” he said flatly.

He sounded like he was far, far away. His eyes were glazed open, and half-closed into slits. I glanced outside and my face turned as pale as the full moon shining outside.

“Colin!” I yelled, but it was too late.

He was gone.

Right then I smelled the flowers. Frangipanis. Sweet and fragrant, like vanilla pods.

Except this time it made me sick.

I rushed to the bathroom, but I barely made it there when I heard someone scream.

I froze.

Every hair on my body stood up on end.

“COLIN!” I yelled, but there was no response, no response…and I stood there, heart racing, not knowing what was going on.

The fragrance of the flowers dissipated, replaced by the smell of rotting flesh. This time I did vomit, and I watched as my dinner floated around in the toilet bowl. I wiped my mouth and flushed.

Laughter tinkled in, accompanying the sound of the swirling water in a sick symphony, chilling me to my bones. All at once though I snapped back to it, my mind on one single thought.

Colin.

I have to find him.

I dashed out of the house. I yelled for my brother, but there was no answer.

It made my heart pound even harder.

Then finally I heard something. It wasn’t my brother, but I wished it was.

It was the sound of a baby crying, yet it didn’t sound like a baby. It was accompanied by growls and groans, and it was strangely distorted. Goosebumps rippled up and down my spine.

Yet it was quiet. Too quiet. Almost like whoever was crying wasn’t there at all. At first I was relieved that she was far, far away. Where she couldn’t hurt me.

Then I remembered my research.

And once again I couldn’t think straight.

At that precise moment my boots sunk into soft flesh.

It looked like someone had feasted and left the corpse in disarray. Organs were scattered everywhere. They were half-chewed, the blood soaking into the damp grass.

The only thing left of the person was his face, discarded to the side like a mask.

“Colin?”

Crunch crunch.

Crunch.

Frangipanis.

Rotten flesh.

I turned around, and there she was.

The woman wearing a white dress.

Her hair hanging down over her face in a black curtain.

With no eyes.

She raised a hand, and I could see that her nails had grown out, long and sharp and bloody, and glinting in the moonlight.

She brought it down, and I jumped aside, just in time as it just nicked my flesh.

I started to run back to the house. Where else could I go? She was floating behind me, glowing like some sort of demented angel. Laughing.

My muscles froze again. I forced myself to keep on going.

Eventually I reached the house. I slammed the door shut and locked it, but it wasn’t much use. She was here already.

Her nails were scraping across the wood. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

Screeeeeeech…..

My heart was thrashing against my rib cage. I desperately tried to remember what my books said.

Screeeeeeeeeeech….

What kills a pontianak?

My mind was blank. All I could think about was my death from the other side of the door. I racked my brains.

Think, Jason, think!

Too late. The door exploded open into a hole, and her hand shot through, her nails gripping my hair. My face rubbed against the rough wood, and then it hit me.

Something sharp.

My eyes darted around.

Anything. Please!

My gaze landed on a table within arm’s reach.

That nail!

I grabbed it, and with the last of my strength, jammed it into her neck. She howled, black blood dripping down like slime, staggered backwards, but the damage had already been done. I unlocked the door and came outside, watching with bated breath.

Finally she looked up to me and smiled with puppy eyes.

It was love at first sight. She was drawing me in like a magnet.

And I knew I couldn’t say no.

---

I named her Jane and married her a few weeks later. We were a happy couple, Jane and I. Or at least it would be if you asked her.

As for me, I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t look at Jane any longer without seeing her the same as in my nightmares. As that woman in a long white dress and black hair covering her face. With no eyes.

Although they had grown back when she stopped being evil, shining green like emeralds.

She was drop-dead gorgeous. I should feel lucky, but I didn’t. My heart was heavy. I could close my eyes and see her for who she really was.

We had sex, but it felt menial, a labour. In fact I had to force Jane into bed because she didn’t want it. She screamed, and begged, but I held her down. It was the part of the night I looked forward to, I supposed. Pinching her soft flesh like clay.

On Tuesday morning she sat down with me at the dining table. The day was young, and her hair glistened as if she just showered. She leaned in close, sipping her coffee. Jane was unhappy. Her hand rubbed against a small bump in her belly.

Then she said this to me. Words that haunted me forever. Words that I would never forget.

“You’re just like your father. You have treated me just like he had to me. Like I am nothing to you.”

I stared at her, the realization setting in like eternal darkness. Goosebumps prickled my skin.

“Now look!”

She laughed dryly, patting her belly.

Then she got up with a glint in her eye.

“Wait here. I’ll be back.”

Those were the last words she spoke to me. The next time I saw her she was hanging from a frayed rope, blood dripping on the floor. Candles were arranged around her in a pentagon, accompanied by strange symbols I did not recognise.

Tonight I am writing to you on my phone from my study, terrified. I am terrified because I see her again in the light of the full moon. The lady in a white dress and long black hair covering her face in a veil. The lady I call Jane.

She’s wandering ever so close to the house, smelling of sweet frangipanis and rotten flesh. Every so often the moon catches her face, and I see she has no eyes.

My heart is pounding against my ribcage again and my hands are sweating. I haven’t felt this way in years.

I grab a nail and unplug my phone. Why am I still writing?

Her nails are scraping against the wood again.

Screech…

SK