It was in the declining light of an October evening, when the last vestiges of day had withdrawn into the western heavens and left the forest of Bukit Timah in that peculiar gloom which is neither darkness nor illumination that I first became sensible of the presence which had long haunted the silent places of my mind. I had entered the reserve upon a purpose which now seems to me of the most trivial character, to trace the source of a stream whose murmur I had once caught upon the ridge, yet the path, which at first had appeared familiar, soon narrowed until the very air pressed close upon me, heavy with the exhalations of the damp earth and the unseen vegetation that stirred upon either hand.
I had extinguished my lamp, for the moon, though veiled, cast sufficient pallor through the canopy to reveal the track beneath my feet. It was then that I heard it, a sound as of some ponderous body forcing its way through the undergrowth higher upon the slope. The branches yielded with a crack that was not the casual fracture of a falling limb, but the deliberate rupture produced by weight and intent. I halted. For a moment the forest held its breath. Then, moved by that fatal curiosity which has ever been the undoing of men who seek what ought to remain hidden, I kindled the lamp and directed its beam upward.
What the light revealed was a figure standing between two trunks, erect upon two limbs, its arms hanging low in an attitude of dreadful repose. Grey fur covered it from crown to heel, matted and glistening as though with the moisture of the grave. The face—God help me, the face—was that of a monkey, yet the eyes which met the lamp were not the vacant orbs of the brute. They regarded me with a fixed and malignant intelligence. The mouth opened, and from it issued a sound low and wet, as of some thick fluid stirred in a vessel too long sealed. I extinguished the light at once. The sound ceased.
I remained motionless until the branches moved again and the steps retreated higher into the obscurity. I did not follow. I retraced my path with a haste that was not courage and reached the broader way only when the last of my strength had nearly failed me.
Upon the morrow I returned, accompanied by one whose friendship I had once valued, bearing a lamp of greater power. We discovered the place of the broken boughs. Gray hairs adhered to the bark at the height of a man’s shoulder. I drew one free. It was coarse and of a hue that the daylight rendered almost white. We followed the trail of disturbed earth until the ground levelled beneath an overhang of rock. The soil there had been scraped bare. More of the pale hair lay scattered. My companion directed the lamp into the recess. Something stirred. The beam caught the curve of a shoulder, and the profile of that same abominable face.
It did not flee. It regarded the light with the patience of one who has waited long. Blood, fresh blood, ran from the lower lip and fell upon the earth with a sound I shall hear until my final hour. My companion lowered the lamp. The creature advanced. Its hands were empty, yet the nails upon them were long and dark as old eyes. It uttered again that wet and sepulchral note. We withdrew. It did not pursue. When we regained the trail the sound had died, and we walked forth in a silence more terrible than speech.
That night I sat within my chamber with the window open to the city, yet the traffic below seemed remote, as though belonging to another world. Sleep would not come. In the morning I returned alone, armed only with a short blade and a coil of rope. The overhang was vacant, the hair had vanished, the tracks led higher, toward the ridge where the old quarry gashed the forest like a wound. I followed until the earth gave way to stone. There the prints ended. Standing upon the verge, I looked down into the cut. At the bottom, beside the stagnant water that had gathered in the hollow, a gray form moved upon two legs.
Its arms swung with a rhythm that was almost human. It paused and turned its head. I stepped back. It did not glance upward. It bent and drank, and when it was done, water streamed from its mouth in threads that caught the failing light. Then it passed into the trees upon the farther side and was seen no more. I waited until the day had nearly expired before I descended. I have not returned. My companion no longer answers when I call. The knife remains beside my door. When the wind moves through the trees at night, it sometimes bears a low and liquid sound that ceases the instant I step upon the balcony to listen.
I have closed the window. I leave it closed. Yet even now, as I write these words by the light of a single candle. I fancy I hear it again, faint, persistent, and drawing nearer with each slow breath I draw.
