“I have never harmed anything. I have led an honest life.”

​

Kyaw awaited the darkness, awaited some descent and the imminent loss of feeling in his limbs to fire and pain but the night remained still like the Creature and all that blazed was Uncle Kyaw’s fear.

​

He tried to get up from his chair, and eventually managed it with great effort and difficulty; he went inside to get his amulet in the hope that it would absorb all of the evil from the malevolent intruder and delay his introduction to whichever afterlife he knew he deserved. Uncle Kyaw breathed heavily. He emerged from the hut, extending the amulet out before him.

​

But the Creature was gone.

*

The next morning the heat returned. By the time the children were leaving for school, the parents were at work, and the elders at home, word had spread of the visitor. Mrs Chokhlang, having been too frightened to sleep alone in her hut, had stayed at her friend Mrs Kruna’s, who had left early for work at the fish market and told everyone there, who then told all the early-morning customers. Mr Phayni had told the men at work, and Uncle Kyaw told loyal visitors when they brought him breakfast.

“What is it?” everyone asked, but no one had the answer. “I knew something felt different,” they had said, “and it wasn’t just the heat.”

. Some believed him to indeed be the ghost of Mr Chokhlang, or a ghost come to disrupt Mr Phayni’s family harmony because his daughter had slept with her hands between her knees, or an angry ghost come to take Uncle Kyaw to the afterlife, or a sun spirit come to make the day hot. The only fact everyone could agree upon was that the Creature was not welcome.

At midday all the villagers gathered at the monastery to talk to the monks about what could be done. There was a steadily increasing atmosphere of passion that, once fused with the hot air and blinding incense smoke, rapidly reached a boil.

​

“What if it’s here to make our crops fail? It’ll put me out of a job!”

 
“If it’s a Hungry Ghost it might use up all our village resources and leave us with nothing!”

​

“It might steal my husband!”

​

Just as the noises grew louder and the sweat dripped faster, a schoolboy came running in. A few people stood up, afraid of what they might hear, but eager. 

“Elders, there is a Creature at our school,” he said.

​

As if this were the catalyst all had been anticipating, desiring, everyone got up and followed the monks across the village directly to the school where they immediately set about looking for the intruder. Those who had seen the Creature found that they could not describe the it but reassured the others that they would know it when they saw it because it was fear itself.

​

It was Mrs Chonkhlang who eventually found the Creature inside the school. It was standing silently, as it had in the compounds of both Mr Phayni’s and her own. But this time it was accompanied by a young girl, Mr Phayni’s youngest daughter she thought, who was gleefully giggling and skipping around it. For a moment Mrs Chonkhlang was touched by the girl’s childish innocence, her uncompromised happiness, but all too soon this was clouded by the presence of the Creature, and the corruption and harm she knew it would bring. When the girl noticed Mrs Chonkhlang, she smiled warmly at her and said, 

“Look! A visitor came to school today. A new friend!”