Ploy’s Ploy

The heat in Chiang Mai was a physical weight, a wet blanket that clung to David’s skin long after the sun had dipped behind the temple’s ornate roofline. He stood awkwardly at the edge of the gathering, a clutch of saffron-robed monks chanting in a hypnotic, alien rhythm that vibrated in his chest. The air was thick with the scent of marigolds, cheap incense, and something else—a faint, cloying sweetness that he couldn’t place. It was the smell of death, he supposed, trying to be pragmatic.

He was here for Ploy: his friend, his anchor in this strange, beautiful country. A sudden aneurysm, the doctors had said. One moment she was laughing, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners, the next she was gone. David felt a hollow ache where his heart used to be. He was the only foreigner at the funeral, a tall, pale ghost amongst a sea of familiar Thai faces. He felt their curious, sympathetic glances, but no one approached him. He was an outsider in his own grief.

The wat was a sprawling complex of teakwood buildings and glittering chedis, but tonight, all focus was on the small, open-air pavilion where Ploy’s body lay in a simple, white-painted coffin. It was an incongruous vessel for such a vibrant soul. Beside it stood a large, ornate refrigerator, its side covered in flowers, a modern touch in this ancient ritual, keeping her cool until the flames could take her.

David watched as Ploy’s mother, a tiny woman whose face was a roadmap of sorrow, approached the coffin. She placed a small, folded white cloth on her daughter’s chest, her movements slow and deliberate, a last act of love. Then, she poured coconut water over Ploy’s hand, a symbolic cleansing. The monks’ chanting swelled, a low, resonant hum that seemed to make the air shimmer.

An elder, a man with skin like old leather and eyes that held the wisdom of a thousand funerals, began to speak. His voice was an indistinct murmur, a eulogy in a dialect David could barely follow. He caught snippets—"good daughter," “kind heart,” “too soon.” His gaze drifted past the coffin, to the crematorium itself. It was a large, concrete structure, its chimney reaching up towards a sky bruised with the coming night. A dark, soot-stained opening in its side was the mouth of the furnace, a hungry maw waiting to be fed.

As the ceremony progressed, David’s unease began to grow. The air grew colder, a chill that had nothing to do with the evening breeze. The shadows beneath the pavilion seemed to deepen, to stretch and writhe like living things. He saw the flowers on Ploy’s coffin begin to wilt, their petals curling and blackening as if they burned from the inside. He blinked, and they were normal again. He was tired, he told himself. Grief was making him see things.

But then the chanting stopped.

It didn’t fade. It was cut off, cleanly, as if a switch had been flipped. The silence that followed was absolute, a deafening void that pressed in on David’s eardrums. The monks were staring at the coffin, their faces frozen in expressions of confusion and dawning horror. The mourners began to whisper, a nervous rustle of sound.

A low thumping began to emanate from inside the coffin.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It was a steady, rhythmic sound, like a fist beating against the lid.

“Hey,” David whispered to the man next to him, a distant cousin of Ploy’s he’d met once. “What’s going on?”

The man didn’t look at him. His eyes were wide, fixed on the coffin. He was muttering a prayer under his breath, his knuckles white as he clutched a string of prayer beads.

Thump. Thump. THUMP.

The sound was getting louder, more insistent. The coffin itself began to tremble, the white paint vibrating. The elder who had given the eulogy took a hesitant step forward, his face pale. He shouted something in Thai, his voice sharp with command. Two temple boys, young men in white shirts and dark trousers, rushed towards the coffin.

They never reached it.

The lid of the coffin exploded upwards with a sound like a gunshot. Splinters of wood and white paint flew through the air. A collective gasp, a wave of terror, rippled through the crowd. People stumbled backwards, knocking over chairs, their cries of shock swallowed by the sudden, overwhelming sense of wrongness.

For a moment, David thought he was hallucinating. Ploy was sitting up.

Her body was upright in the coffin, rigid, her back straight. But it wasn’t Ploy. Her skin, once warm and brown, was the colour of grey ash. Her eyes were open, but they were empty, two pools of absolute darkness that seemed to absorb the light. And she was smiling.

It wasn’t her smile. It was a wide, unnatural grin that stretched her lips too far, exposing her teeth in a grotesque parody of joy. The smell of marigolds was gone, replaced by a stench of decay so thick and sweet it was like inhaling syrup made of rot.

The silence broke. It shattered into a thousand pieces of pure panic. Screams, high and terrified, tore through the night. The monks scattered, their saffron robes fluttering like frightened birds. The mourners fled into the darkness, tripping over each other in their desperate haste to escape. The elder stood his ground for a second longer, his face a mask of disbelief, before he too turned and ran.

David was the only one remaining. David stood frozen, his mind overwhelmed by a deafening roar of terror. He couldn’t move. He could only watch.

The thing that wore Ploy’s body swung its legs over the side of the coffin. Its movements were jerky, uncoordinated, like a marionette with a drunken master. It stood up, its head lolling to one side, that horrible, empty grin still fixed in place. Its feet, bare, made no sound as they touched the stone floor of the pavilion.

Its head snapped towards David.

The empty eyes fixed on him. And the smile widened.

He wanted to run. His brain was screaming at his legs to move, to flee, to do anything but stand there. But his body was a cage of ice.

It took a step towards him. Its joints cracked audibly in the silence, a sound like old wood snapping. Its head twitched, tilting the other way.

And then it spoke.

The voice that came out of Ploy’s mouth was not her voice. It was a chorus of whispers, a dry, scraping sound like dead leaves skittering across concrete. It was the sound of the grave.

“David,” it whispered, using his name. “I’m so cold.”

He felt a fresh wave of horror, so profound it was almost paralysing. This was beyond grief, beyond madness. This was something else. This was evil, ancient and hungry, wearing his friend’s skin.

It took another step. It was close enough now that he could see the fine network of black veins that had erupted across its ashen skin. It could see the dirt and grime under its fingernails.

“You came,” it rasped, the sound like a rusty hinge. “I knew you would.”

It reached out a hand. The fingers were stiff, the nails long and yellowed.

“Don’t you want to say goodbye?” it whispered, its head cocked at that impossible, broken angle. “Don’t you want to give me a kiss?”

Its mouth opened wider, wider than humanly possible, the jaw unhinging with a sickening pop. Inside was a darkness deeper than any night, a void that promised nothing but oblivion.

David finally found his voice. It wasn’t a scream. It was a choked sob of absolute terror. He scrambled backwards, his feet slipping on the stone floor, and he fell, hard. Pain shot up his arm, but he didn’t care. He kept crawling backwards, his eyes locked on the advancing horror.

The thing that was Ploy followed him. It didn’t walk so much as it glided, its feet barely touching the ground. The whispering chorus of its voice echoed around him, a maddening, inescapable sound.

“The fire,” it whispered. “They wanted to burn me. But I’m not ready to go.”

It was standing over him now. It leaned down, its face inches from his own. The smell of rot was overwhelming, a physical force that made him gag.

“I’m hungry, David,” it said, its voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “The monks wouldn’t feed me. They just chanted. So I waited. I waited for you.”

Its head tilted again, and in the empty sockets of its eyes, David saw something flicker. A spark of something ancient and malevolent, something that had been sleeping in the dark places of the world long before Ploy was ever born. It wasn’t Ploy’s ghost. It was a parasite, a thing that had crawled into her shell the moment her soul had departed.

“You’re a good friend,” it whispered, its cold, stiff fingers brushing against his cheek. The touch was like ice, sending a jolt of pure revulsion through him. “You’ll be my first.”

It opened its mouth again, that gaping, bottomless maw, and leaned in.

David screamed.

And from deep within the temple grounds, from the crematorium itself, a sound answered him. It was the roar of a fire being lit, but it was wrong. It was a hungry, exultant roar. A pillar of green flame shot out of the chimney, a sickly, ghost-light that cast grotesque, dancing shadows across the wat.

The thing paused, its head turning towards the flame. Its grotesque smile faltered for a fraction of a second. And in that moment, David saw his chance. He kicked out, his foot connecting with its knee. It didn’t react as a human would, but it stumbled, its balance momentarily broken.

He didn’t wait. He scrambled to his feet and ran. He ran faster than he had ever run in his life, his lungs burning, his heart hammering against his ribs. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t. The sound of those dry, scraping whispers followed him, a promise of what was to come.

He burst through the temple gates and out onto the quiet, moonlit street. The world outside was normal, peaceful. But David knew it was a lie. He could still feel the icy touch on his cheek, still hear the chorus of whispers in his ear.

He finally stopped, gasping for air, and dared to look back. The wat was silent and dark. The green flame was gone. The pavilion was empty. It was as if nothing had happened.

But as he stood there, shivering in the warm night air, he saw it. A single figure, standing inside the temple gates. It was the thing that was Ploy. It wasn’t chasing him.

It was standing there, watching him. And even from this distance, he could see that it was smiling.

He knew then that this was not over. He had escaped, but he had not survived. He was marked. The thing that had stolen Ploy’s body had let him go. It had let him run. It was a game to it. And David knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that it would find him again. It was a part of him now.

He turned and walked away into the night, the memory of the empty eyes and the hungry smile seared into his soul. The funeral was over, but the horror had begun. And somewhere in the darkness, a chorus of whispers was laughing.

The END