CHAPTER THREE

The man continued running towards us, chased by the policemen. I saw that he was a Chinese man in his 30s, and he had a look of desperation.

Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the four ghostly figures vanished into thin air right before they reached us.

There was stunned silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of everyone’s breathing. Lots of people were on the ground, where they had dived to avoid any bullets that might head in their direction.

I looked around to make sure everyone was okay. Nazhar looked pretty shaken, but not as much as Jimmy, who was a bundle of nervous energy. He was running around asking everyone if they were okay, over and over. Mom finally caught hold of him and hugged him tightly. He seemed to relax slightly.

Wendy and Eliza were sitting on the ground looking shell-shocked. Dad was crouched in front of them, checking for any injuries. Watson and Moran were doing the same for each other. Uncle Saad and Uncle Victor tried to calm everyone down, but the tour was clearly not going to continue at this point. People were leaving in a very hurried manner, and Uncle Victor followed them to guide them back.

Nazhar looked at me with wide eyes and whispered, “Hantu.”

“That’s…that’s not possible, Nazhar,” I said. “There has to be a scientific explanation for this.” There had to be.

Nazhar frowned and pulled the My Queenstown Heritage booklet from the yellow bag. He flipped to one of the pages and pointed at one of the entries. “But Sherlock, look at this. How do you explain this with science?”

I took the booklet from him and saw a photo of the man who had been running towards us, firing at the police. It was Lim Ban Lim, the Dual-Armed Bandit. He robbed banks in Singapore and Malaysia in broad daylight and often had shootouts with the police. He swore he would never be captured alive, and he wasn’t. He was killed in Queenstown in 1972.

I looked at Nazhar, and he must have seen the confusion in my face.

“It’s the exact same person, Sherlock.”

“Maybe it was just a trick of the light…” I was barely convincing myself, let alone Nazhar. It’s hard to argue against the existence of ghosts when the man who appeared and disappeared without any explanation looked exactly like a dead bank robber from the 60s.

I decided to deal with this after I had time to clear my head.

Uncle Saad walked over to us and asked, “Are you two okay?” He continued before we could answer, “I’ve done this trail for years and nothing like that’s ever happened before. We might have to discontinue this walk.” He looked quite sad at that.

“We’re okay, Uncle Saad,” Nazhar said. “Those weren’t real bullets anyway. We were never in any real danger.”

“Watson, can you play what you recorded just now?” I said. “But without the sound please.”

Amazingly, Watson did as I asked without complaint (he must have been still in shock), and we saw the four men again, shooting at each other. They were slightly transparent, as I had noticed earlier, but I observed something new this time. The men passed through everything; they were intangible.

“I agree with Nazhar,” I said. “We weren’t in any danger. Whatever this was, it had no physical substance. When the four men ran through the jungle, they never disturbed a single shrub, leaf or blade of grass.”

Nazhar looked like he was about to say something, so I quickly added, “But I’m certain there was nothing supernatural about this. I’m just not sure how to rationally explain it yet.”

Nazhar rolled his eyes at me and walked over to Mom and Jimmy to help console him.

It was rare for my usually mild-mannered friend to show his displeasure so openly. I knew he had to be mad at me. Nazhar and I had always disagreed on the existence of the supernatural. Was I wrong to dismiss his beliefs so quickly?

“I think we should go to my office,” Dad said. “It’s at Fusionopolis, which is quite near here. I’ll call Officer Siva, let him know what happened and to meet us there.”

He looked at Watson and said, “I’m glad you recorded…whatever that was, Watson. I’m sure Officer Siva will want to see it for himself.”

Uncle Saad decided to join us and we all made the 10-minute walk to Dad’s office. Mom held Jimmy’s hand the whole way, and Eliza helped Wendy slap away mosquitos that weren’t really there. Watson used his flight ability to keep an eye out from above while Moran used his rocket skates to monitor our perimeter constantly. Dad called Officer Siva, rousing him from his sleep to let him know what had occurred. From Dad’s side of the conversation, it was clear Officer Siva would be meeting us at Dad’s office.

All through the walk, I racked my brain trying to think of a logical explanation for what we had seen, but I couldn’t come up with a single one. Was Nazhar right? Had we just seen ghosts or apparitions from the past? It was true that the main figure was the spitting image of Lim Ban Lim, a man who had been dead for nearly 50 years, but there were all sorts of possible explanations for that, like masks and makeup. But how were they intangible? Why were they transparent? I still had no answers by the time we got to Dad’s building. I knew I should speak with Nazhar about his theories, but part of me didn’t want to have to argue with my friend. It hit me then—I was being extremely closed-minded about this. I had made up my mind about something and refused to listen to any other viewpoints. That was the worst possible way for a scientist or a detective to behave!

We all squeezed into one lift and Dad pressed the button for the 22nd floor.

“I’m sorry it has to be under these circumstances, kids, but I’m glad I finally get to show you my office,” Dad said.

“Yeah,” Uncle Saad said. “We do a lot of cool things there. Besides your Dad’s awesome teleportation experiments, we also do a lot of stuff with virtual and augmented reality. We’re currently trying to build one of those sandbox games where you can be whatever you want, but with augmented reality. We’re basically trying to build a holodeck, aren’t we, Michael?”

“Teleportation and holodecks?” Mom asked. “Are you sure you guys don’t just watch Star Trek all day?”

That made us all laugh. It was a much needed stress reliever. What Dad and Uncle Saad were doing at their office did sound super cool. Even Jimmy had settled down enough to smile at the thought of a holodeck, though Nazhar still seemed unhappy with me.

When we got to the doors of their office, Dad swiped his keycard and the doors opened. It was dark inside, and I couldn’t see anything at first, but Dad went to where the light switches were.

“Ow!” he yelped out. “I’m okay! Somebody just left something here, and I hit my shin. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Dad turned on the lights, and we saw that everything was not at all fine.

The entire office had been trashed.

Experiments and models lay broken all over the floor, sheets of paper were scattered everywhere, and computers and monitors had been smashed.

“Oh my gosh,” Uncle Saad said.

We suddenly heard a muffled voice coming from the far end of the office. Dad, Mom and Uncle Saad instinctively put themselves in front of us as they tried to figure out what the sound was.

“Do you know if anyone was working late, Saad?” Dad asked.

Saad turned to Dad and said, “Oh no.”

They both rushed towards the muffled voice, which had been getting more insistent.

Mom and the rest of us followed as Dad and Uncle Saad hurried to where a woman sat gagged and bound to a chair. She had long brown hair and was wearing jeans and a light blue t-shirt. She was squirming around and clearly trying to yell despite the duct tape across her mouth.

“Wendy, are you okay?” Uncle Saad asked the auntie as he untied her.

“Who did this?” Dad asked as he ungagged her.

The auntie took a moment to compose herself and then pointed straight at Uncle Saad.

“It was you, Saad!”