THERE'S a sense of loss that threads through Tunku Halim Tunku Abdullah's Scream To The Shadows (published in 2019) like a dull skein of bleakness. For perfectly good reasons, the literature of grief dwells on the experiences of the living, the survivors who grapple with the pain of loss and the puzzle of absence.
But maybe the dead have feelings too. That, when you think about it, is the premise of a great many ghost stories, and also of Scream To The Shadows, his ingenious and affecting compilation of horror stories to date.
A dead boyfriend who can't let go of his living girlfriend; a grieving widower who relives the death of his wife again and again; an inquisitive journalist who faces off with an angry spirit in a deserted rubber estate; an app on the phone that literally takes over a hapless man's life; and many more creepy tales of love gone wrong, greed, revenge, lust and anger.
All of which, while featuring the usual preoccupations of horror — supernatural evil, gore, creepy basements — also evoke the poet Anne Carson's answer to the question: "Why does tragedy exist?" "Because you're full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you're full of grief."
"Most people don't write because they're happy," muses the 56-year-old author. "There's a saying that goes: '…great works aren't created out of happiness.'"
It's a Zoom call because the writer is ensconced up north in Penang, living out the lockdown in relative isolation. "I don't mind it at all," he protests, smiling. Being alone, he says, suits him. "I'm alone, but not lonely. There's a big difference there." He smiles benignly, eyes glinting behind his dark-rimmed spectacles.
He definitely suits the part of the solitary horror writer. It's the head, of course. Entirely bald, aquiline nose, deep-set penetrating eyes — it's easy to imagine him communing with dark spirits and malevolent creatures in the dead of the night while creating spine-tingling prose that speaks of the undead, the macabre and the forbidden.
His reservoir of dark imaginations seems limitless. For over two decades, Tunku Halim has written a series of horror novels and short stories that have earned him the title — one that alternately annoys and flatters him — of the Stephen King of Asia.
His first work of fiction was The Rape Of Martha Teoh & Other Chilling Stories (1997), followed by other books including Dark Demon Rising (1997), Blood Haze: 15 Chilling Tales (1997), Vermillion Eye (2000), Horror Stories 2 (2016), The Rape Of Nancy Ng — 13 Nightmares (2018).
He has also dallied with the land of the living, with non-fiction works including a biography about his father titled A Prince Called Charlie (2018), several children's books (A Children's History Of Malaysia and History Of Malaysia — A Children's Encyclopedia, published in 2003 and 2009 respectively), a diet book (So Fat Lah! — 30 Perfect Ways To A Slimmer You in 2016) and a cookbook (So Fat Lah! Cookbook With Christina Hiew in 2018).
Yet despite branching out into other genres, Tunku Halim remains known for his shadowy tales. He is, to my rather fanciful thoughts, a day-walker of sorts; a vampire who flirts with daylight to compensate for his dark dealings and preoccupation for the macabre. While his works of non-fiction are interesting, his talent for weaving chilling stories has undoubtedly stamped his reputation as an elegant storyteller of the supernatural.
In the introduction of Scream To The Shadows, he invites readers with all the wicked humour of a crypt keeper: "These places of the dead are such beautiful places, aren't they, dear friend? They're serene and filled with bones and memories."
DARK INSPIRATIONS
Literary scholars tell us that the ghost story originated with the gothic novel in the 18th century, or with Dickens in the 19th. But we forget how relatively small our fictional culture is. In Malaysia as with other Asian countries, tales of the supernatural have ancient origins. It's a near-universal form of storytelling. Indeed, I often think that cavemen must have told ghost stories to explain away shadows cast by the fire inside their caves.
Tunku Halim looks at me intently before remarking: "Scary stories are rooted deep in our past. Fear is a primeval thing, sitting deep in our brains. And when you combine that with the myths and legends of our Asian culture which are full of pontianaks, orang minyaks, penanggals and other spectres, then the result is quite potent."
But if there are any secret dealings with the devil, or getting into touch with "biggest, baddest bomoh" (title of one of his short stories from Scream To The Shadows), he isn't letting on. Could darkness be at the centre of his writings at all? He rebuts my idea with another chuckle. There isn't a hint of darkness where he's at, in his sparse, almost sterile looking apartment.
Malaysians love a good horror story, he adds, shrugging his shoulders. He doesn't balk at my pedestrian question — one that's often flung at most horror writers: Why horror?
Shifting in his seat, he leans forward before answering with a grin: "Stephen King was always asked this question, and his answer was: 'What makes you think I have a choice?'"
Chuckling, he continues: "And it's so true! Because I write what I'm interested in. If you ask me to write a love story, I can't. If I attempt to write a love story, it will soon be tilting into the paranormal. I wrote a story called A Malaysian Restaurant In London, which is a paranormal love story. Give me anything else to write and it will eventually veer into this direction. Like King, I don't have a choice…"
But why the fascination? I press. Brows furrowing, he muses: "Maybe it stems from my childhood. As a child you're told, 'It's getting dark. Don't go out. All the ghosts come out after six6.' But definitely as a teenager, I read a lot of horror stories!"
The scion of the Negri Sembilan royal family, Tunku Halim stops short of mentioning his aristocratic ties (he's the grandson of Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's first King), except that he was shunted to a boarding school at age 13.
The turbulent teenage years unleashed the writer in him. "At 13, I started writing poetry. I was sent," he emphasises the last word wryly, "…to a boarding school in England. As a teenager you start to have issues, and my issues I put it down as poetry."
A great many of his experiences found their way into the early poems, and it's probably true that they operated as a release valve — a way of depressurising or bringing chaos into a more controlled format of quatrains and half-rhymes. He crafted poetry, recorded the dates when he wrote them and kept it as a diary. "I wrote about everyday stuff, allowing feelings to emerge," he explains simply.
His poetical diaries ceased when he started working in Kuala Lumpur. "I was very focused on being a lawyer," he explains. Qualifying as a barrister with a Masters of Science degree in Shipping, Trade and Finance, he returned home to practise corporate and conveyancing law briefly, before working for a property developer.
"Most people had many questions about buying condominiums but they weren't necessarily the right questions to ask. So I figured, why not write a book?" he says, blithely.
The writing bug of his adolescence had resurfaced again, and his first book Everything A Condominium Developer Should Have Told You But Didn't was birthed in 1991. "My one regret is that I never kept a copy of that first book!" he says contritely.
As an aside, he informs me that he has the New Straits Times to thank for inspiring him to write short horror stories. "It was about 25 years ago. Back then, NST had a short story competition and I submitted my second horror story ever written about an Ouija board called Something Called Mamsky. Of course, I didn't win but that was the tale that really sent me down this dark, winding path!"
He eventually moved to Australia for two decades, doing legal work for the American computer technology company, Oracle, before fulfilling a dream to live on the island of Tasmania. "I do want to say that a lot of my stories were written when I was in Australia. I'd write about Malaysia mostly. It was mostly due to homesickness," he shares.
He writes, he stresses, for the Malaysian reader. "I don't write Malaysian stories for Westerners. I don't have to explain what nasi lemak or satay is!"
A chilling phrase from Dark Demon Rising comes to mind: "The words too much satay, too much satay scraped like a bleeding finger on my brain." Strange as the sentence may sound, it gives me an almost visceral chill every time I look at satay these days!
He grins, and notes almost regretfully: "Sales wise, Malaysian tales can be very limiting. But that's what I want to write about. Stories for Malaysians." Did you long for the simpler Malaysian life when you were living abroad? I ask. "Malaysian life isn't simpler!" he retorts. "It can be very complicated. I think life was simpler in Australia!"
What did he miss about Malaysia then? "The three F's — food, friends and family. In THAT order!" he replies, tongue-in-cheek. Family can be stressful, he agrees. "The pressure to rise to expectations and make the family proud… that can be hard to bear," he admits candidly.
Does he still keep the poetic diaries of his youth? His face shutters briefly as he sits back in silence. "Unfortunately, I got rid of a lot of things," he confides with a remorseful smile. "I try to live a minimalist lifestyle."
LETTING GO
The minimalist lifestyle, he reveals with rare candour, was forced upon him. When he got divorced eight years ago, he decided to leave Australia. "I've been there, done that and it was time leave the country. I needed a fresh start," he says quietly. A shadow flits through his expression. Here was the man who understood the dark parts of life a little better than most.
He sat alone in an empty house, going through remains of a life he made abroad. "My wife had left with the kids and she took whatever belongings she wanted. I was still left with a lot of stuff." The memories were hard to deal with, as too the pain of letting go.
He went through an audit of everything that made up his former life. "There were so many toys left behind. Some were brand new and hardly even played with," he recalls, chuckling wryly. "There was so much clutter to deal with. I had a drawer full of stationery I hardly ever used, I had clothes I barely wore… my goodness, what a waste!"
He left the country with just two suitcases and a trunk filled with his prized possessions. "I gave away many of my books. That was a big thing because I loved my books. But once you give away the things you treasure most, then it's very easy to give away everything else," he notes quietly.
He became a different man after the divorce. "The pre-divorce guy and the post-divorce guy are very different," he reveals, wincing slightly. By surrendering to the catharsis of experiencing any feelings and memories he had tied to his belongings, he has opened himself up to healing.
And in turn, he feels freer and happier today than he was all those years ago. "Possessions don't make us happy," he points out. "My philosophy now is if you own something, it owns you too."
He has pared down even more since then. He lives, he shares, out of a suitcase. Nothing ties him down anymore. "That's now my attitude in life. Learning to not cling to things. Learning to let things go."
It's interesting to note that the author has cut down so much clutter, including disconnecting from social media. He has no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter — the things marketing-savvy authors would rely on to push the sales of their books. "I may not make as much but then I get a peace of mind and contentment from switching off from fake news and other distractions," he explains sagely.
You live a transient life, I point out. "You know what?" he counters, "Life is transient. You don't know when you're going to go."
In a world where we're always planning ahead or reflecting on the past, he advocates living in the moment. It's realising that less really is more, especially when it comes to packing your life in a suitcase. It's making incredible memories with the people you meet along the way. It's saying goodbye far more than you'd like.
It's in the stories that he tells. Far from obsolescent, his dark tales shift and alter to fit our fears. They understand us — how strenuously we run from the past, but always expect it to catch up with us. We wait for the reckoning with dread and longing. There are nuances in his stories that only a man acquainted with his own darkness can describe.
For now, there's little doubt that Tunku Halim — Malaysia's own prince of darkness — will continue to write stories as long as he remains in the light, untethered and free.