Horror in Paradise Read Online Free Page B

two women who followed me. She was interested to know if they were haoles (Caucasians) or if they had darker skin on the order of hers and mine. She herself, she said, was one-eighth Chinese on her mother’s side. As we talked, it seemed to me that the air was full of reluctance for us to break up, though we both knew she had to catch a plane soon for the island of Kauai. I later learned that she was going there to attend her brother’s funeral. When we said goodbye, I noticed her eyes were no longer so strange.
    Since that first meeting, Emma has visited me quite often, frequently noting that my home was full of “such warmth.” We usually sit across my dining table, she facing out toward Waikiki, and chat about things of the spirit. Soon I began to call her “Auntie” because of my growing affection for her.
    One day I showed her a clipping from a recent issue of Fate magazine (Vol. 25, No. 6, June, 1972, page 82), that identified her as the great-great-granddaughter of ka hum nui (the chief hum) of King Kamehameha the Great. It quoted her story about “a beautiful woman dressed in white” who appeared out of nowhere to halt the progress of her half-Hawaiian and half-Caucasian grandpa, Howard de Fries, on his way to gather mountain apples. Then a boulder that almost certainly would have killed him thundered across the path ahead, but when he turned around to thank the lady for saving his life, she was nowhere to be seen.
    “Every word in it is true,” Auntie Emma said.
    During another visit I asked her to get in touch with the three spirits who had been disturbed by the building of the Contessa and to tell them that they would be welcome at my place any time. “I’m a traditional Chinese,” I said. “We always share our home with others.”
    She smiled. “They are not here any more. They have moved on. Don’t worry about them.”
    Everything was going along just fine. When Auntie Emma again came to call, I told her that I had silently promised the first woman who had followed me that I would not walk on “her” side of the street. But now I wondered if it would be all right for me to do so. Not that I had to. I just wanted to know if it would be all right.
    “Of course, walk anywhere,” she answered firmly. “There is no evil around you.”
    And then, still walking on the Contessa side of the street a few days later, I saw two little Oriental girls of not more than five years old waiting at the Kahoaloha Lane crossing. Each had the most beautiful shiny smooth hair hanging below her waist. Each carried the largest size Philippine tote-bag. Their tiny hands clutched two or three of the largest University-of-Hawaii spiral notebooks, hugging them closely to their light pink sweaters. I thought I ought to cross in the pedestrian walk with them for the same reason I had earlier crossed the street with the woman who told me to go back to China. I asked the girls if they did not want me to help them. They looked at me shyly, giggled, and chatter-boxed with each other. I decided to mind my own business and walked on, but I could not forget the girls. So I turned back and crossed with them. Skipping and chatterboxing, they happily went ahead. But when they reached the pushbutton that allows pedestrians to change the traffic light, they stopped, pushed it, and waited to re-cross the street. It made me feel very strange indeed, having just gone out of my way to help them and now discovering they wanted to go back again. They turned around to look at me, talked to each other some more, re-crossed the street when the signal turned green, and disappeared into the morning crowd.
    When I asked Auntie Emma if they were somehow related to the two women who followed me, she thought for a moment and said, “Who else would they be?”
    “They came to walk me to the other side of the street to let me know that I could walk on their side of the street?” I continued.
    Auntie Emma said, “What could be more obvious?”
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