Mysterious Figure

This is a personal story during my younger days in Brunei Darussalam, till today I still can picture the grotesque image in my head.

I used to study in a chinese school back in the early to mid 1990s. Those days were some of the most memorable days of my life. My friends and I were always on the hunt for rubber seeds, fighting spiders and even looking for 'jewels'... We would go into a small jungle clearing behind our school that was rumour to be an old burial ground for those who died during the Japanese Occupation and those 'jewels' are being buried there, although we never did find anything. It was during one of these searches that ended our hobbies of being treasure hunters.

On one particular humid afternoon after lunch, me and two of my best friends, Jim & Gary, decided to go hunting behind our school. My purpose was to collect rubber seeds to play with the other kids in school as sometimes we would compete with each other to see who has the strongest seeds. Jim & Gary's mission 'impossible' was to look for those 'jewels'.

While on the way into the jungle clearing which we are ever so familiar with, I begin focusing on ripe rubber seeds that had fallen onto the ground, if any of you knows about collecting rubber seeds, when the seeds are ripe, you will hear a small explosive sound when the rubber seed covering burst open releasing the seeds. Being a choosy rubber seed picker, I was selecting those good rubber seeds, don't ask me how I know that the seeds are good, I just know. Jim & Gary are ahead of me making their way towards the clearing. They were roughly just 50m ahead.

All of sudden, while I was busy filling my pockets with rubber seeds, I heard a loud snap on my right above me, it was not like the normal rubber seed covering bursting open kind of sound, it was more like a branch being broken. Naturally, I turn my gaze toward the direction of the sound. To my horror, I saw a dark figure perched on top of the tree branch staring at me. There were those dark red, evil eyes and slightly blurred figure, the head was tilted towards one side. It wasn't laughing nor crying, just staring...This was enough to send instant shivers down my spine and my hairs were all standing at their ends. I scream at it and called out for Jim & Gary... Now comes the bizarre part...

Jim came running towards my direction but Gary was nowhere to be seen. I pointed at the direction of the figure and I don't know if Jim saw it, but sensing the fear in my panicky face was enough to scare the crap out of him. But where is Gary? We ran off in search of Gary, not knowing if the Thing was following behind us. We finally found Gary squatting down against a tree clutching his right hand a few metres down the path. We quickly grab him and made it out of the jungle clearing as fast as we could.

Back at school, Gary was in a daze. We queried him where he was when we called out to him and what was wrong with his arm. Gary claimed that he heard nothing and instead called back to us during the time he got 'bitten'. We inspected his arm and to our horror we saw 2 bite holes on his arm about 1 inch in separation, it was like a dracula bite. His arm was swollen but not bleeding. Jim and I looked at each other with fear in our eyes and that was my confirmation that Jim had saw the evil figure as well.

We instantly notified our school teachers and rushed him to the nearest clinic for treatment. We received a good lecturing from our teachers for wondering recklessly into unknown places; Gary received treatment and was having high fever the next day but recovered a few days later. Doctor says that a poisonous insect had bitten him and cause the swelling, but me and Jim knew that no insect would have fangs as wide as that, even if there was, the insect should be big, however Gary claims he did not see any insect during the time he was bitten... And why didn't he hear us call out his name loudly, we were virtually screaming at the top of our lungs!

That was the last treasure hunting expedition for us. After the incident, some of our 'hero' friends still continue going into the jungle clearing and although nothing happened to them, we are not taking our chances anymore...