Eastern Shadows - Chapter 1

Eastern Shadows

CHAPTER 1

A Silent Witness

It was the third time the motel manager had knocked on the door to room seven. “Housekeeping,” he called in Thai.

He knew the girl was inside. The sound of moving feet was far too loud to be anything other than a person. Although in this place, the manager had seen his share of different creatures, both great and small.

“May I come in?” he asked, gently tapping the door again.

“Go away,” the girl called out in English. “I mean, um, mai…pen…rai.”

The stifling heat bore into the back of the manager’s head as he stood outside, the door in front of him baking in the glow of the afternoon sun. He put his hand in his pocket, running his thumb along the grooves of the motel’s master key. What would he find if he went in there? He pictured the girl tied to a chair, robbed of her money, clothes, and dignity. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened in one of these rooms…

He pulled his hand from his pocket as if leaving the key alone would push the troubling thought away. The girl wasn’t stationary; he could still hear her fumbling around.

The manager scratched his head, thinking of the first time he laid eyes on her. It was after she’d arrived early the previous day. She looked like a Thai, but she sure couldn’t speak like one.

The lines on the girl’s forehead had deepened the longer it took to get her checked in. When the manager had finished, her bloodshot eyes strained as she leaned over the register to sign for the room key. He got the feeling his newest guest was carrying more baggage than just the single black backpack slung over her skinny shoulder.

Where had she said she hailed from? England? America? It was one of those places. He couldn’t remember which.

“I come back tomorrow,” said the manager in what little English he knew. The last thing he wanted was to disturb the privacy of his guests. Especially with what some of them came here to do.

He peeked around the corner. The distant street buzzed with noise and activity. Cars whirred past, blurs of color swerving around weary tradesmen trudging home after a long day of work.

He took a step back, feeling the pulse of the street fade from his senses. His immediate surroundings were different. They languished in solitude. Late afternoons like this reminded him that on the outskirts of Bangkok, opposites collide—a study in contrasts.

He returned to the piles of fresh towels in front of the occupied rooms. As usual, the place was nearly empty, and he hardly noticed the comings and goings of its guests. He scanned the chart in his hand and moved several doors down to the next occupied room.

At least number twelve had the foresight to stick the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob, thought the manager. He placed the final towel and dropped the typewritten note he included with all his deliveries:

ขอให้มีความสุขกับการพักผ่อน

WISHING YOU HAPPINESS WITH YOUR STAY

–มิสเตอร์ เล็ก (MISTER LEK)

โรงแรมแคคตัส

CACTUS MOTEL

The gold cardstock, embossed with a bold Thai script, was one of the few quality items left in this place. Lek’s job was done. It was time to return to the office, where he’d drift off for a few hours. No one would care.

As he passed the rooms, Lek turned his gaze to the canal next to the road, unconcerned with the rising water level.

Khlongs. That’s what the locals called them.

Most khlongs spawned from the mighty Chao Phraya River, the lifeblood of this sprawling metropolis. Outsiders shied away from the smaller khlongs. One look told you why. Repelled by the pockets of rancid still water, as if they were all teeming with sludge and disease, it was hard for them to believe that the canals were Swiss Army knives to locals, serving as a means of transportation, laundry, or even an escape from the heat for those brave enough to plunge beneath the murky surface.

The khlongs in Rangsit, where the fringes of the capital city bled into the neighboring Pathum Thani province, were critical. Laid out from one to fourteen, they served as one giant grid for navigation.

Lek spent most of his days tucked between Khlongs Three and Four, toiling in the secluded building he now walked alongside. Home to the Cactus for the past forty years, the motel was a shell of its former self, overshadowed by bigger, fancier, and cleaner accommodations. Over time, the local industry had left the Cactus in the dust, swallowing the dingy establishment into anonymity.

Lek reached the office. He settled behind his desk, using his toe to slide a hidden footrest out from underneath. Leaning back, he reflected on the place’s history as he often did inside this room, which hadn’t changed since the day he first walked in.

The Cactus had seen its share of oddities during its slow demise. Lek would never forget his start as a bellboy. Ya ba, a nasty cocktail of meth and caffeine, had just flooded the scene. He knew when he set foot in the place that the motel was where users got their fix—a revolving door for strung-out teens chasing the dragon.

After his promotion, Lek realized the Cactus wasn’t just a haven for snorting, swallowing, and smoking oneself into oblivion; it was ground zero for the sale and distribution of the reputed narcotic. He ignored the users. He couldn’t ignore the dealers.

Buyers came to see Loong Upatham, a holistic healer with a mouth full of rotting teeth. Lek didn’t need to be a genius to know that Upatham and his pals were using the rooms to swap more than just herbal tea and granola bars.

Lek was cleaning an empty room one day when Upatham approached, running his hands through his frizzy white hair. Word had reached him that an urgent case down south required his expertise. His room would be empty for a few days.

Worried about the things he had to leave behind, the healer pelted Lek with questions about the motel’s security system—locks, alarms, cameras. Could Lek keep an eye on the room while he was gone? There was no time to move out, but he promised to come back for his stuff.

Lek felt the trip had more to do with dealing than healing.

Waiting until Upatham was out of town, Lek snooped around, trying to figure out what the old man was up to. Behind a tattered painting on the wall, he found a hole carved into the plaster. Inside were half a dozen bags of little round pills. The contents were unmistakable. When Upatham came back, Lek grabbed him by the shirt and threw him out on the street, leaving the old timer flat on his backside.

Lek flung the tiny bags, their contents spilling across the pavement. “Take your horse pills with you!” he yelled.

Upatham grabbed each pill as if they were priceless rubies and high-tailed it out of there. Lek never saw him again.

After Upatham’s eviction, Lek vowed to make the Cactus a more respectable place. With the money he had saved up, he bought the motel outright. It was easy. The old owner hadn’t been there in years and was desperate to sell. Lek fired the entire staff, replacing them with clerks and maids who would actually show up for work. He hired paint crews and exterminators to clean things up, yet no one noticed. The Cactus Motel remained as obsolete as ever. As the clientele dwindled, Lek’s efforts just led to a pile of overdue bills. At this point, he stopped caring. The paint faded, the cockroaches moved back in, and his staff all left for better pay. He didn’t even fix the sign out front after a monsoon ripped it from the ground.

Next to the Cactus rose the walls of a Buddhist temple—a wat. The entrance stood outside Lek’s office window, marked by an arch he once thought lavish before relentless heat and humidity wore it down. Its stucco cracked, and the paint peeled like the summer’s worst sunburn.

Lek’s eyelids grew heavy as he looked out at the wat, his gaze drawn to the statue of Mucalinda, a typical sight in Thailand. Rising above the walls of the compound, its depiction of Buddha inspired him, as it did many others of his faith. The seven heads of the titular serpent bared their fangs as the solemn Buddha meditated beneath its flared hood, indifferent to the imposing creature. Resting on the coils of the serpent’s massive tail, the statue represented the delicate balance between danger and tranquility. Light and dark. Good and evil.

The statue stood next to the temple wall as if its sole purpose was to keep watch over the motel and its tenants. Its unseeing gaze looked upon the invading darkness as it cast its long shadow across the walls of the Cactus, standing as a silent witness.

Lek tore his gaze away from the window, thinking of the girl in room seven. If only the statue could call to him when it saw her leave, then he could get the room cleaned. He laughed to himself, the sound muffled by the dust collecting around the empty room, thinking of all the travelers that thing had seen come and go from his tiny motel over the years.

PLOY SOIKHAM LEANED back against the headboard of the bed inside room seven. The washed-out wooden table beside her doubled as a makeshift nightstand. She ran a finger along the dents and scratches on its surface. Each one hinted at past guests fumbling in the dark or engaging in other nighttime exertions.

Ploy wanted to keep running. The past few weeks had been a whirlwind of emotions. She wiped at a tear as she got up to crank the A/C. Cool air blew from the tired unit, making the curtains flap in the breeze. April was Thailand’s hottest time of year, but this was getting ridiculous. Sweat stuck to her like a second skin. Growing up in a milder climate hadn’t prepared her for the sticky blast furnace waiting for her in her homeland.

The afternoon waned. A soft, warm glow seeped through the crevices in the blinds. Flecks of dust twirled nonchalantly through the air. In hindsight, Ploy had been running away for months since she and her friends had snagged one-way plane tickets to Thailand, hoping to find volunteer work.

Born here over nineteen years ago, she remembered nothing about it. Her mother had taken her to a new life in a new country. She loved America. It was home. Yet, something gnawed at her whenever her mom told stories of Thailand, as if some part of her recognized that she belonged there. She always knew she had to go back.

Ploy’s fists clenched as she thought of her mom. That argument they’d had before she came here was a doozy, but her mom had kept her in the dark about so much of their past—and how they’d ended up on the other side of the world.

The tongue-lashing Ploy had unleashed had been brewing for years. Unfortunately, she had once again underestimated her mom, who dished it right back tenfold.

They barely spoke before she walked out the door to catch her Uber to the airport.

After landing, her group found a school up north requesting volunteers. But three weeks ago, Ploy took off. Fearing what people would think, especially Mom, she decided not to tell anyone why. The hasty decision had left her little time to think logically, but a lifetime of feeling stifled hadn’t prepared her for what form actual freedom would come in when she found it.

She thought of those summer nights when she was younger—kids her age cruising up and down the neighborhood on their bikes while others skipped rope or tossed a football in their front yards. Ploy wasn’t allowed to do any of those things. “Too dangerous,” her mom had said. “It’s better if you stay inside with me.”

With wild energy, Ploy paced as much as the cramped motel room would allow, walking back and forth along the pathway between the foot of the bed and the wall, avoiding the section of the room that narrowed as it got closer to the bathroom. Whenever nature called, she had to turn to the side to reach it.

She looked at the water stains creeping down from the leaky ceiling. And now I’ve ended up in a place like this, she thought, knowing that going back and explaining herself would be like admitting her mom had been right all along: the world was a dangerous place—one her daughter couldn’t handle.

The thought had swirled through her mind all day. Earlier, she had taken a shower to relax, but a jet-black scorpion no smaller than a toddler’s fist had crawled from the drain to join her. Panicked, she grabbed the hand-held bidet and sprayed it back into its hole. She felt grateful for the device’s dangerously high water pressure for once, which felt like icy needles when used for its intended purpose. Yet another deficiency in this shithole of a motel.

Ploy’s anxiety was now at its highest, which was what had led her to the nook she now found herself in. Knowing this decrepit dive was a temporary setback did nothing to relieve her. Before yesterday, she had never met the man who had sent her here, but she trusted that he was with the people she had contacted. He had assured her they’d taken care of everything, leaving her with the address to this motel and a promise that a car would come for her the next day. And now, with maybe an hour or two to go until he said it would arrive, second thoughts lingered, a reminder that she might be in over her head.

A stranger was coming to get her. Someone potentially dangerous.

She could call her friends, tell them where she was, and have them pick her up. She had never meant to be gone this long anyway.

But hesitation held her back. Plus, she wasn’t ready to tell anybody the actual reason she’d run off. Or why she needed to keep running. She wasn’t going to let anyone get in trouble because of her.

Ploy calmed herself down enough to stop pacing. She eased onto the chair beside the table/nightstand combo. Its four spindly legs creaked. Spreading her arms, she tried to balance herself until she felt sure it would hold her weight. More off-putting than its durability was the hideous shade of mauve that screamed for attention among the rest of the room’s muted colors.

Drumming her fingers against the table, Ploy listened to the distant thrum of traffic outside. Up north, the world slowed down at this time of day. But here, this close to one of the world’s biggest cities, the traffic was as thick as a colony of ants on a melting popsicle.

She lunged for her purse, intent on calling her friends.

Panic resurfaced as she sifted through her backpack. She spread its contents across the bed as she searched for her cell phone before remembering the battery had died that morning. Further digging unearthed the charging cord, but the time it took to plug it in allowed her to revisit her situation. Unease flooded back in. Otherwise, she would have made the call then and there.

She took a deep breath, stood up, and approached the mirror above the vanity, gazing at her reflection. The usual sparkle in her dark brown eyes was gone, replaced by a shadow of concern.

“It’ll all be okay,” she muttered. Saying it out loud made it feel more natural. It was her choice to go with these people, after all. But it wasn’t them who made her nervous. It was the thought of seeing him again.

Ploy smacked the side of her head with an open palm.

Stop it. It’s all going to work out.

She swept her long black hair over her shoulder as she returned to the bed, cleaning up the mess.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

Startled, she flinched at the sudden knocking. The sound resonated through the fun-size accommodations.

Was it the nosy manager again, or were they here for her already?

Ploy stood still, wondering if they would go away if she didn’t answer.

The room fell silent, and then:

BAM. BAM. BAM.

Desperation lurked beneath the sound. She parted the blinds with two fingers, but the awkward position of the window prevented her from getting a good look at the entryway. The only thing in her line of sight was a pile of towels pushed to the side of the threshold. She’d have to take her chances.

“Just a minute,” she said, irresolute inside the room, her fingers hovering over the door handle. After a moment’s hesitation, she opened it.

Copyright © 2025 by Peter Nordgren All rights reserved.

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Eastern Shadows will be released on December 19, 2025.