Chapter 1: The Fiend Incarnate
PARAMED RESEARCH INSTITUTE INC.
Document Number: [001]
Written by: Dr. Jane Doelynn
SUBJECT: [Quỷ Nhập Tràng - The Fiend Incarnate]
According to Vietnamese lore and myths, “Quỷ Nhập Tràng” or “The Fiend Incarnate” basically refers to a phenomenon in which a recently deceased person is resurrected by a demonic entity. This person, once back to life, is believed to continue to live a healthy life despite their age as well as any adversities previously associated with their prior ailments. However, some strange behaviors and violent tendencies might start developing later on.
According to several other documents, which could be considered as variants, the deceased one can only walk or stand for a few minutes before collapsing again. Cats, especially lynx, are commonly associated with this event as these animals are, morally and traditionally, believed to be linked with the underworld or supernatural entities, according to Asian mythology.
As a result, when a Vietnamese family has a recently deceased member, it is a common sight for the rest of the family to take turns guarding the body, especially at night. This is an attempt to keep the cats, either stray or domestic, away from the corpse. Their duty ends when the body is properly buried.
On 07/06, Dr. Nguyen and I arrived in Vietnam. There was this strange case of a 88-year-old woman, who suffered from stage four lung cancer associated with diabetes. She was pronounced dead the previous day and had shocked her family and relatives by breathing and knocking on her coffin on the day of the funeral. The case itself was not something unprecedented, in fact, there have been numerous events where patients were initially declared dead by the local medical institutions but able to regain consciousness during the wake, or in other words, “came back to life”. However, the fact that this woman, who was found dead due to lung cancer, has now allegedly recovered and leads a normal life was somewhat questionable to us. As a result, we decided to travel here, hoping to investigate further into this extraordinary individual.
Both of us were destined to depart the next day. The destination was in the north of Vietnam, a small village in Cao Bang to be exact.
It was indeed a long road trip. Not one of our longest but definitely the most exhausting. This place we were going to was far from the center of the province, far away from the decent life of a lively town nearby. The weather was extremely hot as well. If it hadn’t been for the AC in the car, we would’ve evaporated from the heat by the time we arrived at the village.
From what we observed upon arriving there, this small village had undoubtedly been the center of attention, both national and international, thanks to the incident that happened to the Tran family.
Mrs. Tran T. Tam (or Mrs. Tam) started to appear on every news outlet just a few days ago. The fact that she got asked to do an interview with a journalist every ten minutes had indeed driven her crazy. According to the oldest son, Mr. Tu, his mom had become increasingly hostile due to this. It was almost uncontrollable so the family had to shut out everyone temporarily, including the relatives.
They didn’t want to let us in initially. Despite having introduced ourselves as the doctors from the ParaMed Research Institute and that we would like to have a closer look at the situation, Mr. Tu denied the offer in an instant. We traveled this far just for a “no” was not what we had in mind. Luckily, Dr. Nguyen was an acquaintance who happened to know Mr. Tu for quite some time. It didn’t take long to convince him to let us in.
Finally, he agreed, however, under some strict conditions: we must keep our distance from his mother and ask for his permission before we did something, then we could inspect the situation as much as we wanted.
—
Welcoming us to the house, apart from the awkward smile of Mr. Tu, was an extremely disturbing smell as if there was a dead animal buried nearby.
“I’m sorry for asking but what is this smell?” I asked.
“Oh…” Mr. Tu responded in a reluctant manner, “It’s…my mom’s.”
“What do yo-… I’m sorry but she passed away?”
“No, no, no. She’s still alive, we let her stay in a separate room behind our house, in the backyard. My mom has become sensitive with strangers recently, you know, and also because of the smell… But I guess it doesn’t help.”
He then continues, “But before I let you meet her, we need to talk.”
As expected, the more we listened, the more we understood the reason why he gave us those confusing conditions earlier.
“So…How should I say this… You know my mom was dead, right?”
“Yes, but she’s here with you now. Congrats!”
“Please don’t say that.” With that look in his eyes as if he was begging us to believe him, “Well, this might sound crazy for someone with extensive medical background like you both but we believe our mom is a fiend incarnate.”
“Excuse me… What does that mean?”
“My mom is dead. Whatever is living in that room over there is not our mom. It’s something else.”
Seeing the confusion emerging on our faces, he couldn’t help but leaned back in his seat with a sigh.
“The doctors told us to prepare for the worst, so we decided to take her home. At least, before she drew her last breath, she could feel the warmth of her home, where her children and grandchildren were. Though she was too weak to say a word, we believed she would want the same thing.
Needless to say, my brother rented a car and took our mom home the next day. Our sisters and brothers immediately flew back home for her passing. As the funeral was progressed, we heard a faint noise as if someone was knocking on a wooden door. Then my son heard a voice coming out of the coffin. Then the rest was in the newspapers that led you here.”
Taking a sip from his cup of tea, Mr. Tu continues, “We were surprised. We didn’t know what was going on. As we opened the coffin lid, my mom was there telling us to get her out.”
“We were still in shock. Then all of a sudden, my mom asked for a meal as she was starving.”
“I guess it’s alright for her to be hungry, she’s been out cold for the whole day, hasn’t she?” I asked.
“Yes, but…she was constantly asking for food. My wife got her a bowl of porridge from the kitchen, still steaming hot as she took it straight out from a boiling pot. My mom chugged it all down without stopping for a minute to blow it cool. Then she asked for more.”
“The next thing we knew, we were feeding her every five minutes. She was asking for more and more, as if her hunger grew stronger and stronger. It was like a huge feast, my neighbors thought we were having a celebration for her coming back. Little did they know, it was all for her. A whole pot of porridge wasn’t enough, then we started to make use of the animals we had in our farm. But she still asked for more!”
“She could be traumatized from what happened to her. I believe it is PTSD that led to her eating disorder?”
“What? No!” Mr. Tu resisted, “Does ‘eating disorder’ also involve eating live animals?”
“What do you mean?”
“She was always hungry! We eventually ran low on food for ourselves. And when we couldn’t afford to give her as much food as she wanted, she became more hostile and started cursing us out. My son was crying for nights because of her. Then my wife started to spot some dead rats and chickens in our backyard, sometimes dogs, their blood was all over the place, and a large pool of blood with a long red streak led straight to the kitchen.“
“So you believed it was her?”
“It was her! My wife even saw her chewing on a rat in the middle of the night, blood smeared across her face, her eyes were unnaturally bright. Then more and more dead animals started to appear around our property. My wife and my son were crying while trying to wipe off the stains on the floor. Our whole house reeked of that metallic smell for the whole week. And to prevent people, including our neighbors and relatives, from seeing such a sight, we decided to keep everyone out, saying that we were infected with COVID-19. What would other folks say if they saw my mom chewing on their own cattle? We don’t want to get involved in a lawsuit, or to have people call our mother all sorts of names. We have our reputation to protect, after all.”
Mr. Tu handed Dr. Nguyen some pictures, captured on his phone as evidence. Indeed there were a couple of photos that showed some animal bodies scattered around the house, with a lot of blood and fingerprints left behind. However, these photos proved nothing. I still somehow found this unbelievable as there was no way an 88-year-old woman could consume this many animals after clearing out a whole farm of her family.
Maybe we might have come here for nothing but to be the butt of some clout-chasers’ jokes?
“So I guess the horrible smell from earlier is from this…pile of dead animals?” I asked, pointing at the photos on his phone.
“No, I told you, it is from my mom.” Mr. Tu retrieved his phone back from her hands, shoved it deep into his pocket, “She’s dead, she’s not a living being anymore. We started to notice this horrible smell just days ago, it was from some sort of yellow-ish fluid that was oozing out of her body. Her flesh looks like it’s decaying. Pretty much like a zombie, if you ask me.”
“Can I perhaps see her? Do you mind if I also take some pictures of her, for scientific purposes?”
“Are you gonna publish them?”
“No, sir. This is for our research on a bio-project, we have no plans of publishing it and we would like to keep it that way.”
“Then sure, you might take pictures of her.”
Mr. Tu disappeared into the kitchen, then emerged again with a hen, still flapping her wings in his hand.
“Please follow me.”
He then led us to the mentioned separate room. It was more of a storage for his farm that was completely detached from the main house in the front. This so-called room was located deep into the back of the farm, far away from the main road. However, the smell still managed to reach us back in the main building.
It looked like they had locked the woman up instead of just simply letting her stay there. The smell was getting stronger as we approached the alleged room, it was so overwhelming that I had to turn away at some point while Dr. Nguyen found herself gagging.
“There you are, you ungrateful little liar of mine!” a female scream that almost sounded like a screech came from the house, “Is this how you treat your mother? Where’s my food?”
An unearthly long skinny arm sprung out from the window, reaching for our flesh. Her arm was waving fanatically in the air, her skin was way too pale for a living person. We could clearly see the veins running up and down on that arm with blood stained on each finger, which perhaps had been left out for so long without being washed that it turned dark.
It was her, the one and only Mrs. Tam we were looking for. She was shouting and screaming loudly, asking for food. Catching our disturbed looks, Mr. Tu explained that it was for everybody’s safety to keep his mom this way as she could attack others to satisfy her hunger.
Mr. Tu handed her the hen. Without any hesitation, the old lady immediately snatched the poor animal off of his hand, retreated back into the room, away from the window. We then heard a loud crack as if something was broken savagely. Everything went silent shortly after.
“I’m sorry for asking but…How long are you going to keep her like this? You can’t hide her away forever.”
“I know. My brothers and I had our plans. Since we’ve fed her too much, I guess it’s not that easy for her to perish overnight. But we…still have to put her down somehow.”
“We’re talking about your mom, sir. Are you really gonna do that?”
“You are married, right? How about your children, Doctor?” he asked, suppressing his pain.
I used to have a lovely family. A loving husband. But I didn’t want to be honest with him, at least at this point. It was such a pain to bring up my family at this moment, especially when such a scene was unfolding before my eyes, so I said nothing. Perhaps that’s for the best as I didn’t want to unnecessarily put my partner on the spot anyway, she knew what she did.
“You’ve had someone who loves you, who cherishes you, you’ve had your beautiful children that you love so dearly…” he said, his tears started to roll down on his sunken cheeks, ”But please tell me, if you were a loving mother, would you harm your child just because you were hungry?”
We all kept silent. Mr. Tu remained his gaze at the room in front of us, where came a sickening noise of flesh being torn and bones being crushed. The lady didn’t even pause to breathe, just kept eating and eating.
“How are you gonna do that then?” I asked.
“Oh, my brother called me last night. He found us a shaman” Mr. Tu said, “The shaman told me he could help, so I agreed to let you here, as this could be your last chance.”
“Thanks for the opportunity, sir.”
He looked at us, said nothing else.
—
The shaman finally arrived on the next day. He was a man in his late 50s, looked like any other ordinary man. The Tran family was discreetly welcoming the shaman as he came. As Mr. Tu said, it was best not to let the neighbors know what was going on so they arranged this meeting with the shaman late at night.
Without further ado, the shaman named Quang immediately told everyone to get ready.
“I know what is going on with your family. The time is right and the night is favorable, we should do it now. ” said Quang the shaman.
The family and the so-called shaman himself started to set up an altar right in front of the house that kept Mrs. Tam inside. He first laid a large mat on the ground, on which the whole family started to take a seat in a circle. We both had to keep our distance and observed things from behind as Mr. Tu had instructed.
A 30cm tall table was placed in the center, serving as the focal point of the ritual. The shaman lit up four red candles and put them on each corner of the table. A weak yet warm feeling from the candles started to swarm up the whole place. He lit three incense sticks and put them onto the bowl filled up with offerings. The sweet scent was somewhat reassuring to us, at least to me, as my partner was somewhat uncomfortable at the sight. The offerings set on the bowl were not for the demon itself but for the gods residing on that very land, the gods that bestowed their blessings on the people of this region. The shaman started his chanting to summon the superior entities from above, bells were ringing, wind was blowing, the whole scene looked so ethereal.
And there came a hysterically maniac laugh, Mrs. Tam’s eyes brightened up in the dark. Her face slowly emerged from the shadow in the room as she was grinning from ear to ear. Her eyes fixed on the altar and the shaman. She opened her mouth but all that came out was so gibberish that I couldn’t make it out. It was a mix of growls, hisses, and twisted utterances as if she was cursing at us all. But then Mrs. Tam burst out laughing, as if she was ridiculing their attempt to force her out.
“No… They are too strong now. If we keep the ritual forth, I’m afraid I will be the only one to be killed here. Its claws are reaching out for my soul as we speak…” said the shaman.
Taken aback by what the shaman just said, Mr. Tu and his family looked visibly panicked. Everyone was completely bewildered as they exchanged a concerned look.
“Do not fear or you shall break the circle and let the demons in! Stay calm!” The shaman screamed as he pulled out a thick scroll from his satchel and started singing from the book. It was a piece of Buddhist Mantras. The chants were a language I found myself unfamiliar with yet it sounded so melodically beautiful and calm.
Mrs. Tam’s face started to twitch and shift into the most horrible expression I’d ever seen in my dear life. She screamed, wailing in agony and disgust. She cried and begged for her life to be spared. She mourned and mourned. It seemed to last forever.
The shaman kept on singing and chanting, until everything sank deep into silence. A strong wave of an insufferably horrible smell started to kick in. This must be the end?
Indeed, Mrs. Tam had finally taken her rest in peace. All that she, or whatever inside her, had left behind was a shallow mass of discolored and mottled flesh. The smell was so strong that it even knocked my partner out. The experience with Mr.Tu and his family would remain to be one of my core memories that I would never forget.
It was dawn when the ritual finished. The sun gradually illuminated the whole sky with soft and warm lights, clearing the dark patches in our hearts left by all that horrible scene from last night.
“Thank you for your aid, we wouldn’t know what to do if it weren’t for your help.” said Mr. Tu, holding the shaman’s hands appreciatively.
“We would surely send you the payment in no time. Perhaps it would be best if you could stay here and have breakfast with us before you go?”
“No, thank you for the kind offer” said the shaman, shaking his head gently, “I have to take my leave now as I still have an ongoing business that needs finishing as soon as possible.”
“You’re training your Horde?”
“Yes, I am. These souls are perfect to be tamed as one of my soldiers for the Horde underneath. The sooner I train them, the easier it will be to get them to work for me.”
“And also…” the shaman continues, “you don’t have to pay me this time. This fair lady here has paid me enough.”
“Oh, dear. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you very much! We owe you this time!”
It wasn’t a hasty decision that I made as I let my emotions cloud up my judgment. I simply paid for the Tran family, as a thank you to them and also, as a cure for my own pain that I carried in my heart for so long.
“Your payment was the Westerner that traveled with you, wasn't it?” asked Mr. Tu.
---
Soon enough, I found myself standing at their gates for my departure. We bid our farewell and wished our paths crossed again.
Finally, I have managed to get rid of that horrible smell that lingered on my soul since day one. It’s a moment of relief that I’ve been waiting for my whole life.
This is my new beginning.
Supervisor’s note: This case file and its information included is solely for reference purposes only and will soon be terminated as we can no longer proceed without the lead doctors.
Dr. Jane Doelynn was reported to be mildly ill prior to the trip and believed to have disappeared after the night of 09/06, we haven’t received any further reports from her since then. Meanwhile, Dr. Hannah Nguyen has shut down her devices and refrained from replying to our messages since 12/06, shortly after this document was sent to ParaMed.
Any information regarding the two doctors to accelerate the search would be highly valued.
