June 30, 2005, 6:24am

Ae walked two paces back to where the motorcycle was lying, back wheel still spinning. The handlebars were bent, the front wheel was buckled, and the clutch cable had snapped.

Ae shook her head. ‘Mother is going to be pissed.’ She lifted the bike off the ground, and let it rest against the gate. That’s when she spotted the face of the Casio calculator watch that Kay had found when he worked at a Bangkok hotel as cleaner a few years ago. Mother had super-glued it to the rev counter which didn’t work anymore.

‘Six twenty-six! Shitshitshit!’ She pulled the key out of the ignition and used it to scrape off some of the dried glue under the watch. As soon as the gap was big enough, she used the sharp end of the key as a lever. The face of the calculator watch popped and landed between her feet. Ae snatched it and sprinted into the house. ‘The blue book, the blue book,’ she kept repeating under her breath, ‘Under the mattress, Father had said – under the mattress.’

She ascended the stairs two at a time, and scraped her elbow against the wall at the top of the landing as she took a sharp turn into her parents’ bedroom. Rubbing the pain away, Ae got on her knees and lifted the mattress on her father’s side. She found nothing. She wasn’t surprised when she was met with only wooden flooring on mother’s side as well. She shook out the blankets, and lifted the mattress with a grunt, placing it upright against the wall. ‘You’re a sly old man, Father.’ Ae bit her lip, ‘Shame, he really doesn’t want to sell the buffalo.’ She checked the Casio. ‘Well, I have fifteen minutes to find the house registration booklet; twenty, tops. The seven o’clock bus is always on time.’

Upstairs the house had already turned into an oven. Ae caught her breath and wiped the sweat from her brow. Suddenly the whole house started to shake. A sudden gust of wind caused the moldy curtains to bulge and the windows threatened to rattle out of their frames. Ae went down on her knees and looked on in horror as the corrugated iron sheets overhead lifted, revealing a clear blue sky. The sound of the roof sheets made her shudder. She closed her eyes and covered her ears with both hands, the left hand still clutching the watch. The alarm signaled six-thirty:

Blue is the clue, Blue is the clue, Blue is the clue, instead of beep-beep.

‘Stop it! Stop it! Who ... whatever you are, just leave me alone!’ The wind died down, and the roof sheets fell back into place, letting in streams of light through the hundreds of tiny holes where the force of the wind had ripped out the roof nails.

Ae had butterflies in her stomach; once again a feeling of ecstasy had taken over her body, this time stronger than before. The mattress flopped down into place, sending up dust clouds, which were caught by the thread-like light beams that dangled over and around Ae like ropes. She was about to leave the room when the ropes became animated; they wrapped themselves around her wrists and ankles.

You should learn to listen, puppet, the voice squealed. She could feel the warmth of its breath in her neck, but she daren't look. The smell reminded her of river mud.

I want to help you.

The bedroom door slammed shut and the ‘ropes’ disappeared. Ae was on her feet staring at the watch in the sweaty palm of her hand: six forty-five. It dawned on her that she wasn’t at all scared when the voice had spoken, that it sounded genuine when it said it wanted to help her. ‘With what? Help with what? Blue is the clue,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘Blue what?’

Ae opened the door and looked down the narrow hallway. As soon as she saw Kay’s bedroom door, she remembered the blue light that had flashed form his bedroom window while she was doing the dishes the night before. ‘Could that be it?’ Her heart was racing as she pushed the door open. ‘P’Kay put it – whatever it was that flashed blue – away in his wardrobe.’ It was locked – no surprises there, but Ae knew where he kept the key. ‘Being the housemaid definitely has its advantages.’

She reached behind the cobweb-covered Buddha image and wilted flowers on top of the cupboard and felt for the key. ‘Ha!’

The television set and VCR recorder looked out of place in the wardrobe under Kay’s clothes. Ae flipped open the video recorder’s front loading flap and looked inside. There was a video tape stuck in the recorder. ‘Where did you hide the blue book, Father? Under the mattress. Under the mattress! Of course, under P’Kay’s mattress because I refuse to clean this pigsty!’ As she fell to her knees, she also remembered P’Nawat’s words ‘…special movies’. ‘Blue movies!’

Even though there was no one else in the house, she looked over her shoulder before lifting up the mattress. Ae gasped; there were at least twenty to thirty videos under the mattress. ‘I wonder what Father said when he saw these! Ha! Poor P’Kay; he’s never going to hear the end of this!’ She looked at the watch and shoved it back into her pocket. ‘Shit. Which one? Time is running out, Ae,’ she reminded herself. ‘Empty cover. Look for an empty cover.’

She felt around for an empty cover, but all of them contained … adult content. She crawled back to the VCR and looked at the name of the video inserted: Hardcore Japanese Anal Masturbation. ‘Oh, my God.’

On hands and knees, Ae found the cover of said video and opened it. Inside she found a navy blue booklet with big gold letters on the front cover: House Registration.

‘Yes!’