[1.05] The Tree

Published Nov 5, 2021, 2:00 PM

In our previous episode, Inspector Sonia Chan had just been assigned to the case of Aaron Wong, the teenage son of a wealthy businessman. Aaron presents with strange marks on his body but refuses to divulge how he got them or explain the strange behavior he displayed on camera. With Sonia growing increasingly desperate to help the poor boy, she will soon discover that what he needs is truly out of this realm.

This episode stars Rachel Chin, Adam Tun-Aung, Vester Ng, Tan Rui Shan, and Bright Ong. Production and direction by Danny Koordi, screenplay by Karl Gan, editing, and sound design by Danny Koordi with mixing by David Chew, and assistance by Gareth Fernandez, Gabby Peng, and Nadarajah Bhairavan.

The overall story takes influence from the Wattpad story: Stillborn: The Legend of Pontianak, as written by Dr. Elmi Zulkarnain Osman, and first published on Wattpad.com

Finally, the After Dark podcast is an original Mediacorp production developed in partnership with Wattpad Studios, and recorded at IMDA Pixel. Your executive producers are Barry Toa and Sapna Angural from Mediacorp,  and Aron Levitz, Eric Lehrman, and Dexter Ong from Wattpad. Reproduction of any material associated with the podcast is strictly prohibited without the express written consent of Mediacorp.

If you would like to listen to more, you can follow the podcast on the Melisten App, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts. And if you would like to get in touch with us, you can send us a message through the email podcasts@melisten.sg.

Podcast artwork by Paul Hendricks, you can reach him on Instagram @PAUL_JOEL_HENDRICKS

The following audio presentation features mention of graphic imagery and self harm,

listener discretion is advised,

oh my God

I've spent

more than a decade since that day as a police officer since then. I have never seen anything that has stayed with me the way that he has. The sight of this young man huddled up on the bathroom floor with blood

and the water mingling all around him crying and begging to be forgiven.

Yeah

this boy still haunts me you know

even to this day

please sometimes when I come across young people in the cases I work a

I always think back to the image of airing one.

It sounded so grown so

helpless

the way I just couldn't help but feel the same way.

Yeah,

welcome to After dark. A brand new horror audio drama podcast brought to you by Mediacorp in our previous episode. Inspector Sonia Child had just been assigned to the case of Aaron Wong Aaron presents with strange marks on his body but refuses to divulge how he got them

or explain the strange behavior he displayed on camera

with Sonja growing increasingly desperate to help the poor boy, she will soon discover that what he needs is truly out of this realm.

Uh huh.

Okay. He's sleeping

now.

I locked the door already, put the cabinet in front of it and I make sure that window is shut so the whole morning you really didn't hear anything. No, nothing at all. I mean

there was no sound coming from his room at all. I didn't see anything strange.

Don't you think I would have noticed with all due respect. Mr wang all of this, the CCTV the injuries and you're not seeing or hearing anything.

I think it points to issues with erin's mental state. You think sir we should probably call an ambulance, get him to the hospital. Aaron will be much safer there. And what? Get him locked up in a mental institution isn't sir, if you're not comfortable with that. Yeah I'm not

look I have a family doctor, I'll get him to come over here later. Okay? Could you maybe move out of this house temporarily while we try and investigate further? Maybe stay somewhere else for a few days? You mean like a hotel? Uh Yeah, like a hotel and how long you want me to stay at the hotel

a week

Amanda,

you're going to reimburse my hotel stay, is it Mr wang? Because of all that's been happening. Getting out of this house could be good for Aaron. You know, give him a new environment changes. You are here to help my boy. Give me stupid suggestions. All right sir, we're trying to solve this case the best we can. It's just that we need to be realistic.

And right now all the signs are pointing to this being self inflicted.

You

you really think so, Given everything that's happened and all the evidence that we've gathered that appears to be the best explanation that we have

Officers Ask You one.

Do you have Children? Uh Well, because if any of you did you would understand your Children are the most important sir? And as a parent you will do everything that you can to help them

especially in situation where they need you.

Do you understand? Yes sir. We understand this is my job as a parent

to be there for Aaron instead of throwing him into some mental institution. But if

mm hmm.

If it really does go in the direction that you think this is hidden and if you have exhausted every single possibility and every single lead instead of coming up with some have bacteria that you cook up overnight then you come back to me with this.

I do then

I suggest you officers do your job as well.

Uh I understand that

we'll do our best to resolve the case as soon as possible.

Yeah.

Mm

J J I really think we should start to. What the heck was that?

Excuse me. You crossed the line today, charred.

I told you we were just going to deliver the news. But no, you insisted on speaking to Aaron.

We could always try a different approach. I used to work at a counseling center but I did. It was a counseling center for women. I studied social work. You're not a social worker anymore todd look it was a good thing that I want to speak to Aaron or we wouldn't have found him like that. J j What I saw in the bedroom. there's something more to this. Maybe robert is hiding something otherwise. Why wouldn't he take it? How do you know? Huh?

How do you know? I

It's instinct,

instinct. What instinct, John, you're barely out of the academy. You mean you have kids or something?

Look,

this is a family issue. All right. Just a case between father and son. Nothing more. Nothing less. We deliver what we know. We continue to give the facts. And if Aaron continues like this, Mr Wong will have to eventually seek professional help. Doctors, therapists, psychiatrists,

not us. But there's nothing wrong with Aaron. He is not our case. JJ, I think Aaron is in trouble. You're not listening. Mr Wong is our case.

Do you understand?

He called the police,

not his son, but he's asking us to exhaust our options to investigate. We have a ton of other cases back at the station and we can just spend our time worrying about some petty family dispute.

This is open and shot. The boy is pressured, stressed by A levels his overbearing father. He's just doing this to seek attention. But J J I really do think

enough

enough.

I outrank you

and that means I make the final call.

Do you understand

shot?

Yes.

Yes.

Good.

Um,

so

that was that for JJ, I guess we got back to the station tended to our other cases and just went about the day, like nothing was wrong.

But I couldn't let it go you know I just couldn't stop picturing the sight of Aaron in his bathroom. So at that point

there was really only one thing left for me to do.

Yeah.

Hello?

Yeah

yeah

This is one and the trading.

Yeah I saw your website so I started looking into Mr Wong's background,

prominent businessman, plenty of success locally and abroad

fairly routine stuff so far. So you guys handle commercial shipping right?

I represent a company and then I started to dig into the connections key deals, keep players people he might have screwed over before

or

people who could possibly want to hurt his son. We are exploring our shipping options right now and

I just want to find out more about your company to see if we can work together through some digging. I found that Mr wang made his fortune as one of the pioneers in e commerce and shipping.

Remember that this was back in the days when online shopping was only just taking off

so you can imagine how big of a deal it was. Okay so it's just your boss is Mr Wong and

and then soon enough I come across his business partner, a man by the name of Mr Kerry ying.

I see

but not anymore. Oh

Mr Young left the company last year.

Uh Are you are you able to share why we had a lead?

Yeah.

Okay

so it turns out carrying and robert wang had been best friends ever since. University

robert had the idea, Kerry had the funds and a few years after graduating, they both left their jobs and bigger companies to form their startup.

The company thrived and their success would go on for a while until the year before.

All of a sudden it appears that they had some kind of falling out. It started with rumors. Then

Kerry was removed from the board and eventually

wang ying. Trading made an announcement

mr carrying had officially resigned

from the company

to 65

I guess. This is it.

Mhm.

Hello? Is anyone at home from the surroundings alone? It was probably safe to assume that ying hadn't left ungracious terms. The paint outside his apartment was peeling cockroaches were running about. Flyers and letters were squished in the bottom gap of the door.

No,

I mean the place just looked deserted. I was standing there like an idiot for a good 15 minutes and no one came to the door

at that point I thought

great, did end. What a complete waste of time.

But just before I left

a few of the letters under the door caught my eye

most of it were bills, debt notices from different banks

except

for one that was addressed to a miss Nicole yang.

Yeah,

mm.

You know as an investigator. I find it really annoying how easy it is to find someone online these days.

Especially a teenager. I mean back in those days you actually had to work for your information, pull public records, check the police database, go through newspaper archives.

But with MS Nicole ying I guess you could say her presence was unusually well documented for the time. She had a couple of websites dedicated just for her, how smart she was, how pretty she was. Tons of photos. She definitely had fans. Then there was her own personal blog

where she mostly posted these short little happy passages about teenage things and what she did in school, her CC A her studies, what university she wants to go to their friends. She hangs out with,

it was practically a gold mine.

But the thing about that was it all just suddenly stopped

right at the start of the school year. In january.

No more posts. No more upbeat writings. It just

ends, which is weird. Right? Like one day you have this happy cheerful girl full of life and ambition and the next day

it was like she just disappeared

now in most cases I would have just dropped this and moved on to something else. I mean her parents probably wanted her to spend more time studying or something. I don't know.

But what kept me on her blog was her last post. Really cryptic stuff.

A couple of lines where she mentioned something about her best friend and his parents and that she had to, in her own words

right uh wrong,

okay.

Mhm.

Hello. Hi Mrs wang. Hello. Hey speak louder. Can the intercom and problem. Mrs wang. Ah Yeah yeah yeah yeah I can hear you now.

Who is this? Hi Mrs wang. This is Officer Sonia chan from the station

Sonya

from a few nights ago.

Oh okay Yeah I remember I remember you're the one that complained about the smell. Right Yes Mrs wong sorry my husband went oh that's fine. I actually came around to see if I could ask erin a couple of questions is it okay if I come in?

Uh better look I won't be here for long. I just have some leads about Erin's case and I was looking to confirm them with him. I'll be done in less than 30 minutes.

I don't know where Mrs wang. If I could have your cooperation it would really help speed up our investigation.

Yeah

now erin's room. Remember the diminished chop chop? I'll be downstairs. Huh? Okay thanks Mrs wong

Mr

hello

Aaron.

Hello Aaron you in there?

It's officer chan from the other day

is it okay if I come in to ask you a few questions

Aaron

I'm coming in. Okay.

Mhm.

Oh there you are.

Have you been are you okay?

You know

all of us have been really worried for you and your mom said that she's not my mom.

Oh

you mean Charlene?

Well I mean she's nice. Right

she doesn't have a clue

about. What

about anything?

Oh she cares about is a stupid exercise. A stupid workout classes.

Aaron I'm sure she cares for you like your dad. He's even worse.

All he cares about is his face his image.

They don't get it get what

it's not all about material things.

These are just superficial.

They will all come to an end.

What are you talking about?

Yeah

nothing

it's all pointless anyway.

Okay

um Anyway is it okay if I ask you some questions

do you happen to know someone by the name of Nichole ying

you and Nicole studying the same school? Right?

And your parents were business partners? I'm sure you two know each other

Aaron

you know I can't help you if you're not willing to cooperate

if Nicole is somehow involved with what's been happening to you? You need to tell me okay why it's not

like anyone even cares

erin you know that's not true.

Two

something happened between the two of you.

Okay look I remember you saying that you were sorry were you sorry for Nicole? Did you do something to her?

Uh huh

smell again? How do you guys deal

with? He used to go there all the time.

It was

when we hung out every time our fathers fought.

Wait what are you talking about? Where Aaron?

Promise me you won't tell anyone about

it.

He led me down the stairs past Mrs wong working out in her room and out the side of the house from there. Aaron escorted me towards a small path still within the compound of the mansion but leading away to a different section of the forest.

I think we might have missed it the last time. Me and JJ looked around the house

stay close. Even in the daytime. I remember thinking how weird the forest felt like it was heavy. You know

we continued on the path for about five minutes and the trees around us felt like they were pressing in more and more and more. And if you thought that was bad the smell got even worse. I nearly threw up. Were it not for the fact that it actually started to clear up.

Mhm.

As we got deeper and deeper into the forest, the smell became sweeter. It wasn't pungent or foul anymore. In fact it even started to smell like perfume. And then all of a sudden trees open up

and we met with the small clearing

where there was a single big banana tree

right there in the middle,

it was honestly quite

beautiful

leaves fanning out over the top, blooming flowers, big bananas about to ripen,

that was unlike anything I had ever seen.

Well

certainly not in that part of the forest anyway so naturally I start to approach the tree. Right

I'm still soaking in the whole thing, it's like we've been transported to Narnia or something. The smells get more and more fragrant but then as I got nearer this I guess strange sadness starts to wash over me,

I really don't know how to explain it.

It was as though the tree itself was crying

and I could somehow feel its pain.

A couple seconds later I reach out to touch its trunk

and I noticed some sap oozing from the bark

and when I turned around,

Aaron was still standing at the head of the clearing watching me put it on your face.

What? Why rob the set on your eyes? Come on Aaron, you're kidding right, I'm not all right erin this is really nice and all but I'll tell you what Nicole but

only after you were up the set on your eyes.

Okay, okay fine I'll do it.

Oh this is

uh this better not be some elaborate prank Nicole and I hung out here our whole lives. You

would play catch, we would do our homework under the shade, we would write our essays here and bounce ideas off each other. You would hide here as our parents are talking business

and then later

as they started arguing.

So you were her best friend,

the one that she wrote about on her blog.

I told her they don't pose

Aaron. What what happened to her

at this point? He started to climb up again

for a good half a minute. He was just standing there with this

blank look in his eyes, his gaze directly up towards the leaves of the tree,

the ripening bananas. I,

she

we play there on this tree a lot,

you know

stupid things like

throwing fruits and climbing the branches one time she smashed some of the sat in my face and I didn't seem to

uh

Aaron

sure.

Yeah,

geez

she's not here anymore.

10.

It's getting late.

You better go. My father will be back soon.

Mhm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mhm.

Hey john. There you are.

Where did you go all day?

Oh, I was working on a report. Yeah.

In which case the stolen laptop from last week, we had leads on that. Yeah, of course. I mean, I'm trying to look at it from a different angle.

Okay,

can you show me the file? It's not complete yet? Uh I'm still trying to piece together some things and the file is in a huge mess. You know, someone also reported his wallet stolen in the area recently. So I'm just

putting together the information. Yeah, Okay. So

we got like a serial thief or something. Yeah, maybe

that's why I got to look into it. Make sure we connect the dots and everything. Right.

Uh huh.

Right, okay.

Yeah. Just just be sure to show it to me once you're done. I mean, you don't have to get it to me. All right. I know how this place works. I don't want to have to clean up your mess, john

Oh

okay, sure thing.

Thanks g good.

Like mr wang says right,

we all got to do our jobs. Yeah,

exactly.

We were both off duty that evening

but while j J and some other colleagues went out for drinks

I had some other plans.

I couldn't get Nicole yang out of my mind. I knew she was a part of this. She had to be, it felt like I had the pieces of the puzzle but I just

I didn't know what the full picture was yet and so on that evening

I returned again to the Wong mansion.

Okay

okay.

Yeah

this time though things seemed different.

The lights from the mansion had been completely turned off and under the pale glow of the moonlight the house looked even more secluded than it already was.

But aside from that,

what struck me was the complete

and utter silence.

Yeah,

no hum of any electricity, no swaying of branches, not even the insects chirp and their dog was

nowhere to be seen.

Something

was definitely wrong.

Come on come on.

Mhm

I knew it.

Oh no no no no no no come on come on Mr wang mrs wang.

Uh huh

come on come on come on okay okay,

screw this.

Okay

you can do this so you can do this just like training

man.

Yeah.

Uh huh.

Okay

please be okay

please be okay.

Yeah

Mr Wong mrs Wong Aaron mr Wong

Aaron,

mm hmm

Uh huh

Mhm

The smell was back

that horrid mixture of flowery scent and rotten meat hanging like a cloud enveloping the entire house.

Yeah

And then

right

I saw her a woman

standing on the stairs

as though she was coming down from the upper floor.

I mean

I say woman because that's what she looked like but I

I don't think she was entirely

she

she was not human,

she was covered in this billowing white dress. Her skin was pale glassy and she had long straight hair that flowed down the length of her body down to her feet which

didn't touch the floor. What behind her

was Aaron

he looked days

no crying this time, no tears. He was just staring at her, mesmerized as though he wasn't fully aware or

fully present. Aaron get away from her erin I tried calling out for him but it was no use.

It was then that I realized

that she

was looking right at me.

Her eyes were bloody angry red veins spreading out from the sockets all the way across the face. A spider web across her pale porcelain skin.

Get away.

And that was when

it started to click

smell

the tree

to sap and Nicole.

Yeah.

Mhm.

Mhm.

Thank you for listening to this episode of after dark new episodes will be released every other friday at 10 p.m. And you can follow the podcast on the millicent app. Spotify Apple podcasts or google podcast episode five. The tree was produced and directed by Danny Cordy.

The screenplay was written by carl gone editing and sound design by Danny Cordy with mixing by David chiu and assistance by chara Fernandez. Gaby Paeng and Nadarajah by Ravan. The overall story takes influence from the White Pet story Stillborn, the legend of pontianak as written by Dr L mean, So Carnitine Azman.

The costs were episode five features ritual chin as sonia adam, tune on as JJ vester on as robert wang tanri Shan as Charlene Wong and bright on as Aaron Wong. Finally, the After dark podcast is an original media core production, developed in partnership with what Pet studios and recorded at I. M. D. A pixel.

Your executive producers are Burrito and Sabrina and Girl from Mediacorp and Larry, Levitt eric Letterman and dexter Wrong from what pad reproduction of any material associated with the podcast is strictly prohibited without the express written consent of Mediacorp. We hope to see you again as we continue the story in the next episode of After

Dark

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