‘Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.’
Hermann Buhl (1924 – 1957), an Austrian mountaineer who had climbed the Alps and the Himalayas.
ECHO Mountain was a real mountain of granite. I say “was real” instead of “is real” because it is no more. A cousin of mine, who owned it, signed it away to a company many years ago and it was quickly quarried out of existence.
I am not sure how far it was from my village — Kampung Ta-ee in Serian District — but if I were to guesstimate, I’d say it was about the same distance from the Kuching Waterfront to Kota Sentosa. Google says that’s about eight miles or 13 kilometres.
The village folks called it by a different name, but since I was a little child, I have always called it Echo Mountain (in Bidayuh, of course) simply because it echoed sounds that were loud enough to reach it. The villagers, especially the kids, liked to shout to it for the fun of hearing the sounds reflected. Many of us were so fascinated by the echoes that we often stopped for a while on the way to and from our farms to “talk” to the mountain.
Before this story gets too far in the telling, let me provide a basic description of the mountain for better context.
As stated in the beginning, it was all granite, from ground level to the summit. There is no record of its height anywhere, but if I were to venture a guess, it was lower than the Petronas Twin Towers (which are just over 1,400 feet tall). If that’s still hard to visualise, think of the 1,000-foot Mount Santubong near Kuching City. Echo Mountain is a tad lower than that.
It seemed to be about two miles long at the base, and maybe half a mile wide. The “echo side” was its flat face; the foot was covered by a line of trees and above that was bare rock.
This was the side of the mountain that faced and towered over a path leading to several paddy farms around the area and beyond. Between that path and the foot of the mountain was a strip of flat ground, much of it grassland that was a few hundred metres wide and longer than the mountain was long. The ground was dotted with large black boulders that were taller than the grass.
It is said that it was the occupying Japanese army during World War II that first quarried the mountain to get granite for construction work. They blew up the front part, which explained the flat face that reflected sounds extremely well. So well that on windy days the sounds could be heard from afar.
As children, whenever we passed by unaccompanied by our parents or other adults, we would shout to the mountain to our heart’s content, or until our voices became hoarse, whichever one happened earlier.
In the company of some adults, though, shouting like that was frowned upon. To discourage us, some of them claimed that the sounds that came back to us might not be genuine echoes but the voices of malevolent spirits or ghosts. That usually shut up the timid kids, but the rest of us were unimpressed and remained as boisterous as before.
When I grew a little bit older (but still in primary school), I found to my surprise that some superstitious adults feared the mountain, and understandably so. The imposing black granite always looked dark even in bright daylight. It looked even darker at night.
Naturally, several horror stories have made their rounds in the community with Echo Mountain at the core or at least as the backdrop. Of course, the veracity of these tales had never been proven or disproven, but they made for excellent entertainment and brilliant time killers.
I remember a paternal grand-uncle who often visited my parents at our farmhouse that was at least three miles past Echo Mountain. His farm was farther than ours, so he liked to drop by for a chat and a drink before moving on. It was during one visit that he mentioned how spooky the mountain looked after sunset.
When Mother teased him about it, he shuddered and admitted that if not for an emergency he would not walk by the mountain alone at night, not even if someone paid him to do so.
Innocently, I asked, “Why? It’s just a black mountain!”
“Aiyo! What do you know, child?” he said. “It’s not the mountain that I fear. Do you know the things that live on the mountain?”
I shook my head.
“There are things there … creatures that we can’t see, but we can feel them.”
Then he went on to describe how each time he approached the looming black mountain, he felt chills run down his spine and an overwhelming sense of dread washed over him.
“Could it be because of the cold air that blows down from the mountain?” Mother asked.
“No! I swear, when you look up, the mountain seems to stretch up to the sky, its jagged peaks reaching towards the stars like twisted branches of a dead tree,” he said.
What he said here was true. The surface of the mountain was indeed barren and desolate, with no signs of life or vegetation, as if it had been cursed by some ancient force.
While he paused to sip his tea, Mother teased him again, saying that he was exaggerating and trying to frighten me and my little siblings.
“Don’t listen to your mother, boy,” he said as he started to roll a cigarette. “I swear … as you get closer to it, you will notice that even when the moon is out, the black mountain seems to absorb all its light. Not only that, when there is thunder and lightning, the mountain sounds like it is alive as if it is possessed by some malevolent spirit.”
With that, he downed the rest of his tea in one gulp, thanked my parents for their hospitality and announced that he better be on his way.
Later in the evening, just as the last sunrays were disappearing behind a group of hills to the west, another close relative came. Uncle Sulas was Mother’s first cousin whose farmhouse was a hundred or so metres away from ours.
Inside a little rattan basket slung from his left shoulder, he had two bottles of ‘tuak’ (sweet wine produced by fermenting sticky rice). It was Saturday night and he wanted to share it with my father. Mother never really drank the stuff except to take a sip or two just to check whether or not a batch that she was making was sweet enough.
I was too young to drink, so I just lay down quietly on a mat behind Uncle Sulas, waiting for his fantastic stories which I knew were coming. He was such an outstanding storyteller and was always funny. Mother loved to have him around because he made her laugh often. He reciprocated the love by being her best cousin and Father’s best friend.
As was customary, the adults started with a round of pleasantries and small talk, and then they progressed to more serious issues such as money, food, health, and so on.
While they talked, I watched the ‘tuak’. Once the first bottle became empty I knew it was ‘safe’ to insert myself into the conversation. I started by asking Uncle Sulas if he knew about grand-uncle’s fear of Echo Mountain.
Instead of answering me immediately, he chuckled softly, turned around to tickle me in the ribs and called me gullible.
“But he sounded so serious,” I protested.
“Of course, he was! He was just having fun and you believed him,” he laughed.
“Why don’t you tell him your story, instead?” Mother suggested.
“Which one?” said Uncle Sulas.
“That Echo Mountain story … the one you told me years ago. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
“No, no, I will never forget it, but is it appropriate for a child?”
“You don’t have to tell everything,” said Father. “Leave out the details lah!”
“Okay!” said Uncle Sulas, taking a sip of his ‘tuak’ and then rubbing his palms together. “You want to hear my story?”
I nodded my head vigorously, and so the following is my paraphrase of his story which was as true as two plus
two makes four.
It was true that many villagers, particularly the scaredy-cat types, were fearful of the mountain because of the strange noises that often emanated from it; sounds that sometimes sounded like they came from the depths, like the whispers of ghosts or the howls of unseen beasts. During stormy days, the wind howled around the mountain, creating an eerie symphony of moans and wails that echoed off the rocky face.
To the mentally and emotionally weak, the bare, black granite mountain was a place of terror, a place where only the bravest dared to tread, but strangely the whole terror thing worked out to Uncle Sulas’ advantage.
According to him, there was a village girl that he liked but did not dare to talk to. Lucky for him, he caught up with her one day while she was on the way to join her parents at their paddy farm. She was so happy to see him because she feared passing by Echo Mountain alone having heard many scary stories about it. That was the best icebreaker ever for Uncle Sulas and he was thankful for it.
One thing led to another, and to make a long story short, they already had three children when he told me the story. And what a story it was! If ever a horror story had a happy ending, that was it, and I heard it first-hand.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the New Sarawak Tribune.
