IT'S LATE in Narathiwat. The last call to prayer wafts through the town’s dark streets. Soon, other mosques join in the howling refrain that rouses me to action. I hurry back by bicycle to my home stay in Kampung Takok: “scaring village” in the vernacular Malay dialect of Thailand’s deep south. My Muslim host family will be away for a few days and have asked me to look after their home, an abandoned palace they moved into at the invitation of Daiyoha, the caretaker. He is the local imam’s helper but also a shaman and healer with the power, I am told, to invoke rain. He is the strangest man I have ever met.

     I ride down the road that runs parallel to Bang Nara River, which marks the border with Malaysia. After reaching the outskirts of the village I make a quick left turn next to a small mosque with shiny green domes; I enter a narrow dirt road swamped by the last rainfall. I hold my breath to staunch the nauseating odours coming from a rubber warehouse. The end of the trail opens suddenly to reveal, amid tall palm and jackfruit trees, my temporary home – a large, dilapidated wooden construction raised on timber stilts and a burned-brick base.

     The full moon casts a pale haze across roof gables topped by wooden finials and edged with carvings. The collapsed right wing of the building threatens the rest of the structure: the cancer of neglect. In the centre of the façade a steep, crippled staircase leads to a verandah before an arched entrance.

     Locals call this place Rumoh Rajo – the Raja’s House. Now a tattered remnant of a faded past, it was once the magnificent residence of Tengku Samsuddin, a descendant of the sultans of Patani Darussalem, one of the oldest kingdoms on the Malay Peninsula. Patani was not only a trading gateway to East Asia – the Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese and Arabs frequented its ports – but also a regional centre of Islam. But the 16th-century sultanate would eventually fall into obscurity. After several failed attempts, Siam’s army, led by King Rama I’s son, crushed Patani in 1786, depriving the kingdom of its sovereignty forever. In 1909 the Malay states, by then carved up into seven provinces, were annexed under an Anglo-Siamese treaty and all local rulers, Samsuddin among them, were divested of their status. Today local rumours claim Samsuddin cursed his palace to protect it from outsiders after his death. Nevertheless, during the course of time, it would suffer the indignities of plunder.

     I carefully climb the staircase, which creaks under my weight. From the verandah I stare at a large Arabic character on the arched double-door entrance: the sacred word Allah written in white charcoal by Daiyoha. Sporting his trademark Muslim piyoh, or skullcap, he once told me about his powerful magic. “I can pour water in a cup and cast a spell,” he said. “If someone were to drink it his stomach would swell until his organs imploded, killing him. If you want to try I can just make you feel some pain, but blood will spill from your nose and anus. Would you like to …?”

     Unfortunately Daiyoha’s magic, like Samsuddin’s curse, has failed to protect the palace. A wooden frontispiece of Arabic calligraphy is missing from above the main door lintel, having been stolen along with other decorative artwork that once graced the façade. Alcoves on either side once held flaming torches that illuminated the doorway.

     The old door squeaks as I slowly open it and feeble moonlight pours into the darkness. From under the lintel I wait hesitantly for my pupils to dilate and I catch a glimpse of a second door at the end of the large hall. I could grope my way to the switch that turns on the lights, but I choose not to. I step into the gloom, treading slowly on the battered floor. I must be careful because the original hardwood flooring, beautifully crafted and assembled, has long been replaced by a clumsy array of brittle, overlapping planks. A few weeks ago the army stormed the palace, which they suspected was a hideout for insurgents, and one of those flimsy planks collapsed under the weight of a soldier.

     My shadow slides across the long foyer as I make my way inside, frightening some nocturnal inhabitants. Wings flap away faintly. A rat sneaks out. Then, a forbidding silence. Ancient episodes of bloodshed and obscure rituals invoke the ominous spirit master’s words: “If you really wish to see the ghosts that inhabit this place, you must sleep here.” Decades ago, from a pillar next to the doorway, dangled a huge, menacing wood carving of an eagle with outstretched wings. The raja’s power emanated from this powerful talisman, under whose shadow propitiatory Malay ceremonies and traditional trials were staged. A defendant would be instructed to extract an egg inserted in the eagle’s throat. If he was unable to remove it he would be declared guilty of his alleged crime and executed immediately, with the raja’s kris driven into his heart.

     The eagle was taken away more than half a century ago by a shaman summoned from Malaysia to strip the house of its supernatural powers and dispatch the spirits that guarded it. It is said the talisman now lies dormant in a museum in Kuala Lumpur.

     I leave the lingering shroud of death behind, dodge empty coffee cups abandoned on the floor, reach the end of the hall and open the second door, which leads to a wider, bare chamber with three more doors. A pale light flows through the windows, carving out the graceful shape of a huge, half moon bamboo kite that hangs in a corner. Attached to its neck is a bow with a network of rattan strings that plays a soaring melody when the kite is flown. Confined in silence, the kite begs to sing with the wind again.

     In the opposite corner, partially draped with a batik sarong, lies a safe box consumed by rust. No one knows what used to be inside. The only object left by thieves is an empty metal cigarette box stamped with the faded word “Pirate”.

     I venture deeper, beyond a translucent yellow curtain that sways behind the central door. I have reached the last hall, flanked by more doors, one of them leading to my room, two others to timber staircases climbing to a large attic. Two exits lead down to a courtyard fringed by a mouldering brick wall pierced by two gates. Outside, where I imagine the raja bathing, shrubs entangle a serviceable well and two neglected stone pools. The palace had dozens of rooms and was accompanied by manor houses and servants’ quarters. Most of those structures disappeared about 70 years ago, when a large part of the land was sold by the raja’s heirs to a Chinese merchant, who built a warehouse on the river.

     I hesitate to turn on the light and feel compelled to continue wandering in twilight. I am heading for the second level when a rumble takes my breath away. A black cat has just jumped from the staircase to the floor, dashing through a hole.

     Daiyoha says it would be imprudent to disturb the spirits who dwell upstairs: two court concubines with long black hair who dress in red. Some insist they still dance in sorrow for the absent raja. Despite foreboding shadows I climb the stairs. I ascend at a nearly imperceptible pace, holding my breath and sliding my hand up the warm wooden bannister.

     I reach the vast, desolate attic, the decrepit flooring whitened by the continual fall of pulverised clay from the roof. Seeds released by silk cotton trees drift in on the night breeze and lie like scattered snow. Frail moonlight shimmers through myriad punctures in the roof, like stars in a second sky.

     I walk under gables constructed with thick teak joists. Square pillars help support what is still a formidable structure that has withstood centuries of adversity and witnessed innumerable stories in a lost past. My meander reaches its denouement in what was the raja’s chamber, where a perpetual shawl of silence falls deeply. Suspended particles of debris glitter beneath my steps; I sit beneath a dusty, ghostly veil staring into the shadows. This lonely wooden derelict, burdened by hundreds of years of conflict and intrigue, is supine, breathing the name of a forgotten kingdom with its last sighs.