Penguin Book Of Indian Ghost Stories (17 page)

I could not sleep well that night.

As soon as dawn broke, I told Bharadwaj to fill a thermos flask with enough tea for two. When the flask arrived, I left once more for the Haldar mansion.

No one was about. Should I call out to Anath Babu, or should I go straight up to the west room? As I stood debating, a voice said ‘Here—this way!’

Anath Babu was coming out of the little jungle of wild plants from the eastern side of the house, a neem twig in his hand. He certainly did not look like a man who might have had an unnatural or horrific experience the night before.

He grinned broadly as he came closer.

‘I had to search for about half an hour before I could find a neem tree. I prefer this to a toothbrush, you see.’

I felt hesitant to ask him about the previous night.

‘I brought some tea,’ I said instead, ‘would you like some here, or would you rather go home?’

‘Oh, come along. Let’s sit by that fountain.’

Anath Babu took a long sip of his tea and said, ‘Aaah!’ with great relish. Then he turned to me and said with a twinkle in his eye, ‘You’re dying to know what happened, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I mean … yes, a little ….’

‘All right. I promise to tell all. But let me tell you one thing right away—the whole expedition was highly successful!’

He poured himself a second mug of tea and began his tale:

‘It was 5 p.m. when you left me here. I looked around for a bit before going into the house. One has to be careful, you know. There
are times when animals and other living beings can cause more harm that ghosts. But I didn’t find anything dangerous.

‘Then I went in and looked into the rooms in the ground floor that were open. None had any furniture left. All I could find was some old rubbish in one and a few bats hanging from the ceiling in another. They didn’t budge as I went in, so I came out again without disturbing them.

‘I went upstairs at around 6.30 p.m. and began making preparations for the night. I had taken a duster with me. The first thing I did was to dust that easy chair. Heaven knows how long it had lain there.

‘The room felt stuffy, so I opened the window. The door to the passage was also left open, just in case Mr Ghost wished to make his entry through it. Then I placed the flask and the torch on the floor and lay down on the easy chair. It was quite uncomfortable but, having spent many a night before under far more weird circumstances, I did not mind.

‘The sun had set at 5.30. It grew dark quite soon. And that smell grew stronger. I don’t usually get worked up, but I must admit last night I felt a strange excitement.

‘Gradually, the jackals in the distance stopped their chorus, and the crickets fell silent. I cannot tell when I fell asleep.

‘I was awoken by a noise. It was the noise of a clock striking midnight. A deep, yet melodious chime came from the passage.

‘Now, fully awake, I noticed two other things—first, I was lying quite comfortably in the easy chair. The torn portion wasn’t torn any more, and someone had tucked in a cushion behind my back. Secondly, a brand new fan hung over my head; a long rope from it went out to the passage and an unseen hand was pulling it gently.

‘I was staring at these things and enjoying them thoroughly, when I realized from somewhere in the moonless night that a full moon had appeared. The room was flooded with bright moonlight. Then the aroma of something totally unexpected hit my nostrils. I turned and found a hookah by my side, the rich smell of the best quality tobacco filling the room.’

Anath Babu stopped. Then he smiled and said, ‘Quite a pleasant situation, wouldn’t you agree?’

I said, ‘Yes, indeed. So you spent the rest of the night pretty comfortably, did you?’

At this, Anath Babu suddenly grew grave and sunk into a deep silence. I waited for him to resume speaking, but when he didn’t I turned impatient. ‘Do you mean to say,’ I asked, ‘that you really didn’t have any reason to feel frightened? You didn’t see a ghost, after all?’

Anath Babu looked at me. But there was not even the slightest trace of a smile on his lips. His voice sounded hoarse as he asked, ‘When you went into the room the day before yesterday, did you happen to look carefully at the ceiling?’

‘No, I don’t think I did. Why?’

‘There is something rather special about it. I cannot tell you the rest of my story without showing it to you. Come, let’s go in.’

We began climbing the dark staircase again. On our way to the first floor, Anath Babu said only one thing: ‘I will not have to chase ghosts again, Sitesh Babu. Never. I have finished with them.’

I looked at the grandfather clock in the passage. It stood just as it had done two days ago.

We stopped in front of the west room. ‘Go in,’ said Anath Babu. The door was closed. I pushed it open and went in. Then my eyes fell on the floor, and a wave of horror swept over me.

Who was lying on the floor, heavy boots on his feet? And whose laughter was that, loud and raucous, coming from the passage outside, echoing through every corner of the Haldar mansion?

Drowning me in it, paralyzing my senses, my mind …? Could it be …?

I could think no more.

When I opened my eyes, I found Bharadwaj standing at the foot of my bed, and Bhabatosh Majumdar fanning me furiously. ‘Oh, thank goodness you’ve come round!’ he exclaimed, ‘if Sidhucharan
hadn’t seen you go into that house, heaven knows what might have happened. Why on earth did you go there, anyway?’

I could only mutter faintly, ‘Last night, Anath Babu ….’

Bhabatosh Babu cut me short, ‘Anath Babu! It’s too late now to do anything about him. Obviously, he didn’t believe a word of what I said the other day. Thank God you didn’t go with him to spend the night in that room. You saw what happened to him, didn’t you? Exactly the same thing happened to Haladhar Datta all those years ago. Lying on the floor, cold and stiff, the same look of horror in his open eyes, staring at the ceiling.’

I thought quietly to myself, ‘No, he’s not lying there cold and stiff.
I
known what’s become of Anath Babu after his death. I might find him, even tomorrow morning, perhaps, if I bothered to go back. There he would be—wearing a black jacket and heavy boots, coming out of the jungle in the Haldar mansion, a neem twig in his hand, grinning from ear to ear.’

R.V. Smith

The dirt-path was long and lonely and not a sound was to be heard save the distant howling of jackals. The numerous stars seemed like mute sentinels guarding the portals of paradise; but below, wintry night had enwrapped everything. It was in such a setting that I made my way through the Korya Khar (ravine of the lepers), a few miles from Agra; and the thought of being alone made me nervous. My bicycle was punctured and to seek help in the village could be inviting murder, for it was in the grip of dacoits. So, I tightened the muffler round my ears and clutching the rifle firmly, moved forward with courage and determination.

I had hardly gone a few paces when I kicked up the half-eaten body of a child who must have been buried just a foot or two below, for the bodies of children are not cremated. Consequently, the corpse had been unearthed by jackals. I walked more cautiously now, but stumbled all the same over a skull which seemed to stare at me in the starlight. The hollow sockets probably once contained the smiling eyes of a village belle. But strange are the ways of the world. It now sent a tremor down my spine.

More ghastly sights awaited me on all sides of the cremation ground. I later learnt that it had been brought back into use to cope with the small-pox epidemic which had caught the nearby villages in a death-trap, some forty-five years ago.

As I walked, the night grew more malevolent. At last my legs just refused to carry me and my heartbeats came like a clock gone
crazy. I pushed the bicycle to a nearby tree and sat down with a thump on a platform. I was dog-tired, scared and hungry, and longed for the comfort of my bed and the dinner my mother must have prepared for me. ‘She must be worried, poor thing,’ I thought, for this was my first night out in the jungle.

I drank a little from my water bottle and munched what remained of the biscuits in my pocket. Slowly my mind became easier and I breathed more freely. I took out the blanket from the bicycle carrier and placing the rifle below my head, lay down on the platform to sleep. But on second thoughts, got up again, for the hindquarters of the wild boar I had shot in the evening still dangled from the bicycle and could have made a good meal for the jackals. So I slung them on the tree and then sleep overcame me.

It must have been midnight when I got up with a start. Someone was pulling the gun from under my head. At first I thought I was dreaming. Then the thought occurred to me that probably it was a dacoit. I stood up, sleepy as I was, trying to pick up the rifle with one hand. But what I saw made me panic. There, grinning at me in the now bright starlight, was a hideous form, half swine and half man. Sweat broke out from every pore of my body and stood in big beads on my forehead. My legs shook and I felt a strange numbness creeping over me. The form confronted me even more menacingly—its grin was now diabolic, while from its snout-shaped mouth gushed forth a bluish flame which scorched my body. I closed my eyes and then opened them again, thinking that the apparition would vanish like a nightmare. But it did not; on the contrary, I saw that it had taken on a more concrete shape. The flame became bluer and by its hellish light I noticed that the fiend’s heart and liver hung suspended from his neck, while big red drops of blood dripped from them endlessly like the sands in an hourglass.

I made as if to move forwards, but he had tightened his hold on the rifle. I tried to pull the gun as hard as I could, but felt it slipping from my grasp. Fear and the fact that the rifle belonged to my cousin, an army officer who had come to spend a few days with the family, lent me new strength and I tugged and pulled at the gun with all my might and clung to it like a man clings to the
proverbial straw. I knew that if the gun was lost my cousin might well lose his job, for those were the days of the Second World War. Besides, I had a strong feeling that my life depended on the rifle remaining in my hand. So I struggled harder, for who would like to throw away his life like this? But it was all in vain. The gun seemed to melt in my hands. In desperation I tried to strike him with my left hand, while I clutched the rifle with my right; but my fingers turned painfully backwards every time I tried to hit him.

At last it seemed to me that the gun would be lost and my life in the bargain, for the fiend pulled the weapon so hard that he dragged me along several yards. But I still had two of my fingers on the butt, and just as it was about to slip out of my hand I gasped, ‘Oh, God.’ And lo, a miracle happened. The apparition was gone in a flash—vanished into the thin air from which it had appeared. But the gun was back in my hands, surprisingly hot to the touch, warmed by the blasts of hell which, it is said, accompany the damned wherever they go.

I stood up dazed, too shaken to do anything and as my senses came back I breathed a silent prayer for deliverance from the Blue Devil’s clutches. I passed my hand several times over my hair and over the gun to convince myself that it was still there. I next looked down on the platform where I had lain down to sleep and noticed that it was a grave. Perhaps I had desecrated its occupant by tying the boar’s hind-quarters above it. The fiend sprang out of it, I was sure. The thought lent me wings and I ran. This happened long ago: but I still give a wide berth to Korya Khar. It may spring up again, who knows!

Sudhir Thapliyal

It was one of those early spring days in the mountains—brilliant sunshine, blue skies, and the terraced fields golden with ripening mustard. A light wind rocked the wheat crop, and Bhawan Singh of the Garhwal Rifles knew he was home, far away from the battle-fields of France where the trenches stank of death and putrefaction and where the sun never came out of the fog of cordite and mustard gas.

The year was 1918. Garhwal, in the Central Himalayas was thousands of miles from France. But for Bhawan Singh it seemed as if he had left home only a few days ago. He had been gone more than three years and in those days news from home was scarce. Now as he strode along the winding, narrow path that was to take him to his village, all he could think of was home food. His mouth watered at the thought of eating his mother’s brown millet rotis of mustard leaves cooked in rich dollops of home-made butter, and the halwa, fine flour fried in butter and sweetened with jaggery. And then to wash it all down, fresh buttermilk!

It had been a long trek from the railhead at Kotdwar. This was his second day on the road. He had hoped to make it to his village by sundown. But now he had to take shelter under a huge oak as a sudden storm darkened the skies and hail beat about him wildly. In his knapsack he had some tinned food but he’d had enough of it in the trenches.

So, while he waited out the storm, he kept thinking of his mother’s cooking.

Bhawan Singh also thought about the war. The foolishness of it all. He had joined the army because it was supposed to be his duty and a matter of family honour. His father had served in the
same regiment. When the war broke out, in some place he had never heard of, his father said he had to go and help his British masters. In his remote mountain village, Bhawan Singh had never seen a white man. But he got to know them quite well in the trenches. They were just like him. Cannon fodder, they used to call themselves.

The storm died down as suddenly as it had started. He heaved his pack on to his back and set off. Soon, the birds could be heard and the sound of the thrush brought a song to his lips. It had been a long time since he had sung and the first notes didn’t ring true. And then, somewhere along the path, he realized that something was wrong; something was missing.

He stopped, looked around. He was a few minutes from his uncle’s village. But there was no one bringing the cows and goats home for the night. No smoke from the fireplaces.

It was like approaching a village in Verdun destroyed and abandoned because of the war. The houses were there as he remembered them. But what surprised him was that the village dogs were not barking.

He walked into the silent, empty village, his boots dragging him to his uncle’s house where the door stood ajar. He walked in, and everything looked as it always had, except that there was nobody about. Had the whole family gone to work in the fields? But that, he reminded himself, was not possible, as his grandfather never left the house. He was too old to work in the fields and all he could do was look after the babies. However, there were no babies and no grandpa.

What he didn’t know was that a bigger scourge than war had swept the Garhwal Himalayas that year. And that was the Bubonic Plague. Village after village had been totally destroyed of all living things, and the green and yellow mustard fields he saw around him were there because they had been planted before the plague. They were now ready for harvesting but there was no one to do the work. Those who had survived had abandoned their mountain homes and fled to the plains. As night fell, he stood in the courtyard wondering what he should do. His own village was just beyond the ridge and he set off for it, hoping all would be well there. As he
rounded the path on the ridge he looked down at his village and it seemed as empty and forlorn as his uncle’s. There were no lights and no activity. As he remembered it, there should be the sounds of children laughing or crying, people calling in their cows to be locked up for the night, and the occasional barking of dogs as they settled down for their nightly vigil against marauding leopards.

Yet, there was no sound and no light. The wind had picked up a bit and as it raced down the mountainside it sighed and moaned. It was still early for the moon to come up and so it was totally dark as Bhawan Singh felt his way home. It was a path he had known ever since he could walk but even then it seemed a bit unfamiliar to him. On the outskirts was the home of Bethalu, the outcast. As was the custom in those days, all outcasts had to live a little distance away from the main village.

The main path passed above Bethalu’s broken-down shack. In the rains the roof leaked because Bethalu never had any money for new slate tiles. In the winter the snow went right down and through the roof. And in the summers you couldn’t sleep inside because of the flies and the heat. Looking down at it, Bhawan Singh saw a narrow crack of light. Aha, he said to himself, somebody is around. So he turned back and took the lower path leading to Bethalu’s house.

The light was a beacon of hope, a sign of some kind of life.

As he stood before the low, narrow door leading to the shack, Bhawan Singh wondered who could be inside. He called out for Bethalu and a voice from inside asked him to enter. He had to take off his knapsack because the doorway was too narrow, and he left it outside. As he stooped and walked in, he could just make out the figure of a man sitting near a wick lamp. It gave out a faint, yellow light but after the darkness outside, it had a welcome warmth of its own.

There was a peculiar smell about the room but he didn’t pay much attention to it. He wanted to know where his family and the other villagers had gone.

‘Where have the people gone?’ the soldier asked.

There was no reply from the figure crouched in the darkness. Bhawan Singh repeated himself, but again there was no reply.

‘Who are you?’ he pressed on.

The figure stirred slightly and then, like someone who has not spoken for a long time and is not used to speaking much, said, ‘What! Is that you?’

It was a hacksaw of a voice and it set Bhawan Singh’s teeth on edge. He felt a shiver run down his spine and the hair on his back stand up. And then he recognized the smell in the room. It was the smell of death and putrefaction.

‘Speak up, man,’ he shouted, less in anger than in panic.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ the figure said.

‘I’m not frightened,’ retorted the soldier.

‘Ah, yes, but you are,’ the figure replied.

At this Bhawan Singh lunged at him. But all he grabbed was thin air. The figure had moved away. And suddenly from behind him he heard wild laughter that filled the room and the countryside. He spun around but there was nothing to see. The young soldier had known fear, but that was of a different kind. Now he went cold all over.

Then the lamp went out and the shack was plunged in darkness. The soldier felt rooted to the spot. He wanted to get out of the shack but his limbs wouldn’t move. What finally got him out of his paralysis was the growing stench of death and decay. It filled the room and he could hardly breathe.

On leaden limbs he rose to his feet and, head bent low, moved to the door. He only had a few feet to go but it seemed as though he was running for miles. His breathing was laboured and hard, his chest felt as though it was going to burst.

A little later he found himself flat on his back. Above him the moon was rising over the ridge. He struggled to his feet and looked around. The shack stood there in silent testimony. His knapsack was leaning against the wall where he had left it. He went to it and took out his canteen of water. But there was not a drop in it. Strange, he thought. He had filled it at a spring just before reaching the village, and hadn’t touched it after that.

‘Thirsty, are you?’ boomed a voice. His throat was so dry he couldn’t say a word. Then suddenly from out of the darkness a hand reached out with a pitcher full of water. The moonlight
bounced off the brass vessel and the soldier grabbed it greedily. He drank his fill. Then, he started to feel hungry.

‘Hungry, are you?’ boomed the voice again. And this time the soldier didn’t say a word. He had got over the initial shock and fright. He was now wondering what was happening to him. He looked into the gloom and saw nothing. All he could hear was the sound of somebody breathing heavily.

Then the voice came again: ‘Want your mother’s cooking?’

Getting braver and bolder the soldier said: ‘Who are you? And can you give me any food?’

And the voice said: ‘Wait and see.

In what seemed like a few minutes there were piping hot mustard leaves cooked in dollops of home-made butter, hot brown rotis of millet and halwa. And to wash it down, fresh buttermilk. The soldier looked at the feast spread before him and could not resist reaching out for it.

The voice said: ‘Eat heartily, my boy, eat heartily ….

The soldier sensed a kind of menace behind the offer. By then he had realized that something terrible, something wrong, was going on. He was no longer hungry. All he wanted was to get away from that frightening spot.

He was wondering what to do next when he felt a cold, clammy hand on the nape of his neck. And the voice was urging him to eat before the food got cold. That was more than he could bear, and he bolted like a runaway horse. Into the fields he ran, jumping from terrace to terrace, cutting a wild furrow through the knee-high mustard. And at his heels came the laboured breathing of a man in pursuit. Then the voice: ‘You won’t get far, my boy. I haven’t eaten for days and I don’t like my dinner running away from me.’

That spurred the soldier to run as fast as he could. Chest heaving, legs pumping madly he ran through the mustard fields and from time to time leapt from one terrace to another. And all the time the voice followed him. The soldier was now running out of steam and as he ran he looked around for some place to hide. Then he remembered something his father had told him when he was a child.

‘Remember, my son,’ the old man had said, ‘when you are being chased by an evil spirit, a ghost or a witch, run into the nearest cowshed and grab a cow round its neck. These foul things are mortally afraid of the holy cow. They can never harm you then.’

The soldier recollected that there was a cowshed not too far from where he was. He changed direction and charged towards the shed. As he dived into it he felt a steely grip on one ankle. With his last ounce of energy, and driven by a great fear, he jerked his foot free and fell on the neck of a cow. He hugged her with all his strength and prayed for deliverance from the evil outside.

He was at bay and he knew it. The cow was his only lifeline. Outside, he could hear the deep breathing of a man who has run far and hard. His own breathing was slowly returning to normal but his heart was in his mouth. He also remembered his father telling him that these evil spirits ruled only at night and that by dawn they were gone. He knew he had to hold on till daybreak.

Outside, the voice said: ‘That cow won’t live long, my son. And when it dies I’ll come and eat you.’

The soldier felt for the thick vein running under the cow’s neck. The pulse was irregular and faint. Come on, mother cow, he prayed. Don’t let me down now. And he began massaging the animal in the hope that it might last out the night. Outside he could hear his pursuer pacing up and down like a soldier on sentry duty.

Bhawan Singh did not know what the time was. All he knew was that he had to keep the cow alive till dawn. If it died, then it was his turn to go. So he worked hard at keeping the cow warm. He rubbed her with wads of straw till his arms ached and he felt he couldn’t go on any longer.

And then, in the faint light of dawn, he saw the gradually brightening outline of the door to the cowshed. Outside a howling arose that echoed from hill-top to hill-top. It was a chilling sound, piercing through the soldier’s very soul. He clapped his hands to his ears to shut off the sound but he could feel it in his bones. Just like the times when he used to be under an artillery bombardment!

Quiet returned, so suddenly that it was almost painful. A crow cawed somewhere and the cow fell limp in his arms. She had died. He disentangled himself and crawled out into the open. Taking
large gulps of the sweet mountain morning air, Bhawan Singh started to get his nerves and mind together. Was it a dream? A nightmare? No, it couldn’t be. He looked at his puttees. They were stained yellow from running through the mustard fields.

To further confirm his experience he set off for Bethalu’s shack. He stood by the doorway and saw that his pack was still leaning against the wall. He mustered all his courage and entered the dingy hut. Sunbeams streamed through the cracks in the roof. In one corner he saw something laid out, covered in a white sheet.

With the toe of his boot he lifted one corner of the sheet. It was a man. A dead man, and from the smell it seemed he had been dead for some time. He lifted the sheet further until he had uncovered the whole body.

It was totally naked. And the legs were stained yellow from running through the mustard fields.