The catapult.

[durlabh]

From his early years, the child showed multi talents. At the age of two he copied a painting hanging in the drawing room. The child had sketched the outline of the picture on a piece of paper with just a few simple pencil strokes and which pleased his parents great deal, for that brilliant piece of artwork. He was rewarded five rupees by his father.
Encouraged he began to show a lot of interest in both literary and visual fields.

At the age of nine, he was reading short stories and poems from well-known authors published in various journals and which highly impressed his parents but at the age of ten he began to show restlessness and boredom with his studies at the school. He happened to be too clever and super sensitive child who got easily bored by school subjects and sought to find satisfaction within other non-school activities in outdoor pursuits.

The child, Romesh, began to show such tendencies and began to skip school on certain afternoons firstly and soon he became a regular truant from the school. He hated physical training periods at the school where you had to dance to the tune of the physical instructor, twisting your arms, legs and other parts of the body. He hated his PT master and did not want to attend his classes. When the other pupils went to their PT training in the yard outside, he gathered his books into his satchel and simply escaped to the fields surrounding the town.

To his eyes and senses nature was less boring and more exciting. He liked looking at the birds of different plumage and paid attention to their different singing notes. He would sit under a tree to listen to their melodies and found that they worked like some great composer, composing different tunes at different times of the days and thought that feathered creatures were familiar with different ragas, may be in their own birdie way. With the coming of various seasons, he watched them building their nests twig-by-twig and performing their physical task cheerily. When the nests were fully built, he watched birds laying eggs of different sizes and shapes.

One day he found some squirrels with their bushy tails and bright eyes, climbing onto a tree on which a bird had made a nest and he knew they were going to go for the eggs, which they would eventually consume as their food and simply destroy sucking the juices inside and eat the outer shells. He chased them away but when he returned after few days the nest was empty and he suspected the squirrels have done their cruel deeds. He began to develop a grudge against those gray devils. He saw other kids using catapults in the streets and wanted to build one for himself. He found a tree branch forking into two, cut the suitable length and began to powder down its surface with a glass paper. He bought a strong elastic rubber, tied it to the wooden piece and made himself a catapult with a central portion of leather, into which he placed a small stone. When he pulled it to its maximum length and released, the stone catapulted like a bullet.

He found a freedom in his wanderings and a new zest of living ushered in by that liberty. They only thing that marred it was his guilt of truancy. In the long run teachers were bound to find out about it and it would not simply stay with them but would be passed to his parents and then whole episode would be aired publicly upsetting every one. His father would be angry and would expound all sorts of clichés as to the wrong paths taken by his son and he had to listen to all about his childhood when he was so good and never upset his parents. But what about his mother? She would cry her heart out and would take to lying in the bed for long afternoons and shedding big tears. It would be such a tedious scene. For the time being he had simply to take advantage of his situation and not think about all future happenings. Live for the day as he read somewhere.

Slowly he extended his hours of truancy and brought it forward from early hours of schooling. He loved to watch the morning dew and its effect on the countryside. There was a feeling of freshness in the air and when the new rays of the sun struck, it set everything glistening making the mirrored world a joy to watch and be alive. He watched the gossamer’s web with all those encrusted dew drops, like a garland studded with jewels and a little sleepy spider inside just waking up and hoping for a nice meal of some tasty flesh for its breakfast, in the shape of some poor wandering insect or a fly.

Romesh’s boredom with the school continued. As a matter of fact it increased and his truancy rate began to increase in proportion to the hatred of his teachers at school and his fellow pupils. He found them to be totally dull without a spark of intelligence or originality. With his catapult handy he began to shoot at things from great distance just like the pistol target practice. He began to explore greater and greater circumference of the countryside around his town. One day he found an old abandoned house, which looked very dark and sinister and wanted to find out as to who it belonged to. His enquires yielded that it belonged to a sinister old fellow who used to be an eccentric recluse and who liked to live in the wilderness, away from human habitation as he did not like the people around him very much.

He further came to know that the old man just vanished a few years ago and whether he committed suicide or died at the hand of some assassin, nobody knew. With that sinister association people began to shun that spot, on account of it being a haunted and which fascinated Romesh, as he was always on look out for something dark and sinister as something different and out of the way for common folks and their petty comprehensions.

One day he visited the place and smashed a windowpane with his catapult aiming from a distance and he thought he heard some growling voice from within the house and though he ran off but promised himself to come back for further investigations. He did visit the house each day and one by one smashed all the glass in the windows. It became a sort of amusement to him to hear the voices from within whenever another window was smashed. One day when he went to the house to smash the last window, he thought that he saw a figure standing behind a tree in the vegetation surrounding the house and became curious about that figure hiding itself. It might have been a thief or some new occupant, he thought. He tip-towed to the house and looked through the broken window but did not find any one inside except pile of broken glass pieces of all his handiwork. He was going to turn away as to find something more interesting to smash but suddenly found himself in the grip of something. He realized that a cold clammy hand grabbed him from behind and was gripping his neck. He could not turn around to see the thing, as that grip was too strong for him to turn around. Slowly the thing pushed him inside the house where it became dark, cool and icy. As his eyes became accustomed to darkness, he saw an old bed with torn sheets hanging over it and there was someone sleeping in the bed. Soon there was a movement beneath those sheets and he let out a scream.

He was pushed to the edge of the bed and instructed to touch the lying figure sleeping there. A gruffy voice like some distant echo told him to examine it, properly. He tried to take the wrappings away but there were so many layered wraps like that of an Egyptian mummy, as you see in the museums. Suddenly the wrapped figure stirred and he fell backwards with a scream unable to face the forthcoming sight .He was grabbed again by the same hand from behind and forced to stand and was instructed, he thought psychically, to deal with the figure lying in the bed. With trembling hands and half closed eyes he touched the wrapped figure again and began to take its wrappings. He felt in a grip of panic and thought he was going to pass out with his heart was throbbing with terror and disgust.

There were so many layers of wrapping and which he was forced to take away one by one. Liquid was oozing out of that body like puss and the smell was pungent, over-powering, rotten and extremely foul. Nausea came over him. He thought himself to be in some dominion of hell in a house of death confronting all the corruptions of the world. When he took all the wrappings away, he found within a withered old figure with its half eaten face perhaps by the worms and very pulpy.

The deep gargling voice told him that he had to prepare it for its final funeral rites but Romesh did not know anything for such preparation a body for funeral. It was the first time that he had seen a dead body if you could call it a ‘body’. He was told to wash the body for its final cremation. He simply could not undertake such disgusting job and tried to run away but as he was caught near the exit, grabbed and dragged all the way to the bedside of the corpse in order to restart his task.

The sun had set outside and it was getting dark inside and imagine the horror he had to face alone in that house of death, at that tender age. He was given a bucket and a rag to go outside and fill the bucket with water from the little stream flowing outside. He filled the bucket and with the rag as a sponge began to wash the body, each time he squeezed the sponge a blackish red liquid oozed out of it but he had to go one washing the body from toe to head or whatever was left of it and renewing the dirty water in the bucket each time with fresh supply.

He was instructed then to prepare a funeral pyre for the cremation of the body. He went around to find pieces of wood, twigs, dry leaves or anything combustible and which he put underneath and around the bed. It was not enough and he had to take an axe from a dark corner of the building and to chop the walls of the old building with its rotting wooden structure. It was a hard physical task and even that in semi darkness and it took him ages to build up enough fuel to burn the foul lying thing. His heart was pounding and blood was rushing into his veins and brains but his mind became numb to save him from the disgust and horror of the task he was going through to perform.

Dawn was coming across the eastern horizon when he put the final torch to the pyre and flames began to slurp and burn around the body with large tongues, trying to devour everything into ashes. But whole of the body did not burn and he had to smash the skull and maneuver it with a pole and push it to the flames. He sat exhausted on the ground looking at the sight. Suddenly there was a big explosion and the whole house blew up and turned into a volcano of fire with columns of billowing smoke rushing forth and he felt that the whole building had catapulted into the sky.

Romesh did not turn up at his home that evening and was missing from the school too. A search party was sent out and a last they found him in the fields lying unconscious. The surrounding ground was charred and burnt away as if by an explosion of some sort. He was held down by strong hands onto his bed as he was trying to run away screaming and kicking. He lay there into a sort of coma unaware of his surroundings He regained his consciousness after a few days but his nightmares and day mares continued for a while.


Durlabh Singh ©2008.

[durlabh]

Jaggu was a part time labourer and also a part time jack of all trade and which may not be strictly true, as he never learnt a trade in a professional manner but drifted from job to job and from place to place, to earn as he called the ‘crust’ for his hungry stomach.

Schooling was hard for him and he was usually at the bottom of his class but he never detected any harm in it and thought that when divinity brought a human being in this world, he was already equipped to deal with life in all its aspects and did not need the promptings of schooling as to come under goading of some school mastering of any willy nilly personnel. The only important thing was finding a shelter and sufficient food for ones belly as not to get starved or emaciated like hermits and thus to take an early exit from life. That was all. When one was born then one he had to survive somehow and there was no point in committing suicide. It was all right to do a little hard work here and there to make a living, providing one is not wholly preoccupied with it and thus becomes a slave of others.

He was hardly capable of passing any examination at school but somehow managed to progress from elementary level to grade eight and that was the limits of his educational ambitions and it did not extend beyond that circumference. He could just read and add simple sums, to make his way into the greater world. He considered himself as well equipped intellectually as anybody else and pitied those who became slaves of their own intellect by enrolling into universities and higher educational institutes, and that was a shear waste of one’s life.

He had not much time for any morality or ethical behavior either. If a man or a woman is loaded with money and some poor bastard like him comes to such person as to ask for help, the moneyed person should have the guts to give away some of the extra cash that was being left wastefully in a bank. With that pragmatic approach, he did not want anymore intellectual analysis about the ethical side or of moral transactions. Only fools did that- who had not realized the meaning of life.

He decided to settle in a small town where there were sufficient means of making a living, by hiring himself out as a labourer for the day jobs. In the morning he had to go to a place in the market and align himself with others waiting there- sit on the pavement and wait for the prospective hirer to come and pick the suitable person. Normally he was hired to do various jobs- as a farm labourer, a plumber’s mate and assistant to a stonemason or as an unskilled labourer on a building site. After certain period of time, he began to find all that physical work monotonous and tiring. He wanted to find an alternative work but did not know how to go about it. To give him some ideas, he ventured out to the center of the town where the big market place was bustling with people. He visited various shops and arcades.

The green grocer and fruit seller stalls were most attractive. There were so many varieties of fruits, vegetables and other sweets things such as sugar canes tied into bundles and being displayed against the walls. The children were the most enthusiastic about buying the canes, pressurizing their parents to buy them the whole lengths of five feet of the cane sticks and which they directed the seller to cut into lengths of one foot each and thus making the five pieces of cane sufficient for each member of the family. When at home in winter sunshine, they sat in a circle with a lengths of sugar cane in their hands and their teeth ready to do the honour of biting and slicing the outer skin by peeling out and leaving the inner juicy core ready for sucking. They bit into the soft fluffy core tearing out a small piece and extracting its juice. It was a heavenly tasting juice; the sweet cool liquid was pouring through, to transform their palette and brain into a symphony of bliss.

Looking at those tastefully decorated stall of fruits and vegetables with their yellow, green, red, mauve and white colours and different textures; he was prompted to ask for any available job and was not surprised to find its unavailability.

He next observed a bulky shopkeeper sitting on a comfortable divan, in the front parlour of his grocery shop. He had propped himself against cushions to rest his back and also on left and right to support his bulky mass and telling his customers that due to shortage of staff, he was unable to serve them promptly. Here was an opportunity for Jaggu to land such a cushy job and as the opportunity came he presented himself to the shopkeeper.

‘ Ram Ram. Sethji. I gather you are in need of some new shop hand. I was wondering if I may be suitable for it.’

Sethji looked at him and examined him from head to foot with his fat face and mean eyes.

‘ I do not employ any willy nilly.’ Trying to exert his position and his ownership

‘ But I am not anyone, I have done such work before.’ Jaggu lied.

‘Can you read?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘And add and subtract.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Are you honest?’

‘ Very.’ Jaggu lied again.

He was hired.

*


Sethji was sitting on his comfortable divan dealing with the customers who were sitting on a long bench, waiting their turn to order the required groceries. He was popular with people and had a sweet manner of speaking and putting people at their ease. He had loyal and regular customers at his command.

The popular items being dals or pulses- mungi, mash, moth, lentils etc and before the people decided to buy, they were shown samples in small quantities and this was the task assigned to Jaggu.

‘Oye! Jaggu, show the reverend lady some mung dal.’

And Jaggu brought a handful of mung grain scooped from a sack of mung into a sort of metallic scooper and which the customer examined.

‘ Is it from last year’s crop?’

‘ Would I do such a thing to a dear lady? No it is from this year’s crop and I sell only the best.’ Sethji laid out his strategy for charming his customer.

Further the ‘dear lady’ bought weights of rice, flour, cooking oil, spices etc.

Sethji was writing each item on a piece of paper and at the end of the transaction made an invoice by adding the cost of each item. The whole bill amounted to twelve rupees.

‘ I have got only ten rupees on me.’ Shanti, the customer lady announced.

‘ It does not matter, Jaggu will accompany you to your home carrying all the goods.’ Said sethji.

Jaggu accompanied her to the house. Shanti was a widow but her house looked prosperous.

They entered the house.

‘Put all the things in the kitchen and I will bring you two outstanding rupees.’

Jaggu watched her go into a room, unlocked a steel trunk, pulled out a bag of jingling silver rupees and took two rupees for sethji and some loose cash for Jaggu as baksheesh.

Jaggu watched her closely.

‘That old woman has plenty of money hidden away and how nice it would be if he could lay my hand on some of it. A young man like me needs it more than that silly old woman and who has not many years to live’ mused Jaggu with his head full of wicked thoughts.

He went back to the store and planned something ghastly and awaited the arrival of Shanti on her return trip to the shop. Usually the old woman returned to the shop beginning of each month to replenish her stock.


After some interval Shanti did return one afternoon to buy more provisions from the shop and Jaggu accompanied her again to the house and put the grocery in the kitchen and when she went to open the trunk to bring out money, he watched her and as she took out her money bag and returned to kitchen, Jaggu grabbed hold of her from behind and told her to hand it over the money but she refused and ensuing struggle followed when each one tried to get hold of the bag and in the process, Shanti slipped and fell hitting her head on the hard floor. She lay there silent with blood pouring from back of her head.

Jaggu grabbed the bag and ran out of the house trying to close the front door behind him.

When he went to the store the following morning, Sethji told him a dreadful news that one of his best customer had died in the hospital after slipping and hitting her head on the floor and that the door of her house was not locked and the next-door neighbour heard some banging on the adjoining wall. They took her to the hospital where she died later due to severity of her head injuries.

Police did not pursue the matter further as they thought that she died due to an accident, slipping at home and there were no suspicious circumstances.

………………….

Jaggu was worried that he might be charged with manslaughter or something like that but after hearing the good news he breathed a sigh of relief.

Did I kill her?

No she just slipped and banged her head on the floor.

You cannot put the blame on me.

She was old and had plenty of money hidden away.

Truly it was no use to her; she was soon going to die any way.

I am young and still have all my life in front of me and it is better that I make use of her
fortune.

Do not blame me that old woman has died.

No I do not feel any remorse for her on account of my action.

Things just happen that way in life. It is full of unexpected accidents.

Musing thus he convinced himself as being blameless and thus became overjoyed. He had done well. Soon he would go on a splendid holiday and enjoy himself and forget all about that old woman.

* * *

Having unburdened himself of his remorse about that dreadful happening, he was sleeping now peacefully each night and dreaming, some happy reveries occupied his dreams.

One such night during drowsiness of his sleep, he thought he heard a muffled knock at the door but did not pay any attention to it, thinking that it was only an illusion until there was a constant scratching outside the door which gave him a sudden upstart to get up in panic. Soon the door was pushed in with a creaking noise and a ghostly shadow entered the room. He rubbed his eyes to see clearly but could not make much of it against a dark background.

With thumping heart he laid in bed while the scratching sound approached nearer and nearer. Some ghostly fingers touched his neck and he jumped out of bed and stumbled to the floor. The phantom figure of Shanti was standing over him, with her bony finger pointing straight at him.

‘You stole my money. You bastard! You murderer!’ the skeleton shouted in rattled voice

Jaggu tried to run away but stumbled again, his legs turned to jelly and without any energy left to stand.

‘ You cannot run away from me now. You murdered me and I will murder you soon.’

‘Please don’t, I am too young to die.’ Pleaded Jaggu

But the ghostly skeleton approached nearer and nearer and caught him again by the throat with those cold deadly fingers, which felt like a frozen knife blade.

‘Please do not kill me, I beg of you. I will give you all the stolen money.’

‘Show me the bag.’ Said the ghostly voice.

Jaggu pulled out a metallic box from underneath his bed, opened the bag inside and showed all the shiny silvery pieces.

‘All three hundred rupees are there, I have not touched even a single pence yet, honestly.’

The bag was snatched from his hands with a jerked pull and all the silver coins scattered on the floor making a metallic musical sound.

The bonny hand picked one piece.

‘I will be back tomorrow for another piece.’ and disappeared.

He was drenched in sweat and his mouth was dry. He sipped some water and waited for the daylight to come. On the following day he could not eat much and spent the restless day again in dread for the coming night.

The same episode was repeated on the following night and night after that. He realized that he had entered a place in hell and from which no escape was possible for the following 299 nights.

As the days went by, his face began to take on a haggard and withdrawn look. His black hair began to turn gray and after three months, he became an old man with a horrible twisted figure. The customer at the grocery store did not want to be served by that dreaded figure, which instilled so much fear into their children as they screamed and ran away out of his sight. It was not difficult to speculate that he was sacked from his job and had to spend rest of three hundred nights waiting for the executions at each night.

After about a year, he completely disappeared from the scene and the town population was glad to get rid of that ‘horrible old man.’


Durlabh Singh© 2008.

[durlabh]

After ages of boring office work, I needed a break and wanted to have a vacation somewhere nice, to restore my physical and mental balance. I reckoned that I would need at least two weeks to recuperate from the taxing strain accumulated over past months, due to boredom and routines. I visited few travel agents, collected some brochures and studied those to find a suitable place for my vacations.

I thought deeply about the location where I was going to spend my time. In the past I had done lot of touring and tracking inland, visiting wide open plains, walking through hills and climbing few mountains, although not very high. I wanted a seaside holidays this time, in an off beaten track. I had enough of the people in my life and it would be nice to get away from them for a while, away from their little moaning and their boasting and about their conquests of the opposite sex or about their children and their accumulated wealth.

I did not want simply to spend my time dozing in the warm sunshine with drinks in one hand and a newspaper in the other or spending time in trivial pursuits. Not just golden sand and blue skies I wanted a coastline of rugged structures, weather beaten rocks, coves and some secret places hidden in between.

After due considerations, I chose a spot in a quieter part, in a resort which was famous for its natural beauty and rugged coastline but away from touristy hotels and large crowds. It was two miles away from a country railway station with no motoring roads to reach but a walk through fields of the countryside. I rented an old fisherman’s hut, which had been abandoned for a few years but was bought by a property company, restored and refurbished to a modest standard.

As I was going to spend most part of the day exploring coastline, I was not after luxurious furnishings but a simple clean habitation to spend my nights in. The company assured me that it was a clean simple place with a lounge and a kitchenette downstairs and a bedroom upstairs, which was all that I needed. I was greatly looking forward to my vacations.

At the start of my vacation, I duly packed my suitcase. I traveled light with only two pieces of luggage. The suitcase contained my clothes, two paperbacks, toiletries etc and the shoulder bag was packed with ready to eat food, my camera and a small transistor radio, to while away evenings listening to music. I am not very fond of noisy popular music but like classical music, which can enhance the surroundings or could give you time to think about the deeper things in life.

* * *

When I arrived at my destination, I found the property satisfactory and true to the descriptions provided by the company. I settled in comfortably and had a good night’s sleep.

Following morning, I followed the coastal path and the sun shown brightly and it was cool and temperate in the morning Very few people were around and I nearly had the whole coastline to myself. It was silent except the natural sounds of sea and wind. I sat in a cove like formation where a part of blue green sea was visible and the waves were playing with the sandy beach, pushing the grains of clean sand up the beach. They came up to my feet sometime and the feel of water was pleasant. I sat there listening to the wind and the waves. I thought they were trying to communicate and were saying something special for the benefit of myself as a listener. If you are of poetical temperament, you were sure to make a sense of it .I walked and rested and did it over and over again till it was nearly noon, when I unpacked my bundle of sandwiches to appease my hunger, sharpened up by pleasant but strenuous walk.

I walked further along, after taking an afternoon siesta, admiring the coastal scenery and the jagged shapes of the rocks, carved by the wind and the waves. They were like sculptors hard at creating some weird shapes out of the gray rocks. In the afternoon, I took my homeward journey.

Soon it became dark inside the house, as there was no electricity, I had to light an old fashion oil fired lantern, which made hissing noise casting weird shapes across the white walls of the room.

Three pleasant days and nights had passed but on fourth day, when I returned to my place, I felt a sort of gloom as I entered the building and clearly envisaged some dark shadows crossing the facade of the building as if someone was trying to warn me from entering the building. I dismissed it all due to my tiredness and tried to get the thought out of my mind. Imagination can play so many tricks on one’s mind.

As usual I took my meals, put my feet up across a table and listened to the music from my transistor radio. The music being classical and a large symphonic work was being played. The four movements of symphony played, different themes but the overall impression was tragic as if a soul was struggling against all odds, to overcome the pain and suffering of the life. The contents were not totally dark but I would say it was of solar darkness: where the composer, though overwhelmed with grief, was still giving flashes of his inward genius through the music. I listened contemplating and a landscape spread out in the darkness of the night and then a storm issued forth.

The music with its lashes of rain and lightening was illuminating the gloominess by its defiance and sort of hope from which one could take courage to fight against the very odds.

I listened to the symphonic work and afterwards some lyrical pieces on the piano, which somehow changed my mood, and so I went to bed a bit cheery, with pleasant thoughts for the adventures of the coming day.

I must have slept for a few hours but in the midst of my sleep, I thought I heard a knock on my front door. Who could that be? I did not know a single soul in that part of the country. It might have been a burglar trying to get in, to steal my belongings. But such thing had not happened before and could not happen now. So I ignored it and tried to go to sleep again.

After a few minutes, there was another knock and this time heavier and persistent and an airy feeling came over me. I looked through the window but as far as I could see there was no one at the ground level. My heart began to throb wildly.

Then it looked as if somebody had either entered the house or was trying to knock down the front door. I did not have either the strength or the courage to go down and confront the intruder. Muffled voices were heard and then the commanding voice of someone to bring ‘them’ in. It sounded that the people present were trying to drag heavy things from outside to inside of the house. An airy wailing sound came across the sea and I froze with panic. There was a silence again but then the same process started all over again. This time the dragging sounds were heavier and more audible, it sounded like something wooded or metallic being dragged across the shore and into the house. I did not know what to do next. If I wanted to get out of the house and run, there was no way out except thorough the ground floor exist, confronting those terrible horrors.

Unseen things are more horrific then the seen things as your imagination adds to all the fears you had in your mind already. I mustered all the courage and went to my bedroom door, unlocked it and looked through the chunk of opening and what did I find?

There were bodies littered all over the floor with oozing blood and broken limbs, screaming in agony, their mouths twisted and some with silent screams. Half of the bodies were covered in white sheets and some were quivering underneath their shrouds. More bodies were being dragged in but there was hardly a room for them. There was a sort of a figure standing at the foot of stairs leading to my bedroom and I shivered at the sight of him. He sensed me presence and turned to look at me.

By God! It was blood-curdling sight. Half of his facing was missing and the other half was made of some green stuff, seaweeds or plant life. The weeds were quivering with a life of their own, like those snakes on gorgon’s head. I looked closely at the other half and in that empty dark space, there was something glowing. It was one eye staring at me. I just propped myself against the wall in order to prevent myself falling, in a fainting spell. The man gurgled out a heavy broken sound as if he wanted to bring the rest of the bodies into my room. Even under great shock and shivering, I managed to shut the door and bolted it from inside.

I stood there panting and listened. Heavy thudding sound was coming as if the man with half face was ascending the stairs and advancing towards my door. With s super human effort, I dragged all the heavy furniture against the door and climbed into my bed. My heart was thumping and began to beat at faster and faster. Soon I felt a sudden pain in my chest, which began to advance through my back and the whole of body.

There was a heavy knock at my bedroom door. The pain in my chest became excruciating and I thought I was going to have a heart attack and might die soon, devoured by that hideous ghoul waiting outside my door. I covered myself completely in the blanket and as the sound of knocks continued, I put my fingers in the ears to block it. I must not panic and die. As long as I was alive, there was some hope of escaping the nightmare .The intensity of pain in my chest was more important than the attack of any ghoul.

Having wiped out thus a portion of panic, I felt a little relief in my chest and simply lay there. After ages, the sounds of knocks ceased and a tiring exhaustion came over me and I went to sleep.

When I awoke, it was light outside and birds were singing, it must have been morning. It was such a blessed sight though the effect of the last night’s nightmare was still with me. I gathered my tings together, packed everything and just left the cursed house alone. There were no marks or anything on the ground floor except pools of water and bits of sea plants and weeds.

I came back to town and to my house. The experiences of that night had left a permanent mark on my brain. I felt disorientated and slept a great deal for days, in order to minimize the numbing pain and brain fever. After two weeks I went to my office and got myself back busy in the work, to forget those memories. A friend of mine invited me to his place for the weekend and I was glad to accept his invitation.

I related my experiences. He was both shocked and curious and wanted to find the rational explanation for all that. He was a librarian in the central library and had access to the past record. He consulted the records and newspapers of the past few years and thought he had found a clue to my troubles. He brought me a newspaper cutting about the shipwreck on a coastline, of my vacations. A fisherman’s boat was caught in a big storm about twenty years ago on one night and was smashed against the coastal rocks and broke up. People tried to rescue the dead and the injured but were not successful.



Durlabh Singh ©2008.