by Neil D'Silva
***
My name is Christopher Blaisdell, and I originally hail from a small college town in a midwestern state of the United States. Being white and from an upper-middleclass family, most folks whom I have met overseas typically assume I am your average American male on vacation in their country. Quite the contrary, I had an odd, “hippie-style” upbringing which included family picnics at the local cemetery and attending a wide range of religious services, ranging from Buddhist, Taoist, and Hare Krishna gatherings to what is commonly called Wicca today, and also good ol’ Episcopalian services. You could say I got a broad education when it came to the supernatural. Nowadays, I travel the globe chronicling all sorts of paranormal events for my own amusement, edification, and education. These flights of fancy are often financed through the sale of articles and short stories for assorted magazines and blogs. I have visited shrines, temples, and happenings in Japan, Hong Kong, The British Isles, Norway, Spain, Thailand, and all over Africa. This was my first-ever trip to India, however.
My flight from the USA took over 25 hours, and I didn’t get a lot of sleep during the time in the air. Local time was shortly after at 11 p.m. when I stepped off my flight onto the tarmac of Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. I felt…odd and a bit out-of-place wearing a heavy black leather motorcycle jacket and being weighed down by a huge backpack strapped to my back, a military-style canvas duffel bag, with a bulky computer bag slung over one shoulder.
After I was processed through immigration, had my biometrics taken and a few simple questions asked by an unsmiling and bored-looking immigration officer, I got some cash exchanged at one of the bank kiosks in the airport, then went to look for a prepaid taxi stand.
Ignoring the many “offers” to have my bags carried, I spotted the taxi-stand. I told the clerk my destination, paid my 300 rupees, and he called over a driver. The poor man knew very little English, and when I handed him the address, he seemed embarrassed until his manager came over and yelled something at him in Hindi.
It was inevitable that on my first night in India—within the first hour after I landed, in fact—that something would go wrong. Not terribly wrong, but it wasn’t exactly a great start to my visit.
Within ten minutes of leaving the airport, my driver stopped the taxi and turned to me. I had little knowledge as to what he was talking about, but I did catch a few words in Hindi that I understood. Apparently, he was lost and he was asking for directions. I showed him the ticket his dispatch manager had given me, and he just looked at it, stepped out of the cab, and walked around for a few moments, then got back in and handed the paper back to me. His English was nonexistent and my knowledge of Hindi was so limited that we found ourselves in a predicament of sorts. Neither of us knew how to get to the hotel I had booked a few days previously.
Had I had a working smartphone at the time—I had to still pick up a SIM card for India—I could have used some “map-it” feature. But I didn’t, and he pointed to another hotel just up the road a short distance. This building, like all of those on this forsaken and ramshackle street, looked decrepit. However, as we drove up to The Impress U Inn, I could see that, despite the shabby exterior, the lobby looked as if it had been recently remodeled. The driver pulled up and shut off his cab, and I got out my bags and took them with me… I made the social faux pas of not asking the driver to stay—or motion him to—before I checked to see if someone at the inn could help me with directions. As I entered the door to the establishment, I saw the cabbie driving off.
With my driver gone and having been given only meager instructions as to the whereabouts of the Hotel Metro Tower from the night clerk, I turned around and walked out. “…only 500 meters that way,” I heard the clerk say as I exited the place and set off down the road in the direction indicated. It was by now close to 1 a.m., and I was bone-tired.
I walked for what must have been about a half-mile, checking out two seedy hotels to see if they might be possible places to crash for the night. They were just too seedy to be trusted, however, so I turned around and opted to stay at The Impress U Inn instead. I was going to lose a night’s prepaid reservation at my original hotel, and then spend for a room in cash out-of-pocket, but I figured it was better than getting totally lost. Besides, I was ready to drop from exhaustion by this point and needed sleep badly.
The night clerk didn’t look at all surprised when he saw me reenter the Inn, wherein I asked for a room.
“3000 rupees,” he grinned. It was a rip-off and the night clerk knew it, but I wasn’t going to complain. After registering, I was given a key. A bellhop picked up my bags and showed me to the door of my room.
“It’s a good room,” the man said before holding out his hand expectantly. I tipped him, and he walked away, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. As it turned out, the hotel had given me a very nice room, and the bellhop returned a few minutes later and even brought me bottled water and something to eat soon after I had made myself at home. Afterwards, he waited for another tip. This was something I was going to have to get used to during my stay in India. Greasing palms is how things get done here!
***
I made some tea and, after snacking on my plate of nankhatai, I took a shower and prepared to crash. The bed was firm and inviting, but I threw back the sheets to check for spiders just incase. Finding none, I turned off the main overhead light and got into bed. I left the bathroom light on but closed the door so that just enough light would shine out from underneath it. This way I had a night-light of sorts and wouldn’t stub my toe in the dark just in case I got up to pee later.
Then I heard a soft click…
I peeked up in the direction of the sound, my eyes blurry from not enough sleep. The bathroom door slowly creaked open. Annoyed, I got up and pushed it shut until I heard the latch engage. I got back into bed and was just dozing off when, as before, I heard the noise; a soft click. I’ll be damned if the door didn’t slowly swing open again! This time I let it go. The latch was probably faulty and the door may not have been hung level. Not a biggie.
No ghosts around. (Or at least, none that I know of...)
A thought struck me, and I got out of bed and turned on the room’s overhead light. During my travels, I had gathered various, shall we say, “precautionary measures”. Better safe than sorry, and there were items in my duffel bag that would make me feel better about staying in this slightly spooky hotel. I had twice visited Hong Kong and picked up numerous Taoist, Wuist, and Chinese folk religious objects. While there I frequented joss shops and bought obscure hell bank notes and charms for my personal collection, as well as fetishes and Weixinist articles. Some of these novelties I kept with me in my juju bag, which I carried in my coat pocket. It was a simple change purse containing a variety of religious and cultural talismans, as well as a glass bottle containing my late sister’s ashes and a thimble-sized bag of dirt from my home town. But what I was really looking for was in my large duffel bag.
I opened that and rummaged through underwear, socks, and T-shirts, then extracted a small hand-carved, ornate box made of cedar wood. It was my wu box, which I had bought off a Chinese shaman. I placed this neatly on the room’s dresser opposite my bed.
Then I drew out my nkisi nkondi doll, which was securely wrapped in antique cheese cloth. This magical clay fetish was created for me personally by a woman of the BaKongo people of western Zaire and was of a protective god covered in small iron nails. I unwrapped the nkisi nkondi and placed it next to the wu box.
Next, I opened the box and took out a small red clay ceramic, yoni-shaped bowl I had bought at a curio shop years before. It was of Indian origin and had a swastika carved into the bottom of it.
I arranged all three objects on the on the top of the desk across from my bed.
Then fished around in the bag for the box of sandalwood incense I typically brought with me on my travels. Not only was the incense important for rituals, but its pleasant scent made any musty hotel room more tolerable. There w
as an ashtray, a candle, and a book of matches in the desk drawer. I placed one of the cones of incense inside the red bowl, struck a match, and applied it to the cone. A cheerful red glow and small flame sprang to life, then went out. I watched as the thin ribbon of fragrant smoke floated up into the air, curling slightly as my breath disturbed it.
“Please accept my offering,” I said softly and clapped my hands in front of me. The smoke trail scattered with the sudden breeze. I quickly looked around the room to see if there might be a smoke detector, but there wasn’t. It was a small cone, so only burned for a few minutes; enough to feed any ghost in the room, I assured myself.
I love rituals, and even though I had thus far never experienced any encounters with the supernatural, I wasn’t against taking precautions.
***
Having cleansed my room, I felt more at ease. I shut off the main light and got back into bed and began to drift away almost immediately. As consciousness was giving up the fight, the sounds of the city at night—the honking of car and truck horns more than anything else—muffled as they were, filtered through the walls of my room. For some odd reason, these resonances were mingled with human chatter. A woman’s voice, to be more precise, indistinct and far away, no doubt belonging to another person checking into the hotel.
I pulled the sheets up to my shoulders, tucked them in, and rolled over onto my left side, hugging the pillow as I let out a sigh and began to fall back to sleep. Just then a soft creak came from somewhere in the room. The building settling, no doubt. It was old, and despite the obvious renovation work, some minor shift of the foundation was to be expected now and then. I opened one eye and stared at the bathroom door for a moment then pulled the sheets up over my head.
The world began to get fuzzy as I drifted carefree in that pleasant limbo between wakefulness and sleep.
All of a sudden, I heard the creaking again, this time followed by a faint patter of bare feet on the floor tiles of my room accompanied by an equally soft jangle of metal. A barely audible wet slap-slap-slap sound moving in the direction of my bed from the bathroom! Hearing things during the phase before falling asleep was nothing new to me, having gotten used to it over the years. Sometimes my brain took a while to wind down. This new sound was no doubt another in a long series of auditory hallucinations.
Then something settled into my bed next to me…
My eyes popped open and, oddly enough, I thought of home; how my housecat would often leap onto my bed at night and snuggle up with me. The present situation felt very much the same. In my state of mental fuzziness, I reached over to pet whatever it was that had crawled into bed with me. I expected to feel soft fur, vibrating with loving purring. Instead, I felt something smooth, warm and wet… human skin, without a doubt. Solid yet yielding flesh.
Then it shivered…
With a yelp, I bolted out of bed and stood there in the dimness of the room, trying to make out who (or what) was my uninvited guest for the evening by the faint light emanating from around the bathroom door, which was still slightly ajar. Other than for the rumpled sheets and pillows where I had been lying, the bed was empty. I stared hard at the bed, then walked around and felt the space where I believed that someone had lain against me. Nothing. Not warm or wet, just a dry, flat, and unruffled sheet.
Feeling understandably rattled, I double-checked that the main door of my room was locked. Both the top and side bolts were still in place, confirming that no one could have gotten in while I was falling asleep. Chuckling nervously to myself for being such an easily-spooked fool, I closed the bathroom door for the third time. Then, out of habit, I distractedly checked my phone for any missed calls. Since there were none, I settled back down under the covers. A simple hallucination caused by my state of physical and mental exhaustion, that was all I had experienced, I rationalized to myself, feeling foolish. It had been a crazy first day in India, that much was for sure! I hunkered down with my pillow and breathed a long sigh. The faint fragrance of sandalwood still hung in the air. I was now certain that the incident was just some weird hallucination, like those nightmares we sometimes experience during which we are jolted awake, only to have the same nightmare continue as soon as we fall back to sleep.
Mere minutes after I’d gotten comfortable again, I heard another click and the room lit up once more as the bathroom door slowly swung open... The soft murmurings of a woman’s voice started again, as did the creaks, the slap-slap-slap of wet footfalls and the faint jangle of metal.
It crawled into my bed with me again, this time slipping under the covers. I felt her firm, damp body next to mine, smelled the light fragrance of neem as she snuggled close to me. An arm slipped across my belly as she pulled me into her embrace. I was acutely aware of the curvature of her ample breast as it pressed up against my back. What would have been an erotic experience under altogether very different circumstances was now filling me with dread.
“Main thandi hoon aur garm hone ki kaamna karti hoon,” I believed I heard her say in Hindi; not that it made much sense. “Mera badan thanda pada hai. Muze tumhare badan se lipatkar garm hone do,” she spoke again softly, like my lover, and was close enough that her breath tickled my ear. “Hold me, I am cold,” she repeated, this time in heavily-accented English that chilled me to the bone.
My teeth began to chatter and I stifled a scream. A ghost, a fucking GHOST!
She nuzzled in so close that I felt her lips pressing against the back of my neck.
I couldn’t move…
More accurately, I wouldn’t move. I didn’t want to turn over and experience something that shouldn’t be there. Something dead. A corpse grinning at me; eyes dead, mouth agape, rotted teeth, putrescent skin, lumps of flesh writhing with maggots… I closed my eyes tightly and kept them that way.
“Hold me tight,” she said again.
I should have leapt out of bed and fled the room in horror. Then I heard a soft sobbing coming from over my shoulder. Her hand squeezed my right arm and she repeated her plea, “Hold me, sir. It has been too long…”
Not knowing what else to do, and so frightened that my legs likely wouldn’t be able to carry me very far if I did decide leap out of the bed, I shifted to my right and eased my arm free of her grasp. With my eyes still clenched shut, I did something out of habit. I lay my free arm across the pillow and felt her hands crawling onto my chest, upon which she laid her head. I then slowly curled an arm around her bare back and shoulder, hugging her to me. She shivered.
The ghost-woman then let out a long, weary sigh, and her breath, which I felt on my chest, smelled of lavender; not at all like any dreadful spirit I had ever read about. She shifted her position and, my eyes being still closed, I could only assume she was looking at my face. The temptation not to meet her gaze was too much, so I cautiously opened one eye to peep at the lonely female spirit whose head rested on my chest.
What I saw was not a hideous phantasm… nor was it a beautiful woman, either. Instead, my vision was flooded with a rapid-fire succession of key events from her life. Images of her family, her loves and losses, then a cruel gang-rape followed by her brutal drowning death at the hands of three street thugs in a toilet. She had died in this very room. My brain felt smashed, like a bowl of pudding that had been thrown up against a wall. Pain and loss poured into me, filling every nook and cranny of my panicking soul. Whoever she had been whilst actually alive (as opposed to what she had since become) was now unimportant, as she could no longer recall even her own name. Her death had occurred many, many years in the past—so long ago, in fact, that it seemed nothing more than a dream even to she herself. What was important to her was the urgency she felt to escape from her existence of being an attached spirit (or aatma in the vernacular).
She was murdered in this very room, and her ghost wanted desperately to leave it. Via more flashes of her memories, I saw her body being disposed of by the former proprietors of the inn. They thought she was gone for good—yet she still remained. Many men had encountered he
r ghost in this room over the years. They were only horrified and lashed out at her spectral being in a panic of fear. Some had died and some had been driven mad, because they did not care. They showed no compassion. Just fear… blind fear.
Could my earlier precautionary ritual be the reason why I was still in the land of the living? Or was it because I had showed her kindness?
This I would never know, as she then suddenly broke contact with me, and I lay there for a few minutes while my brain slowly recovered from the ghost’s psychic barrage. I rolled out of my bed and onto the floor, where I lay for only the gods knew how long. But she was gone, I was sure of that. And I was alive. Upon gathering my wits about me, I stood up and braved a glance at the unkempt bed. Nothing was upon it but crumpled sheets.
But wait… I squinted my eyes, then crossed the room to switch on the overhead light. There was something on the bed besides the covers: a piece of jewelry. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be an anklet made of what appeared to be either white brass or low-grade silver. A cheap piece of junk costume jewelry with small, flat, heart-shaped links alternating with beneficent swastika symbols. I picked it up and placed it in the palm of my right hand. The anklet felt oddly heavy and warm in my palm. It was hers—no, it was her.
It was approaching dawn by now, and since I wasn’t going to get any more sleep in this haunted establishment, I packed my things and left, returning my key to the day clerk, who blinked a few times when she read the room number on it before asking me if I had found the accommodations to my liking.
“Yes,” I said, smiling. “I had a wonderful experience.”
Leela (as her nametag read), blinked a few more times in rapid succession, nodded at me, then went back to her computer terminal. I left New Delhi by train that afternoon to visit my old friend Santosh in Dehradun. However, after spending some time with him, the rest of my vacation would have to wait. I needed to find a suitable Hanuman temple to visit for the purposes of an exorcism.
