City of Screams

by Neil D'Silva

  ***

  “That is my story, and why I have come to you,” I said via Ahir.

  Vanara looked at me, then at my wu box on the table in front of him, then at me again and then at Ahir, who was visibly upset he had been asked to translate my story to the priest. A thoughtful look crossed his face, and he picked up the box and placed it in his robe. I paid our bill and we left the tavern.

  We headed back to the stone pathway that led back up to the temple on the hilltop. On the way Vanara and Ahir were having a passionate discussion, and I could only guess it was about me and the box with its cursed contents. Both men then stopped and turned towards me, but it was the priest who spoke:

  “I will help,” he said in a thick accent, his English halting. Vanara then paused and gathered his thoughts, “She will be at peace. Moksha. Do you know what I mean by that?”

  I smiled and gave my thanks.

  He looked forlorn for a moment. Then he nodded to me and Ahir and, as he turned to ascend the steps, stopped and said something to my guide, and then laughed.

  For the past two weeks I had carried ‘her’ inside my wu box, half-expecting another haunting to occur. But she had remained quiet, and I wasn’t once tempted to open the box to check whether the anklet was still there (although I did from time to time shake it and listened to the familiar jangle of the chain within). I felt both anxious and relieved to have delivered the anklet to a proper temple, where the murdered woman’s restless spirit could be exorcised and she would be released back into the cosmic scheme of things with a chance for reincarnation.

  “What did he say?” I asked Ahir of the priest as we began our trek back to the parking lot, where his tuk tuk was parked.

  Ahir turned to me, saying with a grin, “He said to thank you for bringing her home, and that you are always welcome to return to the temple. But he also asked, please my friend, do not bring him any more ghosts to take care of!”

  Fair enough.

  ABOUT TIM PAXTON

  Author Tim Paxton has been an admirer of oddball cinema since the 1960s, and has written about this passion since he was a teenager. Founder of Kronos Productions, and publisher of fanzines since 1978. "Home" is the first of several short stories he is working on within the horror genre that takes place in India. Tim lives in Oberlin, Ohio USA with four cats and way too many movies, books, movie memorabilia, textiles, and religious iconography.

  NAMU NE?

  Nilutpal Gohain

  A hot humid wind welcomed me as I walked out of the air-conditioned official car. It was a tiring journey, six hours at a stretch with only one pit stop, and that too way back at Kaziranga. Guwahati, my new place of posting, had ushered a scorching heat to welcome me back after I had left the place fifteen years ago. It was my first urban posting after an almost unending trail of rural and hill postings. I was to join as the Additional Deputy Commissioner of the Guwahati by that afternoon and it was only an hour more before the Deputy Commissioner’s office shut down for the day.

  Raghu, the caretaker of the official quarter, was busy clearing the luggage from the car when I stopped him and rushed to the DC’s office. When I returned at five-thirty, Smriti and the children had arrived. Smriti was busy with Raghu and his aide, overlooking the changes in the layout of the furniture while Rimi, my daughter, and Rimon my son, gamboled among the rumpled luggage. They had taken a flight from Jorhat as Smriti had motion-sickness and she would have been half-dead by the time she reached Guwahati if she had travelled with me.

  As soon as I entered, Smriti said, “Look, Deben! How dirty can people be! It seems that those who stayed here before us never bothered to sweep the floor. The heap of rubbish in that corner that you see is from the master bedroom. There are three more such bedrooms, a horrible kitchen, an overstocked storeroom, and the living room. We need more people.”

  I replied, “Just get the master bedroom ready for the night. We can get more people tomorrow. I will ask the fourth-grade staff of my office to help us. Anyway it’s Sunday tomorrow.”

  She nodded.

  It was an ‘Assam-type’ house—a house with an angular roof of galvanized sheets and concrete plastered bamboo frames as walls. Though it might have been an elegant structure when built, time had been harsh to it. Now, it was just a dilapidated property trying to stand by some means. Years of sham maintenance had taken a toll on it. The wooden floor creaked at places and there were large cracks in the walls with bamboo frames jutting out. The most unique part of such houses is the ceiling. It is typically made of wood and bamboo with a layer of mud meticulously and evenly applied over it. There are two advantages of the mud. One, it can be painted and repaired at minimal cost, and, two, it gives a cooling effect to the room.

  In such houses, an opening is provided in the middle of the ceiling covered by a wooden slab which can be removed to get access to the attic for cleaning it. The only thing is that there is no permanent provision to get into the attic at will; one has to use a ladder for the purpose. So, the attic is generally unused. However, birds such as pigeons and sparrows make nests in the attic as it becomes easily accessible through the gap between the sheets and the wood-and-bamboo ceiling. Therefore, occasional cleaning of the area becomes a must, especially during summers when the foul smell of the decaying body of a dead bird can make it unbearable for the residents.

  After dinner, when the children were fast asleep, I asked Smriti, “Do you like the house?”

  She said, “I don’t know yet. Give me a few days. Let me get it cleaned completely. Then I will give you my verdict. But before anything else tomorrow, get someone to clean the attic. I can’t put up with the foul smell anymore. There might be some dead bird or rat somewhere in the house.”

  “It’s really funny. I can’t smell a thing.” I replied.

  “You will…soon.”

  ***

  The next day, I had two workers clean the attic, three people clean the house of dust, dirt, and cobwebs, and two masons repair the peeling walls. Smriti and I supervised their work the whole day, giving inputs whenever we felt the need for it. The Sunday was utilized in the best way.

  Rimi and Rimon were sent off to my colleague’s place to keep them away from the dust. Rimi, being the older of the two, was instructed to take care of her six-year-old brother. Rimi herself was only nine, yet she was bossy enough for Rimon to obey her. By the time they returned in the evening, the house was restored to a livable stage except for the storeroom.

  That evening, Raghu cooked steaming-hot chicken curry for dinner. It was delicious but Smriti had a hard time feeding Rimon. He wouldn’t even touch his dinner. She tried various tricks, showed videos on cellphone, told stories, even played a peekaboo game, but nothing could make him eat. Eventually, she gave up.

  After we retired to bed, with the children asleep in the next room, I asked Smriti again, “Now tell me. Do you like the house?”

  She replied, “I would have liked it if you would have got rid of the foul smell. It’s still in the air. Something is rotting itself somewhere here.”

  “God knows where you are getting the smell from.”

  “Don’t tell me you aren’t getting it.”

  “I am not getting it.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned away from me. I tried to smell hard but couldn’t smell a thing. But I knew I had made her upset and to reconcile with her, I decided to fiddle with her favorite topic—horror.

  I said, “Do you know that I lived in a similar house when I was a child? Our village house now has been built after the earlier one was demolished. That earlier house was just like this. I mean, the same kind of walls, the same wooden supports, the same mud ceiling, and the same hole on it.”I said pointing at the opening on the ceiling and said, “There was a similar hole in that house. It was my biggest nightmare when I was a child.”

  She asked, “What is there to be scared of?”

  I said, “I was a very mischievous kid, the exact carbon copy of Rimon. Even Ma had a hard time fe
eding me. She would run around the whole day with the plate in her hands, chasing me. And I would eat one portion at a time, that too after throwing a lot of tantrums. Every meal for me would take an hour or two. Then one day she forced me to sit under one of such openings in our house and narrated a tale. A really scary tale.”

  Smriti was all ears. There was pin-drop silence in the house, the perfect background for a ghost story. Even a small sound could startle her and I could extract the element of surprise.

  I started, “A long time ago, when the house we lived on was first built; it belonged to a man named Gobin Das. He was a Zamindar, profusely stuffed with riches and properties. It was one of the biggest houses during those days. And it was actually big. It was a U-shaped building with rooms as big as this house. We had installed partitions to divide the rooms into smaller segments. A sprawling kitchen was at one end of the U and the middle section had a big corridor with two rooms of equal size. One was used as a living room and the other was our grandmother’s bedroom. The other end had the master bedroom, which we had segmented into smaller rooms. When my mother narrated the tale, I was seated under the opening of the master bedroom.

  “So, this man Gobin Das, though he was rich, he was cruel and crazy, and he carried a sword wherever he went. He never married and stayed there with a caretaker and a chowkidar. The caretaker was entrusted with the duty of collecting the monthly taxes and keeping them safe, whereas the chowkidar took care of the house and carried out daily chores. Though a cook was brought in from lower Assam, he left within a week. No one knew why. When no one else was willing to work for Gobin, the chowkidar himself started cooking the meals.

  “Gobin inflicted atrocities on the people who resided and cultivated on his land. If anyone failed to pay their share of taxes, he whipped them in front of the entire settlement and even took a family member hostage until the taxes were paid. Though my mother didn’t tell me then, later I comprehended she might have meant ‘family’ to be the defaulter’s wife. He was a lonely man, right? Moreover, once he was drunk, he punished people for flimsy matters. And the punishments were such that one never dared to commit any mistake again. Mom never told about the nature of punishments and I never asked.

  “Then, one day, the chowkidar committed suicide and the caretaker vanished into thin air without a trace. There was a rumor that had Gobin caught them swindling his money one night. They assumed him to be sound asleep but he was awake listening to their conversation and confessions. When he found out from their conversation about the place where they had stashed away his cash, he got up and killed the caretaker with his sword severing his head from his body. The chowkidar was found hanging in the living room, the living room of our very own house.

  “Gobin was arrested for murder but his caretaker’s body was never found. Years later, they found a blood stained piece of cloth in the attic of our master bedroom. He had hidden the body in the attic which completely decomposed over the course of time. But his soul still lived there.

  “Sometimes, a voice could be heard coming from the attic, ‘Namu ne? (Should I jump?)’And if by chance, anyone down below, said, ‘Naam! (Jump!)’, that thing jumped on him.

  They also said that if anyone called out ‘Namu Ne!’, two legs would dangle down from that opening and if he again said ‘Naam’, you know what would happen.

  “That night I ate without any ruckus just out of fear that Ma might call out Namu Ne. That worked for many years to follow till I found out…”

  Smriti was suddenly anxious. “What?” her eyes grew big enough to let me know her state of mind. A small sound in the attic could have made her gasp for breath.

  I said with all the suspense I could build up, “That it was all fake. I just made the whole story up.”

  I laughed till my stomach ached and reluctantly, she too smiled. She appreciated my brilliance in storytelling but it was only me who knew that all of it wasn’t made up.

  ***

  Next morning, I had to rush to office for some urgent meeting but I made sure that two of my staff attended to the stench in the attic. When I returned in the evening, they reported that they had cleaned the attic to even the remotest corner and they couldn’t find any dead birds or rat. They assured that they would clean downstairs the next day to see if they found any carcasses. But there was nothing I could do. The stench, which even I was able to smell now, was still inside my house.

  The other thing that actually took me by surprise when Rimon asked me, “Deuta! What is a Namu Ne?

  Smriti might have used the same tactic to make him eat. I asked, “Did you eat today?”

  He nodded in reply.

  I said, “Good. Then Namu Ne will never bother you. Eat your food daily. And don’t call that name again.”

  I rushed to the kitchen, where Smriti was, and shouted, “Why the hell did you have to say about the ghost in the attic to Rimon?”

  “What is wrong in that, Deben? I just used the same tactic as your mother to make him eat and he ate everything. It’s all a made-up story, right? Why are you getting so hyper?” she asked.

  “He is just a child, Smriti. He might get scared. Don’t do it again.”

  And I walked out of the kitchen.

  There was a reason to be hyper, a memory to be scared of, and by no means did I want my child to experience the same that I experienced.

  I was in seventh standard when it happened. Ma was in the kitchen on the other side of the house and I was in the master bedroom, seated at my study table, doing my homework. All of a sudden, I heard something moving in the attic. I was stunned; my young mind started imagining all sorts of horrific possibilities. It could have been a bird, a rat, a civet cat, or even a thief. But all I was thinking about was Namu Ne. I was scared to even move in my chair for it could have alerted Namu Ne of my presence and he might come down and gobble me up. The thing kept moving in the attic, from one corner of the ceiling to another, and I was transfixed on my table, not able to move even a finger.

  I tried to recall all the hymns that my mother used to chant while bowing to the deity, but I couldn’t repeat even one of them fully. However, the chanting gave me some courage. I got up from the chair, trying hard not to make even a scratch of a sound, and stood right below the opening on the ceiling. It wasn’t covered, for the cleaning of the attic had been going on and the work hadn’t been completed. It was pitch dark inside. With all the daring I could muster, I called, “Namu Ne!”

  The movement suddenly stopped. The only sound that filled the room was the sound of the seconds hand of the wall-clock. I kept staring at the opening for the moment to pass without anything happening, my heart pounding against my ribcage. But the moment lingered and it lingered so much that I had the intuition that something bad was about to happen. I had the urge to run away from it, to my mother in the kitchen, safe in her presence but something kept me rooted to the spot. I was terrified but nosy enough to wait.

  Then, quietly, as quiet as the movement of a pouncing tiger, two legs dangled down from the passage. The legs were white, not pale but completely white. On the calf of the left leg, a portion of flesh was missing as if something had eaten away the mass, and the bone jutted out of the rotten leftover flesh. The right leg was entire but blood and pus oozed out in places. The legs swayed in a rhythmic movement waiting to jump down if said, ‘Naam.’

  I tried to look but I couldn’t see anything above the legs, the light wasn’t enough up there, and I wasn’t bold enough to probe further. With all the strength I could gather, I ran. I ran and ran till I was safe in my mother’s arms. She was shocked to see me trembling and I narrated the whole incident taking gasps of air in between to calm down my nerves. Once I regained my composure, she escorted me to the bedroom; the legs weren’t there. She called out “Namu Ne” a few times as well but the legs didn’t show up again. Though she convinced me that it was only a fragment of my imagination, from that day my mother stopped scaring me in the name of Namu Ne and never again in my life did I see
those legs again.

  ***

  In fact, I had almost forgotten about the whole episode once we moved into the RCC buildings. It had been years that I had stayed in an Assam-type house and it was only when we moved into the official bungalow in Guwahati that I saw the opening on the ceiling again, I recollected the dreadful episode. Even if it was my hallucination, I would not like my children to have such an illusion.

  That evening, when we all were seated for dinner, Rimon insisted that he would eat by himself. Engrossed in our casual talks, we never realized when Rimon walked out of the dining room after finishing his food. It was only when the door of the master bedroom closed with a bang did we get alarmed.

  Suddenly the foul stench grew intense. I had the same eerie feeling that I had that night when I first saw those legs. I dashed towards the bedroom. A chill ran down my spine when I heard Rimon calling out in his immature voice, “Namu Ne!”

  As I opened the door, I saw Rimon standing right below the hole in the ceiling and, above him, dangling from the hole were the same white legs. The missing lump of flesh was still missing, and the bone still showed itself at the calf. They swung in the same rhythmic motion ready to jump down. And the disgusting odor that we have been trying to get rid of was swallowing the whole house.

  Before I could fetch Rimon from below the hole, he called aloud in his unripe voice, “Naam.”

  ABOUT NILUTPAL GOHAIN

  Nilutpal Gohain is a Government servant currently serving as Assistant Registrar of Cooperative Societies for the Government of Assam. He graduated in engineering from Vels University, Chennai and worked at sea as a marine engineer for a short stint before moving ashore. In 2015, he joined the Government of Assam after a short stint in Canara Bank as Probationary officer. Since then he has been in his current job.