Whispers in the Dark

by Ruskin Bond

  ‘Vishal!’ I called out to a boy who was sleeping a short distance away.

  ‘Vishal, wake up, there’s a corpse in my bed!’

  Vishal did wake up. ‘You’re dreaming, Bond. Go to sleep and stop disturbing everyone.’

  Just then, there was a groan, followed by a dreadful gurgle, from the body beside me. I shot out of bed, shouting at the top of my voice, waking up the entire dormitory.

  Lights came on. There was total confusion. The housemaster came running. I told him, and everyone else, what had happened. They came to my bed and had a good look at it. But there was no one there.

  On my insistence, I was moved to the other end of the dormitory. The house prefect, Johnson, took over my former bed.

  Two nights passed without further excitement, and a couple of boys started calling me a funk and a scaredy-cat. My response was to punch one of them on the nose.

  Then, on the third night, we were all woken by several ear-splitting shrieks, and Johnson came charging across the dormitory, screaming that two icy hands had taken him by the throat and tried to squeeze the life out of him. Lights came on, and the poor old housemaster came dashing in again. We calmed Johnson down and put him in a spare bed. The housemaster shone his torch on the boy’s face and neck, and, sure enough, we saw several bruises on his flesh, and the outline of a large hand.

  Next day, the offending bed was removed from the dormitory, but it was a few days before Johnson recovered from the shock. He was kept in the infirmary until the bruises disappeared, but for the rest of the year, he was a nervous wreck.

  Our nursing sister, who had looked after the infirmary for many years, recalled that some twenty years earlier, a boy called Tomkins had died suddenly in the dormitory. He was very tall for his age and apparently suffered from a heart problem. That day, he had taken part in a football match, and had gone to bed looking pale and exhausted. Early next morning, when the bell rang for gym class, he was found stiff and cold, having apparently died during the night.

  ‘He died peacefully, poor boy,’ recalled our nursing sister.

  But I’m not so sure. I can still hear that dreadful gurgle from the creature in my bed. And there was the struggle with Johnson. No, there was nothing peaceful about that death. Tomkins had gone most unwillingly . . .

  A FACE IN THE DARK

  Mr Oliver, an Anglo-Indian teacher, was returning to his school late one night, on the outskirts of the hill station of Simla. From before Kipling’s time, the school had been run on the lines of English public schools, and the boys, most of them from wealthy Indian families, wore blazers, caps and ties. Life magazine, in a feature on India, had once called it the ‘Eton of the East’. Oliver had been teaching in the school for several years.

  The Simla Bazaar, with its cinemas and restaurants, was about three miles from the school, and Mr Oliver, a bachelor, usually strolled into the town in the evening, returning after dark, when he would take a shortcut through the pine forest.

  When there was a strong wind, the pine trees made sad, eerie sounds that kept most people to the main road. But Mr Oliver was not a nervous or imaginative man. He carried a torch, and its gleam—the batteries were running down—moved fitfully down the narrow forest path. When its flickering light fell on the figure of a boy, who was sitting alone on a rock, Mr Oliver stopped. Boys were not supposed to be out after dark.

  ‘What are you doing out here, boy?’ asked Mr Oliver sharply, moving closer so that he could recognize the miscreant. But even as he approached the boy, Mr Oliver sensed that something was wrong. The boy appeared to be crying. His head hung down, he held his face in his hands, and his body shook convulsively. It was strange, soundless weeping, and Mr Oliver felt distinctly uneasy.

  ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ He asked, his anger giving way to concern. ‘What are you crying for?’ The boy would not answer or look up. His body continued to be racked with silent sobbing. ‘Come on, boy, you shouldn’t be out here at this hour. Tell me the trouble. Look up!’

  The boy looked up. He took his hands from his face and looked at his teacher. The light from Mr Oliver’s torch fell on the boy’s face—if you could call it a face.

  It had no eyes, ears, nose or mouth. It was just a round, smooth head—with a school cap on top of it! And that’s where the story should end. But for Mr Oliver, it did not end there.

  The torch fell from his trembling hand. He turned and scrambled down the path, running blindly through the trees and calling for help. He was still running towards the school buildings when he saw a lantern swinging in the middle of the path. Mr Oliver stumbled up to the watchman, gasping for breath. ‘What is it, sahib?’ asked the watchman. ‘Has there been an accident? Why are you running?’

  ‘I saw something—something horrible—a boy weeping in the forest—and he had no face!’

  ‘No face, sahib?’

  ‘No eyes, nose, mouth—nothing!’

  ‘Do you mean it was like this, sahib?’ asked the watchman and raised the lamp to his own face. The watchman had no eyes, no ears, no features at all—not even an eyebrow! And that’s when the wind blew the lamp out.

  WHISPERING IN THE DARK

  A wild night. Wind moaning, trees lashing themselves in a frenzy, rain beating down on the road, thunder over the mountains. Loneliness stretched ahead of me, a loneliness of the heart, as well as a physical loneliness. The world was blotted out by a mist that had come up from the valley, a thick, white, clammy shroud.

  I groped through the forest, groped in my mind for the memory of a mountain path, some remembered rock or ancient deodar. Then a streak of blue lightning gave me a glimpse of a barren hillside and a house cradled in mist.

  It was an old-world house, built of limestone, on the outskirts of a crumbling hill station. There was no light in its windows; the electricity had probably been disconnected long ago. But if I could get in, it would do for the night.

  I had no torch, but at times the moon shone through the wild clouds, and trees loomed out of the mist like primeval giants. I reached the front door and found it locked from within. I walked round to the side and broke a windowpane, put my hand through shattered glass and found the bolt.

  The window, warped by over a hundred monsoons, resisted at first. Then it yielded, and I climbed into the mustiness of a long-closed room, and the wind came in with me, scattering papers across the floor and knocking some unidentifiable object off a table. I closed the window, bolted it again; but the mist crawled through the broken glass, and the wind rattled it like a pair of castanets.

  There were matches in my pocket. I struck three before a light flared up.

  I was in a large room, crowded with furniture. Pictures on the walls. Vases on the mantelpiece. A candle stand. And, strangely enough, no cobwebs. For all its external look of neglect and dilapidation, the house had been cared for by someone. But before I could notice anything else, the match burnt out.

  As I stepped further into the room, the old deodar flooring creaked beneath my weight. By the light of another match I reached the mantelpiece and lit the candle, noticing at the same time that the candlestick was a genuine antique with cut-glass hangings. A deserted cottage with good furniture and glass. I wondered why no one had ever broken in. And then realized that I had just done so.

  I held the candlestick high and glanced round the room. The walls were hung with several watercolours and portraits in oils. There was no dust anywhere. But no one answered my call, no one responded to my hesitant knocking. It was as though the occupants of the house were in hiding, watching me obliquely from dark corners and chimneys.

  I entered a bedroom and found myself facing a full-length mirror. My reflection stared back at me as though I were a stranger, as though my reflection belonged to the house, while I was only an outsider.

  As I turned from the mirror, I thought I saw someone, something—some reflection other than mine—move behind me in the mirror. I caught a glimpse of whiteness, a pale oval face, burning eyes, long tre
sses, golden in the candlelight. But when I looked in the mirror again, there was nothing to be seen but my own pallid face.

  A pool of water was forming at my feet. I set the candle down on a small table, found the edge of the bed—a large old four-poster—sat down, and removed my soggy shoes and socks. Then I took off my clothes and hung them over the back of a chair.

  I stood naked in the darkness, shivering a little. There was no one to see me—and yet I felt oddly exposed, almost as though I had stripped in a room full of curious people.

  I got under the bedclothes—they smelled slightly of eucalyptus and lavender—but found there was no pillow. That was odd. A perfectly made bed, but no pillow! I was too tired to hunt for one. So I blew out the candle—and the darkness closed in around me, and the whispering began . . .

  The whispering began as soon as I closed my eyes. I couldn’t tell where it came from. It was all around me, mingling with the sound of the wind coughing in the chimney, the stretching of old furniture, the weeping of trees outside in the rain.

  Sometimes I could hear what was being said. The words came from a distance, a distance not so much of space as of time . . .

  ‘Mine, mine, he is all mine . . .’

  ‘He is ours, dear, ours.’

  Whispers, echoes, words hovering around me with bats’ wings, saying the most inconsequential things with a logical urgency.

  ‘You’re late for supper . . .’

  ‘He lost his way in the mist.’

  ‘Do you think he has any money?’

  ‘To kill a turtle, you must first tie its legs to two posts.’

  ‘We could tie him to the bed and pour boiling water down his throat.’

  ‘No, it’s simpler this way.’

  I sat up. Most of the whispering had been distant, impersonal, but this last remark had sounded horribly near.

  I relit the candle and the voices stopped. I got up and prowled around the room, vainly looking for some explanation for the voices. Once again, I found myself facing the mirror, staring at my own reflection, and the reflection of that other person, the girl with the golden hair and shining eyes. And this time she held a pillow in her hands. She was standing behind me.

  I remembered then the stories I had heard as a boy, of two spinster sisters—one beautiful, one plain—who lured rich, elderly gentlemen into their boarding house and suffocated them in the night. The deaths had appeared quite natural, and they had got away with it for years. It was only the surviving sister’s deathbed confession that had revealed the truth—and even then, no one had believed her.

  But that had been many, many years ago, and the house had long since fallen down . . .

  When I turned from the mirror, there was no one behind me. I looked again, and the reflection had gone.

  I crawled back into the bed and put the candle out. And I slept and dreamt (or was I awake and did it really happen?) that the woman I had seen in the mirror stood beside the bed, leant over me, looked at me with eyes flecked with orange flames. I saw people moving in those eyes. I saw myself. And then her lips touched mine, lips so cold, so dry, that a shudder ran through my body.

  And then, while her face became faceless and only the eyes remained, something else continued to press down upon me, something soft, heavy and shapeless, enclosing me in a suffocating embrace. I could not turn my head or open my mouth. I could not breathe.

  I raised my hands and clutched feebly at the thing on top of me. And to my surprise it came away. It was only a pillow that had somehow fallen over my face, half suffocating me, while I dreamt of a phantom kiss.

  I flung the pillow aside. I flung the bedclothes from me. I had had enough whispering, of ownerless reflections, of pillows that fell on me in the dark. I would brave the storm outside rather than continue to seek rest in this tortured house.

  I dressed quickly. The candle had almost guttered out. The house and everything in it belonged to the darkness of another time; I belonged to the light of day.

  I was ready to leave. I avoided the tall mirror with its grotesque rococo design. Holding the candlestick before me, I moved cautiously into the front room. The pictures on the walls sprang to life.

  One, in particular, held my attention, and I moved closer to examine it more carefully by the light of the dwindling candle. Was it just my imagination, or was the girl in the portrait the woman of my dream, the beautiful, pale reflection in the mirror? Had I gone back in time, or had time caught up with me?

  I turned to leave, and the candle gave one final sputter and went out, plunging the room in darkness. I stood still for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts, to still the panic that came rushing upon me. Just then there was a knocking on the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I called.

  Silence. And then, again, the knocking, and this time a voice, low and insistent: ‘Please let me in, please let me in . . .’

  I stepped forward, unbolted the door and flung it open.

  She stood outside, in the rain. Not the pale, beautiful one, but a wizened old hag with bloodless lips and flaring nostrils and—but where were the eyes? No eyes, no eyes!

  She swept past me on the wind, and at the same time, I took advantage of the open doorway to run outside, to run gratefully into the pouring rain, to be lost for hours among the dripping trees, to be glad for all the leeches clinging to my flesh.

  And when, with the dawn, I found my way at last, I rejoiced in birdsong and the sunlight piercing and scattering the clouds.

  And today if you were to ask me if the old house is still there or not, I would not be able to tell you, for the simple reason that I haven’t the slightest desire to go looking for it.

  THE WIND ON HAUNTED HILL

  Who—whoo—whooo, cried the wind as it swept down from the Himalayan snows.

  It hurried over the hills and passes, and hummed and moaned in the tall pines and deodars.

  On Haunted Hill there was little to stop the wind—only a few stunted trees and bushes, and the ruins of what had once been a small settlement.

  On the slopes of the next hill there was a small village. People kept large stones on their tin roofs to prevent them from blowing away. There was nearly always a wind in these parts. Even on sunny days, doors and windows rattled, chimneys choked, clothes blew away.

  Three children stood beside a low stonewall, spreading clothes out to dry. On each garment they placed a rock. Even then the clothes fluttered like flags and pennants.

  Usha, dark-haired, rose-cheeked, struggled with her grandfather’s long, loose shirt. She was about eleven or twelve. Her younger brother, Suresh, was doing his best to hold down a bed sheet while Binya, a slightly older girl, Usha’s friend and neighbour, was handing them the clothes, one at a time.

  Once they were sure everything was on the wall, firmly held down by rocks, they climbed upon the flat stones and sat there for a while, in the wind and the sun, staring across the fields at the ruins on Haunted Hill.

  ‘I must go to the bazaar today,’ said Usha.

  ‘I wish I could come too,’ said Binya. ‘But I have to help with the cows and the housework. Mother isn’t well.’

  ‘I can come!’ said Suresh. He was always ready to visit the bazaar, which was three miles away on the other side of Haunted Hill.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ said Usha. ‘You must help Grandfather chop wood.’

  Their father was in the army, posted in a distant part of the country, and Suresh and his grandfather were the only men in the house. Suresh was eight, chubby and almond-eyed.

  ‘Won’t you be afraid to come back alone?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should I be afraid?’

  ‘There are ghosts on the hill.’

  ‘I know, but I will be back before it gets dark. Ghosts don’t appear during the day.’

  ‘Are there many ghosts in the ruins?’ asked Binya.

  ‘Grandfather says so. He says that many years ago—over a hundred years ago—English people lived on the hill. But it was a bad sp
ot, always getting struck by lightning, and they had to move to the next range and build another place.’

  ‘But if they went away, why should there be any ghosts?’

  ‘Because—Grandfather says—during a terrible storm, one of the houses was hit by lightning and everyone in it was killed. Everyone, including the children.’

  ‘Were there many children?’

  ‘There were two of them. A brother and sister. Grandfather says he has seen them many times, when passing through the ruins late at night. He has seen them playing in the moonlight.’

  ‘Wasn’t he frightened?’

  ‘No. Old people don’t mind seeing ghosts.’

  Usha set out on her walk to the bazaar at two in the afternoon. It was about an hour’s walk. She went through the fields, now turning yellow with flowering mustard, then along the saddle of the hill, and up to the ruins.

  The path went straight through the ruins. Usha knew it well; she had often taken it while going to the bazaar to do the weekly shopping, or to see her aunt who lived in the town.

  Wild flowers grew in the crumbling walls. A wild plum tree grew straight out of the floor of what had once been a large hall. Its soft, white blossoms had begun to fall. Lizards scuttled over the stones, while a whistling thrush, its deep-purple plumage glistening in the soft sunshine, sat in an empty window and sang its heart out.

  Usha sang to herself, as she tripped lightly along the path. Soon she had left the ruins behind. The path dipped steeply down to the valley and the little town with its straggling bazaar.

  Usha took her time in the bazaar. She bought soap and matches, spices and sugar (none of these things could be had in the village, where there was no shop), a new pipe stem for her grandfather’s hookah and an exercise book for Suresh to do his sums in. As an afterthought, she bought him some marbles. Then she went to a mochi’s shop to have her mother’s slippers repaired. The mochi was busy, so she left the slippers with him and said she’d be back in half an hour.