What The Eyes Don't See

18 | Gift from the Other Side

The utter darkness of the apartment disoriented him for a moment. When his eyes focused, he first saw the long couch in the main hall. Surely the two of them had sat there. He kept his hand on the couch, trying to feel Renee's warmth still on it. Then another thought made him jerk. Did they drink? Did he start kissing her on the couch itself or did he wait? Who initiated? He was loath to believe it was Renee. Surely that bastard Anay had made the first move. He balled up his fist and hit the wall behind him.

Vishwa was enmeshed in such thoughts when he was suddenly alerted to a noise in the inner room, the bedroom. He had been to Anay's house earlier, but he had never seen that part of the house. He waited, and his ear twitched again as the noise repeated. Like someone walking in the room. But was it an illusion? This house, situated so close to the beach, was no stranger to uncanny noises.

"Renee?" he called, half in hope, half in terror.

There was something in there. He leaned a bit to look into the room. The white door was partly closed but he could see a portion of the dark room, and in it he could discern something in the darkness. His heart leaped into his mouth. Someone was standing in there. A hooded figure dressed in some kind of a long black gown fluttering in the sea breeze that the neighborhood was famous for.

The next moment, he chided himself. It was his mind playing tricks; that was all. He had had all that ghost talk with the boys and that was where this was coming from. There was no Renee anymore. This was all a wild goose chase. He slapped his cheek to bring himself back to full alertness.

But that gown-like thing was still there. He could see it.

Maybe it was a garment left behind, now hanging away forgotten on the doornail behind the door. He would have ignored it, but then there was something.

And then, in the wind that blew in his face, he clearly heard a word. It was a whooshing sound, and in that whoosh, he heard: "VISSSSHHHWAAAAA..."

He jumped. He heard another sound. A dull thud-thud-thud. It was like a sack filled with something beating slowly against the door. Something was beckoning him.

That was the moment Vishwa should have run out of there. He had already heard the stories from his friends. He should have left everything and run. But as he stood there in that starkly empty and dark house with the salty breeze from the sea licking his face, he felt he was meant to be here. Something had called him, or why would he foolhardily come here at all? Whatever was in that room was calling out to him now, seeking his attention.

"Hullo! Is someone in there?" he said. Then he took a step forward, in the direction of that room, and he could no longer tell whether that sound he heard was the thudding of that thing against the door or his own rapidly increasing heartbeat. Coupled with that fear was a magnetic attraction in his legs that was remorselessly pulling him toward the door.

Just like that, he said, "Renee? Is that you? Please tell me it is you."

He wasn't able to see anything apart from the fluttering shred of the black gown yet, but some unknown intelligence in his mind hoped that it was Renee. And so overwhelming was that feeling that he forgot all caution.

His pace accelerated. There were only seven steps he needed to take to reach the room, and he took them very quickly, and pushed the door aside, and then he looked behind it with an eager expression on his face.

That very moment, his hands flew up to his eyes. He shrieked like the sky had collapsed on his head. He had seen something there, behind the door, and even if it was for only a split second, he would forever wish that that sight had never met his eyes. So ghastly was that sight, that he now rubbed his eyes with such fervor that it appeared as if he was trying to scratch them out.

What he had seen could only be described as this:

The black thing fluttering away and banging against the door was almost like a human body. But its feet did not touch the floor. That could not be made out very clearly, for the body wore a long black robe, made of many shredded cloth fragments, or at least they looked like cloth, and those were the things that were flapping away in the breeze. The thing had long arms that hung limply by its sides, and only the hands were visible; their fingers too long and too pale to be of human origin. These were the hands that were hitting the door rhythmically as that thing swayed in the breeze. It was inconceivable how that body would sway because of the breeze, though, for the body looked heavy enough to be moved by it. And in that one glimpse, Vishwa also saw what would be seared into his memory forever—the body was dangling from a doornail which was embedded into the back of its skull.

All of this, he absorbed within one glimpse. He recoiled and made his way to run out of the room, but something stopped him. There was a purpose to this, he knew. He had been summoned. Why had he been summoned? Somehow, he braved himself and looked at the face of the person who was hanging thus.

The face was devoid of all color and most definitely dead, the lips having gone blue several moons ago. He did not know whose face it was and felt a pang within his heart when he saw that it wasn't Renee.

As he moved in closer to see who it was, it was the ultimate moment of terror! Those eyes, those lifeless orbs, suddenly flickered. And that hanging limp and long-dead corpse opened its eyes—so wide that it was if there weren't any eyelids at all and the eyes were simply thrust into their skull sockets—and a pair of blue, intensely blue, irises looked right into the very soul of the terrified man.

Vishwa shrieked and backed off with such force that he toppled over and fell. He did not dare to open his eyes anymore. He knew his eyes were accursed forever, for he had glanced into the very soul of hell.

An object fell on him then. He felt that object—it was something flat and rectangular and light—and he knew it wasn't just an accident. That thing, whatever it was, had flung that object on him deliberately.

That was when he heard the words:

"TAKE IT TO ANAY."

Here it was, then. The ghost or the spirit or whatever that was had given him something. That villain dressed in attire that looked like a nun's shredded habit had entrusted him with a precious secret. The importance of it did not escape him, but he could not bring himself to look at it.

He took that thing and fled out of the house. He ran over to Patel's house, flung the keys at him, and rushed out of the building. He stuffed that thing in the folds of his shirt as he ran, still not daring to look at it. He was sure that anybody who saw that infernal object would be similarly accursed. He had to give it to Anay; that much he knew. Without wasting another moment, he hailed a cab that would take him all the way back to Mira Road. It stopped on the other side of the road.

As he ran to cross the road to get to the cab, he failed to notice the 48-seater public service bus that was hurtling down the road from the far end.

***

Damn, what just happened?