A Season of Ghosts Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  A SEASON OF GHOSTS

  Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published by Penguin. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

  Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.

  A SEASON OF GHOSTS

  RUSKIN BOND

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Introduction

  Whistling in the Dark

  Wilson’s Bridge

  On Fairy Hill

  The Black Cat

  Reunion at the Regal

  Something in the Water

  The Prize

  Night of the Millennium

  The Rakshasas

  Who Killed the Rani?

  Introduction

  ‘SIR, DO YOU believe in ghosts?’ asked a young student from a New Delhi school.

  After giving this question some thought, I answered in all honesty, ‘Well, I don’t believe in them. But I keep seeing them!’

  Seeing, they say, is believing, but I’m not so sure. You can see a magician or conjurer cut a man in half, but you will believe what you see only if he fails to put the two halves together again.

  Anyway, here are some of the ghosts, phantoms, witches, demons and creatures of the night that I have seen, felt or conjured up.

  Most of these stories were written during the last six months, which could rightly be called my ‘dark’ or ‘supernatural’ period. But over the years I have written the occasional ghost story, and I have been fascinated by the genre ever since I discovered the stories of M.R. James in a lonely forest bungalow when I was just ten or eleven. I went on to enjoy the supernatural tales of Algernon Blackwood, Hugh Walpole, H.G. Wells, Walter de la Mare, Sheridan Le Fanu, Kipling, and, in more recent times, Satyajit Ray. And a friend’s mother, ‘Bibiji’, regaled me with tales of beautiful jinns and churels, mischievous bhuts and prets, and terrifying rakshasas.

  I know some very sensible and practical people who have experienced the presence of ghosts. Mr Vishal Ohri, the manager of the State Bank in Mussoorie, tells me of a chandelier that rocks all night in one of the guest rooms. Mrs Goel, in Almora, feels a malignant presence whenever she climbs a certain flight of stairs. The ghost of Colonel Young, the founder of Landour, often turns up in Ganesh Saili’s cottage—situated on Young’s old Mullingar estate—and vanishes along with Mr Saili’s pipe tobacco. H.H. Maharani Sahiba of Jind has a pet Pekinese, Guru Mai, who has been known to levitate. She ascends slowly toward the ceiling and then comes down again quite rapidly but without any injury to herself. Apparently she is possessed by a pisach, or evil spirit, although I have always found her to be a most affectionate little creature.

  I don’t think ghosts appear at random. They seem to favour places closely connected with their former existence in this world. Old houses, which have seen many people come and go, are often favourite haunts for the spirits of the departed. When I lived at Maplewood Lodge, there was a ghost who used to flitter through my bedroom late at night. I don’t see it here at Ivy Cottage. Perhaps the noise of passing traffic frightens it away.

  My old school, Bishop Cotton’s in Shimla, had a ghost who walked the corridors at night—probably the same gentleman who had set the building on fire in the 1870s. My mother, who studied at the La Martiniere in Lucknow, told me of a haunted boxroom into which no one ever went alone. Most old schools have their ghosts. It’s almost a tradition. As also with regimental parade grounds, which always have ghostly colonels on phantom horses; railway retiring rooms, where someone always waits for a train that never comes; and old dak bungalows, where you may be waited upon by a spectral khansama from the Raj days.

  The novella included in this book is not a ghost story but rather a light-hearted attempt at writing a detective story. ‘Who killed the Rani?’ is set in the Mussoorie of twenty-odd years ago, when vehicles were a rarity in the hill station and even a police officer had to trudge around on aching feet. Although Mussoorie is not as placid and restful as it used to be, we have never really had a crime wave. Occasionally the corpse of a tourist tumbles out of a cupboard or turns up in a hotel boxbed, left behind by his erstwhile companions. The character and type of crime has changed over the years. Crimes of passion—as in my story—are rather old-fashioned. Today it’s usually about money or property.

  Inspector Keemat Lal, based on a police officer who had once befriended me, is no Holmes or Poirot; he is a bit of a plodder, but he gets there in the end. And he has what other brainy ’tecs seldom have—a vulnerable nature, a touch of humanity, a streak of compassion, which make him a nice man to know. One never feels overawed or uncomfortable in his presence.

  And what of the ‘Rani’? She existed too—a rather unfriendly neighbour, who was both feared and detested by those who had to deal with her. A witch of sorts, in fact. I put her in this story, making her the victim, while she was still alive, although I took the trouble to disguise her true identity. A year later she died, in mysterious circumstances. I felt bad about it at the time, though I hadn’t really wished her dead. Was it just coincidence? Or presentiment? Or do our thoughts, if strong enough, sometimes influence external events? I hope not. But you never know …

  Landour, Mussoorie

  November 1999 Ruskin Bond

  Whistling in the Dark

  THE MOON WAS almost at the full. Bright moonlight flooded the road. But I was stalked by the shadows of the trees, by the crooked oak branches reaching out towards me—some threateningly, others as though they needed companionship.

  Once I dreamt that the trees could walk. That on moonlit nights like this they would uproot themselves for a while, visit each other, talk about old times—for they had seen many men and happenings, especially the older ones. And then, before dawn, they would return to the places where they had been condemned to grow. Lonely sentinels of the night. And this was a good night for them to walk. They appeared eager to do so: a restless rustling of leaves, the creaking of branches—these were sounds that came from within them in the silence of the night …

  Occasionally other strollers passed me in the dark. It was still quite early, just eight o’clock, and some people were on their way home. Others were walking into town for a taste of the bright lights, shops and restaurants. On the unlit road I could not recognize them. They did not notice me. I was reminded of an old song from my childhood. Softly, I began humming the tune, and soon the words came back to me:

  We three,

  We’re not a crowd;

  We’re not even company—

  My echo,

  My shadow,

  And me …

  I looked down at my shadow, moving silently beside me. We take our shadows for granted, don’t we? There they are, the uncomplaining companions of a lifetime, mute and helpless witnesses to our every act of commission or omission. On this bright moonlit night I could not help noticing you, Shadow, and I was sorry that you had to see so much that I was ashamed of; but glad, too, that you were around when I had my small triumphs. And what of my echo? I thought of calling out to see if my call came back to me; but I refrained from doing so, as I did not wish to disturb the perfect stillness of the mountains or the conversations of the trees.

  The road woun
d up the hill and levelled out at the top, where it became a ribbon of moonlight entwined between tall deodars. A flying squirrel glided across the road, leaving one tree for another. A nightjar called. The rest was silence.

  The old cemetery loomed up before me. There were many old graves—some large and monumental—and there were a few recent graves too, for the cemetery was still in use. I could see flowers scattered on one of them—a few late dahlias and scarlet salvia. Further on, near the boundary wall, part of the cemetery’s retaining wall had collapsed in the heavy monsoon rains. Some of the tombstones had come down with the wall. One grave lay exposed. A rotting coffin and a few scattered bones were the only relics of someone who had lived and loved like you and me.

  Part of the tombstone lay beside the road, but the lettering had worn away. I am not normally a morbid person, but something made me stoop and pick up a smooth round shard of bone, probably part of a skull. When my hand closed over it, the bone crumbled into fragments. I let them fall to the grass. Dust to dust.

  And from somewhere, not too far away, came the sound of someone whistling.

  At first I thought it was another late-evening stroller, whistling to himself much as I had been humming my old song. But the whistler approached quite rapidly; the whistling was loud and cheerful. A boy on a bicycle sped past. I had only a glimpse of him, before his cycle went weaving through the shadows on the road.

  But he was back again in a few minutes. And this time he stopped a few feet away from me, and gave me a quizzical half-smile. A slim dusky boy of fourteen or fifteen. He wore a school blazer and a yellow scarf. His eyes were pools of liquid moonlight.

  ‘You don’t have a bell on your cycle,’ I said.

  He said nothing, just smiled at me with his head a little to one side. I put out my hand, and I thought he was going to take it. But then, quite suddenly, he was off again, whistling cheerfully though rather tunelessly. A whistling schoolboy. A bit late for him to be out, but he seemed an independent sort.

  The whistling grew fainter, then faded away altogether. A deep sound-denying silence fell upon the forest. My shadow and I walked home.

  Next morning I woke to a different kind of whistling—the song of the thrush outside my window.

  It was a wonderful day, the sunshine warm and sensuous, and I longed to be out in the open. But there was work to be done, proofs to be corrected, letters to be written. And it was several days before I could walk to the top of the hill, to that lonely tranquil resting place under the deodars. It seemed to me ironic that those who had the best view of the glistening snow-capped peaks were all buried several feet underground.

  Some repair work was going on. The retaining wall of the cemetery was being shored up, but the overseer told me that there was no money to restore the damaged grave. With the help of the chowkidar, I returned the scattered bones to a little hollow under the collapsed masonry, and I left some money with him so that he could have the open grave bricked up. The name on the gravestone had worn away, but I could make out a date—20 November 1950—some fifty years ago, but not too long ago as gravestones go …

  I found the burial register in the church vestry and turned back the yellowing pages to 1950, when I was just a schoolboy myself. I found the name there—Michael Dutta, aged fifteen—and the cause of death: road accident.

  Well, I could only make guesses. And to turn conjecture into certainty, I would have to find an old resident who might remember the boy or the accident.

  There was old Miss Marley at Pine Top. A retired teacher from Woodstock, she had a wonderful memory, and she had lived in the hill station for more than half a century.

  White-haired and smooth-cheeked, her bright blue eyes full of curiosity, she gazed benignly at me through her old-fashioned pince-nez.

  ‘Michael was a charming boy—full of exuberance, always ready to oblige. I had only to mention that I needed a newspaper or an Aspirin, and he’d be off on his bicycle, swooping down these steep roads with great abandon. But these hills roads, with their sudden corners, weren’t meant for racing around on a bicycle. They were widening our road for motor traffic, and a truck was coming uphill, loaded with rubble, when Michael came round a bend and smashed headlong into it. He was rushed to the hospital, and the doctors did their best, but he did not recover consciousness. Of course you must have seen his grave. That’s why you’re here. His parents? They left shortly afterwards. Went abroad, I think… A charming boy, Michael, but just a bit too reckless. You’d have liked him, I think.’

  I did not see the phantom bicycle-rider again for some time, although I felt his presence on more than one occasion. And when, on a cold winter’s evening, I walked past that lonely cemetery, I thought I heard him whistling far away. But he did not manifest himself. Perhaps it was only the echo of a whistle, in communion with my insubstantial shadow.

  It was several months before I saw that smiling face again. And then it came at me out of the mist as I was walking home in drenching monsoon rain. I had been to a dinner party at the old community centre, and I was returning home along a very narrow, precipitous path known as the Eyebrow. A storm had been threatening all evening. A heavy mist had settled on the hillside. It was so thick that the light from my torch simply bounced off it. The sky blossomed with sheet lightning and thunder rolled over the mountains. The rain became heavier. I moved forward slowly, carefully, hugging the hillside. There was a clap of thunder, and then I saw him emerge from the mist and stand in my way—the same slim dark youth who had materialized near the cemetery. He did not smile. Instead he put up his hand and waved me back. I hesitated, stood still. The mist lifted a little, and I saw that the path had disappeared. There was a gaping emptiness a few feet in front of me. And then a drop of over a hundred feet to the rocks below.

  As I stepped back, clinging to a thorn bush for support, the boy vanished. I stumbled back to the community centre and spent the night on a chair in the library.

  I did not see him again.

  But weeks later, when I was down with a severe bout of flu, I heard him from my sickbed, whistling beneath my window. Was he calling to me to join him, I wondered, or was he just trying to reassure me that all was well? I got out of bed and looked out, but I saw no one. From time to time I heard his whistling; but as I got better, it grew fainter until it ceased altogether.

  Fully recovered, I renewed my old walks to the top of the hill. But although I lingered near the cemetery until it grew dark, and paced up and down the deserted road, I did not see or hear the whistler again. I felt lonely, in need of a friend, even if it was only a phantom bicycle-rider. But there were only the trees.

  And so every evening I walk home in the darkness, singing the old refrain:

  We three,

  We’re not alone,

  We’re not even company—

  My echo,

  My shadow,

  And me …

  Wilson’s Bridge

  THE OLD WOODEN bridge has gone, and today an iron suspension bridge straddles the Bhagirathi as it rushes down the gorge below Gangotri. But villagers will tell you that you can still hear the hoofs of Wilson’s horse as he gallops across the bridge he had built a hundred and fifty years ago. At the time people were sceptical of its safety, and so, to prove its sturdiness, he rode across it again and again. Parts of the old bridge can still be seen on the far bank of the river. And the legend of Wilson and his pretty hill bride, Gulabi, is still wellknown in this region.

  I had joined some friends in the old forest rest house near the river. There were the Rays, recently married, and the Dattas, married many years. The younger Rays quarrelled frequently; the older Dattas looked on with more amusement than concern. I was a part of their group and yet something of an outsider. As a single man, I was a person of no importance. And as a marriage counsellor, I wouldn’t have been of any use to them.

  I spent most of my time wandering along the river banks or exploring the thick deodar and oak forests that covered the slopes. It was t
hese trees that had made a fortune for Wilson and his patron, the Raja of Tehri. They had exploited the great forests to the full, floating huge logs downstream to the timber yards in the plains.

  Returning to the rest house late one evening, I was halfway across the bridge when I saw a figure at the other end, emerging from the mist. Presently I made out a woman, wearing the plain dhoti of the hills; her hair fell loose over her shoulders. She appeared not to see me, and reclined against the railing of the bridge, looking down at the rushing waters far below. And then, to my amazement and horror, she climbed over the railing and threw herself into the river.

  I ran forward, calling out, but I reached the railing only to see her fall into the foaming waters below, where she was carried swiftly downstream.

  The watchman’s cabin stood a little way off. The door was open. The watchman, Ram Singh, was reclining on his bed, smoking a hookah.

  ‘Someone just jumped off the bridge,’ I said breathlessly. ‘She’s been swept down the river!’

  The watchman was unperturbed. ‘Gulabi again,’ he said, almost to himself; and then to me, ‘Did you see her clearly?’

  ‘Yes, a woman with long loose hair—but I didn’t see her face very clearly.’

  ‘It must have been Gulabi. Only a ghost, my dear sir. Nothing to be alarmed about. Every now and then someone sees her throw herself into the river. Sit down,’ he said, gesturing towards a battered old armchair, ‘be comfortable and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  I was far from comfortable, but I listened to Ram Singh tell me the tale of Gulabi’s suicide. After making me a glass of hot sweet tea, he launched into a long rambling account of how Wilson, a British adventurer seeking his fortune, had been hunting musk deer when he encountered Gulabi on the path from her village. The girl’s grey-green eyes and peach-blossom complexion enchanted him, and he went out of his way to get to know her people. Was he in love with her, or did he simply find her beautiful and desirable? We shall never really know. In the course of his travels and adventures he had known many women, but Gulabi was different, childlike and ingenuous, and he decided he would marry her. The humble family to which she belonged had no objection. Hunting had its limitations, and Wilson found it more profitable to trap the region’s great forest wealth. In a few years he had made a fortune. He built a large timbered house at Harsil, another in Dehradun, and a third at Mussoorie. Gulabi had all she could have wanted, including two robust little sons. When he was away on work, she looked after their children and their large apple orchard at Harsil.