The Laughing Skull Read online

  And so I returned to my desk, my typewriter, my newspaper articles and correspondence. It was a lonely period in my life. My marriage hadn’t worked out: my wife, fond of high society and averse to living with an unsuccessful writer in a remote cottage in the woods, was following her own, more successful career in Mumbai. I had always been rather half-hearted in my approach to making money, whereas she had always wanted more and more of it. She left me—left me with my books and my dreams….

  Had it all been a dream, that strange episode on Pari Tibba? Had an over-active imagination conjured up those aerial spirits, those Siddhas of the Upper Air? Or were they underground people, living deep within the bowels of the hill? If I was going to keep my sanity I knew I had better get on with the more mundane aspects of living—such as going into town to buy my groceries, mending the leaking roof, paying the electricity bill, plodding up to the post office, and remembering to deposit the odd cheque that came my way. All the mundane things that made life so dull and dreary.

  The truth is, what we commonly call life is not life at all. Its routine and settled ways are the curse of life, and we will do almost anything to get away from the trivial, even if it is only for a few hours of forgetfulness in alcohol, drugs, forbidden sex, or golf. Some of us would even go underground with the fairies, those little people who have sought refuge in Mother Earth from mankind’s killing ways; for they are as vulnerable as butterflies and flowers. All things beautiful are easily destroyed.

  I am sitting at my window in the gathering dark, penning these stray thoughts, when I see them coming—hand in hand, walking on a swirl of mist, radiant, suffused with all the colours of the rainbow. For a rainbow has formed a bridge from them, from Pari Tibba, to the edge of my window.

  I am ready to go, to love and be loved, in their secret lairs or in the upper air—far from the stifling confines of the world in which we toil….

  Come, fairies, carry me away, to love me as you did that summer’s day!

  Bhoot-Aunty

  (An extract from Mr Oliver’s diary)

  Aghost on the main highway past our school. She’s known as Bhoot-Aunty—a spectral apparition who appears to motorists on their way to Sanjauli. She waves down passing cars and asks for a lift; and if you give her one, you are liable to have an accident.

  This lady in white is said to be the revenant of a young woman who was killed in a car accident not far from here, a few months ago. Several motorists claim to have seen her. Oddly enough, pedestrians don’t come across her.

  Miss Ramola, Miss D’Costa and I are the exceptions.

  I had accompanied some of the staff and boys to the girls’ school to see a hockey match, and afterwards the ladies asked me to accompany them back as it was getting dark and they had heard there was a panther about.

  ‘The only panther is Mr Oliver,’ remarked Miss D’Costa, who was spending the weekend with Anjali Ramola.

  ‘Such a harmless panther,’ said Anjali.

  I wanted to say that panthers always attack women who wore outsize earrings (such as Miss D’Costa’s) but my gentlemanly upbringing prevented a rude response.

  As we turned the corner near our school gate, Miss D’Costa cried out, ‘Oh, do you see that strange woman sitting on the parapet wall?’

  Sure enough, a figure clothed in white was resting against the wall, its face turned away from us.

  ‘Could it—could it be—Bhoot-Aunty?’ stammered Miss D’Costa.

  The two ladies stood petrified in the middle of the road. I stepped forward and asked, ‘Who are you, and what can we do for you?’

  The ghostly apparition raised its arms, got up suddenly and rushed past me. Miss D’Costa let out a shriek. Anjali turned and fled. The figure in white flapped about, then tripped over its own winding-cloth, and fell in front of me.

  As it got to its feet, the white sheet fell away and revealed—Mirchi!

  ‘You wicked boy!’ I shouted. ‘Just what do you think you are up to?’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ he gasped. ‘It’s just a joke. Bhoot-Aunty, sir!’ And he fled the scene.

  When the ladies had recovered, I saw them home and promised to deal severely with Mirchi. But on second thoughts I decided to overlook his prank. Miss D’Costa deserved getting a bit of a fright for calling me a panther.

  I had picked up Mirchi’s bedsheet from the road, and after supper I carried it into the dormitory and placed it on his bed without any comment. He was about to get into bed, and looked up at me in some apprehension.

  ‘Er—thank you, sir,’ he said.

  ‘An enjoyable performance,’ I told him. ‘Next time, make it more convincing.’

  After making sure that all the dormitory and corridor lights were out, I went for a quiet walk on my own. I am not averse to a little solitude. I have no objection to my own company. This is different from loneliness, which can assail you even when you are amongst people. Being a misfit in a group of boisterous party-goers can be a lonely experience. But being alone as a matter of choice is one of life’s pleasures.

  As I passed the same spot where Mirchi had got up to mischief, I was surprised to see a woman sitting by herself on the low parapet wall. Another lover of solitude, I thought. I gave her no more than a glance. She was looking the other way. A pale woman, dressed very simply. I had gone some distance when a thought suddenly came to me. Had I just passed Bhoot-Aunty? The real bhoot? The pale woman in white had seemed rather ethereal.

  I stopped, turned, and looked again.

  The lady had vanished.

  A Face in the Dark

  It may give you some idea of rural humour if I begin this tale with an anecdote that concerns me. I was walking alone through a village at night when I met an old man carrying a lantern. I found, to my surprise, that the man was blind. ‘Old man’ I asked, ‘if you cannot see, why do you carry a lamp?’

  ‘I carry this,’ he replied, ‘so that fools do not stumble against me in the dark.’

  This incident has only a slight connection with the story that follows, but I think it provides the right sort of tone and setting. Mr Oliver, an Anglo-Indian teacher, was returning to his school late one night, on the outskirts of the hill-station of Simla. The school was conducted on English public school lines and the boys, most of them from well-to-do Indian families, wore blazers, caps, and ties. Life magazine, in a feature on India had once called this school the ‘Eton of the East’.

  Individuality was not encouraged; they were all destined to become ‘leaders of men’.

  Mr Oliver had been teaching in the school for several years. Sometimes it seemed like an eternity; for one day followed another with the same monotonous routine. The Simla bazaar, with its cinemas and restaurants, was about two 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 short cut through a 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, on the night I write of, its pale gleam—the batteries were running down—moved fitfully over 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 of school after 7 p.m., and it was now well past nine.

  ‘What are you doing out here, boy?’ asked Mr Oliver sharply, moving closer so that he could recognise 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 a 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 up at his teacher. The light from Mr Oliver’s torch fell on the boy’s face—if you could call it a face.

  He 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—as indeed it has for several people who have had similar experiences and dropped dead of inexplicable heart attacks. 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 had never before been so pleased to see the night-watchman. He stumbled up to the watchman, gasping for breath and speaking incoherently.

  ‘What is it, Sir?’ 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, Sir?’

  ‘No eyes, nose, mouth—nothing.’

  ‘Do you mean it was like this, Sir?’ 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!

  The wind blew the lamp out, and Mr Oliver had his heart attack.

  Eyes of the Cat

  I wrote this little story for the schoolgirl who said my stories weren’t scary enough. Her comment was ‘Not bad’, and she gave me seven out of ten.

  Her eyes seemed flecked with gold when the sun was on them. And as the sun set over the mountains, drawing a deep red wound across the sky, there was more than gold in Kiran’s eyes. There was anger; for she had been cut to the quick by some remarks her teacher had made—the culmination of weeks of insults and taunts.

  Kiran was poorer than most of the girls in her class and could not afford the tuitions that had become almost obligatory if one was to pass and be promoted. ‘You’ll have to spend another year in the ninth,’ said Madam. ‘And if you don’t like that, you can find another school—a school where it won’t matter if your blouse is torn and your tunic is old and your shoes are falling apart.’ Madam had shown her large teeth in what was supposed to be a good-natured smile, and all the girls had tittered dutifully. Sycophancy had become part of the curriculum in Madam’s private academy for girls.

  On the way home in the gathering gloom, Kiran’s two companions commiserated with her.

  ‘She’s a mean old thing,’ said Aarti. ‘She doesn’t care for anyone but herself.’

  ‘Her laugh reminds me of a donkey braying,’ said Sunita, who was more forthright.

  But Kiran wasn’t really listening. Her eyes were fixed on some point in the far distance, where the pines stood in silhouette against a night sky that was growing brighter every moment. The moon was rising, a full moon, a moon that meant something very special to Kiran, that made her blood tingle and her skin prickle and her hair glow and send out sparks. Her steps seemed to grow lighter, her limbs more sinewy as she moved gracefully, softly over the mountain path.

  Abruptly she left her companions at a fork in the road.

  ‘I’m taking the short cut through the forest,’ she said.

  Her friends were used to her sudden whims. They knew she was not afraid of being alone in the dark. But Kiran’s moods made them feel a little nervous, and now, holding hands, they hurried home along the open road.

  The short cut took Kiran through the dark oak forest. The crooked, tormented branches of the oaks threw twisted shadows across the path. A jackal howled at the moon; a nightjar called from urgency, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Bright moonlight bathed the hillside when she reached her home on the outskirts of the village.

  Refusing her dinner, she went straight to her small room and flung the window open. Moonbeams crept over the windowsill and over her arms which were already covered with golden hair. Her strong nails had shredded the rotten wood of the window-sill.

  Tail swishing and ears pricked, the tawny leopard came swiftly out of the window, crossed the open field behind the house, and melted into the shadows.

  A little later it padded silently through the forest.

  Although the moon shone brightly on the tin-roofed town, the leopard knew where the shadows were deepest and merged beautifully with them. An occasional intake of breath, which resulted in a short rasping cough, was the only sound it made.

  Madam was returning from dinner at a ladies’ club, called the Kitten Club as a sort of foil to the husbands’ club affiliations. There were still a few people in the street, and while no one could help noticing Madam, who had the contours of a steam-roller, none saw or heard the predator who had slipped down a side alley and reached the steps of the teacher’s house. It sat there silently, waiting with all the patience of an obedient schoolgirl.

  When Madam saw the leopard on her steps, she dropped her handbag and opened her mouth to scream; but her voice would not materialise. Nor would her tongue ever be used again, either to savour chicken biryani or to pour scorn upon her pupils, for the leopard had sprung at her throat, broken her neck, and dragged her into the bushes.

  In the morning, when Aarti and Sunita set out for school, they stopped as usual at Kiran’s cottage and called out to her.

  Kiran was sitting in the sun, combing her long black hair.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to school today, Kiran?’ asked the girls.

  ‘No, I won’t bother to go today,’ said Kiran. She felt lazy, but pleased with herself, like a contented cat.

  ‘Madam won’t be pleased,’ said Aarti. ‘Shall we tell her you’re sick?’

  ‘It won’t be necessary,’ said Kiran, and gave them one of her mysterious smiles. ‘I’m sure it’s going to be a holiday.’

  From the Primaeval Past

  I discovered the pool near Rajpur on a hot summer’s day, some fifteen years ago. It was shaded by close-growing Sal trees, and looked cool and inviting. I took off my clothes and dived in.

  The water was colder than I had expected. It was icy, glacial cold. The sun never touched it for long, I supposed. Striking out vigorously, I swam to the other end of the pool and pulled myself up on the rocks, shivering.

  But I wanted to swim. So I dived in again and did a gentle breast-stroke towards the middle of the pool. Something slid between my legs. Something slimy, pulpy. I could see no one, hear nothing. I swam away, but the floating, slippery thing followed me. I did not like it. Something curled around my leg. Not an underwater plant. Something that sucked at my foot. A long tongue licking at my calf. I struck out wildly, thrust myself away from whatever it was that sought my company. Something lonely, lurking in the shadows. Kicking up spray, I swam like a frightened porpoise fleeing from some terror of the deep.

  Safely out of the water, I looked for a warm, sunny rock, and stood there looking down at the water.

  Nothing stirred. The surface of the pool was now calm and undisturbed. Just a few fallen leaves floating around. Not a frog, not a fish, not a water-bird in sight. And that in itself seemed strange, for you would have expected some sort of pond life to have been in evidence.

  But something lived in the pool, of that I was sure. Something very cold-blooded; colder and wetter than the water. Could it have been a corpse trapped in the weeds? I did not want to know; so I dressed and hurried away.

  A few days later I left for Delhi, where I went to work in an ad agency, telling people how to beat the summer heat by drinking fizzy drinks that made you thirstier. The pool in the forest was forgotten. And it was ten years before I visited Rajpur again.

  Leaving the small hotel where I was staying, I found myself walking through the same old Sal forest, drawn almost irresistibly towards the pool where I had not been able to finish my swim. I was not over-eager to swim there again, but I was curious to know if the pool still existed.

  Well, it was there all right, although the surroundings had
changed and a number of new houses and buildings had come up where formerly there had only been wilderness. And there was a fair amount of activity in the vicinity of the pool.

  A number of labourers were busy with buckets and rubber pipes, doing their best to empty the pool. They had also dammed off and diverted the little stream that fed it.

  Overseeing this operation was a well-dressed man in a white safari suit. I thought at first that he was an honorary forest warden, but it turned out that he was the owner of a new school that had come up nearby.

  ‘Do you live in Rajpur?’ he asked. ‘I used to…once upon a time…Why are you draining the pool?’

  ‘It’s become a hazard,’ he said. ‘Two of my boys were drowned here recently. Both senior students. Of course they weren’t supposed to be swimming here without permission, the pool is off limits. But you know what boys are like. Make a rule and they feel duty-bound to break it.’

  He told me his name, Kapoor, and led me back to his house, a newly-built bungalow with a wide cool verandah. His servant brought us glasses of cool sherbet. We sat in cane chairs overlooking the pool and the forest. Across a clearing, a gravelled road led to the school buildings, newly white-washed and glistening in the sun.

  ‘Were the boys there at the same time?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, they were friends. And they must have been attacked by fiends. Limbs twisted and broken, faces disfigured. But death was due to drowning—that was the verdict of the medical examiner.’

  We gazed down at the shallows of the pool, where a couple of men were still at work, the others having gone for their mid-day meal.

  ‘Perhaps it would be better to leave the place alone,’ I said. ‘Put a barbed-wire fence around it. Keep your boys away. Thousands of years ago this valley was an inland sea. A few small pools and streams are all that is left of it.’

  ‘I want to fill it in and build something there. An open-air theatre, maybe. We can always create an artificial pond somewhere else.’