Ghost with a Cat

It was about midnight when Kuriako stopped his car near the roadside eatery known as thattukada in Kerala. He still had another 27 kilometres to go, according to Google Map. Since Google Map had taken him to nowhere lands many a time, Kuriako didn’t commit himself much to that technology. He would rather rely on wayside shopkeepers. Moreover, he needed a cup of lemon tea.

‘How far is Anakkad from here?’ Kuriako asked the tea-vendor.

Anakkad is where his friend Varghese lived. The two friends would be meeting after many years now. Both had taken voluntary retirement five years ago from their tedious and rather absurd clerical jobs in a government industry and hadn’t met each other ever since. Varghese abandoned all connection with human civilisation, which he viewed as savagery of the most brutal sort, and went to live in a forest with only the hill tribe people in the neighbourhood. The tribal folk didn’t bother him at all; they had their own occupations. Varghese bought a plot of land with an abandoned bungalow from the forest department right on top of a hill and lived there – all alone. He had no family anyway. His parents were dead and he hadn’t married. ‘Human beings are an undesirable species on the planet,’ he said once when Kuriako asked him why he didn’t marry.

‘You’ll get good roads until just a few kilometres from Anakkad,’ Varghese said when Kuriako enquired about the route. ‘It is mostly state highway until you turn into the forest road. Nothing to fear.’

‘But I do want some fear,’ Kuriako said. ‘For example, what if I get a ghost asking for a hitchhike? That’d be an unforgettable company on a forest road in the middle of the night.’

‘Make sure you find a male ghost,’ Varghese retorted. ‘Female ghosts will add too many judicial problems in case you land in some trouble.’

Varghese was a hardcore rationalist. One of the reasons why he chose to live in a desolate place far from humans was that he detested people’s superstitions and ‘shameless lack of will to improve themselves.’

One of the men who heard Kuriako inquire about Anakkad asked him whether he could get a ride to his house which was on the way. Kuriako eyed him with some misgivings. He wanted a ghost for company, not this disgusting creature with shabby, stinking clothes. The other men in the thattukada were watching. Kuriako didn’t want to appear inhuman before them, though they all looked rather indifferent about a beggarly creature asking for a free lift.

‘Why not?’ Kuriako said though he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the company he was going to endure for the next few minutes. Kuriako looked at the man’s hair which was a curly mess.

As the man occupied the seat next to the driver’s, a rotten stench suffused the car. It was the stench of death, Kuriako thought.

The man seemed to be enjoying the semiclassical music that was playing on Kuriako’s car-stereo system. He tapped his thigh with his skeletal fingers.

The car left the highway and entered the forest road. The road was pitch black. An eerie silence added more dread to that darkness.

‘Where are you going?’ The man asked.

Kuriako mentioned his friend. Did the man’s voice sound tinny?

‘Strange time you chose to come this way.’

Kuriako explained as briefly as he could how he was in love with driving and hence converted his car to a taxi. He had just dropped a passenger in a nearby place and so thought of visiting his friend.

‘Only cats can see in such darkness as this,’ the man was saying. ‘People hardly travel this way at night, except smugglers and outlaws.’

Kuriako was aware of the sandalwood smugglers of the area. ‘How would you have reached home hadn’t I happened to come along?’

‘I’d find some way,’ he said dismissingly. ‘Where there’s a will…’

I laughed. ‘Vehicles won’t materialise out of any will,” Kuriako said.

‘A way can materialise,’ he said. Firmly. The assertion added some steeliness to his tinny voice.

The air in the car became chilly. It was cold outside, Kuriako could sense the moist breeze that wafted in from the woods through the open windows of the car.

‘My house is over there,’ the man said pointing toward the darkness outside. ‘You can drop me here.’

He stood outside the car with the door open and asked, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

‘Eh?’ Kuriako felt a terrible dread rise from the pit of his stomach.

‘I don’t,’ he said. And he vanished. Just like that. Without a trace. Leaving the car door open. And the engine of the car shut down. A creepy wind rose in the tree branches and the rustle of the leaves sounded unearthly.

Kuriako closed the door and turned the ignition key. The engine refused to start in spite of repeated attempts. Switching off the headlight and turning the parking light on, Kuriako got out and looked around. He could see a faint shape of a small house in the direction that the man had pointed to. There seemed a glimmer of light inside it. Kuriako walked towards it in spite of his terror. He needed help. Not help, really; he needed human company.

The glimmer of light seemed to dim as Kuriako approached the house. He stood outside and called in a quivering voice, ‘Anyone in there?’

No answer.

Kuriako repeated his question. Then a cat appeared at the window that was open though Kuriako hadn’t noticed it earlier. Its eyes shone like two furious little flames.  It shrieked angrily as if ordering Kuriako to get lost from its territory. The shriek was repeated and Kuriako ran for his life. 

The car did start this time.

Kuriako’s phone showed 3.59 am as his car stopped in front of what he assumed to be Varghese’s house.

‘Sleep off your weariness,’ Varghese said dismissing his friend’s apprehensions. ‘We’ll discuss it in the day.’

Kuriako couldn’t sleep. The shabby man, his mention of cats, his question about ghosts and his instant vanishing… and the cat at the window. They wouldn’t let him sleep.

‘There was a man living in that house many years ago,’ Varghese said as they sat for breakfast later in the morning. ‘He was known as Poochakaran, Catman, because of his love for cats. Not that there were many people around to call him any name. But his appearance couldn’t escape anyone’s attention, with his shabby dress and messy, curly hair, and a cat or two always accompanying him, sometimes sitting on his shoulders.”

‘Are you sure he died many years ago?’

‘Of course. It was an accident. The vehicle belonged to some sandalwood smuggling mafia whom Poochakaran always questioned. One of his cats was also killed with him though no one knows how. Who cares about cats anyway?’

Varghese refused to believe his friend’s experience in the previous night. ‘Not possible,’ he said. ‘No one lives in that house anymore. It’s so dilapidated that it will collapse any day.’

Varghese insisted on taking Kuriako to that house. In a few minutes, they stood in front of that house, in the same place where Kuriako had stood a few hours back. The window that was open in the night remained shut now. Not just shut, it had never been opened for years. Termites had converted it into an expansive termitarium.

‘Your mind can create ghosts or gods or whatever,’ Varghese said.

Kuriako nodded gently, not agreeing, not disagreeing. He was thinking about the invisible white little creatures inside the sprawling termitarium on the decaying window.

PS. This is a retelling of an old story of mine for Blogchatter’s Blog Hop.