City of Screams

by Neil D'Silva

  ***

  Lexi stood before her front door and groped for the house keys in her “bottomless handbag” as she called it. Nothing had a designated place even though rummaging through her makeup items, work catalogs, books to read on her long commutes to and from work, and other odds and ends took unnecessary time. She finally retrieved her house keys, fumbled with the lock and finally got the door opened.

  She headed straight to the kitchen and filled the electric kettle with water. She plugged the kettle in. She hurried to the bedroom, kicked off her shoes, placed her handbag, and scarf on the antique rocking chair and returned to the kitchen. The water had reached boiling point.

  “Mango, ginger, lemon honey, pomegranate — which flavor should I have? I can’t seem to decide,” she muttered to herself. She closed her eyes and ran her slim fingers over the boxes and stopped at one.

  “Honey lemon, I guess,” she mumbled.

  She poured herself a mug of piping hot water and put the teabag in. She placed a few chocolate chip cookies on a plate and went to the hall. She switched on the TV. She flipped through the channels and selected her favorite cartoon show. The reruns would be on for a while. She went to the kitchen to fix a light dinner.

  Lexi’s body shook with convulsions, her arms and legs twitched involuntarily. She was in a deep state of REM.

  ***

  “All right then!” Mildly infuriated, Michael glared down at the grey tabby. “I gave you five fresh sardines and one fat mackerel. Off you go on your way then.”

  He bent down to let the cat out of the kitchen door. The cat refused to budge. It purred and rubbed itself against Michael’s bare calves.

  “Oh no! I’m not falling for those tricks, Random Cat,” Michael sat back on his haunches and gently nudged the plump cat toward the entrance of the door.

  The cat rolled on its back and looked directly into Michael’s eyes. He shuddered as a chill ran down his spine. He felt as though the cat was looking into his soul.

  ***

  “Lexi, wake up, your mother is here,” Barry shook her gently.

  Lexi’s eyes opened mechanically and she turned instinctively to the radium alarm clock by her bedside. It was 3 a.m.

  “Barry, it’s 3 a.m., what could mother possibly want at this ungodly hour?” she rasped, pulling a magenta bathrobe over her shoulders.

  Lexi stepped out into the hallway and ran her slender fingers lightly over the pictures and photographs that adorned her walls. Her mother, her father, her siblings, her cat Max, her husband Barry, her grandparents, Barry’s family.

  “Mum?” Lexi called out to her mother. “Where are you, Mum?”

  ***

  Michael sat in front of his laptop and opened Google. He typed in Lexi, Barry, Max but nothing showed up. He was exhausted from the sleepless nights. He ran his hands through his crew-cut and pushed his chair back. He felt like life was getting sucked out of him. He made his way downstairs and went to his next door neighbor’s house. He rang the doorbell.

  ***

  The night seemed ominous, darkness and silence seemed to have fallen simultaneously. It was late and the streets were empty but then there was never much traffic in the suburban area during normal hours. There was no sign of life anywhere. A deafening clap of thunder disrupted the tranquility for an ephemeral moment before the skies opened up and a deluge cascaded through the thick grey clouds. The raindrops pelted the earth a vengeance. The nocturnal animals hid from sight. The houses were in complete darkness. There was no movement at all. An occasional streak of lightning lit up the path.

  Footsteps splashed through the water accompanied by heavy panting. The old wrought iron gates creaked open and shut. Unsure hands fumbled in the darkness trying to gauge the surroundings, tired feet trudged down the uneven track.

  “Max! Max! Come to me, Max,” Lexi screamed almost hysterically.

  She tried to adjust her eyes to the dark. The cemetery was not the ideal place to be at 3 a.m. She had no idea why Maxi kept running off to the cemetery. He had always been a strange cat. An owl hooted in the distance and Lexi spun around, her heartbeat racing like a runaway train.

  ***

  “Please, please you have to help me,” Michael pleaded the moment his neighbor opened the door.

  “Come in,” a slim elderly lady gestured him in. “You must be Michael. I’m Izabel Mendes. How can I help you?”

  “It’s Kristen, my wife. She’s been out of it since we got here,” his words tumbled over each other. “She is delirious, ill, I… I don’t know.”

  “You bought the last row house of the property, no?” Izabel began as she stared intently at the disheveled man sitting before her in a faded pair of jeans and a black superhero T-shirt.

  “Yes, that’s correct,” Michael held her steady gaze. “Wasn’t that the D’Souza property? There was a girl there around my age…”

  “You know that family?” she asked, curiously.

  “Yes, I used to spend a lot of time here as a child,” he replied. “My friends lived in the area, on the way to the cliffs.”

  “That house you live in, the property, has seen many deaths,” Izabel began dramatically. “Her grandparents both died suddenly. The father died of a cardiac arrest. Her mother died of cancer. Colon cancer, if I remember correctly. We started to believe that the house was cursed. Her siblings gave her their share and left the country. No one knows where they are. They have not set foot in the place for over a decade. She got married a few months before her mother died. Her husband died in a fatal road accident. She was pregnant. She lost the baby. She spent an unhealthy amount of time indoors. A few years ago, we got concerned when we didn’t see her for days. We called the police and broke the door down. She had taken her own life. The estimated time of death was 3 a.m.”

  “Cursed? The house was cursed?” Michael raised an eyebrow to indicate his disbelief, ignoring whatever Izabel had told him.

  “Abel, my late husband, a historian, believed that the house was built on an ancient burial ground of some sort,” Izabel squinted at him trying to recall more details. “Nothing has been confirmed, of course. It could be an old wives’ tale… you know… cheap village talk.”

  “Who’s Max?” Michael asked her assuming it could have been the name of the baby Lexi had lost.

  “Max, fat Max,” a smile crossed Izabel’s face. “He was Lexi’s beloved cat. She rescued him from the rain and took him home. He disappeared after she died. No one knows where he went. We haven’t seen him since. Coming to think of it, strange things began happening ever since she took him in.”

  “There’s a strange cat in our home and it won’t leave. It refuses to go outdoors. My knowledge about cats is extremely limited…” Michael tried to be as informative as possible. “It’s a grey tabby, nice fluffy coat…”

  “There are lots of stray cats in our area,” Izabel shook her head. “My neighbors encourage them by giving them food and they are all domesticated and friendly.”

  “Thank you for your time and hospitality, Mrs. Mendes.” Michael was genuinely grateful. “I apologize for having barged in on you completely unannounced.”

  “That’s all right, Michael,” she patted his arm gently. “I hope you have found the answers you seek.”

  ***

  “Max!” Lexi hollered, ignoring the rain soaking through her track pants and T-shirt. She hated the dark, but she valued her absconding cat. “Max!”

  ***

  Kristen sat bolt upright in bed with her hands gripping her neck and opened her eyes. Michael sensed her movements and reached for his mobile. He forced his groggy eyes open and looked at the time. It was 3 a.m.

  “Ten?” Michael was apprehensive.

  “Michael!” she exclaimed.

  “You were totally out of it,” he began. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like a washed-out hen that was left in the rain,” she sighed.

  “You were delirious,” he continued as he subconsciously opened the door. “Yo
u kept rambling in your sleep. You kept addressing people we have never heard of…”

  The grey tabby cat dashed into the room and leapt onto the bed.

  “Max is home,” Kristen buried her face in his fur. “Max is home now.”

  ABOUT CHARMAINE DESOUZA

  Charmaine deSouza has always been branded as a dreamer right through her life. Dreamers are writers, and writers are dreamers, hence the tagline “A writer, A thinker, A dreamer” which sums up her personality perfectly.

  Raised by a master storyteller, Charmaine deSouza learnt to dream, to think and to write. She found herself in her imagination and begun to weave tales out of nothing. When she was six years old, she began writing her own bedtime stories with the help of her grandfather. He also taught her to write and appreciate poetry. She started writing and publishing short stories and poems in local and national newspapers when she was thirteen years old. She discovered horror when she was fifteen years old which has now become her main genre. An avid reader, she enjoys fantasy, horror, and Science Fiction.

  Charmaine deSouza is a swimming instructor by day and a freelance writer by night, she juggles work and home. She spends all her free time at home with her dogs, utilizing those quiet moments reading, writing, blogging, listening to music, playing the guitar, or catching up with movies and serials.

  You can contact Charmaine deSouza on

  charmainemdesouza@gmail.com. You can read her blog on charmainemdesouza.wordpress.com.

  May You Eat Well!

  Santosh Bakaya

  It was an incredibly serene landscape, but touched in places by tints of sadness. The hills in the distance were sheathed in mellow gold in the magnanimous rays of the westering sun. Some departing rays fell on deserted buildings, filling up the cracks and crevices, and also on three young men, in their mid–twenties, driving though this landscape in a secondhand Mercedes.

  “The GPS has abruptly stopped. How will we find the hotel?” panicked Raghav, whose idea it was to explore this wilderness, where it was said that an enterprising builder had turned an old, deserted, and decrepit building into a hotel, which intrigued everyone, because of all sorts of rumors surrounding it.

  “You all know that I am geographically challenged. The only thing that I know is that this was the most ridiculous idea one ever came across. Coming all the way from Delhi to this godforsaken place with such a preposterous name!” Shivam mocked.

  “Look, look, there it is! “Raghav yelled, highly excited.

  Batty Bar and Barbeque

  Rooms also available.

  These words shone before them from a huge tree trunk, with an arrow pointing toward a deserted pathway.

  “Incredible! It is on a deserted pathway!” Shivam, sitting on the passenger seat, scoffed.

  “Come on, it is only a signboard,” said Raghav, steering the car toward the pathway. Just half a kilometer away, there was an old and almost decaying bridge, appearing on the brink of collapse.

  “You know… this bridge reminds me of that Scottish Bridge, from which dogs keep jumping.” Raghav remarked, eyes on the road ahead.

  “Are you really crazy? Which bridge?” Hemant asked from behind.

  “No, I am not crazy. I have heard that the moment the dogs reach it, they are seized by a sudden maniacal energy, and before their owners can stop them, they jump off the parapet.”

  “This Raghav has gone crazy, hope you are not planning to jump off this bridge. Your instincts are also those of a canine,” Shivam said with a huge guffaw, as the bridge clattered under the wheels.

  “Go and google. Many dogs have jumped to their death on the rocks in the valley,” Raghav said with a shudder, relieved that they had crossed the bridge.

  As they went further, they came across many pedestrians looking at them with incomprehensible expressions and a mammoth truck rumbled past swirling clouds of dust.

  And then it suddenly sprung before them like a mirage, almost like a humongous beast. “You know… it reminds me of a fossilized monster that might suddenly shake itself out of its stupor, with a lusty roar and pounce on us,” said Raghav, awe dripping from every word.

  “Hats off to your fertile imagination. Not for nothing are you an epic raconteur,” Shivam quipped with an eloquent grimace.

  “To me, it is almost like a poem of loss, with such startling poignant clarity,” said Hemant, who prided himself on being a poet of sorts.

  “Oh no! I am pathetically caught between a poet and a storyteller, what do I do?” groaned Shivam.

  “Just sing, dude! You are a singer, so just sing! Sing away your doubts and your blues,” Raghav implored.

  “Let us hear you sing Rambling Gambling Willie… Ride, Willie, ride. We also love Bob Dylan, come on, Shivam. Come on!” Hemant seconded with gusto.

  “And it’s ride, Willie, ride…

  Roll, Willie, roll…

  Wherever you are a-gambling now nobody knows…”

  “What a genius of a man!” Shivam remarked, stopping midway in the song.

  “Who? Bob Dylan?”

  “Both.”

  “Both, who?”

  “Bob Dylan and the builder.”

  “Huh?”

  “The builder has managed to arouse the curiosity of many, making it their favorite haunt. Imagine hitting upon such a brilliant marketing strategy, going all out spreading rumors about it,” said Shivam.

  “No, it really is haunted, you know,” Raghav persisted, looking around warily.

  “Haunted! My foot!” Shivam snapped.

  “Hush! Can you hear the flapping of a bird’s wings?” Raghav asked warily.

  “Your hyperactive wings of imagination have started flapping,” Shivam remarked with a body-shaking guffaw.

  “Cut the crap, will you?” Raghav remarked, glaring.

  “It just seems to have forgotten to wind its clock. Caught in a time-warp,” Shivam mumbled.

  A few paces away from the hotel stood an old and ramshackle car shining with the deepening stain of rust; burnt sienna. Next to it was a very old banyan tree, a mammoth giant with what looked like intimidating dreadlocks. They were about to park the car next to the tree, when the guard manning the gate of the hotel asked them for the key so that he could park it in the underground parking.

  “Look, look at the ancient, ramshackle car. Does it not remind you of a bleeding beast? There are stories even about this burnt car,” Raghav said, a hushed reverence in his voice.

  “I am in no mood to listen to stories. I am famished, “Shivam remarked, patting his stomach.

  “Oh what a glutton, you are!” Hemant and Raghav piped up, glaring at Shivam.

  “GLUTTON, GLUTTON, GLUTTON!” they jeered.

  ***

  The veils of sunset slowly hid the hues of the evening sky and soon night fell. A gale trumpeted and shrilled through the trees, and a tiny robin puffed up its feathers, bracing itself to rehearse its autumnal dirge.

  All of them trooped into the hotel, at once struck by its gothic ambience. Corpses of bats hung from the walls, their eyes shining in the dark, sending shivers down their spines. Fake cobwebs, hoary in the moonlight, made eyes at them.

  “Sit! Salute! Rest! Lie! Down! Fetch!” Someone was training a dog. The surroundings echoed with boisterous sounds and loud guffaws.

  “Something looks fishy. I can smell it,” Raghav said, sniffing.

  “You have the nose of an expert sniffer! You can even smell an explosive from a mile, I bet!” Shivam quipped, a merry twinkle in his eyes.

  “You are calling me a dog! A sniffer dog!” Raghav retorted in mock anger.

  “Yes, a sniffer dog!” Shivam said with an impish smile and Raghav huffed toward a sofa in the ornate reception area and slumped down on it.

  Hemant and Shivam also joined him there, absolutely intrigued by the weird curios and figurines adorning the mantelpiece and shelves. There were many paintings on the walls and Shivam, also a promising artist, besides being a singer, was mesmerized by two repro
ductions hanging from the wall in front of them. Francisco Goya’s iconic painting, Saturn devouring his Son and a reproduction of Rembrandt’s Portrait of an Old Man in Red.

  He suddenly shivered.

  He did not tell the others, but had a queer sensation looking at the old man; his eyes seemed to be blinking, and from the frame of the other painting, Saturn appeared to be eyeing him with interest.

  “You know… Rembrandt is a master of light and shadow, and his paintings are known for their exceptional realism,” Shivam blurted out, trying to cover his panic and furtively wiping beads of sweat from his forehead.

  “Look, how real the old man looks!” he added, turning back to cast one more look, before heading for the dining space, where a sumptuous buffet was laid out.

  “You know, Shivam, you are eating with the frantic speed of one who fears that apocalypse is just round the corner,” Raghav pulled his leg, and Hemant also chipped in.

  “And you remind me of a famished sheep, eating away gluttonously, apprehensive of the advent of bad weather. Kal ho Na ho,” Shivam shot back, a mischievous grin trying to push away the lines of apprehension on his face.

  Soon, amid a lot of backslapping bonhomie, they moved into a huge room where the hotel staff had already put an extra bed as requested by them. A lot of boisterous banter followed and not much later, they drifted away to sleep, leaving the night to its clandestine ruminations.

  “Hush, do you hear something?” Raghav sat upright in bed.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch…

  All three of them heard it.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch…

  The sound became louder.

  “You have paid for all these sounds, dammit. That too, a king’s ransom! Now you two listen to these weird sounds and let me sleep in peace,” Shivam remarked, gritting his teeth, and pulling a coverlet over himself.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch…