The Romeos and Juliets of the lovers’ cult flocked to the abandoned temple at midnight to witness the blooming of the paarijatham flower. The cult had a huge number of followers. The temple was where they worshipped the god of everlasting love. The blooming paarijatham was the sanctum sanctorum where their pilgrimage led to; it was the shrine they came to worship at with undying adulation. The divine dance of the apsaras and the magical music of the Gandharvans welcomed the lovers to a world of unforgettable bliss.
The cult members, at end of their pilgrimage, were led to the temple pond by yakshis. They fell into the pond to meet their untimely ends. It was also said that the lovers willingly walked to the pond and drowned, having fulfilled their lifelong dream of witnessing the blooming paarijatham.
Even after the apsara nymphs finished their dance, the sad story of the paarijatham flowers continued to be narrated by silence of the night, a silence only mildly marred by the occasional hooting of owls, the hissing of winds, and the singing of nocturnal birds.
***
These sights of Amballore, some of them nothing but eyesores, made the town famous and notorious at the same time. These negative elements stood out and greeted an accidental tourist like a sore thumb. People avoided Hell’s Highway and its surroundings at any cost. The rumor had it that those who adventured to explore this road ended up disappearing, falling into the pond, hanging from the steel beams of the tile factory, or being sacrificed at the altar of black magic.
It took a superhuman traveler to be able to traverse the entire length of Hell’s Highway with impenetrable equanimity. Even that superhuman would falter at the steps of Amballore House, because the mysteries it held were far more chilling. There were things present in the mansion that even the most imaginative minds could not fathom.
Even Orpheus, who traveled to Hades’ underworld in search of his dead wife, charming the damned entities on the way, could not have traveled Hell’s Highway and survived to be able to see Amballore House, which was shrouded in even deeper mysteries.
***
Amballore House resisted attempts from real estate brokers to sell it, partly because only a few knew of its existence and mostly because some horrendous events surrounded the aftermath of the rare sales it eked out. Even though it was a beautiful piece of land blessed with blinding greenery and a plentiful growth of jackfruit trees and a separate mango grove, it remained unsold. The abundant crop of plantain bananas resembled a feast that gods would love to come and eat to celebrate Onam.
A few years ago, the property finally got sold just like that, like in a magic trick. The new owners of the property were a young couple on their honeymoon. They loved the beautiful estate and fell in love with it so much that they did not think twice before submitting an offer of purchase. Their decision was an easy one also because the price was very reasonable—in fact, below the market price.
The bridegroom belonged to a prominent family who owned tile factories in and around Amballore. The bride belonged to a rich family in Amballore. Her dowry money and the groom’s inheritance loot put together tallied the realtor’s asking price of one crore rupees (ten million rupees), half of the appraised value!
Overtaken by desire to own the beautiful estate, the young couple did not inquire why the asking price was so low. Moreover, they did not have their own real estate agent to give badly needed advice; they made an offer of purchase directly to the seller’s agent. They made the offer on the spur of the moment. They did not want to wait, because they simply fell in love with the mansion!
They were totally unaware of the infamous stories told about Amballore House.
The seller’s agent handed them the key to the mansion and bid them good-bye by evening of the sale transaction day. The couple moved into the property with budding dreams of starting their married life.
The night they moved in had a full moon. Looking at the mango grove awash in pristine moonlight witnessed by a thousand stars, they built a castle of dreams of starting a family filled with the echoing sounds of baby steps. That dream they built that night looking at the milky moonlight was the last dream they had in that house.
They disappeared that night. Some speculated that they died by jumping into the well in the property—on their honeymoon night, of all nights! Rumor spread that something about the estate triggered their panic-ridden race to death: something scary, something supernatural, and something so extraordinarily compelling that they were prepared to do away with their tantalizing dreams in favor of running into death’s arms.
This conjecture, however, could not be substantiated, since their bodies could not be found. Some theorized that the couple ran away from the mansion that night for some odd reason.
The real estate broker was the last person who saw them alive. The succeeding investigation threw no light on how the young couple ended up disappearing. The tragedy was named the “Honeymooners’ Disappearance.”
It took two more years for the property to enter the market in 1958 to find a new buyer. And find a new buyer those tirelessly working real estate agents did. The new owners were a middle-aged couple with a teenage son who was a university student. They moved in on a new moon night to their dream home.
The family was excited about buying a beautiful property with an outdoor swimming pool. The boy invited a bunch of his friends from the university to celebrate. It was an all-night party. The elderly couple retired to their bedroom earlier on. The party venue moved to the swimming pool just past midnight.
It was well past midnight when the sleeping couple woke up to a dreadful sense of foreboding. They got an eerie feeling that something was amiss, since they were no more hearing the loud shouting and screaming of a typical teenage party. They hoped that the party crowd fell asleep, which would explain the silence.
They went out to investigate in the still-cool night. From a distance, the pool looked tranquil, with no partying boys or girls in sight. The blue water looked like a tiny piece of blue sky that descended to earth, with no waves, indicating no activity. With pounding heartbeats, they approached the pool. To their horror, they found their teenage son and his friends drowned. Their worst nightmare materialized in front of them.
Needless to say, the couple was so devastated by the tragedy that it drove them to madness. They took refuge in the mental asylum along Hell’s Highway.
How the teenagers met with their fatal end remained a mystery. Suffice it to say, the property defied every attempt of sale after these two tragedies.
4 A FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
Eli was spotted in Amballore in 1959, one year after she disappeared. It was Judas and Elsa, the owners of Judas Toddy Club, who met her under some odd circumstances. They saw Eli in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. This unexpected meeting took place on Eli’s disappearance anniversary.
Judas had his toddy shop attached to his home, and he operated the business from the comfort of his home. The Judas Toddy Club was a very popular destination for toddy drinkers in Amballore. It was a large-sized pub for a small town like Amballore, with upstairs and downstairs available for the clients. The downstairs had a separate living quarters, and this helped them keep a twenty-four hour watch on their precious business site.
Judas woke up at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, disturbed by a loud clanging sound coming from the toddy club extension. Usually he blamed his wife whenever his sleep got disturbed, either because she kicked him in her sleep or because she woke up the neighborhood with her loud snoring. But, in the wee hours of that Sunday morning, something else, something extraordinary, was happening.
He hurried to the toddy shop to investigate, alerted by the nonstop sound of steel utensils clanging against each other. He armed himself with a butcher knife, ready to cut off the penis of the son of a bitch who dared to trespass and burglarize his shop, possibly to get drunk to his heart’s content—and that too without paying for it. What greeted him in the liquor shop was far from his expectations. Instead of seeing the son of a bitch with a penis, he saw a bitch
, if we could call Eli that name. For many people in Amballore, both deceased and living, Eli was a bitch, named so for her headstrong nature and recklessly overconfident demeanor.
As soon as Judas saw the ghost of Eli, he lost his composure and wet his shorts. He involuntarily dropped his knife, not so much because the intruder did not have a penis (which Judas had hoped to cut off) but because it was a ghost! He was startled to see Eli dressed in an immaculately white dress, sitting serenely at the bar and drinking pure-white toddy. For some reason, she was practicing her drum beats with steel utensil on a steel saucepan, like an unruly child beating knives against forks during a temper tantrum, irritating his parents in a crowded restaurant.
The sight of the ghost scared the bejesus out of him so much that he shouted for his wife, Elsa, frantically.
“Elsa, Elsa, stop snoring and come here presto,” Judas screamed to his sleeping wife.
Elsa instantly stopped snoring. She was endowed with a rare gift of being able to hear her husband even in her deepest sleep. His wish was her command, sleeping or not. She came sprinting, armed with a broom, which she kept handy at her side of the bed. She kept it to use it on any unruly customer who got the wrong idea and decided to pay her a visit after getting drunk with kallu.
The couple saw Eli getting drunk as if there was no tomorrow. She complained of the lack of snacks and ordered fried chicken and popadam from the menu. They obliged and filled her order immediately, even though her order came outside business hours. They would not have done otherwise, because they were terrified of the apparition. To antagonize Eli’s ghost was the last thought in their minds.
When they woke up hours later on a sunny morning, aroused by the resonating sounds of Sunday church bells, they had an uncanny feeling that something was amiss. They both thought that they had dreamed a strange dream and were baffled to realize, while describing the dream between themselves, that it was one and the same dream! “Great minds dream alike,” Judas told Elsa.
They both dreamed that they served fried chicken and popadam to a drunken Eli. The dream had such a surreal quality to it that they decided to check out the toddy shop. Elsa was prompted to investigate because of the unusual case of an open knife that Judas was sleeping with. Judas’s claim that he was planning to cut off the penis of the perpetrator did not jive well with Elsa. She had her own doubts; she had a vested interest in finding out the truth because she was afraid that Judas had fallen asleep during the act of murdering his own sleeping wife—that was her, thank you. To her, the knife was proof of his nocturnal homicidal tendencies.
When Judas, the Sherlock Holmes, and Elsa, the Dr. Watson, arrived at the investigation scene at the liquor shop, they were greeted by the leftovers of fried chicken and unfinished glass of toddy. There was also the lingering fragrance of a perfume that Eli was wearing. They then knew that it was not a dream after all! Once and for all, they became believers of Eli haunting their toddy shop. From that day onward, Judas started leaving toddies and snacks for Eli every night upon closing.
***
Vareed was seen at around the same time by gravediggers at Saint Joseph’s Church in Amballore. The workers hung high intensity lamp on a tall tree in the cemetery and were digging fresh graves at night. It was their regular job—readying the graves before the dead bodies arrived after the church-conducted funeral ceremony. It was a large graveyard, half a mile long, and the same distance wide. While they were immersed in their task a few feet underground, they heard a man talking. The voice was coming somewhat far away from them. They stopped what they were doing, got out of the ditch, and out of curiosity, sneaked to the corner of the yard where this one-man speech was taking place, with no attendees to listen to him. Obviously, it was a madman talking to himself, so they thought.
However, one in the crew recognized the man as Vareed who disappeared just one year ago. Vareed was questioning a grave dweller about some transaction he finished prior to the dweller’s death—a cleverly executed transaction where he stood to gain enormously at the expense of a charity institution losing a lot of money.
The diggers then approached him to say hello, since it was their friend, Vareed, after all. As soon as they approached him, he vanished!
When they reflected next day on what they saw that night, some of them were not sure whether they saw Vareed or even anybody at all. However, the crewmember who identified Vareed stood by his word and swore by his mother’s grave that it was Vareed, the snake charmer whom he saw, and no one else.
***
Even though Judas and Elsa thought that they were seeing Eli’s ghost, they were, in fact, seeing Eli’s second coming. The same was true for the graveyard worker who claimed to see Vareed—he saw the second coming of Vareed!
These odd statements will find proper explanation in a bizarre and unbelievable way. Woven into the explanation is an incredible mishmash of things poles apart, such as Kerala’s origin, the theory of evolution, Mahavishnu’s incarnation cycle, general theory of relativity, and the extraterrestrials’ pick of the Amballore dynasty to carry the torch of advanced civilization. It is a strange admixture of mythology, history, physics, the theory of evolution, and alien incursion into Amballore life. A sensible person might conclude such a scenario was outlandish, and far beyond the scope of possibility, and common sense would not argue against him or her.
***
Vareed cleared the weeds from the fescue grass around Amballore House, collected mangoes, and climbed up the jackfruit tree to collect couple of fruits. He watered the golden trumpet flower garden, fertilized the tapioca farmland, trimmed the banyan trees, and adjusted the sprinkler flow that watered the vegetable garden. After completing these tasks, he entered the house and handed the vegetables he collected over to Eli. She started preparing their supper.
This happened in 1959, one year after their disappearance from the Amballore ancestral home in 1958. The couple lived at Amballore House now. They fought tooth and nail all the attempts for its sale.
Immediately after the second attempt at the sale of Amballore House fizzled, Vareed fortified the property and hoped there would be no more buyers showing up. The notoriety as a haunted house alone should act as a deterrent for any prospective buyer to entertain thoughts of becoming the Amballore House owner, Vareed told himself.
However, the couple was living in constant fear of the inevitability of a third buyer taking possession of Amballore House. They would let that happen only over their dead bodies. They had too much at stake in losing the property to a third buyer. The misfortunes that befell the previous two owners were marked by unexplainable circumstances, and in all likelihood, this would repeat for a third-time buyer.
Even though they were not residing at the mansion in 1956 when the Honeymooners’ Disappearance took place, they were residents when the second tragedy hit in 1958. After these tragedies, the couple built an eight-foot brick wall around the five acres of land to make it more secluded. It became inaccessible to outsiders. The serenity and privacy of Amballore House were important to them. The beautiful mansion embodied their desire to have a second life.
Living in a self-made universe of worldly life after their disappearance took some getting used to and was more of a Twilight Zone experience for both of them. Now they were enjoying it thoroughly. Eli now could indulge herself and get toddies to her heart’s content whenever and wherever she wanted.
Some time ago, she was able to persuade Judas and Elsa to prepare fried chicken for her free of cost. She did whatever her heart yearned for. For example, she attended church Mass whenever she wanted to, participated in toddy shop brawls, and lived a peaceful life attending to Vareed’s needs. Moving around visibly or invisibly as the occasion demanded was what she was good at. She rode the Kerala transport bus free of charge since she traveled invisibly.
Being invisible, she could be more intimidating than she used to be while alive and visible. Being invisible, she could understand true human nature. There was no better time
than when one was sure of being unseen when one showed his or her true color. Eli learned more about human nature after she started living her Twilight Zone life with her husband, Vareed.
They were inseparable now. Their marriage was bound to last till death did them part and even beyond. Imagine that! Theirs was a supernatural union. Their marriage was not made just in heaven but in the highest echelons of heaven.
***
Amballore Investigation Bureau probed the disappearance of Vareed and Eli. They contacted the Judas’ Toddy Club, the rumor mill of Amballore. To the bureau’s relief, the patrons provided valuable information, and this threw new light on the disappearance story. The toddy drinkers started talking under questioning.
The bureau discovered that Vareed and Eli were at the Judas Toddy Club on the day they disappeared.
The couple was at their usual table upstairs, and was enjoying toddy drinks and a plate of fried lobster. That is when two elderly people entered the club, walked up the stairs and joined Vareed and Eli at their table, uninvited. Soon, the four people were talking animatedly. The newcomers placed order of toddy and curried prawns, and Judas delivered the order promptly. Flanked by tall glasses of toddy, the foursome conversed.
They looked like your average Joe and average Jane and therefore did not stand out to elicit special attention by the patrons. Each of them had every appearance of a typical Amballore resident, having just walked out of church after Sunday morning Mass. “They” consisted of a team of one man and one woman. The man was dressed in a mundu and a shirt; the woman was clad in a chatta and a mundu, typical Kerala outfits at that time. They were believed to be husband and wife.
Both the couples got the preliminary introductions underway. The newcomers mentioned that they owned the famous estate Amballore House. This prompted surprised looks from people around.
The mansion was clouded in mystery and had its own share of bad reputation and horror stories, and it was no surprise that the toddy customers were taken aback at seeing the mansion owners for the first time, some even speculating that they were ghosts let loose by the gates of the notorious mansion. The horror stories of the estate were many, and they were popular, like readings from the Bhagavad Gita.
Amballore House Page 20