by Ruskin Bond
And so the three of them walked. And walked. And walked.
‘I think the benefits of walking are highly overrated,’ said Rusty after some time.
‘Gives you an appetite,’ said Pitamber, striding ahead with an air of purpose.
‘There’s nothing to beat lying down,’ said Popat. ‘Especially on a hot, dusty day like this. Do you think we should return to Dehra, Rusty? It will be easier walking downhill.’
‘Don’t give up so easily. The adventure has only begun.’
‘Adventures are for the adventurous,’ said Popat philosophically.
‘Sometimes they happen by accident,’ put in Pitamber. ‘Like the time I got on the wrong train. I was in such a hurry to catch the night train to Delhi that I got on the Lucknow Mail by mistake.’
‘And what happened?’
‘They took me off the train at Haridwar. Then someone stole my money and I had to come home in a kind villager’s bullock cart.’
‘You must have been very hungry.’
‘I kept chewing up the farmer’s sugar cane until we got into town. Sugar cane can keep you going for days.’
‘But there isn’t any here,’ said Popat. ‘And I’m thirsty!’
If you take a long walk in the plains, you can walk for miles before the view or the scenery changes. But in the hills, a new vista opens up at every bend in the road. At one moment you are looking at a bare hillside. You turn a corner, and there, before you, is a belt of spruce trees or pines. Another bend in the road and you have to tread carefully along a narrow path. Then there’s a meadow and you can roll around on the grass. At varying heights there are different birds, different flowers, different trees, different views.
Rusty picked a blue periwinkle from the shelter of a large rock.
‘What do you want that for?’ asked Pitamber. ‘Can you eat it?’
‘You can try. But it’s pretty, isn’t it?’
‘Of what use is a wild flower?’ asked Pitamber.
‘Well, this one is very useful,’ said Rusty, recalling a science lesson. ‘It’s a periwinkle—its essence is used in drugs to cure cancer.’
‘Is that so?’ said Popat, taking an interest. ‘One of my uncles has cancer. Will it help if he eats these flowers?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Rusty. ‘Making the drug is a chemical process. But I’m not much good at chemistry, so I can’t tell you how it’s done exactly.’
Pitamber had plucked the flower by then and put it in his mouth. He spat it out in a hurry.
‘Very bad!’ was his comment.
Fortunately for their mood, another bend in the road revealed a small wayside tea stall, where refreshments were available. Close by, a spring of pure mountain water trickled out of a bed of ferns and soft moss.
The boys sank down on a wooden bench under the shade of an old deodar tree.
‘Now this is heaven,’ said Pitamber, and proceeded to make a quick assessment of all that the shop had to offer by way of nourishment.
A Bloodthirsty Vampire Cat
Hours later, another bus delivered the boys to a dimly lit bus stand on the outskirts of Chakrata. It was almost deserted except for the few arrivals who disappeared into the surrounding gloom. A few lights twinkled on the hillside. Tall deodars loomed out of the darkness. Dogs howled.
‘Why are the dogs howling?’ asked Rusty.
‘They howl when there are evil spirits around,’ replied Popat. ‘That’s what my grandmother told me.’
‘She’s probably right,’ mused Rusty. ‘Dogs bark at people and at other animals. They howl at what they can’t see or hear.’
‘This is the end of the earth,’ said Pitamber, looking about in dismay.
‘Only the end of the road,’ said Rusty.
‘And where do we eat?’ asked Pitamber. ‘It’s only nine o’clock but everything is shut.’
‘My father gave me an address,’ said Popat. The boys hopefully set out in search of it but were told that it was on the far side of the town. There was no hotel. Then someone told them to try the old forest rest house. No one went there any more—not since a new one had been built for visiting forest officials.
So off they trudged, helped to some extent by a half-moon that occasionally appeared between the scurrying clouds. Popat had wisely brought along a pencil torch but they used it sparingly, knowing the battery wouldn’t last too long.
Down below, in the thick of the forest, they saw a faint light—the glow of a lantern standing on a veranda wall.
‘That must be it!’ exclaimed Rusty.
They stumbled down a narrow path which led to the veranda steps. The rest of the building was in darkness, seemingly unoccupied. In the distance, a dog howled.
‘This place is full of howling dogs,’ said Popat. ‘I say we go back to Dehra in the morning, after I’ve seen my father’s clients.’
‘Let’s do some howling too,’ suggested Rusty. ‘There must be a chowkidar somewhere.’
So they began shouting, ‘Chowkidar! Chowkidar!’ and presently another lamp appeared from the rear of the building, moving towards them very slowly, almost as though there was no one behind it. But gradually a figure manifested itself, and the man who held the lamp raised it so that he could see their faces, at the same time revealing his own.
It was the face of a one-eyed man. A scar ran down one side of his face. It was hard to tell his age—he may have been fifty, he may have been seventy. He wore a funny-looking hat; it looked like a bowler hat, something left behind by a British official.
‘What do you want?’ he asked suspiciously, for he was wary of high-spirited students.
‘Shelter,’ said Rusty.
‘Food,’ said Pitamber at the same time.
‘Do you have any money?’
‘Er—a little,’ said Popat cautiously.
‘Very little,’ added Rusty, who didn’t like the man’s attitude.
‘All right, you can come in. There’s a spare room. Wait until I put on the lights.’
Finally, there was light everywhere. The front room had a large dining table in the middle. Then there was a bedroom with two double beds and a huge, cavernous bathroom with a basin at one end and a potty at the other. And there was a kitchen—which looked empty.
Pitamber made a quick inspection of the kitchen and discovered some stale chapatis.
‘You could play table tennis with these,’ he said.
‘Probably made in the emperor Ashoka’s time,’ added Rusty.
But the chowkidar promised to rustle up some food and the boys made themselves at home. Pitamber did some exercises. Popat studied a small notebook and made some calculations. Rusty stared out of the window into the night. The light of the half-moon played upon the trees and bushes opposite the clearing. A large black cat emerged from the shrubbery and crept towards the rest house; the kitchen light gave promise of a meal.
The caretaker-cum-cook-cum-chowkidar came up with quite a decent meal—a vegetable curry, dal and lots of hot chapatis—and watched them as they tore into the food.
‘And where is your journey taking you?’ he asked. ‘It is not yet the trekking season.’
‘To the top of the Witch Mountain,’ said Rusty.
‘Ah, but no one goes there any more. There are only a few ruins there now. No one lives on the mountain, although many years ago it was the home of kings and queens. Sometimes people wander up there and don’t come back. They go looking for a treasure that doesn’t exist.’
‘We’ll come back,’ said Popat. ‘We have to! I have an exam to take!’
‘And there’s a wrestling tournament coming up,’ said Pitamber. ‘Five thousand rupees if I win all my bouts.’
They went to bed early. Pitamber took over one of the beds, while Rusty and Popat shared the other. They had barely settled down when they felt a slight tremor. Then all the lights went out.
‘Did you feel that?’ asked Popat.
‘The bed shook a little,’ said Rusty. ‘Could it
be an earthquake?’
‘Maybe it’s just Pitamber moving around,’ Popat chortled.
But soon there was another tremor, more distinct than the first, and all the windowpanes began rattling. Rusty and Popat jumped out of bed.
‘It is an earthquake!’ exclaimed Rusty. But there were no further tremors and presently Rusty and Popat returned to their bed. Pitamber was still fast asleep; the mild earthquake had not bothered him. They lived in a region that was prone to such tremors and there were tales of an extinct volcano that sometimes showed signs of activity.
Rusty slept soundly till about midnight, when he was woken by someone or something scratching on the windowpanes. The window was locked, and at first he assumed that the scratching was caused by the cat he had seen earlier that evening. But the sound continued, scratch scratch scratch, and finally Rusty got up and reached for the light switch. Only to find that all the lights had gone, probably because of the earthquake. So he went to the window and peered through the glass. At first he saw nothing. Then he made out the shape of the black cat he had seen earlier. Feeling sorry for it, he opened the window and it darted into the room, purring softly.
Rusty returned to his bed and the cat followed him, curling up near his feet. He was not particularly fond of cats and his first impulse was to push it off the bed. And then he thought: It’s probably used to sleeping in this room. I’ll let it be, as long as it doesn’t trouble Popat or start chasing rats! But all it did was come a little closer, advancing from Rusty’s feet to his knees, and purring loudly, as though quite satisfied with the situation.
Lulled by the purring of the cat, Rusty fell asleep. He slept for a couple of hours before he was awakened by a feeling of wetness under his right armpit. His vest was wet and something was sucking away at his flesh.
It was with a feeling of horror that he discovered that the cat was now stretched out beside him and that it was licking away at his bleeding armpit with a certain amount of relish. And the purring was louder than ever.
A bloodsucking cat!
Rusty sat up on the bed, flung the cat away from him, sent Popat rolling to the floor and made a dash for the light switch.
As the lights came on, Rusty saw the cat standing at the foot of the bed, tail erect and hair on end. It looked very angry.
And then, for the space of five seconds at the most, its appearance changed. Its face was that of a human—a girl’s face, beautiful but anguished, with full red lips that were drenched with blood . . .
The moment passed and it was a cat’s face again. It let out a weird mewing, leapt on to the windowsill and disappeared through the open window.
Quickly, Rusty shut the window and examined himself in the mirror. His vest was soaked with blood. For over an hour the cat had been licking and sucking at his fragile skin, wearing it away until the blood oozed out.
‘What happened to you, Rusty?’ asked Popat, now wide awake. ‘Why are you bleeding?’ He followed Rusty into the bathroom and helped him wash the blood away.
‘It was a cat,’ exclaimed Rusty, ‘or a vampire!’ But he had not been bitten. There were no teeth marks, no scratches. The tongue and the constant licking had done the damage.
Popat found a roll of cotton wool in his backpack, and used some of it to stop the trickle of blood from Rusty’s armpit. Then he dabbed boric powder on the wound and made a rough bandage out of a couple of large handkerchiefs.
‘I didn’t know you were a doctor,’ said Rusty, appreciating Popat’s efforts.
‘I’ll get some proper bandages when I’m in the bazaar,’ said Popat, ‘but how did the cat get in?’
‘It was all part of a dream, I think,’ said Rusty. A nice dream at first, but then it had changed—and dreams and reality were all mixed up now.
Rusty returned to his bed, uncertain about what he had seen. How had the cat’s face changed just for a few moments? Had it been a vision, a dream or the embodiment of a spirit?
‘A bad dream,’ professed Popat. ‘Let’s just go home tomorrow.’
‘If you like,’ agreed Rusty.
*
But in the clear light of day, the incident in the night did not seem so terrible.
The young wrestler stripped to his shorts, strode out into the sunshine and went through a number of vigorous exercises. A band of long-tailed langurs watched him from the surrounding trees. A barbet called out from the top of a spruce tree, announcing the imminent arrival of summer. A barking deer peeped out from behind a tree trunk, was startled by the sight of humans and rushed away. The surroundings were quite heavily wooded, and Rusty felt that there would be larger, fiercer animals lurking in the depths of the forest.
Popat had to visit one of his father’s clients, so he left for the bazaar, saying he’d be back as soon as possible with bandages and antiseptics.
Rusty lazed in the sun, still pondering over the vision of the night before. It had seemed so real—and perhaps it was . . .
‘I propose we stay here another night,’ said Rusty. ‘There’ll be a lot of walking from tomorrow.’
Suitably rewarded, the bowler-hatted chowkidar agreed to put them up for another night. Pitamber ate a hearty breakfast—six parathas, carrot halwa and a jug of milk. Rusty hated milk, but he managed to put away three parathas with the help of a mug of tea.
‘Not such a bad place after all,’ said Pitamber, burping with satisfaction.
A convoy of crows seemed to agree, for they descended on the area and noisily helped themselves to the remains of the breakfast.
Black Hat in the Cemetery
While Popat went around visiting his father’s customers, Rusty and Pitamber strolled through the town, seeing what the place had to offer by way of entertainment and refreshment.
As for entertainment, there wasn’t any. Not even a cinema. Rusty was a nature lover, and could spend hours looking for unusual plants or wild flowers, or even butterflies or beetles, but nature’s bounty meant little to Pitamber, who was of a practical nature, ever attentive to the needs of his body. He was, in fact, one of Mother Nature’s better specimens, as far as mammals go. However, he was not a reflective person, and could not appreciate his own unique qualities. Beetles would have interested him only if they were edible.
As for refreshment, the town was not without its dhabas and small eating places. Pitamber knew from experience that such places often provided tastier and more satisfying fare than the smart restaurants and cafés one could find in Dehra and the larger towns. By late afternoon he had sampled the fare in at least three of these.
In trying to compete with Pitamber, Rusty had developed acute indigestion. Looking for a place to rest, he spotted an old churchyard and decided to stretch himself out on the steps. Pitamber planted himself down on a large stone slab and then, discovering it was a gravestone, got up in a hurry and joined Rusty on the steps.
‘Is it unlucky to sit on a grave?’ he asked, for he was of a superstitious nature.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Rusty. ‘The dead could probably do with a little company.’
The church door was locked and the building looked as though it hadn’t been used for years. Daisies and dandelions grew out of cracks in the walls. A portion of the roof was missing.
There were about a dozen old graves in the churchyard, an indication that a small British community had once lived here, for the names inscribed on most of the gravestones were English or Scottish or Welsh or Irish as far as Rusty could make out.
‘That cat has been sitting on that particular grave for a long time,’ observed Pitamber, pointing to a corner of the cemetery where a large black cat lay stretched out on a flat tombstone. ‘Is it the same one that drank your blood last night?’
‘Just sunning itself, probably,’ said Rusty. ‘It’s not the same one.’
‘Black cats are unlucky,’ said Pitamber.
‘No, they are lucky,’ said Rusty. ‘In Europe and England, every ship keeps a cat on board just for luck. And it’s always a black
cat!’
‘But witches keep them too, I’ve heard.’
While Pitamber and Rusty were arguing about cats, lucky or otherwise, this particular black cat vanished, to be replaced by a black hat—or rather, the black-hatted person who ran the rest house.
‘Do you think he turns into a cat?’ whispered Pitamber, in awe.
‘Of course not,’ said Rusty. ‘The cat ran away as soon as it saw him.’
The boys approached Black Hat and asked him if he looked after the cemetery. He nodded gravely. ‘I do it as a duty to the memsahib who is buried here,’ he said, indicating the tombstone where the cat had been resting.
‘We saw a cat here,’ said Rusty.
‘That’s right,’ said Black Hat. ‘It was Herbert memsahib’s cat.’
Rusty looked at the inscription on the tombstone. ‘Gloriana Herbert. Born 1860. Died 1935. May her soul rest in peace.’
‘She died sixteen years ago,’ calculated Rusty. ‘That cat must be very old.’
‘The cat died with her,’ said Black Hat. ‘They both drowned when crossing the Yamuna in a small boat. There was a sudden flood, the boat capsized, Herbert ma’am and her cat and the boatmen were all swept away. The lady’s body was found and buried here, but the cat was never found. Its spirit comes here every day, just to lie down beside her.’
‘It looked like a real cat,’ said Rusty, wondering if Black Hat was trying to fool them.
‘A ghost cat,’ said Pitamber. ‘Coming back to be with its mistress, who must have been a witch. Cats everywhere! Very unlucky. It’s time to go home.’
‘We’ll decide tomorrow,’ said Rusty.
Dinner by Moonlight
Black Hat lit a wonderful bonfire that night. Fallen oak leaves, pine cones and branches that had fallen during the heavy winter snow—all combined to make a crackling fire. The flames leapt up, casting an orange-gold glow on the faces of the boys. Black Hat’s demonic countenance was given an even more devilish tinge by the flickering firelight. Eager to keep the fire going, he very nearly set fire to his beard.