Whispers in the Dark

by Ruskin Bond

  Miss Mackenzie stopped speaking, and I noticed that the thunder had grown distant and the rain had lessened; but the chimney was still coughing and clearing its throat.

  ‘That is true, every word of it,’ said Miss Mackenzie. ‘But as to Burnt Hill being haunted, that’s another matter. I’ve no experience of ghosts.’

  ‘Anyway, you need a fire to keep them out of the chimney,’ I said, getting up to go. I had my raincoat and umbrella, and my own cottage was not far away.

  Next morning, when I took the steep path up to Burnt Hill, the sky was clear, and though there was still a stiff wind, it was no longer menacing. An hour’s climb brought me to the old ruin—now nothing but a heap of stones, as Miss Mackenzie had said. Part of a wall was left, and the corner of a fireplace. Grass and weeds had grown up through the floor, and primroses and wild saxifrage flowered amongst the rubble.

  Where had they sheltered, I wondered, as the wind tore at them and fire fell from the sky.

  I touched the cold stones, half expecting to find in them some traces of the warmth of human contact. I listened, waiting for some ancient echo, some returning wave of sound, that would bring me nearer to the spirits of the dead lovers; but there was only the wind coughing in the lovely pines.

  I thought I heard voices in the wind; and perhaps I did. For isn’t the wind the voice of the undying dead?

  THE LATE-NIGHT SHOW

  According to the crime novels I used to read, there are four principal reasons for committing murder:

  Money

  Property

  Revenge

  Insanity, temporary or otherwise

  In that order of priority.

  But according to the crime movies I used to see, the priorities were a little different:

  Passion (hate/jealousy)

  Insanity (serial killing)

  Money (bank hold-ups)

  Espionage

  Having grown up on crime fiction (both in literature and on film), I think my assessments are not far off the mark. When I put it to my friend Inspector Keemat Lal a few years ago, he said 50 per cent of murders were the result of greed—for money, property or another person’s possessions. He was right, of course, but something as mundane as that doesn’t make for great films or novels.

  In the year I finished school, I was still staying with my mother in the old Green’s Hotel in Dehradun. Just across the road was the Odeon, a small cinema that showed English and American films. Every winter, during the school holidays, I had been a regular picture-goer. Now that I had finished school, I was still a patron of the cinema, but preferred going to the night shows, from nine-thirty to twelve. At night, the hall was usually half-empty, and the usher-cum-ticket-collector, who had become a friend of mine, would let me in without a ticket—provided I occupied one of the cheaper seats. As pocket money was in short supply (my mother’s salary was both poor and irregular), I readily accepted my friend’s assistance. In this way, I saw almost every Hollywood or British film made around that period.

  Just as much of my reading was centred around Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and Edgar Wallace, so did my taste in films veer towards the slick thrillers in which stars such as James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson portrayed various colourful characters from the underworld. Back then, I remember how strange it felt, watching these actors transition from their roles as gangsters or outlaws to portraying detective heroes (as Bogart did in The Maltese Falcon) or even appearing in musicals (like Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy).

  If today I have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of films made in the 1940s and 1950s, it is due largely to my usher friend who allowed me into the Odeon night after night, putting his job at some risk in doing so. I reciprocated by bringing him the occasional bottle of beer from the Green’s bar. The barman, too, was a friend of mine.

  There were other regulars who came to the night shows—salesmen, shopkeepers, waiters, those who did not get much time off during the day. And some old characters too—like the retired postmaster who never missed a film but always fell asleep after a couple of reels and whose snoring drowned out the sound from the projection room; or the hunchback who always sat in the front row because he couldn’t see anything from the back; or the man who drank endless cups of tea throughout the show. Mostly menfolk. Women seldom came to the night show, unless escorted by husbands or family.

  One regular always intrigued me. He was a man in his thirties who sat through the show without ever removing his hat. Presumably he was bald and felt the cold draught that ran through the hall whenever one of the doors was opened. In January the hall could be cold. He wore an overcoat too, which also served as a receptacle for packets of chana which he munched assiduously during the film. Those were the days before fast foods of various descriptions took over. You had a choice between peanuts and chana. And apart from tea, there was a crimson-coloured cold drink called Vimto, which had a raspberry flavour. The gentleman with the hat always drank Vimto.

  There was no social intercourse during the film. Either you saw the picture or you left the hall. The hatted gentleman almost always took the same seat, not far from one of the exit doors. Occasionally he would have a companion, but not for long. Mr Hat watched the film in its entirety, but the companions came and went. Sometimes he would offer them something from the folds of his overcoat. They would pocket the offering and leave after a few minutes.

  One night, there was a little more activity than usual in the row where Mr Hat was sitting. He came with a companion, who left after a few minutes. A little later he was joined by another person. I did not pay much attention to them. I was engrossed in The Third Man, Anton Karas’s haunting zither music building up to the chase in the sewers of Vienna, with Joseph Cotten hunting down his black-marketeer friend, Orson Welles. Cotten, not Welles, was my favourite actor.

  The activity around Mr Hat was something of a distraction, and one or two in the hall shouted to them to shut up or go home. One of his companions, a tall individual, got up suddenly and walked towards the exit. He passed in front of me. And when he pushed open the door, the light from the foyer fell on his face and I caught a glimpse of narrow eyes, a large hooked nose and a jutting chin. Then the door closed and I was back in the world of post-war Vienna. Ten minutes later, the film was over and the lights came on. We began moving slowly out of the theatre—reluctantly, as it was freezing outside.

  Mr Hat hadn’t moved. He was hunched forward, his hat tilted over his head. I thought he’d fallen asleep. Curious as ever, I took a few steps down the central aisle and looked down at him. At first I thought he’d spilled a bottle of Vimto over his unbuttoned coat and shirt front. Then I realized that it was blood, not Vimto, that had gushed out of his torn and still bleeding throat. I cried out, and my usher friend came running. Then the manager. Then the tea-stall owner. Then those who were still in the hall.

  ‘His throat’s been cut,’ said someone. ‘He’s dead or dying.’

  And by the time a policeman and a doctor arrived, Mr Hat’s lifeblood had seeped away.

  * * *

  It was two or three weeks before I visited the Odeon again, and then, too, only for a matinee.

  ‘No more night shows,’ said my mother. ‘You must be in the hotel by nine, and preferably in your bed.’

  ‘But it had nothing to do with me,’ I protested. ‘He was just another filmgoer.’

  ‘No ordinary filmgoer gets stabbed to death in the middle of a picture. Wasn’t someone with him?’

  ‘Sometimes. I didn’t really notice.’

  But I had noticed the tall, hawk-nosed man who had left before the show ended. I would recognize him again. But I did not tell my mother this.

  With nothing much to do late in the evening, I began hanging around the Green’s Hotel bar, where the bartender, Melaram, often chatted to me if he wasn’t too busy. I sat by myself in a corner of the large, dimly lit room, watching the customers and sipping a shandy. I would have preferred a beer, but my mother had given
Melaram instructions to serve me with nothing stronger than shandy.

  ‘A pity you can’t go to the Odeon any more,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Not at night, anyway. Why don’t you go to the afternoon shows?’

  ‘The free pass was only for the night shows,’ I told him. ‘The hall is practically empty at night.’

  ‘Not surprising, with people getting murdered in their seats.’

  ‘It only happened once.’

  ‘True . . . So how would you like to see a Hindi movie? You can come with me. We’ll go to the Filmistan. Your mother won’t mind.’

  So Melaram took me to see an extravaganza called Alibaba aur 40 Chor, which was the sort of film Melaram enjoyed. All I remember is that it had a nifty little heroine called Shakeela, who was easy on the eye.

  The following week we saw another film, and this time we were accompanied by my friend Sitaram, one of the room boys. We sat in the cheaper seats and clapped with the tonga wallahs and labourers whenever the dashing hero (Dilip Kumar) rescued the coy heroine (Nalini Jaywant) from the menacing villain (Pran, as usual).

  As we left the cinema and were about to cross the road, I thought I saw the man who had passed me in the Odeon the night Mr Hat had been killed. He looked at me, hesitated for a moment, and then passed on. Had he recognized me?

  ‘Someone you know?’ asked Melaram at my side.

  ‘That fellow who just passed,’ I said. ‘I think he was with the man who got killed that night.’

  ‘Well, better keep quiet about it,’ said Melaram. ‘I think he’s from one of the drug gangs. If you see him again, don’t let him think you recognize him.’

  * * *

  To my surprise, the next time I saw him was in the Green’s bar. He strode in, as though looking for someone, then shrugged, sat down on a bar stool and ordered a beer. I was in my dark corner, and he probably would not have noticed me just then, had I not got up and left the room by the service door. I felt his eyes on me. I thought it best not to hang around, so went to my room (my mother had allowed me to use one of the smaller hotel rooms), locked the door, switched on the bed light and immersed myself in Wuthering Heights.

  It was the right sort of book for such a night. Outside, a storm had broken, thunder rolled across the heavens, and the rain came rattling down on the corrugated tin roof. I read for an hour or two, then looked at my watch—given to me recently for having passed out of school. It was only eleven o’clock. I switched off the light and tried to sleep. Presently, the thunder grew more distant, the rain lessened. A breeze sprang up, and a bunch of bougainvillea kept tapping against the windowpanes.

  And then, someone was tapping on my door.

  A light tap to begin with, and then louder, more insistent.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I called, but no one answered.

  Had it been the nightwatchman, or Sitaram at a loose end, they would have said something. Perhaps Sitaram up to tricks?

  ‘Go to bed,’ I called out. ‘I’m sleepy.’

  No answer. But after a little while, more knocking. Then silence. Then footsteps receding.

  I switched on my bedside radio and lay awake, listening to popular songs that held no special meaning for me. But at least the radio was company. Finally I fell asleep, the music still playing.

  It must have been towards dawn that I woke again. The radio was still on, but the station had gone off the air and there was a lot of static coming over the airwaves. I switched it off.

  That tapping again. But now it came from the window, not the door.

  I got up on my knees and drew aside the window curtain. There was a face pressed against the glass. An outside light fell upon it and made it look more hideous than it really was. The slit eyes, hooked nose and wide, sensual mouth seemed more sinister than ever. Boris Karloff as Frankenstein couldn’t have been more frightening.

  The apparition smiled at me, and I let the curtain fall.

  And then I did a foolish thing. I leapt out of bed, opened my door and ran barefoot down the corridor, calling for Sitaram, Melaram, the chowkidar, anyone!

  But no one came. It was the hour before dawn, and no one stirred.

  I ran out on to the back veranda, and he was waiting there—Hook Nose was waiting. In his right hand he held a kukri, its blade shining in the lamplight.

  I turned and ran into the wilderness behind the hotel. A path ran down the slope and into a tangle of jungle. I knew it well. He was running after me, crashing clumsily through the lantana, but I was faster than him, and I kept running until I came to an abandoned cowshed that stood at the edge of the jungle.

  I did not enter it. He would have caught me there. Instead, I crouched behind some bushes—and waited.

  He was not long in coming. He stopped in front of the open door—the shed’s only door—then stepped inside. I could hear him stumbling around in the dark.

  I crept up to the door, pulled it shut and slid the bolt in. It was an old door, but strong, made of deodar wood. There were no windows in the shed, just a small slit high up on the wall. Mr Hook Nose would have to break the door down in order to get out. He’d need an axe to do that. Already he was hammering away with his fists and cursing.

  I left him to it, and returned to the hotel.

  Dawn was breaking. A cock crowed near the kitchen outhouse, while an early riser emerged from his room, yelling for his morning tea.

  * * *

  I went to Bareilly to spend a month with one of my aunts. There were no bookshops in Bareilly, and no English cinema, and I was soon restless and eager to return to Dehradun.

  When I got down at the station, Sitaram was there to meet me.

  He told me that Melaram had gone to a new and bigger hotel, and that Green’s had a new but inexperienced bartender. He also brought me up to date on all the films that were running in town.

  Was it fear, curiosity, a morbid fascination that took me down to the old cowshed that very afternoon? Somehow I had to know if Hook Nose had escaped, or if he was still there, now a bag of bones!

  I had lunch with my mother, then said I was going for a walk—it was a bracing February afternoon in the Doon—and took the jungle path down to the shed.

  It was still locked. Dared I open that door? Would the revenant of Hook Nose come rushing out at me? Worse still, would I find his remains putrefying in the dust?

  Well, I had to find out.

  I opened the door and stepped inside.

  It was so dark I could hardly see anything. In the stale air, there was the smell of muskrats and rotting vegetation. But nothing that I would describe as a human smell.

  I looked around. Toadstools grew on the floor. There was a pile of wood in one corner. A large grey rat ran out from under the woodpile and out through the open door. No sign of Hook Nose anywhere. Either he’d escaped on his own or someone had set him free. I felt relieved, but also apprehensive. What if he came looking for me again?

  That evening, as I emerged from my room, Sitaram took me by the hand and said, ‘Come on, the bar’s open. I’ll get you a beer. No customers as yet.’

  I was still a year under the legal limit for drinking in a bar, but that didn’t stop me from perching on a bar stool while Sitaram went in search of something for me to eat.

  The bartender had his back to me. When he turned, a bottle of Golden Eagle in his hands, I received the shock of my life. It was Hook Nose!

  I almost fell off my stool. My first impulse was to get up and run. But his face was expressionless. All he did was open the bottle and top up a glass with beer, and place it before me. Was it possible that he did not recognize me?

  Sitaram was beckoning me to a table in a dark alcove.

  I hurried towards him.

  ‘Who’s the new bartender?’ I asked urgently.

  ‘Don’t know his name,’ said Sitaram, speaking rapidly in Hindustani. ‘I don’t think he knows it himself. Your mother felt sorry for him and gave him the job. Somehow he’d got locked into that old shed behind the hotel. Must
have been there for several days before he was found, just by chance, when we went there for some firewood—he’d had nothing to eat and drink, and he’d hurt his head trying to get out. Lost his memory. Couldn’t remember a thing. Had nowhere to go. So your mother gave him a job. He goes about in a bit of a daze, but he’s all right for serving drinks. Perhaps he’ll start remembering things one of these days . . . Why are you looking worried? It’s no concern of yours. Come on, finish your beer and we’ll go to the pictures. I’ve got the night off. There’s a new film with Nimmi in it. You like her, don’t you?’

  WHEN DARKNESS FALLS

  Markham had, for many years, lived alone in a small room adjoining the disused cellars of the old Empire Hotel in one of our hill stations. His Army pension gave him enough money to pay for his room rent and his basic needs, but he shunned the outside world—by daylight, anyway—partly because of a natural reticence and partly because he wasn’t very nice to look at.

  While Markham was serving in Burma during the War, a shell had exploded near his dugout, tearing away most of his face. Plastic surgery was then in its infancy, and although the doctors had done their best, even going to the extent of giving Markham a false nose, his features were permanently ravaged. On the few occasions that he had walked abroad by day, he had been mistaken for someone in the final stages of leprosy and been given a wide berth.