Whispers in the Dark

by Ruskin Bond

  He had been given the basement room by the hotel’s elderly estate manager, Negi, who had known Markham in the years before the War, when Negi was just a room boy. Markham had himself been a youthful assistant manager at the time, and he had helped the eager young Negi advance from room boy to bartender to office clerk. When Markham took up a wartime commission, Negi rose even further. Now Markham was well into his late sixties, with Negi not very far behind. After a post-War, post-Independence slump, the hill station was thriving again; but both Negi and Markham belonged to another era, another time and place. So did the old hotel, now going to seed, but clinging to its name and surviving on its reputation.

  ‘We’re dead, but we won’t lie down,’ joked Markham, but he didn’t find it very funny.

  Day after day, alone in the stark simplicity of his room, there was little he could do except read or listen to his short-wave transistor radio; but he would emerge at night to prowl about the vast hotel grounds and occasionally take a midnight stroll along the deserted Mall.

  During these forays into the outer world, he wore an old felt hat, which hid part of his face. He had tried wearing a mask, but that had been even more frightening for those who saw it, especially under a street lamp. A couple of honeymooners, walking back to the hotel late at night, had come face-to-face with Markham and had fled the hill station the next day. Dogs did not like the mask, either. They set up a furious barking at Markham’s approach, stopping only when he removed the mask; they did not seem to mind his face. A policeman returning home late had accosted Markham, suspecting him of being a burglar, and snatched off the mask. Markham, sans nose, jaw and one eye, had smiled a crooked smile, and the policeman had taken to his heels. Thieves and goondas he could handle; not ghostly apparitions straight out of hell.

  Apart from Negi, only a few knew of Markham’s existence. These were the lower-paid employees who had grown used to him over the years, as one gets used to a lame dog or a crippled cow. The gardener, the sweeper, the dhobi, the night chowkidar, all knew him as a sort of presence. They did not look at him. A man with one eye is said to have the evil eye, and one baleful glance from Markham’s single eye was enough to upset anyone with a superstitious nature. He had no problems with the menial staff, and he wisely kept away from the hotel lobby, bar, dining room and corridors—he did not want to frighten the customers away; that would have spelt an end to his own liberty. The owner, who was away most of the time, did not know of his existence; nor did his wife, who lived in the east wing of the hotel, where Markham had never ventured.

  The hotel covered a vast area, which included several unused buildings and decaying outhouses. There was a Beer Garden, no longer frequented, overgrown with weeds and untamed shrubbery. There were tennis courts, rarely used; a squash court, inhabited by a family of goats; a children’s playground with a broken see-saw; a ballroom which hadn’t seen a ball in fifty years; cellars which were never opened; and a billiard room, said to be haunted.

  As his name implied, Markham’s forebears were English, with a bit of Allahabad thrown in. It was said that he was related to Kipling on his mother’s side; but he never made this claim himself. He had fair hair and one grey-blue eye. The other, of course, was missing.

  His artificial nose could be removed whenever he wished, and as he found it a little uncomfortable, he usually took it off when he was alone in his room. It rested on his bedside table, staring at the ceiling. Over the years, it had acquired a character of its own and those (like Negi) who had seen it looked upon it with a certain amount of awe. Markham avoided looking at himself in the mirror, but sometimes he had to shave one side of his face, which included a few surviving teeth; there was a gaping hole in his left cheek. And after all these years, it still looked raw.

  * * *

  When it was past midnight, Markham emerged from his lair and prowled the grounds of the old hotel. They belonged to him, really, as no one else patrolled them at that hour—not even the night chowkidar, who was usually to be found asleep on a tattered sofa outside the lounge.

  Wearing his old hat and cape, Markham did his rounds.

  He was a ghostly figure, no doubt, and the few who had glimpsed him in those late hours had taken him for a supernatural visitor. In this way, the hotel had acquired a reputation for being haunted. Some guests liked the idea of having a resident ghost; others stayed away.

  On this particular night, Markham was more restless than usual, more discontented with himself in particular and with the world in general; he wanted a little change—and who wouldn’t, in similar circumstances?

  He had promised Negi that he would avoid the interior of the hotel as far as possible; but it was midsummer, the days were warm and languid, the nights cool and balmy, and he felt like being in the proximity of other humans even if he could not socialize with them.

  And so, late at night, he slipped out of the passage to his cellar room and ascended the steps that led to the old banquet hall, now just a huge dining room. A single light was burning at the end of the hall. Beneath it stood an old piano.

  Markham lifted the lid and ran his fingers over the keys. He could still pick out a tune, although it had been many years since he had played for anyone or even for himself. Now at least he could indulge himself a little. An old song came back to him and he played it softly, hesitantly, recalling a few words:

  But it’s a long, long time, from May to December,

  And the days grow short when we reach September . . .

  He couldn’t remember all the words, so he just hummed a little as he played. Suddenly, something came down with a crash at the other end of the room. Markham looked up, startled. The hotel cat had knocked over a soup tureen that had been left on one of the tables. Seeing Markham’s tall, shifting shadow on the wall, its hair stood on end. And with a long, low wail it fled the banquet room.

  Markham left too, and made his way up the carpeted staircase to the first-floor corridor.

  Not all the rooms were occupied. They seldom were, these days. He tried one or two doors, but they were locked. He walked to the end of the passage and tried the last door. It was open.

  Assuming the room was unoccupied, he entered it quietly. The lights were off, but there was sufficient moonlight coming through the large bay window with its view of the mountains. Markham looked towards the large double bed and saw that it was occupied. A young couple lay there, fast asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms. A touching sight! Markham smiled bitterly. It was over forty years since anyone had lain in his arms.

  There were footsteps in the passage. Someone stood outside the closed door. Had Markham been seen prowling about the corridors? He moved swiftly to the window, unlatched it, and stepped quickly out on to the landing abutting the roof. Quietly he closed the window and moved away.

  Outside, on the roof, he felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. No one would find him there. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of the roof before. Being on it gave him a feeling of ownership. The hotel, and all who lived in it, belonged to him.

  The lights from a few skylights, and the moon above, helped him to move unhindered over the sloping, corrugated old tin roof. He looked out at the mountains, striding away into the heavens. He felt at one with them.

  The owner, Mr Khanna, was away on one of his extended trips abroad. Known to his friends as the, ‘Playboy of the Western World’, he spent a great deal of his time and money in foreign capitals: London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam. Mr Khanna’s wife had health problems (mostly in her mind) and seldom travelled, except to visit god-men and faith healers. At this point in time, she was suffering from insomnia, and was pacing about her room in her dressing gown, a loose-fitting garment that did little to conceal her overblown figure; for in spite of her many ailments, her appetite for everything on the menu card was undiminished. Right now she was looking for her sleeping tablets. Where on earth had she put them? They were not on her bedside table; not on the dressing table; not on the bathroom shelf. Perhaps they were in he
r handbag. She rummaged in a drawer, found and opened the bag, and extracted a strip of Valium. Pouring herself a glass of water from the bedside carafe, she tossed her head back, revealing several layers of chin. Before she could swallow the tablet, she saw a face at the skylight. Not really a face. Not a human face, that is. An empty eye socket, a wicked grin, and a nose that wasn’t a nose, pressed flat against the glass.

  Mrs Khanna sank to the floor and passed out. She had no need of the sleeping tablet that night.

  * * *

  For the next couple of days, Mrs Khanna was quite hysterical and spoke wildly of a wolf-man or Rakshas who was pursuing her. But no one—not even Negi—attributed the apparition to Markham, who had always avoided the guests’ rooms.

  The daylight hours, he passed in his cellar room, which received only a dapple of late-afternoon sunlight through a narrow aperture that passed for a window. For about ten minutes, the sun rested on a framed picture of Markham’s mother, a severe-looking but handsome woman, who must have been in her forties when the picture was taken. His father, an Army captain, had been killed in the trenches at Mons during the First World War. His picture stood there, too; a dashing figure in uniform. Sometimes Markham wished that he, too, had died from his wounds; but he had been kept alive, and then he had stayed dead-alive all these years, a punishment, maybe, for sins and excesses committed in some former existence. Perhaps there was something in the theory or belief in karma, although he wished that things could even out a little more in this life—why did we have to wait for the next time around? Markham had read Emerson’s essay on the law of compensation, but that didn’t seem to work either. He had often thought of suicide as a way of cheating the fates that had made him, the child of handsome parents, no better than a hideous gargoyle; but he had thrust the thought aside, hoping (as most of us do) that things would change for the better.

  His room was tidy—it had the bare necessities—and those pictures were the only mementos of a past he couldn’t forget. He had his books, too, for he considered them necessities—the Greek philosophers, Epicurus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca. When Seneca had nothing left to live for, he had cut his wrists in his bathtub and bled slowly to death. Not a bad way to go, thought Markham; except that he didn’t have a bathtub, only a rusty iron bucket.

  Food was left outside his door, as per instructions; sometimes fresh fruit and vegetables, sometimes a cooked meal. If there was a wedding banquet in the hotel, Negi would remember to send Markham some roast chicken or pilau. Markham looked forward to the marriage season, with its lavish wedding parties. He was a permanent, though unknown, wedding guest.

  After discovering the freedom of the Empire’s roof, Markham’s nocturnal excursions seldom went beyond the hotel’s sprawling estate. As sure-footed as when he was a soldier, he had no difficulty in scrambling over the decaying rooftops, moving along narrow window ledges, and leaping from one landing or balcony to another. It was late summer, and guests often left their windows open to enjoy the pine-scented breeze that drifted over the hillside. Markham was no voyeur, he was really too insular and subjective a person for that form of indulgence; nevertheless, he found it fascinating to observe people in their unguarded moments: how they preened in front of mirrors, or talked to themselves, or attended to their little vanities, or sang or scratched or made love (or tried to), or drank themselves into a stupor. There were many men (and a few women) who preferred drinking in their rooms to drinking in the bar—it was cheaper, and they could get drunk and stupid without making fools of themselves in public.

  One of those who enjoyed a quiet tipple in her room was Mrs Khanna. A vodka with tomato juice was her favourite drink. Markham was watching her soak up her third Bloody Mary when the room telephone rang and Mrs Khanna, receiving some urgent message, left her room and went swaying down the corridor like a battleship of yore.

  On an impulse, Markham slipped in through the open window and crossed the room to the table where the bottles were arranged. He felt like having a Bloody Mary himself. It had been years since he’d had one; not since that evening at New Delhi’s Imperial, when he was on his first leave. Now, a little rum during the winter months was his only indulgence.

  Taking a clean glass, he poured himself three fingers of vodka and drank it neat. He was about to pour himself another drink when Mrs Khanna entered the room. She stood frozen in her tracks. For there stood the creature of her previous nightmare, the half-face wolf-demon, helping himself to her vodka!

  Mrs Khanna screamed. And screamed again.

  Markham made a quick exit through the window and vanished into the night. But Mrs Khanna would not stop screaming—not until Negi, half the staff and several guests had entered the room to try and calm her down.

  * * *

  Commotion reigned for a couple of days. Doctors came and went. Policemen came and went. So did Mrs Khanna’s palpitations. She insisted that the hotel be searched for the maniac who was in hiding somewhere, only emerging from his lair to single her out for attention. Negi kept the searchers away from the cellar, but he went down himself and confronted Markham.

  ‘Mr Markham, sir, you must keep away from the rooms and the main hotel. Mrs Khanna is very upset. She’s called in the police and she’s having the hotel searched.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Negi. I did not mean to frighten anyone. It’s just that I get restless down here.’

  ‘If she finds out you’re living here, you’ll have to go. She gives the orders when Mr Khanna is away.’

  ‘This is my only home. Where would I go?’

  ‘I know, Mr Markham, I know. I understand. But do others? It unnerves them, coming upon you without any warning. Stories are going around . . . Business is bad enough without the hotel getting a reputation for strange goings-on. If you must go out at night, use the rear gate and stick to the forest path. Avoid the Mall Road. Times have changed, Mr Markham. There are no private places any more. If you have to leave, you will be in the public eye—and I know you don’t want that . . .’

  ‘No, I can’t leave this place. I’ll stick to my room. You’ve been good to me, Mr Negi.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll see that you get what you need. Just keep out of sight.’

  So Markham confined himself to his room for a week, two weeks, three, while the monsoon rains swept across the hills, and a clinging mist gave everything a musty, rotting smell. By mid-August, life in a hill station can become quite depressing for its residents. The absence of sunshine has something to do with it. Even strolling along the Mall is not much fun when a thin, cloying drizzle is drifting into your face. No wonder some take to drink. The hotel bar had a few more customers than usual, although the carpet stank of mildew and rats’ urine.

  Markham made friends with a shrew that used to visit his room. Shrews have poor eyesight and are easily caught and killed. But as they are supposed to bring good fortune, they were left alone by the hotel staff. Markham was grateful for a little company, and fed his shrew on biscuits and dry bread. It moved about his room quite freely and slept in the bottom drawer of his dressing table. Unlike the cat, it had no objection to Markham’s face—or the lack of it.

  Towards the end of August, when there was still no relief from the endless rain and cloying mist, Markham grew restless again. He made one brief, nocturnal visit to the park behind the hotel, and came back soaked to the skin. It seemed a pointless exercise, tramping through the long, leech-infested grass. What he really longed for was to touch that piano again. Bits of old music ran through his head. He wanted to pick out a few tunes on that cracked old instrument in the deserted ballroom.

  The rain was thundering down on the corrugated tin roofs. There had been a power failure—common enough on nights like this—and most of the town, including the hotel, had been plunged into darkness. There was no need of mask or cape. No need for his false nose, either. Only in the occasional flash of lightning could you see his torn and ravaged countenance.

  Markham slipped out of his
room and made his way through the cellars beneath the ballroom. It was a veritable jungle down there. No longer used as a wine cellar, the complex was really a storeroom for old and rotting furniture, rusty old boilers from another age, broken garden urns, even a chipped and mutilated statue of Cupid. It had stood in the garden in former times; but recently the town municipal committee had objected to it as being un-Indian and obscene, and so it had been banished to the cellar.

  That had been several years ago, and since then no one had been down into the cellars. It was Markham’s shortcut to the living world above.

  It had stopped raining, and a sliver of moon shone through the clouds. There were still no lights in the hotel. But Markham was used to darkness. He slipped into the ballroom and approached the old piano.

  He sat there for half an hour, strumming out old tunes.

  There was one old favourite that kept coming back to him, and he played it again and again, recalling the words as he went along.

  Oh, pale dispenser of my joys and pains,

  Holding the doors of Heaven and of Hell,

  How the hot blood rushed wildly through the veins

  Beneath your touch, until you waved farewell.

  The words of Laurence Hope’s Kashmiri love song took him back to happier times when life had seemed full of possibilities. And when he came to the end of the song, he felt his loss even more passionately:

  Pale hands, pink-tipped, like lotus buds that float

  On these cool waters where we used to dwell,

  I would have rather felt you round my throat

  crushing out life, than waving me farewell!

  He had loved and been loved once. But that had been a long, long time ago. Pale hands he’d loved, beside the Shalimar . . .

  He stopped playing. All was still.

  Should he return to his room now, and keep his promise to Negi? But then again, no one was likely to be around on a night like this, reasoned Markham; and he had no intention of entering any of the rooms. Through the glass doors at the other end of the ballroom he could see a faint glow, as of a firefly in the darkness. He moved towards the light, as a moth to a flame. It was the chowkidar’s lantern. He lay asleep on an old sofa, from which the stuffing was protruding.