Fiction

Ghost

by Jyothi Ramchandran

Everyone clearly remembered the night that it started. It was long past midnight and the household was asleep. The silence of the night was punctuated only by the peeping of frogs and the chirping of crickets. Lakshmiamma, the cook, who slept on the kitchen floor, heard it first: a low, regular knocking at the back door.

Under normal circumstances, Lakshmiamma was not easily intimidated. Living in a house with three generations of a family—which included twenty children of varying ages—had taught her that there were few things she needed to fear. But this sound, so clear and distinct, barely feet from her head, scared her.

Trying to suppress her fear, she got up quietly and peered through a small crack in the door. Although the night was quite dark, the light from a sliver of moon showed clearly that there was no one outside. And yet, the knocking continued.

Convinced by now that a ghost—or something worse—lingered outside, she ran to her mistress's room. By this time, some of the women had heard the sound too, and were beginning to stir from sleep. Lakshmiamma nimbly made her way over the cotton mattresses on the floor, finally reaching her mistress's bedside. Controlling her by-now trembling fingers, she gently shook her mistress by the shoulder.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that none of the menfolk were home. It was the season when they hunted wild pigs in the dense forests on the hills behind the house, and a large party had left the previous night, expected to return only the next day.

The women spent that night wakeful and anxious. All the oil lamps were lit, and the women spent their time trying to console frightened children. The knocking sound persisted intermittently throughout the night, but when the terrified women peered through the windows and the cracks in the kitchen door, they clearly saw that no one stood outside.

At dawn the next morning, by which time the sounds had ceased, Lakshmiamma had screwed up enough courage to open the door. Outside, there was no token of a human presence. No footprints appeared in the sand beyond the porch, and the only sign of anything untoward was that a bench on the porch was slightly askew. Some of the workers were sent to scour the area around the house for indications that anything had been stolen or damaged. By afternoon, they returned with the news that nothing unusual was to be seen anywhere.

That night, the women did not go to bed. Instead, they waited apprehensively for the sound to return. Past midnight, it started once again, and they spent another sleepless night waiting for the sun to rise. The following day, the men returned from their hunt and were told in breathless tones about the events of the past two nights. It had to be admitted that even the most hardened of them seemed a little perturbed. Wild animals, rogue elephants, difficult workers, and spoilt little children, yes, they could handle those, but ghostly knocking in the middle of the night? Now that was a different matter all together.

Nevertheless, that night they all waited near the door, armed with guns and long sticks. When the sounds started, they were prepared. Two held the door open while Mukundan Kurup, the patriarch of the family, and his son jumped out, wielding their guns and sticks. Kurup shouted "Who is out there?" at the top of his voice, and his son brandished the stick in his hand with gusto.

In the few seconds after they jumped over the threshold, everyone inside stood with bated breath, waiting for they knew not what. They were expecting, perhaps, blood-curdling screams or gunshots. When they heard the loud laughter of the two men, everyone converged at the doorway to see the cause.

The sight that met their eyes was astounding, to say the least. There, on the bench in the porch, reclined a mangy little cur. All the noise of the last few moments had not been enough to dislodge him from his perch on the bench. As they watched, he nonchalantly stretched one leg over his head and vigorously scratched the back of his neck. The dog, scratching himself, jostled the bench, and, because one of its legs was shorter than the others, made a loud tapping sound, which from inside the house sounded exactly like someone knocking on the door.

Amidst the laughter and the sound of the men chasing the obstinate little dog away from his cosy bed, the women turned away with a collective sigh of relief. From then on, the knocking sound in the night lost its power to frighten them.