The cottage by the sea

The cottage stood by the sea, at the far, distant end of a lane which led from the main road, which further connected to the National Highway that led to Mumbai, the city of bright lights and big dreams. It had a wicket gate leading to a small thatchet garden. The house itself was a small, one-storeyed building of brick and wood with a tiled roof (as was the norm in this part of the country) and barricaded windows with Venetian blinds tightly drawn at all times of the day. The construction was surprisingly Victorian, as if an Englishman had lost his way and decided to settle down in this part of the country. To complete the illusion, the house even had a chimney, which had never functioned, but nevertheless gave passersby a reason to turn around and look at the house. The house was painted in a dark shade of gray, which made it look even more forbidding, especially during the winter season, when the small patch of greenery in front of the house would change its colour from green to various shades of grey, and the cold, salty wind would blow in from the sea .

The sign –board outside the gate proclaimed, somewhat paradoxically, “Serenity Cottage.’’

There were a few other houses in the lane. These were built in the typical local Mangalorean style, with large windows, a courtyard and the archetypal coconut tree. Children would play about, run into the lane, look at the cottage at the end of the road, and look back. They had been conditioned to avoid the place, since many years.

No one had lived in the cottage for a very long time, not at least while the other houses were being constructed. The story went around that the landlord, who now lived in Mumbai, had been witness to the death of his wife in the very same house, due to an explosion from the kitchen gas oven, many years back. He had left the place with his children ever since. People whispered that the house was haunted, indeed some claimed that on full-moon nights, they would see a shadowy figure emerge from the building, walk towards the wicket gate and then suddenly disappear. The ones, who listened to the story, of course, were not up to it to verify its authenticity .

Therefore, it was surprising when, on one fine Sunday in November, a taxi drove up to the gate of the cottage. It was near Diwali, and people were decorating their houses, getting ready to usher in the festive season. The arrival of a visitor was surprising, and made heads turn. A short, gaunt man in his late thirties got down from the taxi, accompanied by a petite lady clad in jeans and kurta.

Mr.Vasudevan , the secretary of the local land-owners’ association, went up to meet the couple. It turned out that they had just arrived from Mumbai, and were taking the house on rent.

“On rent?” exclaimed Mr.Vasudevan, a puzzled look on his face.

“Yes”, the man replied, “anything wrong?”

“ No, .. no.. no at all” stuttered Mr.Vasudevan. It would not be right to frighten the new-comers, he thought.

The man did not look relieved, but he let it go. Introductions over, the couple got down to unloading their belongings from the taxi. They were Rajiv and Rathi Nair, from Mumbai, who were professors, and had taken up a job at the local engineering college.

Their household belongings arrived a few days back. But, all throughout, their interaction with their neighbours was minimal. The Venetian blinds continued to be tightly shut, and they emerged from the house only twice, once at dawn and again in the evening. No noises would be heard from the house, even that of television, though the television antenna had been fixed, with great difficulty, by the local cable person. The thatchet garden continued to be untended as before, and no one was seen outside the house for most of the daytime.

Mrs.Ratnakar was the garrulous lady of the neighbourhood. She ventured forth into their house one day. On ringing the bell, the door opened, a crack wide, after what seemed an eternity.

“Hello, I am Mrs. Ratnakar. I live next door”, her greeting was met by a vacant stare from the couple, who were standing in front of her.

“Yes?” the voice was blank and distant, as if he was talking in a stupor.

They showed her in. The house was dark and smelled of fresh paint. There was a mounted antler horn on the wall, which also had to its adornment a large picture which showed a werewolf hunting on a full-moon night. There was a picture on another wall, which depicted a scene of fires burning in hell. The house smelled of incense and camphor oil. Even in the daytime, the dark, heavy satin curtains were tightly closed and the objects in the room, which included stuffed bust of tiger, complete with burning eyes, cast eerie shadows upon the walls. Mrs. Ratnakar shuddered involuntarily. After making small talk, and sitting for what seemed like an eternity, she excused herself and made her move. That was her last attempt to socialize with them.

Gradually, the rumors started to go around. Were they members of a secret cult? Worse still, were they terrorists? Mr. Crasta, the local police inspector, had a tough time dealing with these rumours and finally decided, after a bout of failed espionage, that they were probably normal people, who just wanted to be left alone.

After a few days, it started. Mrs.Ratnakar, as usual, was the first person to notice it- the pile of books lying outside Serenity Cottage, early in the morning. These were old magazines- Readers’ Digest, Cosmopolitan and others, dating quite a few years back. No one gave it much thought, and the local kabadiwala was delighted with his find when he came for his rounds that day.

They would never speak about their personal lives, even at the rare social occasions they attended, like Mr.Vasudevan’s son’s wedding. All that people knew was they hailed from Mumbai. There were no friends or relatives who came to the cottage. Similarly, they went out very little. At times, they would not go out for days on end, but there would be times when they would lock the house, go out and not come back for weeks. They had travelled widely around the world, they said, so people assumed that they had just gone somewhere and would be back soon. Surely enough, the reappearances were as abrupt as the appearances.

Gradually, the haunted house rumours started getting replaced by the “mysterious couple”rumours. Mrs.Ratnakar would be the one to lead these rumours.

“May be they are really terrorists, you know!” she said.

“Nonsense, they don’t look like that”, exclaimed Mrs. DeMillo.

“And what do terrorists look like? Do they wear horns?” the other retorted, to which Mrs. De Millo had no answer.

“Got to be careful, Amma “advised the sagely Mrs. Bhat, “what is the local police doing?”

“No good as usual” exclaimed Mrs.Ratnakar, “that useless inspector Crasta, he roamed around for a few days, but did nothing about it”.

“Probably it’s nothing, they are just strange” concluded Mrs. De Millo.

“Or devil-worshippers “, Mrs.Bhat refused to be outdone.

Whatever they were, the neighbours were unanimous in their opinion that they were very, very strange indeed.

The disposals from the house grew stranger and stranger. Almost daily, there would be something discarded outside the cottage- new books, DVDs, knick-knacks. Even a bone-china dinner set, an ornate tea-table, fashionable folding chairs, brand new clothes which had never been used, all made their way into the early-morning heap outside the cottage. The neighbours were puzzled. The Nairs had stayed in the US for quite some time, so they had informed Mr. Vasudevan during one of their rare conversations. Was it like this over there in that crazy country, he thought. Or maybe they were filthily rich. Whatever, the kabadiwala grew richer, and the neighbours grew more curious every day. On one fine day, some novels of Stephen King emerged. Mrs. Bhat’s son took these to read, and was mortified by the contents, for they dealt with death and afterlife. And when he spotted vampire and werewolf stories in the heap the next week, his mother’s suspicions about the strange couple grew stronger. The deluge grew in size and volume, and one day the neighbours were surprised to find an elegant sofa set in front of the house. This was, of course, promptly carted off by the local watchman , to adorn his house.

August came, and rain was lashing the town. The torrent had not let down in the last three days, and it gave no sign of doing so. People were confined to their houses for the past few days, and with nothing to do other than watch TV, the rumour channels were working overtime. The Nairs had not been seen for the last one week, and people were wondering where they had gone. It was, of course, not unusual, and they had done this several times before. Monsoons seemed like an unlikely time for visiting places nearby, so people assumed that they had gone to someplace far away.

The rain finally stopped after two days, and people heaved a sigh of relief. Mr.Vasudevan had gone for his regular afternoon walk to the sea-shore, and as he was coming back, he noticed something odd. One of the windows of the cottage, on the side facing the sea, was open, the blinds drawn wide. It was a most unusual thing for a house which was always shrouded in secrecy, and it drew his curiousity. Although he was of a rather non-inquisitive nature, he was concerned about the whereabouts of the couple. Entering through the wicker gate, he peeped through the window.

The window opened into the bedroom of the house, and all he could see was a bed, an almirah and a reading desk with chairs. The room further led into the drawing room, which was obscured from his view, but he noticed a faint light coming through the door. There was a faint smell of camphor and incense, and an eerie silence which made him very, very apprehensive. It was then that he noticed the footsteps in the mud, leading to the back door.

Evening had descended by now, and the shadows of the trees nearby cast strange silhouettes on the walls. His heart beating aloud, he made his way to the back door, and knocked thrice, urgently. There was no answer.

Suddenly, he heard it. The soft, almost imperceptible moan coming from inside the house, through the back door. It was as if something was dying, asking for help. It was the voice of a lady, who was in a great deal of pain.

He ran back, out through the wicker gate, his heart pounding like a sledgehammer. Somehow, he located Inspector Crasta’s number on his mobile and frantically shouted into the phone, “Inspector, you better rush here… immediately! No, no, don’t delay, it’s urgent. Yes, its Mr.Vasudevan. I am speaking from in front of Serenity Cottage. No, no, I cannot explain on phone, inspector. For God’s sake, hurry!”

He had barely disconnected the phone, when he saw, in the distance, a person standing in the garden. It looked like a lady, and she was looking at him. Even through the darkness, he could make out the sadness and despondency in her eyes. He had never ever seen her before. He tried to reach towards her, but she simply walked away towards the back of the cottage, where a thicket separated the garden from the sea shore. His heart pounding rapidly, Mr. Vasudevan followed her to the back of the cottage, but found no one there.

Unlike the other days, it took the cherubic and rather lackadaisical Inspector Crasta barely ten minutes to reach Serenity Cottage. As he got down from the rickety jeep, two constables in two, he saw Mr.Vasudevan, ashen white and stuttering.

“What happened?” his urgent querry elicited no answer. Mr.Vasudevan simply pointed out to the cottage.

It took another five minutes for Mr.Vasudevan to recover and recount the facts, and another twenty minutes for his team to gather reinforcements and break open the front door of the cottage. The front door led into the living room, and as they made their way inside, what they saw made them stop in their tracks.

There was only one small oil wicker lamp burning inside the room. The blinds were drawn as usual. The house was dark and quiet, and the few furniture cast eerie shadows on the walls, in the light of the wicker lamp. The room was sparsely decorated, the pictures of Hell and the werewolf still adorned the walls. The lone ceiling fan was on the floor. From the hook of the ceiling fan, dangled a nylon rope with two nooses, from which dangled the bodies of Rajiv and Rathi Nair.

As the news broke outside, all hell broke loose and neighbours started flooding the gates of the cottage. As Inspector Crasta looked around, carefully, he found a notebook tucked under the sofa. It was easy to miss if one was not looking around. There was no other paper or book anywhere in the room.

Inspector Crasta took Mr.Vasudevan into the next room, notebook in tow. The house had been barricaded by the small police contingent by now, and the bodies had been brought down and laid on the floor. They were waiting for the forensic experts to come.

As he opened the first page of the notebook and started to read aloud, it read”Recollections of an anguished soul.” He rapidly flipped through to the present date, 20^th August, and began to read:

“It has been the most peaceful decision of my life. I, Rajiv Nair and my sister Rathi, are finally joining our mother today in the journey into the unknown.

Thirty years back, in this same house, we saw our beloved mother die. I was seven then and my sister was five. It was passed off as an accident, but we know that it had the devilous hand of our father, who we believe had purposefully kept the knob of the gas oven open, so the accident was bound to happen. It can never be proved, but we know that he had intended to get rid of her, as his multiple affairs and his lust for money was wrecking our family. He was not the one to carry out his work without calculation, and the life insurance settlement he received from our mother’s death ensured enough wealth for him to build his business in Mumbai, while we languished in non-descript boarding schools. We grew up like orphans, having no mother, and having a father whom we hated and wanted dead. Somehow, we scraped through school, fighting adversity and the tortures of an uncaring father, and then made it through college and university, learning finally to stand on our own. Thereafter, though we have been successful professionally, life has been as painful for us as depicted in the picture of Hell in our living room.”

Mr.Vasudevan started with a jolt. He never knew they were brothers and sisters. And surely no one knew the history behind their taking up this house.

The diary further read,

“To be or not to be, that has always been the question. Whether we should suffer, or end it all. But how could we end it without ending the devil who started it all? And therefore, we first took this house on rent. Our father (whom we refer to as Mr. Nair- he has always been as good as dead for us) had sold it long back, and it took us some time to locate the present owner.

Mr.Vasudevan faintly remembered a property broker who had once come to enquire about the owner of the house. He had said one of his clientele was interested in buying the house.

“And after we had rented it, we set out for our act of retribution. Mr. Nair was killed by his own method, by a gas explosion at his house. Everything can be arranged, even death. Don’t ask us how.“

Inspector Crasta remembered the furore in the newspapers about the death of the leading businessman Mr.AK Nair in Mumbai last year- the multiple conspiracy theories, the wild guesses doing the rounds. It had all led to a dead end, and nothing was proved. The case was closed as an accident.

“Ever since we settled into this house, every day and every night, we wanted to catch a glimpse of our beloved mother, whom we loved with our dear lives. We, however, did not meet her, despite all our attempts to call her back from the other world, all our forays into hallucination and other-world communication. For the last one week, we have been inside our house, trying to connect with her, before we ourselves pass into the other world. The journey has been painful and we wanted to end it soon.”

Both men suddenly saw the half-empty bottle of scotch, the empty liquor bottles, the cigarette stubs and the multiple medicine pills inside the room. Inspector Crasta picked up one strip. It read “Imipramine”, a popular anti-depressant medicine.

“And finally, we saw her last night. As clear as daylight, as radiant as her love, we saw our mother. Last night, as we were finalizing our decision to end our lives, she came in through the back door, stood in front of us, and looked at us in that sad, yet loving manner. Thirty years melted in an instance, we tried to talk to her, reach out to her, touch her, but she simply melted away, as she had come.”

Mr.Vasudevan recollected with a violent shudder the footsteps leading to the back door, and the lady in the darkness. “Those rumours were true”, he thought.

“We have lived very fulfilled professional lives. We have been around the world, seen a lot of success, have been able to do justice to our profession, but that is never enough. We have killed the devil and know it is correct, but still the guilt does not go away. We know that we will never see mother again in this world. This painful existence is not worth it any longer, and so, we are exiting this world to join our mother in the other world. We are leaving behind our wordly belongings, to be donated to the local orphanage, and Rs.15,000/- for our cremation at the nearest crematorium. We apologize for any inconvenience that we may have caused to others, and thank our neighbours for putting up with us.” The note ended with the names of the Nair siblings.

It was dark outside the house now. One of the constables came into the room and announced that the forensic team had arrived. The two men wiped their silent tears and went about doing what needed to be done.