Victims of Injustice: A Spine-Chilling Horror Story

My subconscious mind cannot decipher the calligraphy on the brick wall. The roots of the wild plants
run through the cracked bathroom wall of the old, dilapidated building. I cannot feel the texture of the soft moss growing on the wall. Nor can I smell the newly appeared green leaves. Black ants are marching in a queue from the wall puncture, where the shower faucet stood once, to the damp floor. There is a horror story trapped in these ruins.

The floor that once had a white bathtub is bare with the stories of the past soaked within. The tub was removed years ago, along with the body that was found dead inside it.

I enter the bedroom now and walk to the bay window. In our childhood, my elder brother Anand and I used to sit over the upholstered box seat of the window and draw in our sketchbooks.

Sometimes, I used to sit there to gaze at the village landscape. The glass panes are now missing from the rusted wooden frames. I look up at the sagged centre of the ceiling and stare at the spot where the ceiling fan used to hang once.

It was an antique brass ceiling fan with four blades. It was the fan from which my mother hanged herself to death.

I was only nine, and Anand was eleven when the tragedy fell upon us. She was so oppressed by her husband’s abuses and so depressed by the loss of any hope that she took away her life.
She left two innocent children in the care of a tyrannical father.

She died in this room, unaware of a future when her beloved son would be brutally murdered in the attached bathroom.

My brother Anand was a person I could hardly understand. After our mother’s death, he was the only person I could call family. We were pretty different in numerous ways. Many of Anand’s characteristics were similar to that of my father’s.

However, I adored the Anand but detested father. I was petrified of my father and could never let myself forget that he was responsible for my mother’s unfortunate death.

When I grew older, the contempt inside me for my father intensified. The reason behind the rising hatred was the fact that he was never afflicted by a guilty conscience. His hypocrisy was always visible. I was distressed more by Anand’s inclination towards father’s welfare. I started questioning his frequent
decisions that favoured the will of my father.

“We shall always linger in the past and never soar towards the future if we keep nurturing grudges”, he had replied.

But I was not persuaded by his answer.

I gradually distanced myself from my brother. He sensed the growing unrest in our relationship and was
soon troubled by my misdemeanours with father.

My father was a landlord with a combination of businesses in the village. Anand had joined the family business soon after his graduation. He wanted to expand the business and utilize the lands we owned for the development of the village.

Although I had always thought of working with him and believed in his charitable plans, I no longer wished to accompany him in his endeavours’. I had no idea how he would proceed with his socialist values while our father was a stern capitalist.

I had no interest in any of them whatsoever. I only knew that I wanted to leave the village and settle in a city away from all the trauma.

His bungalow had once been a lofty habitat of a happy family. It stands now as an epitome of melancholy.

As I move down the spiral staircase, I see a squirrel running down the dusty handrail. Anand and I used to
run down this staircase and land on the Oriental rug laid on the landing floor.

The space in the hall where the large mahogany dining table stood once is empty, dense with the mist of a haunting presence.

People are scared to enter this abandoned building. They say the building belongs to the snakes, bats, and spirits of the dead ones. However, just like places, memories haunt us too.

Should this reason stop us from visiting them? The transitional curtain between life and death is as thin as the tiny unit of time taken by the soul to explode out of the body at the time of death.

So I often arrive too close to the curtain, expecting my brother will come to meet me, but he never shows up. Anand had always been obstinate. Still, he was also unpredictable.

When I was nineteen, I had an altercation with my father. Unlike Anand, who had graduated from
a college in the village, I wanted to study in an esteemed metropolis college. I wanted to become a Software Engineer and the university needed donations for my admission. I never anticipated that a simple demand like that would be difficult for my father to accept.

He threatened me that I would get no part in his property if I chose to leave the village. He was a narrow-minded conservative fool who wanted me to look after his business like his elder son. I was not beleaguered by his archaic threats.

I was backed by my elder brother. He did not just sponsor me but also gained my trust back. The next time I went back to the village was when Anand was getting married. By that time
the arrangement between my father and Anand had started deteriorating.

Anand was apparently marrying someone from the lower caste, the daughter of the leader of a trade union. My sister-in-law was an educated woman who was smart and amiable. Anand had chosen to marry against my father’s wish.

Soon after the marriage took place, Anand revised the wages of many factory workers and introduced welfare schemes for the villagers.

The superiority that our father enjoyed in the village was slowly disintegrating as he witnessed the growth of equality in the area. Unlike my father, who had been feared in the village, Anand was venerated.

The hardest blow came to my father when the local goons consolidated in support of Anand. Father detested Anand’s actions and both of them started having frequent tiffs in the house.

Father eventually entered a state of depression and spent his time mostly reminiscing about the occasional good times he had spent with mother.

After a year, my sister-in-law, a teacher, opened a secondary school in the village.
Anand took responsibility for its administration. As he had always desired, he entered politics with all the support that he had garnered. The golden age of his life started.

I didn’t regret not being a part of it. I was pretty satisfied with my life. I worked in an IT firm at the time and had an income of my own. My bank account always swelled with the extra money I received from Anand.

He never complained that I was spending extravagantly and wasn’t worried when people criticized him for spoiling me. To the villagers, I was a foreigner, a tourist who visited the place only once every year.

Now, I am no more a tourist. I am a resident of the village, who is remembered often by the people who
pass by the bungalow. Anand, however, is a foreigner now.

He is too far to listen to the grievances of his people, and too far to provide answers to my questions.
I turn around the column, which has cobwebs hanging from its capital and enter the den.
The small cosy room has a quaint rustic atmosphere. This is the room where I had the two conversations that sowed the first seeds of uncertainties in my mind.

“I know you have hated me all your life. Still, I hope you will forgive me,” expressed my father on a cold winter night, after the day-long function and rituals for Anand’s newborn son were over.

My brother had gone to sleep. I had come to attend the functions for three days and was oddly concerned when I found my father extremely sick. His old age and wrinkles had subsided my grudges against him. I poured down two glasses of beer and sat down in the warmth of the den to talk to him.

“I was wrong about you Pawan”, he said, “I always favoured Anand. But now I regret that I trusted him.”

Then he narrated to me the story of his plight. According to him, Anand had lost his mind. In his quest for being generous and helpful to the less privileged, he had not only doomed the family’s business but also made friends with criminals.

“I can never forgive him for how he has destroyed the fortune that I worked so hard to make”, he complained.

I told him that I would speak to Anand before leaving for the city and I did so. A day before I was supposed to leave, I sat down in the same den with my brother and told him about our father’s fear.

If my father’s weakening condition and kind demeanour alleviated my hard feelings against him, the insinuations of Anand’s ambition aggravated my anxiety.

“Forget about his accusations”, Anand said, “Was he so considerate about this family when our mother craved for it? No! I know I have always seemed to be a dutiful obedient son but all through the years, I have hated him as much as you have. And now, we have what we wanted. He is powerless. I control everything and believe me Pawan, I control better.”

“I know what he is afraid of,” he continued, “And I know even you are worried that I will give away all that we have. But believe me, I am not moving forward without a strategy. Look at the bigger picture and tell me if I am wrong.”

I could not debate with him over his intention because I knew it was for good. After he promised me that I will never have any shortage in the supply of my needs, I let the matter settle. I left the village hoping
that he would be true to his words.

However, within two years he had incurred severe losses in the business. To cut expenses, he gave away two of our small factories to an ally of the goons who worshipped him. I kept track of his actions but never questioned him.

When he got another house constructed in the village and moved there with his wife and children, I didn’t protest against it. Father was left alone in the bungalow in the care of a housekeeper.

Eventually, there was a reduction in my monthly receipts as well. I was still patient. However, the day when I lost my cool soon arrived.

It was a sunny day in July, the day after my father died due to a heart attack.

A strange feeling lingered within me a day after I had lost my father. The man I had hated all my life had burned on a pyre in front of me. I was distressed and devastated. I was even more surprised
to find that he had left all his property to me.

Anand was also disturbed and anxious, not because of the death but because he had lost everything he relied on. He now totally depended on me. And now he tried to influence me with his ideas.

“I am so troubled by our father’s injustice,” he whined, “I have no more rights on the property that I
used to uplift the poor and to bring prosperity to the people of this place. I know you have the same vision that I have and not the one that my father cultivated. I am sure you will be as passionate as me and work with me to advance society and save the people from injustice.”

“So you want me to join the same political party you are a member of?” I inquired.

“Yes, you can. Or you could help the party by funding it as well,” he said and explained to me how I could
be a part of his selfish power gathering game.

I took a deep breath and asked my brother what I was longing to ask him, “What is your motive behind all this Anand? Your management skills and financial planning are not as bad as your actions have proved. But you have strategically given away parts of the business and let it decline. You definitely do not want the business to grow. You are focused on your growth alone. Be honest with me. Where do you want to reach?”

He smiled impishly. “You know me,” he said, “ I do have political motives but my primary motive
is the social development of my people. I want to be their leader because I can help them, serve them and
make them prosper. I have done enough for the people of this village. I want to encompass more people in this humanitarian plan.”

“Political plan,” I retorted, “A plan to accumulate vote banks, a plan to rise to power, a plan to make
more money than what you are throwing away now, and a plan to rule to glory.”

He was quiet now and closed his eyes. He sat on the chair in front of me and massaged his
temples with his hands. A tense air settled between us.

“Whatever I intend to do,” he continued with a broken voice, “is for good. Take your time to think about this. Scrutinize my dealings if you doubt me. If your conscience tells you that it is a thing worth going ahead with, you must help me.”

“My conscience tells me that you are no better than our father.” I exploded. “You are ambitious, selfish,
conceited and someone I can never trust again. And yes, if you really have the support you proudly say
you have, let us see how they worship you now when you have no money to splurge on them. I am not going to give you a thing from my property.”

I stood up and stormed out of his house. I knew I had stunned him to silence. I walked with a heavy heart
as my head hammered. I walked around the pond. White and brown ducks were quacking over the water
that was shimmering in the golden hue of the sunlight.

The sun was scorching. I could feel the sweat in my armpits. My eyes were burning. My stomach growled with nausea. As soon, as I reached the mango orchard that was behind our bungalow, I stopped walking.

I was alone. There, in the shade of the trees, I finally broke into tears. I sobbed for the mother I had lost, who was tormented by my father. I cried for the father I had lost, who was afflicted by my brother. I wailed for the brother I had lost, who I had just injured with my ruthless words. I realized how I had always tried to run away from my birthplace, hated my identity and didn’t value our family. I realized how I always belonged here, no matter how much I tried to break all the bonds which tied me to the place.

Even now, I belong here. I remember how I had wailed that day. I remember how my head pained so hard that after I came back to my room I undressed and went straight to the bathroom to take a shower. I remember the cold shudder that shower gave to my aching body. I remember my horror when I saw the muscular man enter the bathroom.

He was carrying a glossy knife in his hand. He was wearing two gold rings on his fingers, gifts from my brother. As he approached me, my heart stopped but the shower kept running…

The front lawn has dried up. The old mango tree still stands tall. Anand and I used to climb up the branches of the tree to pluck the small green mangoes of early summer.

I wish I could return to the joyful days of our childhood. I wish I could turn back the clock and bring the wheels of time to a standstill.

A dog is barking outside the gate. Green creepers have twirled around the rails of the black Iron Gate. The
stray dog is barking at the balcony of the first floor. I turn around and find my mother sitting over the broad balustrade railing and staring at the dog. The mark on her neck is reddish-green, not as prominent as the deep scar on my throat. I look back at the Iron Gate, secured with a heavy lock. A thick red thread is coiled around it, ensuring that the transitional curtain between life and death stays in its place.

Even on the day of his birth, the MLA, who now lives in the city, did not visit his village. Once again my hope to see him goes in vain. I turn around and float back into the house; to settle back, deep in the dungeons of this haunted edifice, to live with the snakes, the bats and the victims of injustice.

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