Pathways: Anecdotes from Further Beyond

03. BETWEEN THE SEAMS

An independent short story, written by me because there was no current in the house at that time.

Based on a true story... romanticised where necessary.

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It is frightening how confounded minds can produce the queerest tales. I have heard tales of even the most god-loving people being carried off by goblins in the chaos of a thunderstorm. I have heard of frightful apparitions showing themselves when both the sun and the moon were lost to the advent of the dreadful night. What I am about to recount is no such tale, but quite opposite, for it involves... well, you shall see what it involves. With that prelude, let us begin.

Chaos tore its chains asunder. It began just like a normal evening for yours truly. Our house has two floors, one occupied by my family, and the lower floor rented out to various tenants over time, each one stranger than the one before. We knew nothing of the current tenant, only that she was all alone and needed a house. She was a teacher of foreign languages, and many times, I have heard her enunciate Japanese phrases for the benefit of her students. She had stayed with us for more than a year and a half. We knew next to nothing about her life, but we were privy to her wrathful outbursts. Her capacity to be irked can only be described as pedantic, however, this is not an account of her mentality. It is what followed after her removal from the premises that compels me to tell this tale.

It was late March, and the sun had been beating down like a blacksmith's hammer for more than a week. At around five o'clock, my parents departed the house to bring my sister home from college; it was the time of the holi holidays. (Holi is a festival in which people play with powdered colours and eat a variety of assorted delicacies. My lazy disposition prevents me from taking part in the former, but enjoying the latter.) I was left alone in the house thanks to my classes. Out of the blue, a vehicle approached, and the tenant began loading her items onto it. She was moving out. Before I knew it, she was off. With a nonchalant shrug, I dismissed her presence the way someone might dismiss a pigeon that has already left its present on one's terrace.

I was just sitting down for my class, when a strong wind blew from far north, bringing with it torrential rain and even hailstones in some places. As for me, I was forced to leave my seat and run about the house, closing the windows to prevent dust from intruding into the nooks and crannies. The thunderstorm caused a power outage, and, armed with the small beam of the phone's flashlight, I ventured downstairs. Only then did I perceive the aftermath of the tenant's departure. The gates were left ajar, with the rain pouring in waves. To my great displeasure, my mother told me to check on the empty lower floor. So I went, unarmed and slightly nervous, even.

I have heard my relatives recount tales of horror, of wicked witches, phantoms and demons. Though I cannot ascertain the validity of those stories, I do believe that the narrators of the tales believed in what they believed. The darkness excited my untamed imagination, so that, by the time I unbolted the main door, I sincerely regretted not going with my parents. The tales of the unexplained always involve a consciousness that is not human; such was not the case. The most frightening detail was the complete lack of life... nay, of consciousness itself! There was nothing, a stillness so vast that it encompassed the entire lower floor, and rendered me mute for several minutes. Even my quiet footfalls were unnaturally amplified by the walls. To call it an abode of death would be folly, for it defied the very existence of life, and therefore of death. It was empty, an emptiness stretching from before the birth of time to its end. The windows were open, but what I saw outside did not look like the neighbourhood I was accustomed to; it seemed to be a grim dystopian city, where the sun had been swallowed by the great Wolf, and the moon had been dissolved in the darkness around it.

The rooms were cleaner than I had expected, though the plaster had fallen off in some places. The strangest detail, however, was the odour that pervaded my senses. The house smelled of medicinal vapours, akin to a hospital perhaps, or a pharmacy. There were broken objects piled in a corner; the odour seemed to be coming from them. My flashlight cast only a faint glow, a tiny sphere of light within an infinitude of omnipresent darkness. There were chalk marks on the walls, and with growing trepidation, stepped quietly into the kitchen, only to behold an even greater shock.

The shelves were taped with brown paper, and the platform was lined with various dried powders. Dry chillies were strewn over the floor, and there was powdered turmeric, probably beat down by a mortar. In one corner, I discovered the withered corpse of a lizard. Even then, the corpse had not been exposed to the relentless attack of ants and the like. The dry air and summer heat had caused its desiccation. Having borne witness to this, I could not move. The house swallowed everything and left only withered husks of the former self behind as a remembrance. It remained unaffected by the mark left by its residents. It had no regard for the actions of mortals bound by flesh. It was beyond the cycle of life, it was infinite. Standing in the empty hall, I found myself not in my house, but in an expanse that devoured everything. It was not just devoid of life, the very value of life was lost in it. I knew nothing and the emptiness without was only matched by the emptiness within. It left no room for thought; there was only an endless ocean far as my mind's eye could see. In that house was the true meaning of the word 'lost'. There was no sense of time, nor direction. I was truly lost, in mind as well as in body. The house was my maze, it was as much mental as it was tangible. It took away consciousness, sanity and left nothing behind, for it was nothingness, an unwavering monument to the ephemeralness of the mortal realm.