Desi Horror Stories

Red Glass Bangles

Truth be told, things would have been much better if Bina had just kept walking that evening. But instead, she stalled. She had seen the vendor on the side of the road holding a rack with many-colored bangles. He was a street bangle-seller, the kind that are not often seen these days. He stood proudly in his spotless white attire, a welcoming smile on his lips, and a thousand glass bangles glittering on his handheld store.

Bina walked up to him, drawn to those bangles. She looked intently at his wares, and then stopped at a bunch of red glass bangles. They were a dozen of them, all similar in design.

"Perfect choice, madam!" he said. "Only hundred rupees."

It was a steal. Bina quickly took the bangles that he wrapped in brown paper and rushed homewards. The evening had already set. She had to be home in time to fix dinner.

Rajat understood there was something special waiting for him the moment he entered. He settled down at the dinner table and the whiff of fresh food immediately drew him in. It was only when he was halfway through that he noticed the clinking red bangles on her wrists.

He held her hand lovingly and for long moments stared at the bangles. "They look lovely on you," he said. "Where did you get them?"

No sooner did Bina tell him than there was a sudden reaction in him. All at once, he let go of her hands, so abruptly that her arms swung all the way to the back. "What happened?" she asked. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Street vendor, you said? Was he standing alone, dressed in white, with a white beard?"

"Yes."

"Oh, foolish woman!" Rajat said, slapping his forehead. "You should not have done that! The man you bought the bangles from is Old Abdul, and he's not a man anymore. He's a ghost. Everyone in the city knows about his legend. Don't you?"

Bina could not understand. It had all been so real. It was true that no one else on the street seemed to notice the man. In fact, she had turned to look at him later, and he had disappeared. But what about the bangles that were on her wrists?

When she told him about the bangles, he shot up. "You have to get rid of those bangles. Right now! Old Abdul died a miserable death on the street. The bangles carry his misfortune."

Bina had no choice but to heed to her husband. He dragged her into the street outside and brought her to an empty ground. There he dug a hole and asked her to pull those bangles out. He then placed them on the ground, and stomped on them till they broke into a million pieces and then buried them.

They did not speak a word the entire night. But in the morning when Bina was dressing up for work, she screamed. The bangles had come back! And as she looked, she felt a sharp jab of pain on her forefinger. One of the fragments of the broken bangles had pierced her skin.

"It's the misfortune! That horrible bangle-seller's curse is upon us," Rajat said as he bandaged her finger. How had so much blood come from it, anyway?

And then began a strange saga. The couple tried to destroy the bangle fragments in various ways—throwing them into the sea, dousing them in petrol and setting them afire, even leaving it in a different city—but they always came back. And they came back in the most unexpected and painful of places. Once they were in the dough that Bina was kneading for chapattis, and as she squeezed on it, a particularly sharp fragment pierced the palm of her hand. Another time, it was in her glass of water, which she realized only moments before she gulped it down. They came back one by one and terrified the couple as if they were not just pieces of glass; they were demons incarnate.

Finally, an old neighbor who had become aware of their plight told them that the only way out was to look for Old Abdul again and beg him to take back his bangles. Bina had to do it herself; because it had to be reversed in the exact manner that it had happened.

For days then, Bina stood alone on that same accursed road, waiting for Old Abdul to appear. It took her seven days of waiting when she eventually spotted him, his white attire just as white as it had been on that day.

"Please, sir," she pleaded even as her palms and feet ran icy-cold knowing that she was talking to a ghost. "Please take back your bangles."

Old Abdul's smile immediately vanished. A cloud appeared in his eyes and they turned dark. He winced as if he had been stabbed in the gut. But without a word, he cupped his palms and nodded. Bina poured the broken fragments of the bangles into those palms. He covered his hands over her hands, and for a bloodcurdling moment held her hands in his grip. Then he released her and when he did so, the bangle fragments had vanished. And so had he.

Bina returned home with a peculiar heaviness in her heart. "He took it back without a word," she told Rajat. "The bangles won't bother us anymore."

"Yay, we are free!" said Rajat.

But Bina was not very sure. She knew it the next day when she went for a bath. All of a sudden, she let out a shriek. Rajat pushed the bathroom door with force and found her staring at her hands in horror.

Around her wrists were strange wounds. They were circular wounds of red that ran all around those wrists and were cut into the flesh to expose the bloody tissue underneath. Still feeling Old Abdul's closed hands on hers, Bina knew she'd have to live with those marks forever. Old Abdul had released her but not without branding her forever.