FICTION BY NITIN SHARMA

Nitin Sharma lives in India, and his stories often reflect the culture of his country. His stories have been published in various magazines, anthologies and blogs, including The Horror Zine, Dark Moon Digest, McKenzie Publishing anthologies, and others. He writes in multiple genres and in two languages, English and Hindi.

Nitin was a guest author at New Delhi World Book Fair (2013). Indian delegations have taken his books to different nations. He firmly believes in an ancient Sanskrit phrase that translates as “Entire world is one family.”

When he’s not writing, he is probably cooking at his home in Gurugram, India.

DANGEROUS DISOBEDIANCE
by Nitin Sharma

Dying Mrs. Edward could barely speak, so nobody heard her properly, but she seemed so eager to tell something—something urgent—that those standing around her Victorian styled bed anxiously glanced at each other. Her preteen granddaughter, Arabella, promptly brought her ear close to her grandma’s mouth, but Mrs. Edward pushed her away as hard as her feeble, trembling hands could.

The old woman attempted to sit upright and glared at her son’s perplexed face. Upon being nudged by his wife Cornelia, John Edward knelt down on the red carpeted floor and brought his ear close to his mother’s mouth as she fell back onto the pillow.

“Cremate me,” the old woman whispered. Then, as if possessed by the devil, she suddenly grabbed his tie and pulled herself back up as though she had just gained a supernatural strength from an unknown source.

The old woman suddenly shrieked, “Cremate me, John! Promise you will cremate me! Don’t put me in the mausoleum next to Harold!”

She continued to pull on the tie, and as he attempted to get away, his hand hit a marble vase on the bedside table and knocked it to the floor, where it shattered. Cornelia bent down to help her husband, but Arabella began to scream in terror.

“Stop it!” Cornelia commanded, and suddenly the bedroom was deathly quiet. The old woman lost her grip and fell back down upon her deathbed. Her arms retreated slowly and dropped lifelessly by her sides, but her eyes were still wide open as she breathed her last.

It took John Edward a long moment to recover from shock. Such a terrifying death didn’t belong to his mother! But as an officer in British Raj, he was expected to display fortitude at all times. The Raj was the result of the British government taking over the rule of India from the British East India Company after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Many native Indians practiced Hinduism, but the English were predominately Protestant.

John’s eyes fell on his frightened daughter who was clinging to her mother like a baby, clutching her turquoise gown with both hands.

“Don’t be frightened, Arabella. Sometimes dying people get an inexplicable jolt of strength that makes them do the things they wouldn’t do otherwise. It was a bad moment but it has passed.” He wasn’t convinced by his own explanation, though.

Arabella nodded. John could seehis daughter’s fear subside because her face relaxed, but her eyes welled up with tears as she gazed at his mother’s now-closed eyes. He knew his daughter was already mourning the loss and how unbearable it was for her.

Cornelia wiped her tears and told their daughter to leave the room because she and John had work to do. Then she turned to her husband and said, “The way your mother acted, John…it might have something to do with her hallucinations that began last week. Remember? She had that weird idea that your dead Uncle Harold had the evil eye. Perhaps she didn’t want to share a final resting place with him because of that superstition.”

“He had a dark heart,” John agreed. “Even I wouldn’t want to share the mausoleum with him, if I had a choice. But none of us has a choice. It is a family mausoleum. It has status. We must continue to acclimate into the Indian elite’s culture, as the new Emperor expects us to. Our family has been in this country since 1858, and it’s now 1911. It’s expected for those of high social positions to be placed into mausoleums when they die. It showcases their status and legacy within the community. Our family is no exception.”

Cornelia hesitated for a moment, then asked, “So you are not going to fulfil her last wish, John? You won’t cremate her?”

“No!” John responded rather sharply. “Mother’s body will be placed beside my father in our family mausoleum. If that means next to Uncle Harold, it is none of my concern.”

Cornelia was quite relieved by her husband’s decision. The Edwards were an opulent English family in colonial India, and had an iconic mansion in Shimla, the hill city where British government took refuge in summers to escape the unbearable heat of capital Delhi.

Late Joseph Edward, the father of John, had turned a deodar-covered part of their property into a lavish cemetery that soon became a tourist attraction for its recently introduced red rhododendrons and large family mausoleum. To cremate late Mrs. Edward would imply that the young Edwards were breaking away from Christian traditions, and they might even be compared with local revolutionary groups that customarily cremated their dead and were against The Raj. That wouldn’t augur well for the Edwards.

So it was to be the family mausoleum for the matriarch, who now lay silent in her elaborate bed.

*****

It was a clear, sunlit Sunday when late Mrs. Edward was laid to rest in presence of over three hundred acquaintances and friends, seven mansion guards—two of them on brown horses, three daytime servants, the gardener, and the female cook who lived in a servant room in a corner of the backyard. A condolence message was sent by the Governor, which John Edward read out loud with a hint of pride in his voice.

The Edward family mausoleum, a sandstone building, housed a dozen marble vaults. When the sunlight fell on the mausoleum through intricate jaali—beautiful, perforated section of the stone walls—it looked magnificent, but after the dusk, when a lamp was lit on top of it, it cast eerie shadows on the ground.

There were other graves in this Protestant cemetery, outside of the mausoleum, in which lifetime servants were buried. Winds that blew through it made creepy sounds that scared the locals. People came to appreciate the rhododendrons during the day, but no one would dare come at night.

Some locals swore that they heard terrifying cries and inhuman laughter from the cemetery; they ascribed them to Harold Edward, Joseph’s brother, who people feared in his lifetime for merciless treatment of prisoners in his jail. And after his death, they believed he haunted the cemetery because everyone knew Harold possessed the evil eye.

As the visitors gradually drove away in their black or white Rolls Royces and Morrises, an ominous quiet fell over the place.

“Bye, Grandma,” said Arabella as she put white roses on the casket, and the Edwards retreated to the comfort of their mansion, leaving dead Cassandra Edward lying beside her husband Joseph, and in the same mausoleum with Harold Edward.

The servants closed the mausoleum door and sealed the occupants inside with each other for all of eternity.

A small brass bell hung near the perforated wall by a rope, and the other end of the rope went inside Mrs. Edward’s casket. There had been some accidental burials in which living people were buried mistakenly, and the lucky ones were only saved when a passerby heard their desperate cries from deep under. To avoid such mishaps they started hanging bells over the graves and near the mausoleum so that a recently buried victim could pull the rope to get heard.

There were no such devices for the graves that housed the servants, so they were on their own. Those graves had small headstones in contrast to the elegant mausoleum of their masters.

As the city bell-tower struck midnight, the bell connected to Mrs. Edward’s crypt shook a little but was ineffective, as if the one connected to the bell didn’t have the strength to make any sound. The white roses that Arabella had left on the casket moved a little, as if pushed by a gust of wind, except that there was no wind inside the sealed building,

In the cemetery outside, an owl hooted.

*****

“I saw Grandma in my dream,” Arabella told her parents at breakfast table. “She looked worried.”

Her mother stopped eating and looked at her husband, who took a bite of his toast and replied nonchalantly, “It’s all right for her to dream about her grandmother for a while. It’ll stop with time.”

Arabella protested, “Father, she was not happy! And—”

“Arabella, stop,” he said gently but in a firm voice. The remaining breakfast was eaten in silence.

But when the cook and gardener told John Edward that they felt an uncanny presence in the mansion, he called Father Jennings—a family friend, the priest who had given the last rites to Mrs. Edward—to bless the house.

He thought it was better to reassure his family and servants than reason with them. Portly Father Jennings visited, took a look, and sprinkled holy water in every corner, and pronounced the house free of any unholy entity.

“There,” John said to his wife, who looked visibly relieved after the priest’s visit. “Now nobody needs to raise any suspicions. This house is clean.” He glanced at his daughter, who smiled meekly.

The rest of the day was routine.

*****

Night arrived. Gas street lamps fought the darkness that enshrouded the city.

As the Edward couple were fast asleep, a Himalayan owl, of whose sightings the locals associated with impending death, alighted on the window sill and hooted excitedly; had it seen something human eyes couldn’t?

But it took off when the glass panes rattled in their frame, as if a mild earthquake rocked the earth. The mice playing in the pipes stopped dead, then darted away from the couple’s bedroom, as if they too sensed something. The temperature of the room fell sharply.

John Edward, who lay in his bed next to Cornelia, heard a tap on the bedroom window. He strained his ears, unsure of what it meant. At first he thought it was a tree branch, but when it occurred a second time, he couldn’t suppress his superstitious feeling that something was wrong.

And then he smelled it—the roses? Yes, the fragrance of white roses. But they never kept flowers in the bedroom! And then he thought of the roses that Arabella had placed on the casket of his mother.

His heart sank. Nothing felt quite right. The realization of sudden drop in temperature made the hair on his arms bristle up, and he shivered inside his warm blanket. Soon he was having an attack of anxiety that originated from an unfounded feeling of doom. He broke out in a cold sweat as he gasped for normal breath. What is happening? he silently asked himself, but he had no answer.

And then he felt it: there was someone in the room. Or some thing.

In a feeble attempt to regain control over his senses, he tried to reassure himself that he was imagining all this, because hadn’t the good Father blessed this house? What kind of Christian would he be if he doubted God’s messenger? Yet he was remembering how only a few hours prior, he had placed his mother into the same mausoleum where his uncle slept for all eternity against her final request.

His mother’s last wish was to be cremated. She didn’t want to sleep close to the uncle with the evil eye. The locals told stories about the evil eye, how it destroyed families and killed people, but John always laughed at their superstitions, for they were uneducated fools. Or were they?

The very thought of the evil eye jolted him into a seating position, waking Cornelia.

“John? What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. Normally he would have tried to reassure his wife, but right now he was actually afraid. He wanted the comfort of not having to face his fear alone.

“Why is it so cold in here?” his wife asked as she, too, sat upright, rubbing her arms. “It smells different…like flowers or something. John, say something! I’m scared!”

John didn’t respond. He too was afraid, very afraid. His thoughts traveled to places he didn’t want them to go. He had defied his mother’s last request. In the dark of the night, any superstitions that he dismissed in the daylight now only seemed more plausible.

Somebody knocked at the door, and they both nearly jumped up. John’s hand was over the handle of an inbuilt drawer in the bed where he kept his revolver, when he heard the voice. “Mother? Father?”

Cornelia jumped out of bed and ran to open the door.

Arabella looked confused. “I heard noises from your room! Why is it so cold tonight?”

Cornelia pulled her in and made her sit on the bed, but nobody told her anything.

John pulled out his revolver and was looking around warily, although in his heart he knew that guns were useless against what he was facing.

The night lamp went off suddenly, and the room was engulfed by darkness; only the light from street lamps and the full moon shined through the window. It was enough for him to be able to see into the room, although it was shadowed in the corners.

A creak on the wooden floor made him jump back into bed, huddled next to his wife and child. A distinct wheezing was followed by a strange fog that emanated from the cracks in the floor. As the three watched in terror, the fog covered entire floor.

Arabella put her hands over her face and screamed. Cornelia grabbed her in a tight embrace.

“John, do something!” she pleaded.

“Do what, Cornelia?” John asked, a distinct panic in his shaking voice.

He pointed the revolver at the window and pulled the trigger, hoping his action would fetch the guards, but the gun jammed as the sound of wheezing got louder and faster. He threw the revolver aside and took out the silver Holy Cross he wore around his neck. With his other hand he fumbled for his cigarette lighter on the side stool. He clicked the lighter, and instantly saw a human-shaped shadow on the wall facing them, but there was no one between the bed and the shadow.

“Whoever you are, please leave us,” John begged, “for we did nothing to you.”

The lighter burned out, and once again, shadows enveloped the corners of the room. It gave the bedroom a surreal effect, and he could only see directly ahead of him.

Suddenly he heard sobs—blood-curdling sobs.

Before he could say anything, Arabella looked up. “Grandma, is that you?”

“Mother?” John said. If it was his mother, they probably weren’t in danger. “I promise I’ll cremate your body. You won’t have to spend the eternity with that evil-eyed monster in the same mausoleum.”

And then all hell broke loose.

There was a piercing, deafening roar—certainly not from a human—that shook their hearts. The three were compelled to put their palms on their ears, yet they couldn’t suppress the roar that erupted from every dark corner of the room.

John, though frightened to death, was more concerned for Arabella then himself. But now he was certain it wasn’t his mother in the room.

He knew exactly who it was.

From somewhere within, he found strength that he hadn’t known he possessed. He was suddenly calm, but mostly determined. He had lived a good life, but his young daughter had not yet had the chance to live hers. He loved his wife, but not nearly to the extent that he loved his only child.

Part of him was surprised that he found himself willing to sacrifice himself for Arabella, but another part of him knew it was the only way.

“Enough!” he shouted as loud as he could, and got up to step onto the floor, leaving his family by themselves, still cowering on the bed. “What has my family ever done to you? Nothing! I know you had an eye on our share in the wealth all your disgraceful life, and now you torment us even in your death! You certainly don’t deserve a place in the mausoleum, Uncle.”

Before he could say more, John was lifted up by invisible hands and thrown against the bedroom wall. He cried out in pain as he slid against the wall to the floor. He heard wheezing in the room—a chilling sighing sound from beyond the grave.

“What do you want?” Cornelia cried out. “If I confess, will you leave our daughter alone?”

Things went quiet within seconds. Was it over?

John, now at the verge of fainting from pain, tried to get up from the floor but his back felt damaged, so he looked at Cornelia. Confess? Was that what she had said? He felt a momentary confusion. His wife was a good Protestant. Perhaps she wanted to confess her sins to God before she died.

But Cornelia had her hands clutched together, as if in a silent prayer, and wasn’t even looking at him. Tears streamed from her blue eyes.

“I’ll confess in the church tomorrow,” she said to the invisible entity that began wheezing heavily again.

Suddenly John saw his wife yanked out of the bed and thrown to the floor beside him. He could hear Arabella screaming uncontrollably. He looked at his daughter, but she was cowering under the covers with the pillow over her ears. More than anything, he wished his daughter could be spared from this unholy scene.

John sat up with great difficulty, and faced his wife. He reached his arms toward her. “Cornelia? You’ve done nothing to my uncle.”

“John, I poisoned your uncle. I put cobra venom in his black tea.”

John was visibly shocked. “But why, Cornelia?”

“Because I wanted to stop Uncle Harold! You know he would have thrown us onto the street if he could. And since he had no family, I wanted his inheritance, too! I wanted more money. I admit it! I was greedy!”

She bent forward and kissed John’s shocked face. “I’m ready to pay for my sins. Forgive me, Husband. It turned out that I am just as bad as your uncle.”

Then she stood up and lifted her arms, as though ready to face her fate. “I tried to end you, Harold. But evil can’t be eliminated.”

The wheezing grew louder until it changed to an unnatural roar as though a train passed through the bedroom. The sound was almost deafening. A tempest entered the room, and papers from the desk blew into a hurricane that originated from the eye of the storm.

A mist seemed to form, then it swirled to connect into a semblance of a body. Sparks flew from the entity that was now visible for the entire family to see.

As brave as he had tried to be, John now cowered before this phenomenon, but his wife only stood taller.

“I’m ready,” Cornelia announced. “Take me. But leave my family alone. They didn’t know. They are innocent.”

The ghost of Uncle Harold sent sparks that condensed into a single bolt which traveled to his murderer. An eerie voice, seemingly coming from everywhere and yet from nowhere, said, “Like is attracted to like. Evil always finds evil.”

Cornelia collapsed to the floor from a heart attack.