Daybreak

A sequel to Nightfall

I am twenty seven.


Life ends up as a string of random memories tenuously bound together. Wisps of smoke framed against the starlit sky. Often, a chance phrase causes a rush of previously withheld memories to come to the fore. Such was the case today.


She died yesterday night. The one who terrorized my childhood dreams. She has finally left the confines of the physical world and escaped into the spiritual one.


I feel a vague unease. A childhood fear penetrating my adult consciousness. I look out through the window and see a few mourners dressed in white. Too few, sadly. Disliked throughout her life, her demise had been keenly awaited by many. And now that it had happened, few had bothered to turn up.


Her husband cut a forlorn figure. She had been all that he had. Their daughter, having escaped her household three years before through marriage, was weeping silently holding her father by his arm. Filial love triumphing over two and a half decades of tortured memories.


A month passes by. Their house is abandoned now. Her husband had moved in with his daughter's family. I have forgotten about her, busy with my daily schedule. I will remember her again. And how!



Tonight the moon is in shadow. The perennial city smog hides countless unseen stars from me. I toss and turn in my bed, unable to sleep. I am alone, the folks having left for our native place yesterday. A mournful dog bays in the forlorn streets below. It cries out to the lost souls of the night. Yamadharmaraja is on the prowl, whisking away his somnolent victims. 


My heart filled with misgivings, my ears filled with the horrific wail of the dog, I almost miss hearing a most singular yet sinister sound. Almost! The window in my balcony is being opened. The incongruity of this occurrence floors me! I am on the third floor and my balcony is protected by inch-thick iron grills. No earthly being could be on my window-sill.

Pure animal instinct makes me turn around. But there is no one there. Yet the window lies open. A gaping hole letting in the wintry night, where a moment ago there had been none. Getting up to close the window is probably the bravest thing I have done in my life. Or probably the most stupid.
As soon as my hand clasps the window latch, darkness envelops my eyes. The last thing I remember is falling to my knees as the world goes blank.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
I wake up with a throbbing pain in my neck. My senses take a while to adjust to the surrounding darkness, when I realize where I am. The bathroom. I also realize something  else. I am my eight year old self again. I am reliving the night that occurred 19 years ago, a night which scarred my childhood memories for ever. 


She waits for me beyond the door, wreathed in the shadows. I cry out - a full-blooded guttural cry - to my parents, to God or whoever else who could extricate me from this hellish nightmare. Ten minutes pass before I am able to control myself, my voice spent, my shirt drenched with my tears and my pants drenched with something else. I hear a faint tapping on the door.


It is time to go out. Time to succumb to the fate I should have 19 years ago. I open the door, my hand shivering violently. Events proceed exactly as they did that other night. The room is illuminated by the faint vestige of an almost extinguished 1991 streetlight. The headlights of a passing vehicle cuts an illuminating arc across the corridor, just as they did then. I feel dizzy, illogical - as if none of the intervening disasters and wrong turns in my life have occurred yet.


And there is she is - leering at me - her pudgy pock-marked face contorted with malicious hate. She is dressed in the same nightgown that she wore on that night - frilly material tainted with the grime of age. Her arms adorned with hideous varicose veins, her nails long and sharp, filled with pus and filth. 


She advances towards me and places her grizzled paw on the nape of my neck, the nails piercing into my skin. I close my eyes, expecting the nails to slash across my throat at any instant. Instead I feel my mind being altered - new memories being inserted into them. 

I am at a school playground. I see a plump young girl not much older then me. Sitting on the sideline eating some oily bhajiyas. Her classmates are laughing at her as they play langdi in the ground nearby. They call her names. She continues eating, sobbing silently. A teacher approaches her with a cane! He calls her a fat dumb cow - pulls her by the hand into an empty shed beside the school. Fifteen minutes later she emerges, tears in her eyes, her frock torn and stained with drops of blood.


I feel a new memory overtaking my mind. She must be atleast 12 now. It is night. She lies huddled under her blankets clutching a doll to her chest. She can hear her father in the adjacent room beating her mother up. Abusing her with the vilest of phrases. Her mother remains silent. She draws the blanket closer to her. She starts pulling the fake hair off her doll and stuffs it in her ears. Replacing the screams of her father with screams of her own.


A new memory, a new nightmare. It is her wedding night. She lays on the bed, decked in bridal attire. She is nervous, shyly anticipating the future ahead. Her husband is in the other room, glued in front of the TV watching the cricket match. She waits for him to appear. In the morning she goes to sleep all alone, the future already appearing as dim as the past.


My mind is benumbed. I cannot take this anymore. But I am not in control of my mind. She is. And she is not yet ready to stop. She sits in the kitchen trying to feed her young daughter some rice. Her husband is in the living room, stuck to his usual routine in front of the TV. Her daughter refuses to eat. Instead she starts bawling a plaintive piteous cry. She hears familiar words coming out of her mouth - Shut up you dumb cow! The child starts crying more louder. Her features contort with hate. By the time she realizes that she is hitting her own daughter - it is too late. 

The script that is to be played out each night has been set in motion.


With a sudden jerk, my mind snaps back to the present. She catches me by the arm and leads me away with her. We go out of the apartment and start climbing up the stairs. In the gloom of the night I follow her, the stench emanating from her decrepit corpse overpowering my senses. We pass through an open door into the terrace. The chill of the night makes me shiver. She releases her grip on my arm and steps onto the ledge. She turns and looks at me, the horrible rage and hatred replaced by infinite sadness. And then she steps off the ledge, into the darkness below.


I am convinced that I have no choice but to follow her. I climb onto the ledge, my body shivering and weary. I glance down and the street below seems miles away. Without the slightest hesitation I step off.



EPILOGUE
My corpse was found by early morning joggers. My parents sold off our flat 2 months after my death, the place being an evil memory of their loss. Years have passed. No new tenants have occupied the flat. 

I am still 27, staring out of the window into the flat exactly opposite to ours.