Escape
Niru and Biju were tired from their two-day journey to Bishnupur. Business was rough in town. Initially, they were doing well. Their garage always had broke-down vehicles. Biju was famous for his intuition with engines.
“He can listen to the rumble of a car and tell what’s wrong with it,” townsfolk said. It was true. Biju was a self-made engineer. He ran away from home when he was 7. A kind and wealthy businessman took him in where Biju trained to fix cars. He later went on to build bridges around the country only to come back home and settle down in this small town.
Even with his wunderkind, he couldn’t sustain success in business. With these branded service stations popping up, indie garages were hard to run. Something’s gotta pay the bills. So Biju, with his sister Niru went to Bishnupur to meet with a buyer that was interested in the land.
Times were tough. They had already found a buyer for their old house, which was a beautifully designed bungalow. It had a garden in the front and an open backyard where Biju’s father would often soak in the sun, smeared in mustard oil, tuning the radio.
Memories are the only luxury you can afford when there’s not enough money left to put food on the table for the next few months.
…
It was almost 12 AM by the time they returned. He was thankful for the meal his aunt had warmed for them. They washed up, ate their food, and retired to their respective rooms.
Biju took the bed in the TV room. It was the first room you entered into through the long, white-grilled verandah which connected all the rooms in the house. Niru took the other room, also connected to the same verandah. These rooms were separated by thin walls and connected by wooden doors.
It was a warm night. The fan was creaking in circles. Slowly, Biju drifted off to sleep.
“SSSSSSSSSSSSSS”
Biju woke up groggily. “What’s that sound?”
“Ssssssssssssssssssssss,” there it was again.
He rubbed his eyes and scanned the room to check where the sound was coming from.
“Ssssssss” “sssssss” “sssssssssssssssssssssss,” it was as if a snake was hissing in his ear.
Biju was now wide awake. The air in the room felt unusually heavy.
“Ssssssss!” this time the sound was closer to his ear. He felt goosebumps in the back of his neck.
Instinctively, he looked at the window that opened into the verandah. It was a waning moon but the light from the nearby street lamp was painting shadows.
He saw a boy, about 7-years old, staring at him right through the window.
“What! Who is that?” Biju sat up and rubbed his eyes again.
He clearly remembered locking the verandah grill up with the press lock and chain. How could someone break in, let alone a puny little boy.
“Hissssssssssssssssssss” the sound was louder this time and the boy somehow appeared inside the room!
A chill ran down his spine and his eyes widened.
“Hey! Who is that,” he barely managed to say the words.
What he saw next was something a man of science like him could never fathom.
The boy started moving towards him as he started taking the form of a huge white snake.
“HISSSSSSSSSSSS” the sound reverberated in the entire room.
Biju could not find his voice. He felt stuck — stunned. What was he seeing?
The snake hissed louder and attacked him.
That was when Biju ran. He ran to his father’s room and woke him up from outside the mosquito net.
“Baba! I saw something. I don’t know what it was…it was, it was a boy, but it was also a snake…” he was fumbling through the words, invisible cold sweat lining his brow.
His father quickly pulled him under the mosquito net and said, “Stay still, do not say a word.”
…
Niru was tossing and turning in the other room. She kept hearing hisses and whispers.
She couldn’t tell whether it was dream or reality. She was asleep and awake at the same time.
She tried to sit up but she felt a huge weight on her chest — as if a man was sitting on her. The more she tried to get up, the more this feeling weighed her down.
More hissing. More whispers. Heavier weight.
She somehow fought herself awake and found her room eerily dark and silent. It was like the world went mute.
And then she heard it.
A shrill, painful scream that cut through the silence like a blade.
She jumped up and ran to her father’s room and saw Biju and her dad sitting up under the mosquito net.
She got inside, hyperventilating. “Did you hear that?”
“What? What did you see? Did you hear it too?”
…
In what felt like an eternity, it was finally daybreak.
The three of them sat up all night without really saying much to each other.
Orange dews of sun seeped in through the windows lighting the house in a warm gold.
All the family members gathered in the TV room to discuss what had happened last night over their morning tea. Biju and Niru seemed visibly shaken. None of them had any explanation.
Of one thing they were sure — they felt threatened. To death.
“Thank God we are moving out,” Biju said. He was incredibly sad about selling the house but what he experience last night was not something he could ever erase from memory.
He tried to reason with himself, “perhaps it’s the stress and the agony of selling our childhood home.”
“I have to go to the garage to get some papers, I’ll just go grab the bike keys,” he said out loud and walked through the door that connected the TV room and the room that Niru slept in last night.
No one was in the room.
He grabbed his keys and his wallet and turned around to leave when he heard a hissing whisper say to him from behind.
“You’ve all escaped.”
He turned back immediately but saw no one.
Nothing.
He walked out silently without mentioning it to anyone.
