Favourite Horror Story
Photo: Karan Madhok
Flash fiction: ‘Kunal imagines Yashaswi Sir running in the dark, back towards the bus, through the grass and the weeds and the shrubs. Over snakes and rabbits and frogs. Away from the light, seeing nothing, vacuum only making way for more vacuum.’
Kunal loves the story. A bus breaks down late at night, in the middle of the highway. There is nothing but farm land in all directions. There’s the bus driver, of course, and the conductor, seated on a rickety metal box in the front. But the bus carries only one other passenger, all the way in the back row.
Yashaswi Sir insists that he was that passenger.
“There was nothing, you understand?” Yashaswi Sir tells Kunal. “Pitch dark. No stars visible beyond the haze. New Moon. And, outside the window on my left, far far at the end of the horizon: just a faint, yellow light.”
Yashaswi Sir is home three times a week to help with Kunal’s maths homework, and Kunal encourages these digressions. Maths is Kunal’s strongest subject. He’d scored 23 out of 25 on last week’s test. Today, he is chosen for his school’s junior Mathematics Premier League quiz team.
That night, from the corridor outside his bedroom, Kunal hears his mother tell his father the news. Really? Father responds, in an unfamiliar, high-pitched voice. Really, confirms Mother.
“The conductor has to go towards the light first,” says Yashaswi Sir. “He is the youngest of us, with these long legs, like the ones clowns wear in a circus. If need be, he can take big strides and run away. Have you ever seen a real circus?”
“No.”
“It was 1 a.m., I think, when he disappeared into the darkness.”
Kunal swirls the pencil in his palm, passing it like a baton between the gaps of his fingers.
In the darkness of his bedroom, Kunal lies awake. There are loud voices from the kitchen. Arguments and litigation. A clattering crash of a steel thali. He wonders why the conductor didn’t have a light on his phone.
“This was the 1990s, you understand? We didn’t have mobile phones then,” says Yashaswi Sir. “The conductor didn’t return for hours. We waited in silence, thirsty and hungry. I felt like there were rats doing somersaults in my stomach.”
Kunal drops his pencil and licks his lips. He’s thirsty, too.
“Then, it was the driver’s turn to go to the light. They were related. The driver was the conductor’s cousin. Or his uncle.”
“You weren’t afraid, alone on the bus?”
“Look at my face,” says Yashaswi Sir. “I was about to piss myself.”
Yashaswi Sir wears square-rimmed spectacles, and has a light, grey beard, always a little unshaven. He is thin, with his shoulders hunched forward; unlike Kunal’s father who walks with a wide-chested strut in his step.
Father doesn’t come home that night. Kunal’s mother knocks on his door and enters the bedroom in the dark. Kunal is balanced on a tightrope between consciousness and dreams, but somehow, unable to fall in either direction. He is comforted by his mother’s embrace.
Kunal’s instincts betray him on the day of the quiz. He forgets how to multiply fractions. He confuses composite numbers with prime numbers. His team finishes third in the Premier League.
“Finally,” says Yashaswi Sir, “I got off the bus to walk into the dark myself. I couldn’t see anything: the long straws of grass, or the bush that tangled up my chappals, or any snakes slithering below, or—”
“You were wearing chappals?”
“Yes. At first, no matter how much I walked, the light seemed the same distance away. It never grew any bigger. As if I was pushing the horizon away from me.”
He has never been on a farm, but Kunal can smell the earthy, fresh scent of hay. He can hear the chirp of cicadas. He can imagine the void under a starless moonless night sky.
Father wears a white shirt with a red tie. He dips his parathas in dahi and swirls it in mango pickle. He tells Kunal to get ready for school. He tells Kunal that his mother is in Kanpur to see her family.
She’ll return in two weeks, max.
Yashaswi Sir finally arrives to the light. “It was a small hut made of straw. All dark except for a light from the chulha inside. She was cooking over the open fire.”
Yashaswi Sir closed his eyes, as if the darkness behind his eyelids was transporting him to that night.
“I saw inside, through a small window, an old lady with silver thin hair. An ancient, wrinkled face, hundreds of years old. A blue sari, the bluest blue. Like the blue of a sapphire gemstone. And her eyes were blue too. But, Kunal, that wasn’t the scary part.”
“Tell me the scary part.”
“The children. Twin boys, both around your age.”
“They saw you?”
“Their eyes were red.”
Kunal aces the next maths test. A perfect 25 of 25. Mother returns and makes him gajar-ka-halwa for dessert—his favourite.
Yashaswi Sir is happy to finish the leftover halwa the following afternoon. “A little too sweet for me, but it’s excellent.”
“What happened to the conductor? The driver?”
“I had to save those children,” he wipes the crumbs off the side of his mouth. “I screamed, loudly. Aaaaaaaaaah. But the old lady kept cooking. Stir and stir and stir. I shouted again. Still, nothing. The lady didn’t move. The twins didn’t move.”
Mother wears a doleful look in her eyes. She tells Kunal that they’re moving to Kanpur after his annual exams. Not your father, just me and you.
Kunal wonders if his new school will have a Mathematics quiz team.
Later, Kunal imagines Yashaswi Sir running in the dark, back towards the bus, through the grass and the weeds and the shrubs. Over snakes and rabbits and frogs. Away from the light, seeing nothing, vacuum only making way for more vacuum.
“Until there,” Yashaswi Sir suddenly pauses, his voice almost as breathless as Kunal’s racing mind, “right in front of me, the tiniest glints. Four little red lasers, hovering in the air.”
Kunal swirls the pencil faster between his fingers. Yashaswi Sir has both elbows on the table.
“What was it?”
“At first, no matter how much I walked, the light seemed the same distance away. It never grew any bigger. As if I was pushing the horizon away from me.”
“Eyes, Kunal. Two pairs of red eyes.”
He takes his spectacles off, revealing his own beady, thin eyes.
“The twins.”
Kunal thinks about those laser-red eyes in his sleep. He is caught in the plexus of the story every night, including the nights before his exams.
The results are a cause for celebration; Kunal is ranked second.
Yashaswi Sir is paid for the full month, even though Kunal and his mother will leave on the 18th.
“But what happens in the end?” Kunal asks. He is on the desk with Yashaswi Sir again. They’re reviewing the exam paper. Kunal had struggled with bar graphs.
“It’s your visual understanding,” says Yashaswi Sir. “Work on that, and you’ll be a topper in your new school.”
“No, the story! What happened to the old lady? To the driver and conductor? Those boys?”
“Kunal, it’s as if the two boys were rooted to the ground, you understand? They were no bigger than you, but I felt like I was trying to lift a 500-year-old peepal tree.”
“And then?”
“And then they both began to cry. Big red tears from their big red eyes. The loudest cries I’ve ever heard. Like police sirens. Ambulance sirens. Vyooon! Waaaah!”
Kunal couldn’t help but jump up off his chair.
“I left them ran again,” says Yashaswi Sir, “all the way back to the bus. The mosquitoes that night were a real nightmare, I remember that. I swatted one here and I swatted one there. And soon, on the back seats, I finally fell asleep.
“And when the sun rose, I could see nothing else in any direction. Only barren fields, green and grey, but mostly grey. And I walked ahead now, on the highway. I walked until I got to a village, and I was hungry, so I ate a samosa, and I caught another bus. And, two hours later, I was home.”
Kunal scrunches up his eyebrow. “Just like that? You were home? What happened to everyone else?”
Yashaswi Sir checks his watch. It’s time to go.
“But…” Kunal insists. “That doesn’t make any sense. What does it mean? What’s the point of the story?”
“Point? I just told you what happened. Not everything has to have a point.”
In Kanpur, Kunal has vivid, graphic dreams. He is comforted by the ancient lady’s sapphire-blue eyes, he bakes near the warmth of her chulha, his muscles relax after the strain of attempting to uproot the children. He feels a euphoric elation when he wakes up to sunrise.
He has to take Yashaswi Sir’s advice. If only he was better at bar graphs. Next year, he will top the class.
***
Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar, whose creative work has appeared in Epiphany, Gargoyle, The Literary Review, The Bombay Review, The Lantern Review, and more. He is the founder of the Indian basketball blog Hoopistani and has contributed to NBA India, SLAM Magazine, Fifty Two, FirstPost, and more. Karan’s debut novel A Beautiful Decay will be published by the Aleph Book Company in 2022. His short story “Public Record” will appear in the 2022 anthology A Case of Indian Marvels (Aleph Book Company). You can find him on Twitter: @karanmadhok1 and Instagram: @karanmadhok.
