Fear and Superstitions

 

[It is not a completely true story but based on one.]

 

The landlord of the village suddenly got missing. His right-hand man said that they (he and his newly wed wife) saw a ghost in the house.

 

There was a lock on the front door and the back door was locked from inside. Their departure was very hurried. They had left most of their earnings in there. It instilled fear in the villager's minds so, that no one would go near it. We never got to know what happened to the landlord and his wife.

 

"Don't go on that road." Said our mother to me and my sister.

"But that is on the shortest route to school." My sister said.

"You know why I am saying this. What I said is final. Wake up earlier, I will prepare your breakfasts." She said in that authoritian tone which we had begun to despise.

My father came back. "You are early. What..." And parents started spewing venom on each other again.

We went on to study. "She is so extremely delusional." I said.

"And paranoid. If they don't know how to live, how the hell can they teach us?"

"I suspect you have something in mind."

"Tonight when they will be fighting, we will sneak out and see what is really up with that house."

"It will be unsafe. I don't mean the ghosts but at night there will be some robbers and kidnappers."

"Don't worry, I have some safety."

"What?"

"You will know when it is required."

I had learnt not to pester someone for information.

I did some maths and went out. Most of my friends were older than me and they preferred to do things I was not even slightly interested in so, I was usually alone. There was a tree 7 km from my house. I had only recently been able to run all the way to over there and back without stopping. I came back home completely exhausted and dehydrated. After that, me and my sister started preparing dinner. Mother came back from work and got us out of the kitchen and completed the cooking. She served us, took negligible portion for herself and after finishing it went into the kitchen to wash the plates and other utensils.

Father just returned and shouting began. We stuffed cotton in our ears and sat down to study some more. They stopped for a while and began again. It was time to sleep. I pulled the bed out and retired for the night.

Like almost every other night, mother started the fight again and father was not the one to quit. We were supposed to pretend to be asleep but then we had had enough. We went out of the house. There was nowhere else we could go. We lived in a house with just one room where we did everything, one bathroom and one kitchen. We were poor but unlike most of them, my parents did not have 10 children. Just a little bit of education and forward thinking made my parents realize that children are responsibility and raising them require a lot of money. My mother being a woman wanted at least one child but my father wanted none. My grandparents pressurized my parents to have more and more children. Unfortunately that meant, I was unwanted. The ambition of my parents to make both of us good members of society required money and that had started to strain their marriage. It was one thing they believed which we had engraved in our minds. "DO NOT DO WHAT EVERYBODY ELSE DOES BECAUSE EVERYBODY ELSE IS POOR AND MISERABLE."

I was thinking all this when, I realized we had drifted away from the house.

"Where are we going?" I asked my sister. She was wearing pants and a loose shirt and she had wrapped a turban on her head. She was looking like a man. "I don't think looking like a man is enough."

"I have more safety measures than that." She replied.

We were going to that supposed haunted house. The moon was full sky cloudless. We were easily able to see our way.

We reached there.

"Let's take a full outside view." My sister said.

We were at one side of the house where we saw the window lighted with a candle light. The ghost was in. I grabbed my sister's hand and ran away.

"The ghost." I said completely out of breath.

My mature, wise, rational and four years older sister said, "Stupid, it is not a ghost. Someone has broken in. We should tell the police."

I believed her. A ghost would definitely not need candle light to see based on the stories I heard.

We were on our way to the police station.

"Wait, they will not take us seriously as two kids roaming at 3 in the morning and will call parents." I said.

"Good idea we will tell them in the morning. By that I mean that I will find someone to inform them."

"But by then the intruder will have long escaped."

"The man who used to live here was a landlord. A rich cruel bastard who would squeeze the poor dry and add to his huge wealth. If someone uses a rational mind to rob a robber and does not care about stupid superstitions, he deserves whatever he steals."

I liked her thinking but was not satisfied.

"We went back. Parents were still fighting and not even noticed their children were out."

Such was the case, we always listened to what our parents forbade us to do, thought about it and did the same. They never told us not to drink or smoke or do drugs or even get mixed with gang members, so we always did what we were not told to do. My sister had an extremely high amount of wisdom, she always told me right from wrong.

 

10 years later

My sister was doing a well-paid technical job and was married to a professionally similar man. I was in a good college. Our parents after we were settled became quiet and gradually stopped fighting. It was smooth sailing-kind of.

 

I went back home for holidays. I was roaming with my friends when, I reached in front of the same abandoned house.

"What is up with this place now?" I asked.

"The landlord came back and died. So, it is still haunted."

"What? When?"

"Last year. Nobody ever dared to enter but seeing the front door unlocked, police went in and discovered the rotting body of the landlord. On even more investigation, they found a skeleton of a woman, which was confirmed to be of his wife."

"He murdered his newly wed and ran away claiming the place to be haunted."

"Yes."

"Why did he come back?"

"Apparently to take away some of his valued belongings. Police found a suitcase filled with old jewels."

"How did he die?"

"He was taking a trunk from a shelf and it fell on him, killing him."

 

I found some details about the landlord that he had remarried and was living on his property in nearby city, living a life of comfort and luxury. He had four kids.

So, apparently the person we saw that night was the landlord himself. Removing any evidence of his murder and taking back his jewels.

 

I told my sister about the latest fact and she said that she was glad that we never went in ourselves else he would have murdered us too. That spot being so desolate. Our body would not have been discovered for years.

But this incident stayed in my mind. If we would have gone to the police, would they have caught the landlord or just ratted us out to our parents or maybe both.

Everybody dwells on the past and becomes miserable. I can't do anything about it so, fuck it.