Lurking shadows finale

Read part 9 - here 

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Liyah, Liyah’ Mita screamed.

She was trying to snatch the photograph from the policeman’s hand. 

‘What are you doing?’ the shorter man tried to hold her back.

‘I..I..she’s dead. Liyah is dead. he killed her.’

‘Miss, miss. Please, calm down’ The taller policeman tried calming her down but the woman they saw, as skeletal and dead as she looked now seemed possessed. ‘Look , look’ she screamed, running to her couch and pointing at the darkening handprint on the wall. ‘Look at this’ 

The policeman saw a dirty wall that had a dark spot which seemed to have been scraped with something hard. Its plaster was falling out and grey cement spots peeked through. ‘Look’ she screamed again. ‘This is Liyah’s handprint. she..’ Mita paused and looked around, the thick gust of decayed wind sat on her shoulder. ‘look, she is here’ Mita pointed towards her head.

‘Miss’ the policeman raised his voice out of concern. ‘Miss, please listen.’ he walked towards her, trying to assuage her sudden discomposure. 

‘we had come to tell you as a general piece of information regarding uh, the previous tenant seeing how we had been here to question you. We thought you should know that miss Liyah is absolutely fine. She contacted and met us last evening. Seems like she had a fight with her parents and wanted to sever all contact with them, and so she didn’t inform them about the move, leading them to file a missing person’s report.’ He waited to let this bit sink in. 

Mita looked puzzled. ‘But, Anek?’ 

‘If your.. er, boyfriend is harassing you we can help.’ the taller of the two men stepped forward and helped her sit on the couch. 

‘we can file a complaint. You can come with us to the police station.’ he continued.

A small meow made itself audible. Pink had entered Mita’s house seeing the door open. He walked around, ignoring the two strange men and gently rubbed his shoulder on Mita’s leg.

She was screaming. ‘he..he saw her. He talks to Liyah. he’s on it.’ Mita had curled into a ball.

‘is this your cat?’ the shorter policeman asked pocketing the photograph.

‘No..it’s Anek’s’ Mita’s reply came muffled.

She saw a tall man picking up the cat. He must be really brave to just scoop the demonic animal in his arms. 

How long had it been?

Mita didn’t know. 

There was silence. No one was in the house. The rains smattered their hearts against her weeping window and Mita slept.

Anek was staring at the small passport-sized picture of a very sickly looking woman. 

He adjusted his spectacles and found a thin wave of recollection with a faint dank odour sweeping him.

‘I wouldn’t say I know her. I just occasionally greet her in the mornings. She often stands by the kitchen window which opens to the staircase and it doesn’t seem decent to just ignore someone, especially a neighbour.’ Anek concluded thoughtfully.

The policemen didn’t look convinced. They hmmed and nodded without any reassurances. 

‘why?’ Anek asked worriedly. ‘Is she alright? is this about her?’

‘what about your cat?’

‘what about my cat?’ Anek was confused.

‘Does your cat often visit that woman’s house?’

‘Pink?’ Anek asked, not looking too surprised. ‘Pink is friends with almost everyone around. He is such a spoilt little thing and very friendly. He visits everyone’s house hoping for treats. I didn’t know she was among his friends as well’ Anek mused.

‘So you don’t know the woman who lives downstairs?’ The taller man asked.

‘I don’t know her as such. Like I said, we just greet each other formally.’ Anek sounded annoyed.

The shorter policeman suddenly conjured a crumbled old picture that was impossibly stained and faded. 

‘how about now?’ he asked tersely.

Anek peered into the photograph. ‘This is Liyah’ he said confused.

‘You know her?’ 

‘yes, we used to be good friends. well, when this picture was taken we were high school sweethearts but things changed and we were relegated to being friendly acquaintances.' 

‘Did you know she lived in the same house which is now occupied by this woman?’ The taller man asked pointing at Mita’s passport photo.

‘I did, but Liyah had moved out by the time I moved here. I don’t understand what’s the problem?’ Anek appeared clueless.

‘When exactly did you move here?’

‘Just last month. why?’ Anek stressed his question looking absolutely bewildered.

‘Can you please look at this picture again.’ The policeman near thrust the ink-stained photo in Anek’s face ‘Please try to focus on the person standing on the extreme right of this photo.’ 

Anek stared at the face of a girl with short hair, wearing an oversized school sweater, almost trying to hide her face behind the other two stained faces that were in the photograph besides Liyah and himself.

He pursed his lips at the sad memory of this person. ‘yes I know her. Poor thing. Her mother was our English teacher who had died of a sudden illness. This girl’ Anek shook his head, trying to remember her name ‘she stopped coming to school and last I heard she was admitted in a home for the mentally ill.’ Anek looked at the photo. ‘Her name. Well..we never spoke much. I don’t remember her name.’

He suddenly looked up at the policemen with a startling realization.

‘is she? I mean, is that, is that her? the woman from downstairs?’

‘Her name is Mita’ the taller policeman replied pocketing the photograph. ‘she moved in about the same time as you in the same apartment as Liyah’ he replied with a long drawn exhale.

Pink was scratching on the doormat. He wanted to be let in. 

Lurking shadows- 9

Read part 8 - here

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If she had appeared gaunt the last time then today Mita looked almost skeletal. 

The two policemen stared at the ghostly caricature of the woman they had met only a couple weeks ago and it seemed like her health has steadily deteriorated in that time.

The front of her shirt was caked in thick dirt. Almost like she had been dragged through the filth. The bruise on her neck that was a plum coloured thing was now a faded yellow as the taller policeman noted. The injury on her finger had still not healed and looked to have gotten worse if the filthy bandages had to be believed and the stench pouring out of the house near made the shorter policeman gag.

Awkwardly the two men took a step back.

The rot that filled the house mingled with decaying humidity, steadfastly clinging to the woman, almost entrenched within her existence and she seemed to have made her peace with the debilitating state of her ruin.

Mita’s bony arms held the door open and she stared at the two men whom she’d seen before. Where did she see them? 

She wanted to remember. Did they live with her some time ago, maybe she saw them in the long corridors of the old building she had once frequented while holding Anek’s hand.

‘Yes?’ Mita smiled and it was a painful little gesture.

‘Uh...We were here earlier.’ the shorter of the two men seemed to look unsure about something. Mita tried to understand why he looked to be pulling himself back.

He now waved a piece of paper in front of her face. It looked like an identity card. 

‘Ah, it’s the police’ Mita beamed.

‘Are you alright miss?’ the soft-spoken taller man was looking straight at her, the way sometimes Anek would when he said 'good morning' to her each morning.

The woman looked like she was having a seizure. Her face was frozen with shock but a moment later it relaxed. 

‘You’re here to arrest him?’ Mita asked morosely. Her mood suddenly changed.

‘Excuse me’ the taller man looked at her surprised.

‘yes, I know’ she sighed. ‘he has done it. He killed her.’ she said slowly shifting her weight and pointing inside her house. ‘Liyah is here. She is dead of course, but mother thinks she is haunting me. I think so too. Anek is trying to kill me as well. And..’ she suddenly paused and motioned for the two men to wait.

Mita ran back inside the house.

The two policemen now at an absolute loss for words looked at each other.

‘What do we do?’ the taller one asked. 

‘Let's go inside and check.’ his partner replied and the two men stepped inside the house, taking care to not lock the door behind because the malodor infesting the house needed to escape.

They couldn’t believe the living quarters they had stepped into.

The floor was sticky with mud and wet. A steady stream of water poured through the rotten woodwork on the window panels. 

An entire wall was moulded and looked to be a festering wound within the house. Someone had been throwing water all over the couch and walls of the house, in all likelihood it was the woman who’d been doing it. An empty bucket lay on its side.

Glass shards and broken pieces of china lay scattered on the floor along with torn pieces of dirty cloth that had holes in some places and looked to have been intentionally ripped apart.

Each spot in the house had a stench of its own.

The walls gave off a dank mouldy fume but it was the kitchen which added to the grave like redolence. 

The sink was stacked with broken bowls, plates and empty wrappers along with decomposing food that was steadily getting wet under the thin stream of a running faucet.

The shorter policeman trying to breathe through his mouth turned it off and stared at the floor which in some places appeared to have thin streaks of dried blood. 

The woman of this house had been barefoot and there was glass all around. What was going on? what was she talking about?

His reverie was broken by his partner who was pointing at the floor. There were long drag marks through the dust and perhaps that explained why the woman's shirt front was so dirty. Was she crawling on the floor?

‘wasn’t she wearing the same clothes when we met her last?’ the policeman asked to a shrug from his taller friend trying to look nonchalant as they both noted Mita approaching with a crumpled photograph in her hand.

‘Here’ she said handing it out to the shorter man.

‘This is Liyah in this picture, the one on the right with my boyfriend Anek. They used to be together and now she has disappeared. He has been trying to kill me too, you know. He wants me dead.’ she extended her bandaged finger in front of the policemen. ‘Look what he did. And he chokes me every night’ Mita’s voice trembled with anger and agony as she demonstrated how. She held her neck with both her hands and squeezed hard until her eyeballs nearly popped out. 

Someone was screaming for her to stop and pulling her away. The beautiful white place had clean bedsheets, Mita remembered. Mother always told her to stay there, but she loved walking along the long corridors.

The two policemen were trying to pry her fingers open and suddenly she began coughing. Mita was rasping, her breath came out in spurts and she knew Anek was at it again.

The yellowing bruises were darkening again. 

The two men looked confused. Mita didn’t know what they were doing in her house.

They were holding a photograph.

--

cont..

Lurking shadows - 8

Read part 7 - here

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Anek adjusted his spectacles that kept sliding down his nose.

The two policemen, one of whom had just pocketed his identity card and the other taller one who looked to be scrutinizing Anek’s face didn’t look like a sour bunch of men but Anek found himself getting unsettled.

He wasn’t used to having the police knock his doors so early in the morning and they had questions. 

What sort of questions would Anek have answers to that might be of any interest to the police?

‘I have seen that cat before’ the taller policeman said pointing to a cat. 

Anek’s gaze followed Pink as he quietly sneaked out the open door. 

‘Ah, Pink’ Anek said with a smile before looking baffled. ‘You’ve seen him before?’

‘yes,’ the policeman smiled.

‘Won’t you please come in?’ Anek spoke dryly, knowing full well that he’d get late to work.

It was the shorter policeman who spoke this time. ‘we don’t want to keep you. Just a couple small questions for now. We will come back later again for la engthier chit chat.’ He pulled a passport-sized photograph from out of a thin folder. ‘Do you know this woman?’ 

Mita stared at the kitchen faucet streaming a thin line of water that ran down the sink in a small whirlpool. 

She was scraping the solidified streaks of burnt instant noodles from the bottom of her pot that had been left to cook for too long. The resulting noise was too tedious and her mother complained. ‘Will you stop it?’ 

Mita stopped and flung the pot back into the sink. 

‘I..I was just trying to wash the dishes mother.’ she looked around the moulding walls, dust carpeted floors, peeling plaster, swollen and rotted wooden window panes ‘I’m thinking of getting this house fixed.’ Mita’s feverish voice trembled with uncertainty. She avoided looking at her mother whose gaze now felt hot to her chest. It was burning through her, undoing whatever little strength she felt she possessed.

A deep sigh emanated from where her mother stood. ‘It’s alright she said. Everything will be okay.’

Mita nodded in reply but found it hard to believe her mother.

She’d always supported Mita, always helped her, held her, told her never to worry and Mita had listened. She had opened her eyes, opened her heart and let her mother seep into her each time she felt she was at the end of the path.

It was bright. The well made clean bed, the never-ending corridors. ‘everything will be okay’. She’d heard a hundred times over and believed it. She’d believed herself as she held Anek’s hand and strolled through the ancient building. 

Mita fixed her focus on her feet. The trickling sound of running faucet mingled with the immortal screams of monsoons that chastised her glass window. Its rotten panes bloated and seeped a thin trail of water down the walls and into the living room.

She stared at her feet again. They were dirty, dirtier than the floor which was smeared with splotches of sticky black stains.

She’d been walking barefoot through slick grime and making a mess.

‘It’s alright’ her mother assured her.

Mita felt a sudden twitch in her finger and saw it bleeding again just as a strong gust of thick stench filled her insides. Her head throbbed with an intense ache and she was on the floor. Something sat on her chest hammering it inside. She was going to turn into a cave. A dank dirty grotto of filth and stench.

Anek’s eyes stared at her. ‘No, please no.’ Mita rasped as the weight pushed harder against her.

‘please stop it.’ a cloying soggy funk hung around her head as Mita beseeched into the eyes staring into her gaping mouth that was trying to scream.

She pulled away from under the weight and found her legs bereft of any strength. hauling her weight on her elbows Mita crawled into the bedroom and locked herself up.

The wave of nauseous stench unrepentant in its vile mucilaginous nature stuck to Mita, following her as she bolted the door, begging Anek to stay away from her.

‘Please, please’ she sobbed. ‘I love you.’ she cried to be heard by the man she never knew she could live without. 

How did she live before him? There was no recollection in her mind. She never had an opportunity to know of a time or life without him.

She lay on the cold floor. Anek’s footsteps were far away but she could hear them. ‘tell me’ she asked through her dying sobs. ‘Why did you have to kill Liyah?’ 

A piercing screamed rumbled through the house, the howl of a living grave screamed into her ears, ruffled her hair, the rains tried hard to crash through the windows and drown her in a flood of ire.

‘tell me’ Mita screamed. ‘Why did you kill Liyah? She is still inside this house..haunting me’ 

Anek did not answer. 

She waited for him to say something. The house was silent. All that Mita could hear was her own breath and the scraping sound her bandaged finger made against her face as she wiped her tears.

The rains had muted, some people in the distance laughed, a couple dogs barked and then there were footsteps. 

A soft voice called Pink’s name.

A voice she didn't remember. There was a distinct smile to the tone. The way it addressed her cat. there was someone outside. Mita curled into a ball on the floor, hoping this moment would go away. The voice, whosoever’s it was, would vanish. 

She wanted the day to end. How many days had it been? 

Anek was silent. Someone was outside the door. Please go away she whispered into her nightshirt. The decomposing smell tried to pry her open. Her body was beginning to fall apart. Something was trying to make its way through her skin, she could feel her bones tighten. 

Mita lay in a fetal position, waiting for everything to disappear. She wanted a white nothingness.

‘Mother.’ she cried.

Silence again. 

Mita breathed hard and waited to exhale. 

Nothing. There was emptiness. 

She let her breath out and watched the dust lift and settle back on the floor.

Someone was laughing outside, in the distance perhaps.

The dogs were still barking and the rains had almost stopped. 

Someone was knocking on her door.

--

cont..

Lurking shadows - 7

Read part 6 - here 

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Anek did not return home that night.

A red plastic bucket and ball of steel wool lay near the couch.

Mita hummed to the sound of monsoons lashing against her window panes. She had been waiting for Anek but somehow knew that he probably wouldn’t be coming home that night or perhaps any other night.

Did I drive him away?

‘He wanted to kill me’ Mita whispered as she stifled her sobs in her dirty nightshirt that stank like the house. 

She just wanted everything to get back to as it was, as she remembered, but her recollection now wore thin.

She’d held Anek’s hand as they walked across a long corridor sometime in the past, maybe in another life. It was an old building with many people in it and hundreds of rooms. Nothing was white. Everything was old and brick-like and airy.

It was beautiful.

Something breathed into her ear. Mita sat up looking around. The fetid odour from the living room was trickling into her bedroom, lifting dust off the floors in a bizarre arrangement.

The thick dust seemed to have come off clean in long streaks as if something had been dragged through. 

‘Liyah?’ Mita murmured. ‘Liyah is it you?’ she gasped and ran to the cupboard where she had stuffed the ink-stained photograph back into the old bag that the previous tenant had left behind.

Mita held it between her palms and closed her eyes.

‘Liyah, please talk to me. tell me everything. Where are you? the police are looking for you. What did Anek do?

A long painful wail emanated from outside her house.

‘Liyah, Liyah talk to me’ Mita rasped. The singular yowling sounds grew and transformed into menacing hisses. 

Mita unclasped her hands and let the photograph fall to the floor on the wide flat spot where the dust seemed to have cleared up from the floor.

She stared at it. It almost seemed like an outline of a body.

‘Someone dragged her through this room and lay her here’ Mita suggested to herself.

She looked around her bare room floor. It was caked with dust even though the windows had been shut to keep the rains out and yet dust had settled everywhere. 

Dirty shoe prints had since long dried and caked and collected dust to form patterns.

Mita lifted her feet to check the prints on the sole of her slipper, but she wore none. 

‘What a mess’. The picture lay on the floor, creased and stained, looking up hopefully at Mita. 

A very lanky Anek stood in it, his plastic rimmed spectacles seemingly falling off his nose next to a pretty looking girl with healthy skin and blushing cheeks still visible through the discolour and ink stains.

‘She was once alive and now she is dead stinking up my house like a grave; drawing mould on my walls and menacing me with a handprint on the walls. Turning my cat against me.’ Mita screamed and kicked the photograph. 

She ran out of the bedroom and was aghast. Her kitchen was in shambles. All the mismatched pieces of broken crockery and cups sat on the counter. 

Three plates with cracked tops and chipped sides lay streaked with leftover food that had dried up. 

Leftover bits of instant noodles entwined in congealed ropes stuck to the basin. Small insects hovered over a moulding orange kept on an empty photo frame. 

Mita let out a howl. She wanted to put her mother’s picture in it, but the orange had almost seeped out its innards and it looked grotesque the way green and white fungus crept all over the frame.

‘Liyah, you bitch. I hate you. I’m glad you’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead’ Mita pulled at the torn curtains hanging limpidly on the brackets that were flaked with rust. She tugged and tried to rip through the holes in the curtains with her fingers, shredding them into mottled ribbons. Mita dug her teeth into the dirty fabric and ripped it apart.

‘This is my house. my house, my house.’ she screamed kicking at the boxes on the floor which spilt with dust eaten, moth loved tattered cloth. ‘My curtain, this is my curtain’ she tore at them with a loud ripping sound.

‘My glasses, my cups’ she said smashing everything to the floor. 

There was a silent pool of murky water in the bucket she had earlier used to clean up the stain.

‘I will clean up my house’ she declared with a scream and flung the bucket at the moulding stain that had since grown and covered the full length of a wall. 

There were footsteps outside the house. ‘Anek is that you?’ Mita ran to the door. There was no one. 

Pink was running up the stairs. 

‘Where are you going?’ she tried to ask the busy cat but he had long since disappeared.

‘Where are you Anek?’

Mita slid to the floor, waiting for him. 

She was holding a photograph which she had just moments ago kicked away from her, or was it yesterday? no, it was moments ago, she remembered kicking it on the floor. The photograph was lying somewhere on the bedroom floor. Liyah laid there too. Anek had buried her in their own house. 

But why?

Why was she holding that photograph?

Mita was resolved to talk to the police about it.

What would she tell them?

‘Hello police, my boyfriend has killed the previous tenant of this house, the one who’s gone missing. You’ve been asking me about her and I've been lying. I know where she is. You’ll probably find her skeleton under my bedroom floors and her soul hanging about my house, making it smell like my rotten insides.’ 

Mita laughed at that.

 My insides are truly rotten she mused.

‘Mother’ she sat up with a jolt. Pressing down her nightshirt, trying to rid it of the creases. ‘I have to talk to mother’ 

--

cont..