Amballore House (15 page)

While working at the Central Reserve Police, she got in touch with catholic nuns running private hospital in town and enrolled as a volunteer to do nursing and social work. This gave her immense satisfaction and kept her life very busy. More importantly, this gave her a meaningful goal in life. She got to know of the suffering from close quarters and was happy that she could alleviate the pain in her own way.

When she sat with her lawyer to draft her will, it was not hard for her to give away all her wealth to the sisters of Mother Teresa. The lawyer was surprised at the kind and generous gesture. Not many people would do such a thing, in his opinion.

The lawyer asked her, “Are you sure you don’t want to give part of your wealth to your family?”

Kareena said, “I have given enough to my family already. Now, it is my choice to give it away to those who deserve.”

So saying, she signed her will.

That was a noble decision, taken by a courageous woman and someone who applied what she learned from life to her own life. She chose her recipients as those who deserved charity, without
having to worry about whether they would be grateful. Life had taught her not to expect gratitude. She gave away whole heartedly, whatever she had.

Kareena was a wise woman and had a kind heart.

8
INTO THE GRAVE, TOGETHER

Ann was preparing supper at her Amballore home one day in 1988. She licked the clay pots to savor the last remaining bits of curry, before washing them. She would then move the pots to a batch to be washed and readied for next day’s breakfast. There was still one or two hours of daylight left in the day. Night would arrive shortly.

A demonic laughter rang out just outside the home at that moment. It was more like a howl than laughter, and it bellowed out of whoever it came from. The viciousness of the laughter gripped Ann as if she was thunderstruck and she involuntarily dropped the clay pots, breaking them into a number of tiny pieces. She ran to Thoma, worried if he was turning insane and howling like a demon in his advanced age. As soon as she approached Thoma who was seated in a wheelchair in the patio overlooking the side yard, she was relieved to find him dozing. Everything was OK.

But not so fast.

A second deafening laughter sprang out and it woke up Thoma this time. They both looked in the direction of the laughter and saw a small thing of the size of a soccer ball was rolling into the front yard, as if their neighbor decided to play a game of soccer with them. As it rolled in, the gate closed behind it loudly.

“Remember me, Thoma, my friend?” it asked with a booming sound and continued rolling towards the couple. Thoma and Ann looked at each other and then at this incredible scene, unable to believe that a soccer ball could talk, and that too with a thunderous sound unlikely to have come from a small object. Then they saw another astonishing scene: the ball started manifesting two eyes, one nose, one mouth—everything that made up a human face. These features started sprouting up on the ball one thing at a time, in rapid succession. In a fraction of a second, the ball became a full-fledged human head with a devilish face.

The rolling ball—now, a full-fledged human head with gray hair— stopped at the entrance of the outdoor hallway leading to where
Thoma and Ann were stationed. It then started having a body growing under it and started rising swiftly, propelled by the emerging body. By the time the soccer ball thing was about six feet up from the floor, the transformation was complete, with the whole body and limbs formed perfectly in a matter of minutes. A tall human being was standing in the hallway, staring at the couple. It started walking towards them. As soon as the strange creature reached the couple, it stopped and laughed again viciously and uproariously. Then they recognized him.

It was the good old Old Man Misery that used to invite himself to Thoma’s rental home in Mannuthy during monsoon season! Years and years ago, it was. He was wearing shoes made of snake skin. He was clad in a black robe. He had yellow eyes. He looked like an enlarged lizard or snake. He did not make eye contact when he talked to them. He looked through them.

“Long time, no see, my friend!” he told Thoma.

“You are not welcome here,” Ann told the Hunger Man. He responded by spitting his reddish tobacco saliva into the yard. He laughed again.

The man’s uninvited arrival took her by surprise and fear, the bad memories rushing to fill her mind. She quickly grabbed the cross hanging on the wall and flashed it in front of him, hoping to drive him away. He got hold of Ann by her hair, dragged her to him, snatched the cross and tossed it out. He then pushed Ann against the wall.

Thoma convinced himself that he was not dreaming by pinching himself. He needed a conviction that it was not one of the dreams that he was having while he was napping. He reached out and touched the black circles of beedi smoke that he decided to light up after his interrupted nap, which arose in front of him like giant O-rings, just to make sure he was awake. Ann looked scared and screamed at her husband for abandoning the church and God, thereby inviting the bad spirit to their home. She knelt down and started rolling the rosary.

The Misery Man’s black robe dragged behind him like a bride’s
gown would follow her while on her way to the altar to be blessed in holy matrimony. Though frightened out of wits by the unexpected arrival of the Hunger Man, they could not help noticing astonishingly that he was growing taller minute by minute.

OMM headed towards the lone coconut palm tree by the side of the outhouse. Thoma or Ann could not forget that tree —the same one he had shaken off Number-Six from, to land him in a pile of shit in the outhouse, few years ago. The moment the Hunger Man reached the destination, he became as tall as the tree.

“Your end is near,” he shouted in his thunderous voice to Thoma and Ann. The man’s black robe had grown longer and longer as he had become taller and taller. He looked like a gigantic scarecrow planted in their backyard. The crows and other birds took off from the Misery Man in panic, with their frantic wing beats speaking volumes of the terror he instilled.

“I am here to take you to your end,” he solemnly declared to Thoma and Ann.

He then tossed a card to the couple. Ann picked up the card, only to read her own obituary written on it! It startled her to read that she was going to die on that very same day! She started wailing. Thoma grabbed the card from her. He looked at it, and flipped the card, only to read his own obituary, with the minutest of the details written, including the date he would die: It was that very same day!

***

It had never occurred to Ann that Thoma and she would one day leave this world and go away from their beloved home. She was troubled. She was scared. She started crying.

The prophecy of the Old Man Misery confirmed the foreknowledge of the palm reader at the famous Trichur Round, who predicted the imminent death of Thoma, judging from the disappearing lifeline in his right palm. He was attending the famous Trichur Pooram when the palmist did the reading.

“You don’t have much of a future,” said the palmist to Thoma. He said it politely, instead of making a loud declaration that he was
going to die soon. Thoma was mad to learn of his fate and in protest, refused to pay the palmist. Ever since this prediction took place, he declined to see any traveling palmists who came by his house.

Adding to this alarming news was the instance of an inexplicable photograph taken during the wedding ceremony of their youngest daughter, Number-Ten. The bride and the bridegroom were seated on a pedestal on the wedding stage in the presence of Thoma and Ann. The photo was of high quality and clear, except there was something out of the ordinary: there was a ghost standing behind Thoma! There were five people in the picture, including the ghost, instead of the four people who were photographed.

The ghost appeared to be holding Thoma by his shoulders as if to protect him. Some thought that the ghost was cradling him and consoling him and shielding him from an impending disaster. There was terror written on Thoma’s face, as if he was seeing the hellfire that he was assigned to be tossed into.

People who attended the wedding function remembered that he was smiling when the photograph was taken. All the people who were photographed were smiling on the happy occasion. The frightened Thoma of the photo, with his gaze riveted to a frightening scene, probably a raging inferno of hell, was nothing like the Thoma who attended the whole ceremony with a smiling face. Such a sharp contrast between his live appearance and his photographic image intrigued his relatives and neighborhood friends alike. Some speculated that he was assigned to hell upon his death—that he was looking at hellfire, and the ghost was trying to protect him, trying to block him from entering the hell. The hellfire was not visible in the photograph; however, its presence was implied by the terrified look on Thoma’s face.

Some people believed that poor development of the negative gave rise to the artifact mistakenly interpreted as a ghost. Some thought maybe the picture got smeared with inadvertently spilled water or curry, giving it the appearance of a ghost. The lens quality was examined and found to be satisfactory. The chemicals used in the processing of the film were examined and found to be without
blemish. Both these findings were reported by the photography studio.

No other picture taken during the wedding had this sort of bizarre nature. No other person photographed on the happy occasion had altered looks in the photo. None else had a ghost protectively holding him or her, unlike in the case of Thoma.

This incident added credibility to the widespread belief that there was an impending tragedy in Thoma’s life.

The pious friends of Ann from Saint Joseph’s Church, including Annamma, claimed that the ghost was nothing but guardian angel protecting him at the moment of his death. They speculated that he was assigned to hell by mistake, and therefore the angel appeared on the scene to take him away.

It was soon discovered that the photograph was changing as days went by, adding to the alarm it already created. It was as if a changing photograph was narrating a story through its evolving content. Suddenly a hellfire appeared in the photograph! As time progressed, the fire became more intense and crimson in color. Thoma appeared more and more terror-stricken as days went by.

An additional entity appeared one day in front of him: a devil with a menacing look and with two prominent horns on its head and a tail. Thoma was caught between the ghost behind him, who was restraining him, and a devil pulling him to hellfire. It was as if the devil was leading him along a red, fiery carpet of welcome to his eternal damnation. The devil seemed to be winning. The ghost’s hold on Thoma appeared to get weaker as time progressed.

And then it happened one day: the photograph suddenly started making sounds. The sound effects started with frightening laughter from the devil. The laughter became more alarming, getting louder and louder as the days went by. The sounds then underwent a transformation, and spoken words started emerging. There was a one-way conversation between the devil and Thoma. “Come to the eternal hellfire, Thoma; we keep you warm for eternity; you will not feel cold anymore,” the devil told Thoma, sarcastically of course.

Meanwhile, the protective ghost’s hold became weaker and weaker, and one day, the ghost disappeared for good. The remaining days showed further transformations. It became a full-fledged movie!

In the movie, the devil shouted expletives at Thoma and showed him how the inhabitants of hell were suffering. The frightened Thoma screamed in terror on the next-to-last day of the transformations. Then the last day’s chilling scene was shown where Thoma was engulfed in the hellfire. Thoma was screaming amid the raging fire, alone. Even the devil abandoned him.

Then movie stopped suddenly. It became a still photo of raging hellfire engulfing Thoma.

While this drama was going on, the other side of photograph showed that Ann was also destined to end her days on earth. It showed Ann being escorted to heaven by an angel. On the day when hellfire consumed Thoma (the last day of the movie), Ann was shown being inducted into the halls of heaven.

On the last day of the hell-bound movie, the photograph caught fire. The nightly scene of the photograph invading the bedroom of Thoma and Ann, shouting obscenities at them, was replaced by an angry photograph catching fire in the middle of swearing, right in their bedroom. It then burned out and perished, spewing out black smoke.

The implications were disturbing. The inexplicable melodrama portended a horrifying future for Thoma but a happy ending for Ann. Hidden in the fathomless pits of a run-of-the-mill still photograph was the prediction that both Thoma and Ann would be saying good-bye to the world on the same day.

Did the lens capture the immediate future of Thoma and Ann? Was death stalking the couple? Did Thoma have premonition of his own death, which made him unusually quiet and introspective recently?

The Hunger Man’s announcement that their end was near put a final nail in the coffin, no pun intended, and confirmed the widespread speculation that Thoma was living his final days, and that both Thoma and Ann would disappear from earth on the same day, he to hell and she, to heaven.

***

The news spread around Amballore that a supernatural thing appeared in Thoma’s side yard and was stationed there to fetch them to their end. This unusual development drove a large crowd to Thoma’s home. The populace started calling it a “thing,” for lack of a better term. It was not a devil, it was not a ghost, and it was not a spirit. It surely was something out of this world. Therefore, they called it a “thing.”

The good neighbor Annamma decided to pay a visit to the supernatural guest. She came with apprehension, crossing the back fence, and with curiosity to see how evil spirit invaded Thoma’s home. She also thought of driving the spirit out, being a loyal follower of the church and its teachings.

Ann was happy to see her good friend and confidante, Annamma, joining her. The neighbor’s presence instilled renewed courage in Ann. The two women talked between themselves, conspired, and reached a conclusion. They agreed upon a plan to scare away the spirit and discourage him from taking Thoma and Ann with him.