Charles G. Chettiar

They Came to Bury Me

 

 

When I came out into the living room after doing the dishes, I found her. She sat perched on the arm rest of my easy chair. It had been her favourite spot whenever she used to visit.

 

 "Karen, child?" I said.

 

She leafed through the book. She stopped and lowered her head further.

 

"Karen, how did you come inside?"

 

I shook her shoulder. She looked up. Then I knew that she was Karen but also not Karen.

 

Her eyes had no hint of whites. They were entirely black.

 

I shrank back.

 

My glass window opened. An icy gust of wind touched me with its chilly finger.

 

I turned to find Karen being joined by her mother—my cousin. As Karen leafed through the book her mother stared at the TV. I remembered switching off the TV but it was now on.

 

"Emily?"

 

She turned to me with her black eyes. My heart leapt in my throat. Words failed me. My hands turned cold. They couldn’t move. She broke eye contact and stared at the TV.

 

I felt butterflies fluttering in my stomach. My hands moved. I went in the kitchen and had a drop of water. Even though with the chilly air, sweat had burst out from my forehead.

 

I didn’t want to go in the living room.

 

A thud-thud sound came from behind me. My ten-year-old brother sat on the washing machine swinging his legs.

 

"Ethan?" I said.

 

His eyes were dark too. Like the depths of a black hole.

 

He lowered his eyes giving me an instant to break myself from his hold. I walked into the passageway from where I could observe. Both the living room and the kitchen were assailed by presences whom I could not shake off.

 

Their eyes were enough to freeze me.

 

A clang sounded. It came from the bedroom. Snow swirled inside the bedroom. The window clanged wickety-wit as it moved in the freezing wind. I barely managed to clamp it shut. Snow covered my palms and hair. I swept the snow from my long hair. My bed was a mess with my bras and panties lying helter skelter.

 

I shivered. I didn’t know why. I had put the heater at 60 degrees, but I felt really like 30. A cold draft punched me. I ran to the living room. I found the door open. Snow had deposited itself on the threshold. I kicked off the snow. I pulled the door shut with snow crunching.

 

I turned to find my dad busy with his laptop punching away.

 

"Dad?"

 

I averted my eyes before he looked up. I kept the maximum distance between the three in the living room. I made my way to the bedroom with my back touching the wall.

 

There in my bedroom, I found my mother. She slept on my bed surrounded with unwashed clothes. My cousin with her daughter and my father were going to meet today for my mother’s death anniversary. But the snowstorm destroyed our plan.

 

"Mom?" I said.

 

She lay in the same position I remembered. Cancer had wasted her body, her skin a sickly pallor. Tears came unbidden to my eyes. I touched her hand and they matched the coldness in my heart.

 

I sat beside her like I had sat at her wake. I cried silently, tears streaming out and running on my cheeks. I had wanted to be there, but couldn’t. I didn’t know how I could atone for it.

 

A faint trickle which looked like a scar at first. But when I went near I saw the blotched redness on her sole. It glistened with a dull hue. Then I realised what it was.

 

Blood.

 

It trickled from her feet. I had heard that once she had gotten up at the hospital. Her bones too brittle to take her weight had snapped. Juts of bone protruded through her feet. I touched her feet and the bone pricked me.

 

The air had turned colder.

 

Then she opened her eyes. I didn’t want to meet her eyes. Her eyes were dead; with the steady darkness I had seen in other eyes.

 

"Mom?" I said.

 

She stared at me. My insides turned to water. I don’t know what was more jarring than the dark eyes, or my mother’s steady stare. I couldn’t fathom it.

 

 I rushed to the living room with the thought at the back of my head that it had been just a sorry hallucination.

 

I froze.

 

They stood staring at the low table all of them—my father, my niece Karen, my cousin Emily & my brother Ethan.

 

In unison they looked up—at me.

 

Their eyes were dark, totally dark.

 

I heard a report. I had fired a few to know that it was that of a gun.

 

Their stares were like aiming and firing of a gun. I stepped back half expecting them to dissolve in mid-air.

 

I stepped back. They stepped forward. I heard a small tingle.

 

My ears tingled. I stepped back and my relatives stepped forward.

 

I turned and met the pale face of my mother. She raised her hand and tried to grasp my top. I moved out of her reach.

 

The living room party crowded in the passageway. My hand recoiled as I felt ice. Cold hands grasped my wrists from behind. Emily pressed from the front. She grasped my shoulder. I thrashed but my brother grasped my legs. I saw the ceiling as my feet lost touch of the ground.

 

A cold draft of wind sent shivers all over my skin. For an instant I wondered how the cold could get to me. I had two layers of clothing on me. My skin, thighs & breasts were bare against the elements.

 

My glance went to the door. It was open! I squirmed but it had no effect. They held me—held me firm and carried me into the snowstorm.

 

 

 

Charles G. Chettiar is an Engineer by circumstance and writer by choice. He works in Engineering in Mumbai. He started writing short stories when in college, and has just now completed his first novel.