THE MAN WITH THE WHITE HAT (A ghost story)

I never thought the bike to give us trouble, Vidya. Anyway the mechanic did a good job, and we are reaching before sunset.” Rahul said.

Vidya adjusted her sitting posture on the pillion. It is a long ride, she is clung on to him by strapping her hand tightly over his abdomen.

“We should thank God for his grace Rahul.” Vidya reacted.

From the main road Rahul took a diversion and was riding along the sleek pathway to his home. The roof top of his ancestral house was appearing yonder.

Rahul’s home was built in olden times. Tiled roofing and wood ceilings give it a classic look of the past. His dad was born in this house. Even his father had no knowledge at whose time in his lineage the house was built. Its architecture is culinary, guests have only praise for the artistic splendor. In a kind of solitude, in the midst of of rubber plantations, the house stood far away from its neighbors.

Rahul swerved his bike to the right of the approach way, and pulled it on its side stand. He walked up to the rusted cast iron gate and pulled at one loaf of it. Vidya lifted her handbag from the bike’s side box and hung it on her shoulder. Rahul hand pushed the bike up to the portico of the house and parked it on the left.

The golden rays of the sun was still falling over the place. Two thirds of the fire ball was yet to be extinguished behind the horizon. The leafage of the rubber trees fluttered in a golden bath from the western sky.

Vidya was looking to the sky. Despite thousand times she saw the sunset there, she watched the phenomenon like a fresher, every time.

“What you doing there Vidaya?” Rahul quizzed her. He was spinning the bike key on top of his index finger.

“Stop spinning the key, Rahul. Ample times I have told you never do it. It is not the right thing to do with the key.”

“Sorry Vidya, sorry. Habits seldom dies. But my habit I’ll kill soon, a promise Vidya” He laughed. Vidya joined him in a hearty laughter.

“My Rahul! Hmm…” Her face fondly beamed.

Rahul turned the key on the door. Vidya entered after him. He sat on the divan and heaved a sigh of relief, the end to a tiresome journey.

Vidya soon brought a potfull of tea. Rahul pulled the teapoy closer to his divan.

He is leisurely sipping the tea. Vidya is biting at a cookie. Vapor is still rising from her half finished cup…

“Vidya, I don’t know what to say, but while I turned the key…”

“You saw something there, Rahul?!”

“Not exactly, but….”

“Ha, it is the jasmine vine leaning against the wall. A lot of flowers it bears. May be you have seen that there.”

“No Vidya, it is not bare jasmine. There was some other thing there.”

She switched on the master switch. The house was illumined. Rahul was examining the jasmine vine leaning against the wall right to the main door. Vidya is right, it has a lot of flowers on it. He pulled at it and left it. It went and clung to the wall again. He brought a kitchen knife and cut the vine off the shrubs and threw it away.

“The human mind! We sometimes fear unreasonably, Vidya. It was the jasmine. And I removed it.”

“Yes, jasmine. But then why it looked like a hat? I don’t know why.”

“Hat! You said a hat Vidya? A white hat!”

“I saw it, Rahul. A white hat.”

“Yes, that was what I saw first, that I wanted to tell you. Let’s not stand here anymore. Something is there.”

A chill is running up Rahul’s legs.

“It is not mere jasmine Vidya.”

They quickly got into the house and shut the door.
They closed every window. They latched the doors from inside and locked them too.

“I’m not able to resolve it Vidya. I had that white hat in my mind, but I didn’t want to tell you. When you said white hat, it chilled my spine.”

Vidya was staring at him. Fear was working in her now.
Rahul continued…

“Our house is a loner in 10 acres. We have neighbors. But then they are far away. The day is terrific here, but the night is equally terrible here.

They had an early dinner. The television programmes then interested them. They watched TV beyond midnight.
Vidya closed her eyes for sleep. Rahul sat in the chair and finished reading the last chapter of a novel. When he retired to bed she was fast asleep.

The wall clock chimed from the depth of the black night. Vidya awoke.

“Rahul. Rahul.” Vidya tapped on his shoulder.

Rahul was in a stupor.

“You didn’t sleep, Rahul?”

“No. The man with the hat was with me. It was nightmarish, a horror. You feel my heart it is still pounding…Don’t say I was just dreaming.”

“Fear. Your fear did it, Rahul.”

“It is not fear alone, Vidya.”

He sat up in the darkness. He groped for the bed lamp switch…

“What you are searching Rahul?”

“Bed lamp.”

“Have you ever listened to the whistle of silence?”

“Whistle of silence! What’s it?”

“Just try listen, Rahul”

Rahul positioned his ears. He was hearing the whistle of silence. It was rising from the bottom of silence. It was rising and spilling, it was re-echoing like shifting ripples.

Rahul suddenly embraced Vidya. He caught her tightly within his arms. Her heart was pounding violently against his chest.

“What? What?” She screamed.

“Someone is there in our room. I can smell him. His presence is flowing like a linen over me. Touch my palm, Vidya!”

She felt for his inner palm. It felt a thousand gossamer threads. It was spiraling around her.

“Webbing, something is webbing us!”

“Yes. Yes.” Rahul was whispering.

“Shall I put on the switch, Rahul?”

“No. Be silent, our breath he shouldn’t hear.”

“Something is moving on the floor. Listen to it Vidya, something is moving.”

Vidya was listening. Like threads being dragged on the floor, it is very feeble.”

“You are caressing my hair Rahul? You are touching my hair?”

“No, I’m not touching your hair.”

“Who then?”

There was sound of a matchstick striking. It seemed not lighting up. A flare went up. The flame was slowly moving up.

The whiteness of a cigarette appeared in the light of the matchstick. Fire was flaring at the tip of the cigarette.
Someone is pulling at it.

The contour of a white hat wavered in the air.

“I saw the hat.” Vidya screamed.

Rahul covered her mouth with his palm.

“Don’t scream! Don’t scream!”

As the burning fire was reaching the butt of the cigarette the man’s face momentarily flashed. The man with the white hat!

Vidya switched on the light amidst a crashing sound.

They watched the fallen chair. It was lying flat on its back…

by Muraleedharan Pillai