What’s in Grandma’s Suitcase? (Part 2 of 2)

Read the first part of this story here.

No one spoke with no one in my house after that. I rarely saw Eddie, and whenever I saw him, he was too drunk to see me. And mother lost all her beauty in that one day. She sat forlorn and sad, up in her room, hardly ever moving out of it.

No one had ever visited our house much anyway. The front door rarely opened, except for Eddie going in and out as he pleased. There wasn’t any food prepared in the house either. When I felt hungry, and asked mother about it, she would not respond. On the third day, when my stomach began to growl with hunger, I walked up to the kitchen myself and tried to get whatever I could.

I hoped and prayed to Jesus to make everything all right. All these things, despite all those Sunday Masses… was this because we were all living in sin in some way? But Jesus is all-forgiving, isn’t He? Yes. Hadn’t Father Jacob said at Mass that Jesus knows all and forgives all?

Would he forgive my father? Or my mother?

I do not know. I would not have forgiven them even if I were Jesus. But I wanted their forgiveness. It was the only thing that would make things better in the house.

The loneliness began to eat me up. Being undesired is one thing; being unwanted is entirely another. I would probably understand one day why my mother had not desired me before my birth, but how could she not want me after I was here? How could she shun my very presence when I was here, in front of her, in flesh and blood?

I think all her silent brooding was repentance for her evil thoughts.

Finally, the day arrived when I knew I could not stay in that house any longer. What would you do in a house where no one spoke a word to you, much less prepare food for you, or involve you in anything they did? Of what use are their tears and silence? Grandma had left the home, and then I suddenly realized—no one had ever taken my name in the house except her.

In the darkness of that night, I made an important decision.

I decided to run away from the house.

I knew exactly what to do. So, when both of them slept that night, I walked up to the door, opened it as silently as I could, walked out in the same clothes I had been wearing since the past three days, and closed the door behind me.

The night was dark, but I hadn’t expected anything else. I had chosen the night for I did not want to bump into anyone my parents knew, for there would be uncomfortable questions I did not have answers to. Thus, I stole away, my hands in my pockets, braving the cold and the horrors, and walked along the single road, which was all my village had. I hoped I was going in the right direction.

And I knew in the morning that I was right.

When the first light of dawn broke in the sky, I saw the thatched hut where the village seemed to come to an end. And the moment I saw it, I whooped with joy.

***

I had seen this hut only once before. That was when I was four, I guess, the time when my mother had come to this house—Grandma Grace’s house—to fetch her to her house. I remember she had desisted back then, but my mother had insisted and had prevailed.

What was the use of that?

My Grandma Grace was once again in that same house. Nothing had changed.

I looked around for her, and found her quite easily. She was sitting in her garden, and digging up something. I knew how much Grandma Grace loved her gardens. She had a green thumb for sure, for she knew exactly what needed to be done with her plants. As I moved ahead, I saw her digging up something in the soil, probably preparing her farm to bear fruit once again.

I did not want to disturb her. And so I sat for a long time in silence, at a little distance from her, watching her work.

Then, when the day started turning to noon, I could take it no longer and softly spoke to her.

Her ears immediately pricked up. She looked in my direction, without seeing me, and said, “W’at’s dat noise? Dang dese eyes. Can never see as I used to.”

I walked up to Grandma Grace. All I wanted to do is to hug her and let her ruffle my hair. I surrendered myself into her arms, but she was stiff. Still as a statue. Why did she not respond?

Then I got my answer.

“My Immanuel! My dear Immanuel! Look at w’at t’ey did to you. ’ow will I ever get back de Immanuel I loved?”

I looked up at her, “Do you mean you do not love me now?”

There was no answer to that. Instead, her eyes filled with fresh tears and she looked away.

I walked into the hut and saw something that surprised me.

It was that suitcase. It was still packed and placed on the bed. It was evident that she hadn’t opened it yet, and that nagged me. “What has she brought in that suitcase that’s so precious?” I wondered.

But then Grandma came inside the room and I fell silent. Soon, absolute sleep came over me and I moved on from one world to another.

The next morning when I woke up, I again found Grandma Grace in her garden. She was doing something with twigs and digging up weeds, or whatever it is that she did in the farms. I went and sat next to her, hoping that she would talk to me at least today.

But another day passed in almost silence. Was she angry with me? I really would not want to think so. The tears in her eyes gave evidence that it was not anger that deterred her from speaking with me.

Even the slightest provocation moved her. I asked her, “What are you doing, Grandma?”

And just that much brought a fresh flood of tears in her eyes.

***

Then that afternoon was the last time I saw my Grandma Grace.

It happened all so suddenly, but had been a long time coming.

It must have been lunchtime—I do not know for sure because we did not eat anything, nor did she prepare anything—when she got up from her garden and walked into the room.

She came up to that suitcase of hers and took it off the bed. That relieved me, and I told her as much, for finally we would have a proper place to sleep. The bag seemed to be more difficult to carry now, or probably it was because she was burdened with something else now.

With a thud-thud-thud, she lumbered the suitcase through the house and brought it out of the door.

What was in it that she wanted to use in the garden? Was she trying to hide her gold and jewels in the soil like she had told me once? I wouldn’t disbelieve it if that was indeed what she was doing.

“Grandma, what’s in that bag?” I asked.

But she did not answer.

All she did was take the bag out into the open, and pull it all the way to her favorite place in the garden where she had been working.

Then she placed the suitcase next to the new patch, and even as I stood behind her, I saw her opening the lock on the suitcase.

What was inside the suitcase? Now I wanted to know it all the more.

And then I saw it.

***

When Eddie had fired the shot that night, it had been a thunderously deafening noise and nothing more. But I should have felt more. After all, the bullet had been shot right at me, right in the heart. It was an accident, everyone would like to believe, but since when has death been partial to accidents?

And I had not felt anything because death had accorded me with its infinite mercy—the mercy of painlessness. When you are dead, pain is the first thing that you stop feeling.

And that’s what Grandma Grace had rushed to fight for—to make them know that they had killed me. But when she saw that no one cared for me, perhaps she knew she had to take me with her.

That suitcase. The perfect size for my little body.

“Is mine! Is mine!” I laugh at it now. That’s not what she was saying. She was saying, “He’s mine! He’s mine!” with her dropped ‘h’s, the way she always spoke.

That is why she wouldn’t talk to me. Can she even see me?

When I came back from the reverie, my gaze fell upon the little cross she had made out of the twigs she had been sizing up all morning.

On those twigs, in her handwriting, were etched the words:

My Dear Immanuel

R.I.P. with Jesus

(2006 – 2016)

I wanted to hug her, tell her that I was there with her, but it wasn’t to be. The cross was a sign that it was time for me to leave. And as I left, I saw two things. One—the dear, dear face of my Grandma Grace, the only person who truly loved me; and—two—my own decaying face as she opened her brown suitcase.

END

 

For more psychological thrillers and horror stories from Neil D’Silva, check out Right Behind You, a collection of 13 stories that will make you sit up and read them a second time.

 

 

The Cursed Letter (Part 5 of 5)

I see Betty stirring in bed. She will soon wake up. I see her slightly moving form and am aroused again. She is beautiful, the most beautiful thing I have ever touched, and soon I will have enough money to make the next big move in our relationship. I am sitting by the bed, waiting for her to wake up, envisioning what I will do with the money I will get.
But my fanciful mind is arrested by the doorbell.

The Cursed Letter (Part 3 of 5)

Back in the present, I recall that I am to meet Betty Whitman. It is funny how one tragedy sometimes cements other relationships. With my brother languishing in state prison, my relationship with him had weakened to almost nothingness. But my relationship with my neighbor has improved. Out of all the riffraff that surrounds me, Betty is a ray of sunshine. The cigarette-smoking, blonde, next-door bimbo is the one standing with me in my hour of need. I can see right through her, and what I see makes me happy.

The Cursed Letter (Part 1 of 5)

He was the kind of person who could bewitch anyone with a single smile. The person could have been a complete stranger, of whatever age or rank, but he could just go up to them and charm them right at the ice-breaker. But I hated him. I hated his guts, hated the fact that he could be such a smooth-talker, hated the warm glow people had in their eyes when he walked away from them. And I hated the fact that he was my older brother.

I had been trained all my youthful life to look up to him. His impeccable behavior at home and his outstanding score at school and later at college ensured that all authority figures I met on my way up had been smitten by him, and inevitable comparisons would follow. “Edgar, why aren’t you more like your brother Edmund?” Mrs. Foster, our tenth grade Chemistry teacher once said. That was after I had slogged for three days and brought in what I thought was a great assignment on the allotropes of carbon. But the teacher remembered my brother’s assignment of three years ago and shot mine down. Just like that! That’s how good he was. The pictures of diamond and coal I held in my hands seemed to mock me.

This continued right up through my teenage and does so till today. I am 24 now and he is 27, nearing 28. We have both moved out from our parents’ house, the Grange Residence. I stay alone in another rented house in the vicinity. We are all close to each other, and yet we do not tread on each other. And that’s the way it should be.

Animosities that develop in the childhood do not go away so easily. My hate for him won’t either. It will be like a shadow always looming behind me where I go.

But today, things are different. So different, that I am starting to forget myself.

My brother Edmund stands in front of me with an unspoken fear in his eyes. His hair is disheveled and he has a week-old beard that belies his handsomeness. But what I notice first when I open the door to him is the blood on his hands.

“What is this?” I ask him, horrified, as he barges into my house as soon as the door is opened.

“Edgar,” he says breathlessly, “Edgar…” and then he breaks into a sob.

I had never seen him crying before. Not even when our parents went away, one after the other. He sniffled in a corner and graciously accepted condolences from relatives and friends, but he did not cry. Now I am not a wuss, but even I broke into an ungainly bawl when the coffins were lowered. But he did not. He stayed there, stoic as a statue.

Seeing him cry now makes me realize the gravity of the situation. I usher him into the study, pour him a glass of wine, and instinctively lock the door and shut the blinds.

“What happened?” I ask him when he seems settled. “Tell me everything.”

“I committed a horrible… horrible mistake,” he says.

He is letting it loose now. I give him the silence he needs to go on with his tale.

“We were to go out—Madeline and I. You know Madeline, right?”

I know. Madeline is his girlfriend, three years older than him. I do not interfere much in his life nowadays. It feels good to be out of his shadow, but I know he is going out with this widow who teaches in an elementary school.

“What about Madeline?” I ask.

“I… I must have… killed her.”

The crying begins again, and this time it is punctuated with hollow distant wails, like a wolf-mother calling out to her cubs.

“What do you mean, killed her?”

“We were to go out today.” I have to strain to hear his words between the sobs. “And I reached her house at 7. She opened the door and she looked… oh, she looked so beautiful!”

Again the crying follows and then an attempt for composure.

“Like a delicate flower. She wore the white dress that we had bought together. She looked ethereal, beautiful as the moonlight.”

He reminisces for a while, and I keep my patience.

“And then… and then I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know! I found myself on the floor, next to her, knife in my hand and Madeline dead next to me.”

“How can that be?”

“I just don’t know! I seem to have blanked out, and then she is suddenly dead.”

“Did you call anyone?”

“No! I was so frightened, I only thought of you. You will protect me, won’t you?”

He looks at me like a lost puppy, but I see the blood in his eyes. He is different, almost animal-like. I am frightened of him now. He is not himself. Even as he recounts his tale of horror, I understand my brother is not in control of his body anymore.

Half an hour later, the cops knock at the door. Everything just happens in a tizzy after that. Edmund just surrenders himself and willingly follows them. They take me as well, for I am caught with the suspect.

It’s a week since his arrest now. They have decided to let me go, because my brother has readily admitted to being guilty, and it also helped that I stayed silent and let the law take its course. In any case, I am out, he is not.

However, a week in prison has taken its toll on me. I am sure this horrendous experience of being in custody with hardened criminals, among them rapists and murderers and at least one serial murderer, will scar me for life. But it does not escape my attention that another scar has been removed. I have seen from close quarters how my brother has fallen from that high place he held to the worst muck one could sink into; and it gives me an unholy sense of gratification. I curse myself for feeling secretly happy at my brother’s miseries, and somewhere I feel sorry for him too, but I am happy that the shadow is finally lifting. Somehow, I feel that I am being liberated.