Rain Calling

The monsoon clouds blow grey across the skies. Sometimes they are fierce black, edged with silver. And the rains come pouring down. Rain calling again.

It is when the rains arrive that we feel we should look at Bungalow No. 85 once more. The shattered old house standing at the northern most edges of the city seems to be clothed with mystique at this time. The gnarled trees in the destroyed garden hug a century’s old secret even closer. Grass and weeds grow wildly, enticingly. Something calls…something that is almost alive…

And we answer. And almost everyone has a story to tell of Bungalow No. 85 when it rains. Only S has a story of the old house in the sunshine.

It was afternoon, S begins, a hot, sultry afternoon with the sun beating down mercilessly, when he found himself in the vicinity of the old house. Wanting to escape the punishing weather, he strolled up the silent garden path, down the winding curve of the trees, wrenched open the front door and entered.

Everything was as it should be. Sunbeams danced through the broken window panes, catching motes of dust. S. settled down on an old chair with a grin. Nothing in the sunshine, he told himself, no sounds, no groans, no old murders being reenacted…

And it was then that he began to feel uneasy. The grim old house, haunted by the shadow of an ancient crime, loomed over him. Outside there was bright sunshine. But not a leaf stirred or a bird chirped. The furniture cast shadows on the wall. Huge shadows that moved at will.

“All I felt was terror,” he used to tell us at this point. “And an almost overwhelming urge to run out of the house. But I was pinned to the chair”.

He could not move. Outside the city sweltered in the summer heat, but inside it grew ice cold. S. could almost see his feet being frozen to the ground. And then he heard it… a soft chuckle…an almost inhuman shuffle, somewhere close to him…

“I felt the hair rise on my head”, he reminisced, “For the first and last time in my life…”

Something shuffled closer…and S. flew straight out of the house and into the crowded streets.

“It could have been imagination”, he mutters. A trick of the mind. Or could it?

As I told you S is the only one who has a story of Bungalow No. 85 in the sunshine. Others can tell you many stories of the Bungalow when it rains. When clouds play drums in the skies and rain falls in harsh drops on the ruins of memories … When lightning tears apart the skies in purple fury. When destroyed trees holds fast ragged edges of violence…A story that begs to come alive once more…

Rains bring to life many things. But perhaps some things are better left untouched, better buried in forgotten gardens…or so says the wise.