Scary House, Old Curiosity Shop and a Footpath

It was a good work. Little or nothing of physical work. He used to go at ten thirty in morning and work there till nine in night. He had to wear a skull mask and a hefty black gown with few red patches on it. He had just to frighten scary house visitors who were few and come at long intervals. He had to sleep on a broken bed and has to jump from it. In between he was free to chatter with his fellow blokes. He was paid four thousand of rupees for his work. Four thousand rupees were sufficient for his living in town and for a man who was a non skilled labour and pathetically educated.

He lives in room behind a laundry. It is dank and dark place. Walls are always wet and sometimes roof dribbles even in sun drenched days. Mildew is breeding in corners. Rain worsens its situation and sometimes he catches cold and sneezes all day. For sneezing and coughing his owner at work cuts his payment half per day as sneezing lessen the dread in scary house for visitors. Allergy to petroleum products used for dry cleaning and clammy atmosphere are responsible for it but he was helpless. Doctor gave him Cetirizine but it brought so much stupor with itself that he hadn’t felt like going to anywhere. He stopped using it.

It all happens in a very common way-
It was Thursday and raining. Winds were frozen. Bleak sky and grey lights were depressing but that day work was quite less and he spent it in yakking and terrifying schoolgirls. They were adolescent and celestial with growing little breast under their school uniform white shirts and voluptuous thighs beneath navy-blue skirts. He heard their raucous mirth and loud heartbeats. Inside scary house they looked like ghouls for lights reflects grotesquely on faces but he had learned to devour splendour beyond lights and shadows. He ate ice cream that day.

December passed and New Year arrived. Scary house was occupied almost all day and air conditioned air in it made it arctic as hellhole. He shivered and longed for sun, sunflowers and Sunday{Sunday was his off-day}. He sneezed a lot. He saw a ghost on that day. He is not sure but that man seemed to be a ghost. His cranberry eyes and blue lips were not sane. He came with his girlfriend, perhaps; who was fat and of hideous cerise complexion. They kissed in front of his colleague whose job was to operate on intestines of a corpse full of artificial human excreta.

He felt disgust and fear.

Then days followed were quite everyday, nothing odd. February came and with it came bit warmth which can only be experienced in February or in threadbare, old schooldays sweater. Ghostly man had not arrived after that neither he saw his girlfriend. They raised his salary by hundred and fifty rupees. He brought a tweed coat from old curiosity shop. It had strange orange cheques and crimson elbow patches and pocket on left side of chest. At scary house everyone laughed on him for buying such a droll coat. The old curiosity shop manager told him coat’s history. It was a coat from 1930s of the drummer of Ramdas marriage band who had this false notion that he will die on the day when he will not wear this coat and he died exactly on a day when he gave his coat to his son because he was poor and they both have only one coat. It was ruthless winter.

Nobody believed his story. Nobody never believed old curiosity shop’s manager’s stories. He was a teller of false tales. Highly erratic and known for his miscellaneous truths mixed with mendacities. He believed him and brought that coat with roughly half of his month’s pay. He felt in good spirits wearing that coat. Although co-workers called his coat a comic costume. He also brought spinach and corn sandwiches from Culinary delights café ; costliest thing he ever ate.

Scary house visitors declined in last days of February dramatically as they were the days of university and schools’ examinations. Owner asked them to stitch new costume and make new atrocious puppets, some dying hanging and some being stabbed at belly with intestines open and nether region exposed. He was a bad owner, who paid less and took too much of work. They all thought about original and novel ways to petrify visitors.

He suggested himself copulating with a morbid rubber doll. Everyone laughed.

He wore that coat everyday religiously. In march when cold was fading and sun felt warm and winds were temperate and restless; he had not stopped wearing that coat. Others asked him about his health and he laughed. He wrote a long letter to his mother.
He wrote,

‘Dear mom

I’m happy here and wish the same for you.
How’re you and dad and everyone in home. I’ll come in summer. Everything is fine except my job. I don’t like my job nowadays. I feel fear. Every visitor who comes to scary house seems to a ghoul. I know that a boy came on sixteenths of February was a zombie. I know. His eyes and lips were insane. I’m not afraid of surroundings but people. They horrify me. I’m planning to leave the job. I’ll find some other job. I can live poor and hungry but now I can’t work at this place. Instead of getting afraid people here laugh. That is such an abnormal thing.
How is Mohini my little sister? Give my love to her and respect to father. Pray to Bajrang Bali for me.
Yours
Arvind’

His mother sent him lucky charms and an evil-eye bracelet and asked him to continue work at scary house because they were poor people and money was the thing which was the most wanted.

But he left his job. He loafed on road and slept hungry for days wearing his droll coat.
One day I met him. He pretended as if he hadn’t seen me but I asked,’ what are you doing nowadays?’
He looked pale, thin and depilated. He was smoking a cigarette butt which he must be picked from footpath.
‘Nothing. I’m searching for a job.’
‘Come to my office at Amarchand Press, there is a vacancy for a proof-reader. Lets see.’
‘I can’t be a proof-reader. I’m bad with spellings.’
A grin came on his shrunken pallid lilies like lips.
‘What is your experience?’
I’m good at petrifying people.’
It seemed useless to talk to him. I came back.

After couple of weeks, I saw him again in his tattered coat and with an old hat on his head. He was happy. Hungry too. And bare foot under his threadbare pantaloons.

‘I bought a new hat from Old Curiosity Shop. Its manager says it brought luck to so many people. Especially fearful people.’
‘Why don’t you stop buying things from that foolish shop.’
But I need a cap. I left that house because of money scarcity. And now on footpath ‘I need a cap to protect my ears and head from sunlight and cold during nights.’

He had not found any job. He was bad with spellings, poor in grammar like me but unlike me he was good at horrifying people and he himself was a very frightened man.

Old Curiosity Shop closed down after its manager’s death. He committed suicide.
Scary House is still making profits. I went there yesterday with my children. They laughed and laughed until cough caught hold of them.