Paranormal
Sri Lanka, 1987
"Come on! Hurry up, come over!" Susan was almost hysterical. "But it's 7 AM! It's too early. You come over," I managed to croak. I did not take particular delight in the prospect of having to get up at 7 AM on a Saturday. It was almost blasphemy. Hadn't some god somewhere made it illegal to do anything on Saturday?"Noooo, I don't want to read it at your house. Your room smells like pistachios," whined Susan. It was true. My room did smell like pistachios and I had no idea where it was coming from. And it always smelled like something. Last month it smelled like melted balloons.
It was always like this when the new Readers Digest arrived. She'd get the new Readers Digest in her mail. She'd call me as soon as she got it, which of all possible times had to be at 7 AM on this sleepy morning; and then we'd read it. The mailman must've fought with his wife.
And so I'd go there, as I did today. And we'd sit on her couch and we'd go through each page together. For nomadic families such as hers and mine, Readers Digest was something of a source of comfort, because you could find an edition of it in just about every country. It was everywhere. There was probably a miniature version of Readers Digest for the pygmy tribes in Africa.
We sat in determined silence. We always tried to read the entire thing in as grown-up a manner as we could muster. We looked at the cover. I hated the cover. Always with the stupid medical stories. I turned the cover, and this is as far as the silence went. Being a local Sri Lankan edition, there'd be an immensely ridiculous advertisement on the inside of the cover which we'd laugh at and poke fun at. Oddly enough, it was the best part in the entire magazine.We could forget the best jokes or stories from the previous issues, but the advert inside the cover, we wouldn't forget. This one was a picture of three
girls laughing, having a milkshake, advertising boilers.
As the laughter was dying down, I reached up and purposely adjusted my glasses. My brand new glasses. My brand new, expensive glasses. I had finally gotten myself a pair of thick framed glasses that did not look like abnormal extensions of my eyebrows. These had nice, thin frames that were noticeably absent. It was noticeably absent in a way that if the proverbial nerdy kid from school, such as me, were to get a pair of those, you would notice almost immediately, for lack of the unusual eyebrow extension that you had grown accustomed to. I looked straight on at Susan, and kept waiting for her to notice. She had nice blonde hair and pink cheeks covered in baby fuzz. And she had concave eye sockets and very circular and protruding eyebrows, hers was a face that looked like she had glasses on, though she didn't. You'd think that with a face like that, she would have noticed these brand new, expensive glasses by now, but she didn't. Maybe that was the whole point of having thin frames, to not have it noticed.
She turned the page straight to the Word Power section, took the magazine away from me and began testing my vocabulary. It was one of those routines. She was about to start with her first word when she said, "We're going on a trip next Saturday." My head jerked up like a dog that had just heard the sound of a can of dog food being opened. "A trip! Where?" I asked. "My dad says your family's going too. My dad says we're going to Candy. Do you know about it?" she asked.
"It's not Candy that you eat, it's a place called Kandy, they spell it with a K," I explained.
"Aah, where is it?"
"Right in the middle," I pointed at the center of my palm. The good thing about living in Sri Lanka was that you could shape your hand into the shape of the island and point at places on it.
"Will they have candy?"
"Ha ha. Almost forgot to laugh."
"Do you know what it's like?"
"Dunno, there's a lake there I think." It didn't matter now though. We were salivating. Trips had that effect on children at that age. It conjured up images of the fun we'd have: we'd get to travel in a bus and make noise and run around and wear our 'flashy' cool clothes and big digital watches twice as thick as our own wrists and chew gum with our mouths open and pretend like we knew more than everyone else around us. I cringe with revulsion to even harboring memories of such behavior.
We finished all the good stories and funny jokes in Readers Digest and I went back home. It was really exciting, this would also be my last trip in Sri Lanka before we moved to another country. And she hadn't even noticed my brand new, expensive glasses.
One week later, I was in a bus as it was pulling in to its final stop in the ancient Sri Lankan capital. I had taken time in that week to read all I could about it. There was a lake there, and a river and a Tooth Temple. And true to my age, I was wearing my favorite T-Shirt. It had Donald Duck on it, lying in a hammock as the sun set behind him. The colors were brilliantly done, the sunset was vivid, and in large letters above it was the proper misspelling: "DONUN DUCK". That's what you get when you purchase children's clothes in a market without copyright laws. It was, nevertheless, a really nice T-Shirt,
just the right amount of flashiness that could get your attention. From a mile away.
Susan had some friends with her and although I wasn't very good at meeting new kids my age, I stayed with them anyways because they seemed to be Susan's best friends. We were then in front of a marketplace near the lake, a large bunch of gaggling foreigners standing around and being loud, because that is the sole purpose of the existence of foreigners. And the dozen of us children darting in and out of the spaces available between them. Our group started walking about the area, we migrated like a herd to a somewhat posh restaurant. A well dressed owner with dollar signs in his eyes when he saw the size of our group came out and asked us very politely to wait an hour for all the other patrons to leave, then we'd have the whole restaurant to ourselves. Excellent, I'd have time to explore. There was a lake down there.
I went to Susan and her giggly friends. "Hey, do you want to go down to the lake? It's down the hill and looks really nice."
Her friends giggled.
"Uhm... we're going to play hide and seek. Do you wanna play?"
Her friends giggled.
"No, I'll go down and look at the lake."
I then went to my dad to tell him that I was going down to the lake. He was engrossed in a conversation with one of his colleagues.
"Dad, I'm going down to the lake."
"OK, but stay close and don't go near the highway," he said in haste so that he could get back to his engrossing conversation.
"But I said I'm going to the lake!"
"OK, but stay close."
I could've sworn I heard Susan's friends giggling in the distance.
I walked down the road and past the marketplace into an area where it was relatively empty. I kept walking and found an area where the slope was gentle, then started making my way down to the lake. From up here, the lake was breathtaking. The surface was calm and serene and a cool breeze was blowing. It was a breeze that told you that it would be a great day ahead. I passed by a small boy hitting a tyre with a stick, who stopped his important task to stare at me with utter surprise in his eyes. "Haven't you ever seen a boy before?" I wanted to ask.
15 minutes later, I was at the edge of the lake. It was the first lake I had ever been to and it looked nothing like it did from up above. The entire area near the edge was a muddy slosh. I looked up and saw that the marketplace was a long way up. There were shoddy huts along the descending slope of the hill with tiny gardens and plantations outside them. People dotted the area there, some working on a garden, some standing up and staring at me across the distance. I paid no attention to them and continued walking along the edge of the lake. I was determined to find a spot where the edge ended abruptly and the lake started so that there would be no mud. To save my shoes, I would find large rocks or boulders and jump from one to the next. I thought I was pretty clever for thinking of it.
Hop, hop, hop. Large rock, small rock. This was great. I could smell the lake in all its fishiness. I jumped on a small rock and then onto a long rock. But the long rock moved.
It turned around and I stumbled off it backwards. I was still standing, and the rock looked at me with its beady eyes. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn't a rock. It was a crocodile. And those were its eyes. And it was looking at me. I was frozen in place.
It seemed like an eternity of us staring at each other, before the crocodile must have blinked. That blink snapped me out and back into reality, and I turned and started running as fast as those awkwardly childish feet could take me, up the hill. I heard a pitter-pattering behind me but I didn't turn to look, I tried running even faster. But before I knew it, I felt a sudden but dull pain in my leg and I fell to the ground face first. The ground started moving, but not in the direction I wanted. I was being pulled backwards.
I twisted onto my back and saw that the crocodile had a firm hold on my leg and was walking backwards briskly. A documentary from National Geographic flashed in my mind, where I learned that animals would be dragged into the water by the crocodiles and drowned. I didn't want to be drowned though. I thought that drowning is the most unpleasant way to die.
My arms voluntarily started thrashing around for any sort of a hold and through sheer improbability, caught hold of a branch of a fallen tree there. I held onto it for dear life as the crocodile started tugging. His teeth were ripping through the jeans and into my skin, I could already feel the initial burning. As the crocodile tugged, my jeans were getting pulled along with it, my underwear showing. I knew that I now definitely didn't want to die, because I wasn't wearing clean underwear.
Just then, I heard a "THWACK!" It came from next to the crocodile's stomach and a lot of soil went flying into the air as the crocodile convulsed. It immediately let go of my leg and ran back to the lake where it disappeared underwater. Or hid, I didn't know.
I stayed where I was, still clutching the branches, trying to realize what had happened. A few incomprehensible voices with an urgent tone about them were approaching fast. It was a group of fat men, most of them carrying guns. One of the men with a gun picked me up as though I were a fluff pillow and walked briskly to what was his hut on the slope of the hill. He seemed to be in a good mood, though I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying. He seemed to be chattering away to himself or me or whoever was near him at the time as he gave me a drink of water, cleaned up my muddy clothes with a wet towel and my face. The towel, originally red, turned an ugly brown. A curios group of men and women and children had gathered halfway inside his hut to stare at me. But I didn't notice all of it that well, I was looking around at the walls inside his hut and I recognized something, a drawing. It was a drawing of a circle with a tiger's head roaring in it, and the whole thing crossed by two rifles. The LTTE. The terrorist group that went around bombing everything. They had even bombed my school. Was he...? He had a gun. He had to be.
He didn't notice anything though. He was busy yapping away. After he was done, in the best broken English that he could conjure up, he told me to go back
up to my friends. I nodded and walked up a somewhat makeshift path in the grass up the hill.
I emerged up into the marketplace after some time, I didn't know how much time. I couldn't see very well either. I was still trying to regain my senses. That's when I realized that I wasn't wearing my glasses! They must've fallen off when I was being dragged. I finally approached the group of foreigners I had left behind about an hour ago, who were still boisterously noisy. But one of noticed me and slowly, but ever so excruciatingly slowly, they quieted down and were now staring at me, aghast at my dishevelled appearance. I looked down at myself. My jeans had been ripped where the crocodile had held them, and I could still see a few red spots. My T-Shirt was brown from the absorbed mud and so were half my pants.
"Have you been digging again??" my mother asked sternly.
"No!"
"Why are you so dirty? I told you not to go the highway!" My dad was very angry.
"I didn't go to the highway, I went to the lake."
"Why are you so dirty, what happened to you? And where are your glasses?!" he asked, still angry. When my dad got angry, a vein would bulge from his forehead and I often caught myself staring at it wondering if there were little gremlins trying to get out.
I didn't know how to explain it. But I did, I started slowly at first, but as I did, the rest of the story came pouring out, I told them about the alligator and the gunshot and the people with the guns and the guy who cleaned me up and the LTTE emblem I saw in his house. At this point, my parents had turned as red as tomatoes about to burst and the vein in my father's head was throbbing. All I received in response to this was silence. Then my dad spoke, "You are embarrassing me. Go inside and clean yourself!"
I protested, "But I'm telling you the truth. It really happened, I can show you."
"Just go inside!" he snapped.
My mother grasped me roughly by the arm, much in the same way the crocodile had grabbed my arm, and she almost broke the buckle of my oversized digital watch. She dragged me inside as fast as she could. The rest of the people there exchanged nervous looks and began resuming their conversations as I was went in. They didn't believe me.
I saw Susan a few hours later, in the evening, doing something or the other with her friends and I went up to her. She immediately became very uncomfortable as her friends started giggling around her.
"You're such a liar!" she said to me, loud enough so that her friends could hear.
"But I didn't lie," I said. "I didn't lie about this. It really happened. I can show you from up here where it happened."
"Leave me alone! And you ARE a liar." She swirled and went away, her friends giggled and following her.
That night, as I was sleeping, I lay on my stomach so that the wounds on my back wouldn't hurt as much. My dad had used a sharper belt this time.
Two months later, we were in Damascus, Syria. New school, new people, no friends. I didn't care about it so much. I did remember Susan and how she had stopped calling me and talking to me. We didn't read Readers Digest anymore. She hadn't even come to my place on the last day when everyone else had come over to say goodbye. It did make me feel sad. But as was part of our three-year routine, we kept moving. There were new people to not be friendly with.
One day, when I got home from school, a package was waiting for me. A brown envelope addressed to me. No return address. I opened it. Inside, was a little note that said "I'm sorry. I miss you." There was also a photograph of Susan at her birthday party. I thought it was funny, she was actually wearing glasses this time. And also inside the envelope, there was a copy of Readers Digest.
I realized I hadn't read a Readers Digest since that fateful day. This one had the usual cover with stupid medical article titles. I opened it and instinctively looked at the inside cover. It was an advertisement for juice. "It'll catch you by surprise!" was the slogan.
I gasped when I realized what the large picture underneath it was of.
Absolutely, positively, definitely no mistaking it. I couldn't believe what I was looking at, but there it was. I was forced to believe it. Who took this picture? Why was it in a juice advertisement? It was too eerie. It was morbid too. I wouldn't be able to get answers about it either.
But the picture... well, there was the crocodile. And my T-shirt did say "DONUN DUCK."
