by Ziaul Moid Khan
The two human skeletons in the town’s school biology lab remained inactive during the day. But after midnight, they were like you and me, filled with some basic common desires: anger, love, hatred, jealousy, longing-for-sex and whatnot. The weird human remnants wore a grave look on their bony countenance and were the chief attraction of the otherwise ordinary lab.
The first skeleton dangled loose tethered with a synthetic rope to a peg against the wall, while the second one was fixed in a door-less wooden cupboard, painted cream. During class, they seemed to have no common connection, no business with each other. But if somebody happened to visit this laboratory at night, he’d find the two chaps sitting across a table facing each other and negotiating important issues over tea.
Yes, anyone present there at night could easily behold the two skeletons chatting heartily with a cup of tea in each one’s hand. I was always apprehensive about their eerie activities and casually discussed this sensitive matter with my students. They were shocked and surprised. A few considered it a fleeting joke. And thus, none of them took me seriously.
The automatic CCTV camera installed in the lab that was supposed to be in night-mode at the fall of day, would stop functioning the moment the wall clock struck midnight. Thus, no footage was available of their skeletal activities.
The lab happened to be in the basement opposite to the library. On one side of the lab was the sports room; while on the other side was the music chamber with all its paraphernalia: banjo, Casio, bagpiper, half a dozen guitars, a music system, and a couple of microphones apart from a big, king size mirror used during the dance classes once the annual function approached near.
The rectangular bio lab did not have much magnetism save these two bony skeletons. A couple of microscopes, slides, test tubes, beakers, flasks, Bunsen burners and dissecting sets were all there neatly arranged in apple pie order in different closets. Yet, whenever I happened to visit the lab, there was something bizarre that I could not voice, but only feel about the twin skeletons.
I suspected (and was a bit sure too) of one thing, the two skeletons had a slight yielding towards literature. This I happened to conjecture, when one fine morning I found two books missing from the extreme right-corner shelf number three of the library. I saw these books only last Saturday, and wanted to get them issued but could not find them this Monday.
Mr. Shyam, the librarian, checked in the accession register whether the said books were issued to some students or teachers. But as expected, such an entry was done nowhere. Under the circumstances, I had to satiate my reading taste with my second choice Fascinating Short Stories by H.G. Wells. My suspicion intensified when during a pre-board exam’s invigilation duty, I noticed a faint-weird something-like-smile on the jaw of one of the fleshless fellows. These chaps seemed to be something more than mere skeletons.
The library housed around ten thousand books including a few hundred specimen copies. In the last two years, I’d shuffled through almost all the book racks and could bet that my knowledge about this library was nowhere less than Shyam’s, for I frequented there more often than not.
Mr. Shyam was a slim gentleman whom students nicknamed Mickey Mouse though he was unfazed by these kinds of remarks. He too looked aghast at the disappearance of the two books, but took no concrete steps to search or recover them.
***
This is when I decided to check the skeletons during one of my nocturnal rounds of the school building drenched in moonlight at that time. It was a chilly winter night with stars glittering out in the blue and the moon shining with all her poetic beauty. Instinctively, I stole an opportunity to walk down the flights to reach the basement. Once down in the corridor, I tiptoed towards the bio lab.
The laboratory was faintly illumined with a point five voltage bulb. Due to its broken switch, the bulb was always on. The electrician did not find time to fix it nor was the electric heater—which was out of order for months—repaired, irrespective of repeated reminders to him by the school supervisor.
I never drank, never smoked and took no drugs either. I was not on high either that chilly winter night. Thus, there was no chance of illusion. I was sane and healthy and knew perfectly well where my feet were falling.
It was a wondrously hard-to-swallow sight: both the skeletons were sitting comfortably across the table facing each other with a book in hand. In the past, I’d heard about ghost writing but never about ghost reading.
The first one, the wall skeleton, was keeping Homer’s Odyssey in his bony hands, while the cupboard skeleton was busy with Ruskin Bond’s Night of the Millennium. Both the chaps were totally lost in study with an expression of surprise and awe on their cheek-less bones. Truly, both the writers were timeless genius, for even their dead fans were taking keen interest in their notable works.
I was less amazed over their sitting posture and fondness of reading, but more so for their selection of classic books. Beside them two cups of tea were steaming, giving warmth to the winter cold. Strangely, they were not only sipping tea but also sort of digesting it, for the tea was not splashing or spreading on chairs they were sitting in.
First, I decided to keep standing and observe something more, but then retreated from there, for my teeth were bitterly shivering and anytime might startle the two voracious readers, who had amazingly maintained their reading habit even years after they were dead.
***
The next night, I resolved to visit again the bio lab to witness the two friends’ activities. Though the temperature had substantially sunk down and people were busy in Christmas preparations. I was adamant to have a look at the two fellows. Put on my best warm clothes available. Wrapped a comforter around my ears and neck and wore sports shoes, for the leather ones were uncomfortable and made a slight eerie sound.
When Mona, my wife, and Cosmos, my three-year-young cute son were in the tender arms of sleep, I came out from my humble, two-bedroom accommodation situated in the school’s residential compound. That was convenient for me for this amateur research work casually undertaken. Mona says, “Don’t talk about ghosts at night. Who knows they might appear from nowhere.” But like my late father, I hardly bothered about their presence.
I inherited this bizarre interest in ghosts and apparitions from the old man who frequented the graveyards at countless nights. The weird man seemed to be more interested in dead people than those alive. He had an expertise in witchcraft. Launched the first Indian speculative Urdu magazine, Murda Aalum (Science of the Dead Souls), but one day mysteriously found dead in one of the village ponds. He died, who knows, how. But that was long back when I was four, and I never wanted to recall the sad episode of my life.
After a three-minute stroll, I was standing again at the flights that led to the haunted laboratory. Precisely seventeen flights down, I was right there in the corridor. But then, I quickly realized I’d perhaps reached the spot a bit earlier than the scheduled time; for neither of the friends had moved even an inch from his respective position.
I had a quick check at my wrist watch. It was still five minutes shy to midnight. Time moves at an extremely slow pace when you have to wait for someone to arrive or something to take place. I stood like a statue transfixed waiting for some sensational scene, which was no less than that of a Hollywood horror flick.
The entire basement corridor had a weird ghost-silence. Faint, pale light through the laboratory window was making a squire cube in the middle of the corridor. The basement had its entry from two ends of the school building’s front. At a walking distance out of the key entrance of school was situated a graveyard, where on rare occasions, one could find some corpse under preparation to be buried by the villagers after someone’s death in the neighboring village.
***
Sharp at twelve, the two lab skeletons suddenly animated and came to life. Spread their legs and arms and yawned as though they might have woken up from their deep slumber. They came down with a thud from their stable positions. At this juncture, they looked more horrible than the Egyptian mummies.
I was less fearful from the two skeletons, which had just become animated right in front of me, but more so, lest I should be asked by the school authorities what the hell I was doing there at the wee hour. It would be hard to explain. And by the way, no one would believe the skeletons’ theory, particularly when it’s narrated by an English teacher like me.
Unfazed I started walking, for I heard some footfalls from the other end. I hid myself behind a round pillar and peeped out to see the new visitor. Initially, I could not figure out who it was. It seemed to be a black female of average height. She walked with a limp, but when she passed the faint, diminished cubicle, I realized, to my horror, it was a skeleton fresh from the coffin.
A weird green smoke was rising from her chest. The skeletal corpse entered the locked lab door without even knocking at it from outside. “Bad manners,” I thought, “couldn’t she rap at the door?” This, I think, is the best specialty in ghosts and apparitions. They’re so thin they need not open a door to enter a room. We, petty human beings, have to do most of the things manually, forget about entering a door through its keyhole.
I could easily eavesdrop, for there were enough fissures in the laboratory door frame. The slightly charred body was given a warm hug by the two-lab male skeletons. Their exposed teeth rattled as they talked. The increasing cold, in the corridor where I stood, sent shivers to my bones. I felt like wrapping a comforter around my face; but did not, rather I was all ears.
“When did you die, sister?” The first skeleton asked in a cold voice.
“Last year,” she replied with a broad grin.
“You, enjoying tea together. Excellent,” she added with apparent sarcasm in her cold voice.
“Good news sister,” the first skeleton said with an eager look. “Mrs. Khanna, the newly appointed biology teacher, has proposed the management to have one more skeleton in the lab for practical purpose.”
“—she has an angling for original skeletons and not for calcified bones.”
“Here is a fortuitous opportunity for you,” the second skeleton said, holding his tea-cup mid-air, “if you manage to fit in the scheme of things, our family will be complete here.”
“I’d leave no stone unturned,” said the slightly charred body, taking another chair to slip in.
“Devils, I had to search a lot to reach you people!”
Then all they laughed together, while I watched them mesmerized, aghast.
Standing out of the lab as I overheard them talk, I was frozen. Whether it was due to cold or terror or both, I was not sure. Still, I was glad to see a family reunion on a Christmas Eve after such a long-lost contact. Festivals bring happiness even in dead people’s lives, this I’d witnessed for the first time in my life.
Death cannot rob someone of deep-rooted family love and care, I thought while coming back from the bio lab to my accommodation. The crescent moon was playing hide and seek with winter clouds, and Hotel Moonlight opposite the school building was well lit and fully prepared to welcome a happy Christmas. As I entered my bedroom, Mona and Cosmos were still sleeping peacefully. I lay beside them, thinking if I should share this story over a cup of tea with Mona as she woke up.