Patterns
Suspense Stories
Eleven-year-old Danni meticulously spread her handkerchief on the class desk and placed on its four corners her mom’s pristine bangles that kept lying inside her dressing table for years. The color of the bangles – red and green was not her interest. What mattered was to make different geometrical arrangements using them.
“What are you doing Danni? You can’t carry them in the school.” The teacher’s voice was frightening. “I am sorry”. Little Danni wheezed in apology.
The next day, teddy Ruxpin lay at the center of her desk. Around the soft toy were placed six candles in a circle. The teacher was aghast. Danni was staring malevolently into the doll’s eyes. As she hurried towards her desk, Danni grabbed her wares to hide them inside the table, but Mrs. Crimson snatched the teddy from the delicate hold of her hands and stashed it into the class cupboard. The other children threw a cursory glance at Danni and snickered with disdain.
Danni crouched at the desk. Her eyes were incessantly fixed at the cupboard for the rest of the day hoping the teacher would return the teddy. But when the final bell rang, she could not make a single move to apologize to the teacher. She had always been like this—reserved and closed. When her friends would play hide-and-seek, make castles of mud, or loiter around in the park, Danni’s tiny fingers would be incessantly drawing haphazard contours in the soil until interrupted by someone.
This time, Mrs. Crimson returned the teddy to Danni’s mom on students’ appraisal meeting. When the gracious middle-aged lady learned about the undisciplined behavior of her daughter, she offered an apology. Besides, there was nothing much to be bothered about the slightly odd behavior of an eleven-year-old. But when the teacher fished out more articles from the cupboard- broken dolls, rope fibers, dismantled pens, candles and a measurement tape, her mom was aghast.
The teacher whispered, “Mrs. Emma, your daughter lives in a different world of a mysterious kind. She is strange. A day before yesterday, she was fiddling with your bangles. I hope she is not indulged in witchcraft. You need to pay more attention on her.”
Emma did not clearly understand what the teacher meant. But neither could she overlook the severity of her voice when she warned about Danni. It had been difficult for a business woman like her to attend to the issues of her little one. Now she made a mental note to do so.
***
Midst the afternoon nap, Danni woke up to the sizzling smell of pasta tainted with an assortment of spices and cheese. It had been long since she returned from school. She walked towards the kitchen, her eyes blinking to adjust to the sharpness of light. Her mom had just put the steaming pasta in the plates. But as she turned around holding Danni’s plate, she saw her running the index finger across the kitchen wall. It was something like a ‘cross’ that Danni scribbled repeatedly. Emma stood still silently watching Danni as she recalled the teacher’s words when suddenly, the ring of her phone broke the spell. She called out Danni to collect her plate as she ran to answer the call.
The phone receiver slipped from Emma’s hands. In a moment, her small world had broken. The news set her aghast with shock. Her husband, who was working in another town had passed away a few minutes ago.
“We shall bring the body tomorrow.” The official’s voice continued from the fallen receiver. Emma’s scream resonated in the hall like a volcano. In a while, Danni walked out of the kitchen and stood before her. Her face frighteningly cold and blue. Just a glimpse of her and Emma fainted on the carpet.
***
Moaning neighbors and relatives had gathered around Emma. Her eyes struggled to open against light. Suddenly she woke up with a shock recalling the news she received on the phone and burst into tears.
The morning was a gory picture of anguish when the dead body arrived. Just like everyone else, Emma could not bring herself to believe that her husband who she had talked the previous morning was now lying in front of her lifeless.
The postmortem had been done by the police and reports were handed over to Emma. Before she could open the envelope, the officer said, “it is a strange thing that there is nothing wrong with any body organ. No toxic, no poison. The cause of your husband’s death is mysterious. The doctors reported that the most possible cause behind such cases is generally abnormalities of the heart such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy which go undetected during the lifetime but the heart muscles once thicken, disrupt the heart’s electrical system causing irregular heartbeats.”
“Was it cardiac failure?” Emma inquired.
“No. Recent reports invalidate this assumption. Anyways, some more results are awaited which might suggest the root cause. We are sorry for your loss. Take care.” The officer left as Emma nodded feebly in response. But her mind was not able to recover from the shock of the tragedy.
The next day was the condolence gathering. Mrs. Crimson appeared for another purpose. She threw a cursory glance around when she spotted Danni at the gate.
She looked numb. Her face like a painted picture, her eyes not blinking. She was in a trance, in another world. Mrs. Crimson raced up desperately towards the central hall from where loud cries of womenfolk were coming. In the middle was the one she was looking for–Emma. Mrs. Crimson took her by hand towards the corner.
“I warned you, but you did not listen. Your daughter is an evil soul. Why don’t you understand?” She whispered.
“How could you say that! She is my daughter. One more word against her, and I will..” Danni’s mother broke into tears. Her mind was barely able to function.
“I have seen her do strange things unlike normal children. She wraps her dolls with wool, makes bizarre patterns in her notebook, and keeps aligning things as an endless tireless exercise. It scares me to tell you this but I caught her with a makeshift voodoo doll. I wish I told you this before. When Danni’s best friend showed Daani her kitten, she died the next day. Someone later told that they found Danni doing some tricks on the kitten. And remember the day when she did something to those bangles and then the teddy–your husband passed away all of a sudden without any reason. How could that happen?”
Emma stood gazing at her for seconds until she felt a light touch on her shoulder. The teacher added, “I know a well-known occultist who can free your daughter from the claws of the spirit.”
Emma fell into delirium. Why would her daughter perform witchcraft to kill her own father? But on the other hand, she could not overlook what the teacher said. Indeed she was not wrong. Why did she steal those bangles? Why were candles around the teddy? Had the death not coincided with this event, she would not give weight to Mrs. Crimson’s opinion. But the bangles were gifted by her mother-in-law saying that they were passed on by their ancestors which if revered bring prosperity but if go in wrong hands, might bestow anarchy. What if someone does witchcraft on them?
The next week, Danni’s mom went to an occultist along with Danni’s photograph as instructed by Mrs. Crimson. After seeing the photo, the big yellow eyes of the occultist filled with rage.
“There is a witch in your home. She has possessed this girl’s body, and will soon kill you all.”
Emma fidgeted, feeling helpless, troubled. The occultist reassured her that he could send the spirit away through sacred rituals. He gave her a potion and told her to give two drops to Danni and check for improvements else the spirit would wreck havoc.
Emma returned home confused, worried, and anxious. Did she have any choice? Deep down, a resentment of overlooking her daughter’s malady led to frustration. She had learned that the reason behind her husband’s death was black magic of a witch whose brown eyes stared out at her, now looking devilishly when she walked past her daughter’s room. Not a single tear, not a word uttered by Danni. Her mother wondered, why was she destined to do it? Why could that not make her cry? Later in the night, she shed two drops of the potion into a glass of milk. Danni drank the milk in few gulps and went to sleep.
It remained a daily chore for a week until the next instruction came from the conjurer. Emma’s only hope was to redeem the sinful vice and get her daughter back. But the situation worsened. Danni was turning insane. She would become angry for no reason, spill the dishes on the floor, misbehave with the teacher, or fight with other children. She started drawing more and more patterns everywhere. Strange, demonic, menacing patterns. The house was a mess. Everything from cardboard to walls was scribbled with shapes that intersected and overlapped. At school, the news of the witchcraft story spread like fire. The children took fright and stayed away from Danni. While at home, her mom would get calls from the teachers telling her how the terrified parents were demanding to expel Danni from school. While this went on, the school authorities decided to give Danni a medical leave of one week and advised Emma to consult her doctor.
Amid this chaos, her father’s death and her mom’s anguish, Danni stayed in her room, restlessly drawing indistinguishable contours among which were squares, rectangles, circles and stars.
Her mom was afraid. She wondered who had conquered Danni’s body. Or was Danni born a witch? Her husband’s death had left her traumatized. And now while driving, a volley of thoughts befuddled her mind. She thought about the bad omens she kept ignoring. What if she had noticed Danni when she wrecked havoc with her dolls? What if she had seen Danni steal the bangles from the cupboard? What if she had seen from the same eyes as Mrs. Crimson.
***
‘Mrs Crimson?’
Emma’s mind took a flip. She fished her phone out of the dashboard and dialed her number. Someone picked up but before a voice could come, the unfortunate happened. A truck was coming from opposite direction on the road. She turned the steering wheel in full swing to avoid collision. But in the dark, she could not locate the divider which was flanked by metal rods. Hitting the rods, her car flipped twice across the divider before landing on the other side–upturned. A broken shard of metal from the car cut through her throat. Her breaths, her heartbeat, everything came to a standstill. Except her watch which kept ticking. Because time, like a perennial river keeps flowing.
***
15 years had passed. Danni, now 26 was leaving from college where she worked as a professor. A student asked, “Madam! How come you know all the concepts of geometry so well?’
She replied, “I was very small when my parents died, but the doors of an orphanage opened for me. I would study, draw the patterns in my notebook until a teacher discovered my special talent and taught me the mathematics behind those shapes. Until then, I didn’t know why I would scribble on the walls of my house.”
The student giggled saying, “I wish everyone could have a real passion like you.”
“I hope no one else ever does.” A sudden melancholy spread across Danni’s face before she leaves.
