Haunted Railway Track

This happened many decades ago, when I was still a young high school boy. Imagine those days - no smartphones, no video games, no internet - not even CDs and DVDs. Only a few people had even cassette tape recorders. It was a time when entertainment meant going to the ‘cinema’, especially if you were a young boy living in small town India. I certainly lived in small town India - a small, dusty town near the east coast of Andhra Pradesh. I might have been in my 9th Standard.

We lived in a small rented house close to the railway line. The notable thing about this railway line was that it almost bisected the town. It was a major line, connecting Madras in the south to Calcutta in the north. (They were not called Chennai or Kolkata then). Most of the old town lived west of the railway line, while some of the new developments grew on the eastern side.

As children, we really looked forward to the movies because it was a rare event and we didn’t have too many choices. The movie I wanted to watch was an old, & white, Telugu film. It was being re-released. It was a hugely popular film back in the day and I hadn’t watched it. And so I was full of anticipation and excitement.

Soon, the movie released in a theatre called ‘Vijaya Mahal’, a typical name for movie theatres in those days! And Vijaya Mahal was on the other side, on the eastern side, of the railway line while we lived on the western side. For some reason I don’t remember now, I decided to catch the late night show - typically starting around 10:00 pm and going on up to almost 1:00 am in the morning. Despite some grumbling, I got permission from the family.

So the day finally came and after an early dinner, I bounded off with excitement. I sat spellbound, thoroughly enjoying the fights, the songs and all the usual stuff. Around 1:00 am, the movie finally got over. The few people who came to watch the late night show took different routes to wherever they had to go. As for me, I was thrilled. I was over the moon. As I walked back, I kept reliving the scenes and recalling the dialogues in my head. I was 15 years old.

Further along the railway line, there was a manned railway gate about a kilometer from the theatre, where all the traffic was supposed to cross over to the other side. But it was 1:00 am. The town had gone to sleep a long time ago. All was quiet except for the sound of crickets from the wayside bushes. And it was dark. But, like I said, I was 15 - a boy lost in his world of heroic heroes and villainous villains. So instead of walking parallel to the railway track along the road and crossing it at the railway gate, I decided to walk across the tracks and make a shortcut of it. In a while, I crossed the thorny ’thumma’ bushes that acted as feeble barriers around the railway line. As I approached, even the crickets fell silent. 

Now, I started climbing the steep embankment made of crushed stone and gravel that cushioned the rail tracks. Way over to my right in the far distance, I could see the dim lights set around the railway gate. Distant and hardly visible. Back where I was, I crunched over the gravel and got to the top of the embankment. It was too dark to see where I was going. But I wasn’t scared. In fact, I wasn’t even conscious of my surroundings - so lost was I in the movie in my head!

Now, I crossed the first railway track, stretching along the top of the embankment and started descending. A few feet away were the second rise with the second railway track. I slowly stepped into the depression between the two embankments. I was right in the middle of the depression.

Something soft touched my feet.

I looked down. I couldn’t see anything. Not even my feet. The darkness seemed denser between the embankments. There was no moon in the sky and barely enough starlight. What was it? With my thoughts wandering in their own cinema world, I acted without thinking. What was it touching my feet? I bent down close to the ground and my hand stretched to touch whatever was touching me. A few moments passed. Slowly, I came out of my reverie. 

Now I was back in this world - conscious of the darkness, conscious of the sound of crickets that took up the chorus again, conscious of my cold feet in simple Bata sandals, conscious that my face was inches from the ground - almost smelling it, conscious of something soft against my feet, and conscious of my right hand gripping softness.

The dim world came into focus. And I saw two eyes staring into mine - their whites were barely visible in the dimness. They looked at me as I looked at them, inches apart. And I saw what my hand was gripping. It was hair - loose, long, lifeless, and wet. I was looking at a human head, a female head. I was standing where her body should have been. There was no body; it was a severed head - with my fingers around the long, wet hair!

Something clenched inside me. Very slowly, I let go of the hair and stood erect. I backed up a couple of steps. Cautiously, deliberately, I started moving away from… her.

With all my senses now focused, I climbed the other embankment, making sure I didn’t slip on the loose gravel. I took one step at a time followed by the breath another time. As I crossed the second track, I noticed, dimly again, what might have been a body without a head. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to be.

I descended the second berm without turning my head. My back was tingling, as though it was being watched by a pair of dead eyes. What if a dead mouth suddenly whispered my name? Stop thinking! One step, one breath. Soon I was walking among the brambles and the bushes again. This time, I wasn’t careful. I didn’t notice the thorns scratching at me. I didn’t feel the web of bleeding lines they made on my calves and knees. I needed to keep walking and that's what I did.

Finally, I was on the other side, on the tar road that ran along the track and then away from it. Standing under a lamp post and the dull pool of flickering light it made, I looked down at my feet. Nothing was touching them. I didn’t want to look at my right hand. I only wanted to leave it behind so it didn’t come with me.

And then I started running - as silently as I could, so as not to wake the dead.

Postscript: A day later, the local paper circulated mostly within the town carried a piece of news about a woman who committed suicide by jumping in front of a train. No one knew what desperation, what hopelessness made her do it.

Memory is a strange thing! Sometimes you remember the silliest of things all your life and forget the important ones.

And some incidents burn deep, as though branded with a hot iron. This was one such. I dared not to speak about it to anyone for a long time. That was certainly not my family.

I slept fitfully that night. But I didn’t come down with fever or go into a shock. I was normal outside. But it took me a long time before darkness was just darkness, and not something with silky hair and staring eyes.