I reassured him once again that I had nobody with me that night. The next day, before returning to Calcutta, I went to see Vrindavan again. The previous day’s fear seemed so insignificant in the daylight that I did not mention it to him. I set out for the station at about five in the evening. It was getting dark. I had to walk through the huge Bauripara garden. I had come half way through it when I turned around suddenly. I don’t know what prompted me to do so, but the moment I did, I felt I was struck by lightning!

Who was that, standing there?

A very tall figure with a narrow helmet on his head — the kind we find English soldiers wearing in pictures — stood on the wild grass, a little away from the road. He stood there like a statue and stared at me.

I walked towards him. I had to find out who he was. Suddenly my legs began to tremble violently. My whole body went numb. Another minute and I would have fainted right there.

Luckily for me, someone holding a lantern entered the garden just then. I shouted to draw his attention. He ran towards me. “What happened to you, babu? Your face is white. Did something frighten you? This place is like that — many people have said that in this dark patch…”

I could not answer him. I could still see that man standing there.

“What are you looking at, babu? This tree? They have recently cut the branches,” he explained.

I looked at it again. Yes it was a tree. It had been trimmed in such a manner that the top looked like a hat. I felt quite ashamed of myself. The man walked with me to the railway station.

The first thing I did on Monday was to return the medal to Sudhir.

“My dadu wants to meet you. I will take you to my house after school.”

I went with Sudhir, wondering why his grandfather wanted to see me.

“Thank goodness you are safe! Yesterday I was very worried when Sudhir told me you had taken the medal to your village.”

After a pause, the old gentleman continued, “That medal was given to my father by an English soldier even before I was born. The man had pawned it to pay for his drinks. But he could never claim it back. There is a curse on the medal. My brother-in-law once took it away forcibly from me to show it to his family. That evening he fell from the terrace and died. They found the medal in his pocket.”

In a dull, mechanical voice I uttered, “From the terrace? The medal in his pocket?”

“I would never lie to you. Whoever took the medal away even for a day or two, returned it immediately. They said they felt a strange fear. No one outside our family can withstand the power of this medal. So I wanted to warn you.”

I went back to my village within a month. I tried to locate the tree which had almost frightened me to death. I couldn’t. I tried to find the road where the tree stood. There was nothing there. Neither a trace of the road nor of the tree.

The End

Excerpted from Lukose’s Church & Other Stories