The Bamboo Curtain

This happened three years before the hospital in the hills took my sight as they opened my third eye. I was living in a rented cottage on the outskirts of a coastal town in Sri Lanka, where the monsoon rains turned the red dust roads into mud slicks and the old cinnamon estates dripped with water. My mother had hired a housekeeper named Nirmala, a widow from a village near the highlands who had come to us after her previous employer, an ailing planter, had passed away. She had mentioned, almost offhand, that the planter’s garden had a massive, ancient bo tree, so old that its buttress roots had cracked the foundation of the old bungalow. I thought little of it then.

One evening, about a month after she arrived, Nirmala began to shiver with a fever. The rains had been relentless, and the cottage had a chill that seeped through the clay walls. I gave her some of the herbal fever medicine the local apothecary had made for me, which I knew would make her drowsy, and insisted she rest. My parents were away in Colombo for the week, and my younger brother had taken the opportunity to stay at a friend’s house in the town, leaving me alone in the cottage with Nirmala. I was a night owl, accustomed to the silence of the rain drumming on the tin roof, and I spent the hours playing chess against my computer, the only light coming from my desk lamp.

By two in the morning, the rain had become a steady patter, and the air was thick with the smell of wet earth and frangipani. I was absorbed in a particularly tricky endgame when I heard a sound that made my blood run cold: a woman’s scream, not from outside, but from just beyond my bedroom door, which was ajar. The scream was cut off abruptly, as if a hand had choked it. My heart hammered as I pushed back my chair and crossed the room. I swung the door open. Nirmala stood there, but she was not standing; she was crumpled on the threshold, seemingly having fallen against the door. Her pale face was turned up to me, her eyes wide and unseeing, and her lips were moving soundlessly. I knelt down, calling her name, and she finally blinked. ‘Sir, I… I had a bad dream,’ she whispered. I helped her to her feet and guided her back to her small room at the back of the house. I tried to soothe her, but she clutched my arm and said, ‘The old planter, he used to sit under the bo tree, but he didn’t wither. He waited. I think I’ve brought something with me from that house.’ I dismissed it as feverish babble and gave her another spoon of the medicine. She lay down, and I returned to my room, but I could not sleep. I left my door open, the light on.

The following night, the rain had paused, leaving a thick, hanging mist. I was reading in the sitting room, and Nirmala had retired early, still unwell. Around midnight, I heard a soft, rhythmic sound from the kitchen—a kind of thumping, like a heavy ripe fruit falling from a tree onto a wooden floor. Then I heard a low, guttural laugh. Alarmed, I grabbed a flashlight and crept to the kitchen. The room was empty. But on the floor, beneath the window that faced the back garden, was a single bo leaf, large and glossy, with a pattern of veins that looked like an old man’s hand. I had never seen such a leaf in our garden, which had only coconut palms and a few young papaya trees. I picked it up. It was cold, as if from a draft, and it crumbled to dust in my fingers, leaving a stain like old blood.

That night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was in the house with us. I decided to check on Nirmala. Her door was slightly open, and I saw her sitting upright on her cot, her back to me. ‘Nirmala?’ I called. She did not turn. Instead, she began to rock back and forth, and a voice that was not hers—a deep, masculine, weary voice—said, ‘The rains have come, but the root is dry. The tree will not let go.’ I backed away, my skin crawling. I called my brother, but he was in a drunken stupor and only mumbled. I tried to call the doctor, but the phone line crackled with static, and I heard that same low laugh on the line. In desperation, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, returning to Nirmala’s door. It was now shut. I pushed it open, and found her lying down, asleep, breathing normally. I shook her awake. She looked at me with her own voice, confused. ‘Sir? What’s wrong?’ I told her what I had heard, and she turned, forlorn. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I think I should go back to the hill village. The sickness is not only in me.’

But before she could leave, the true horror began the next afternoon. I was in the garden, trying to clear the clogged drain, when I saw Nirmala standing by the fence, staring at the empty space where a bo tree would stand. She had a machete in her hand, and she was chanting something in a language I didn’t understand. I shouted, and she turned. Her eyes were not those of the Nirmala I knew; they were milky white, like a blind man’s. She swung the machete at the air, hacking at invisible roots, all the while whispering, ‘Cut the tendrils, break the seed, but the banyan never dies.’ I dodged the blade and tackled her, and we fell to the wet ground. She went limp, and I saw that the machete had cut my forearm, blood mixing with the mud. I called out for help, but we were isolated. I dragged her inside and locked her in her room, begging her to remember herself. From behind the door, she only said, ‘He’s already inside me. He’s been inside since the first night. The drugs opened the door.’

That evening, I realized I had to get help. I couldn’t leave her alone. I decided to drive to the town, a mile away, on the few roads that were passable. But as I reached the gate, I saw a figure standing under the bare branches of a dead tree outside our fence—a tall, thin man in a planter’s suit, drenched in rain. He had no face; just a smooth, featureless head. He raised a hand and pointed at the cottage. I heard Nirmala’s scream from inside. I turned and ran back. The front door was open, and the hallway was dark. I stumbled to her room. The door was open. She was standing in the corner, her back to me, but her head was turning impossibly far to the right, until I saw her profile, then her full face, dislocated. She smiled, a too-wide smile, and said in the planter’s voice, ‘The bo tree’s roots reach far. I have traveled on her. You will be my new grove.’

I lost consciousness. I woke up the next morning, lying on the floor, the rain had stopped, and the sun was breaking through. Nirmala was gone. There was no sign of her, no footprints, and the gate was still locked from the inside. I reported it to the police, but they treated it as a missing person. After that, I could not sleep. I started seeing the shape of a banyan tree whenever I closed my eyes, its aerial roots descending like a curtain, and always a man sitting at its base, waiting. A month later, my parents moved us away. But the visions remained, and I knew what I had to do to protect my sanity: I went to a temple in the mountains, and through a sacred ritual, I had my third eye forced open, so that I could see the truth of the spirits and guard myself against the one who had ridden Nirmala like a horse. They say the third eye sees all. It does. And sometimes, when I am alone at night, I hear a faint, rhythmic thumping beneath my feet, and I know the bo tree has not forgotten me. It is waiting for me to plant my roots deep, and I will never let that happen.