The Cursed Pond of Jasmine Gardens

When I was seven, my grandmother sent me to fetch water from the communal tap at the end of Jasmine Gardens. Our house was the only one with a proper garden, tended by my grandfather, who had a green thumb. We were a modest family, but our garden was the envy of the street, bursting with frangipani and jasmine, the scent clinging to the air like a blessing.

Two houses down, the new family from the city had moved in. They were a Malay family, the Pak Husains, with three boys, all older than me. They kept to themselves, but there was something about their house, a perpetual chill, even in the noon sun. The previous occupant had been a reclusive old man who practiced odd rituals; the neighbors said he had a dark heart. After he died, the house sat empty for years, gathering dust and rumors.

The Pak Husains, eager to have their own water source, hired men to dig a well in their backyard. They dug deep, but the water that surfaced was not clear. It was murky, the color of rust, and it tasted of iron. The smell was worse—a foul, sickly sweetness, like something had died and was marinating in the heat. They covered it with a wooden lid, but the stench seeped through the cracks, wafting into our garden, making my grandmother’s jasmine wilt.

I was too young to understand the tension that followed. The Pak Husains’ boys, once boisterous, grew quiet. They stopped playing cricket in the street. Their faces, once cheerful, became hollow, their eyes shadowed. Rumors spread that the well had disturbed something, that the old man had left more than memories.

One evening, I was playing near the fence when I heard a strange sound from their backyard—a low, guttural hum, like a language I didn’t know. I peered through a knothole in the wooden fence. The Pak Husains had gathered around the well, the father chanting, the boys holding candles. The mother was weeping, her face in her hands. At the center, the well’s lid was off, and the water inside glowed with a faint, eerie light, like the eye of a beast.

I ran to tell my grandfather, but he only sighed, his fingers tracing the beads of his tasbih. He told me to stay away, that some wells are not for water. He said the old man had tried to seal something beneath the ground, and the new family had unwittingly opened it.

That night, I had a dream. I was walking toward the well, the wooden lid lifted, and a hand—pale, elongated, with fingers like roots—reached out. It beckoned me. I tried to scream, but no sound emerged. The hand grabbed my ankle, and I felt a coldness spread up my leg, a coldness that burned.

I woke in a sweat, my ankle red and tender, as if bruised. The next morning, the Pak Husains’ house was eerily silent. No one came out. At noon, the police arrived, and they led the family out, the boys clinging to each other, their faces blank. The father, though, looked back at the well with a gaze of pure terror.

They never returned. The house stood empty again. But the well remained, and the stench grew stronger, reaching our front porch. My grandfather, in a rare act of anger, took a bag of salt, lime, and incense. He performed a ritual at our altar, then he stormed over to the well, throwing the salt and lime into it, chanting prayers. The water bubbled, and a loud crack split the air, like a bone breaking. The stench vanished instantly, replaced by the smell of burnt herbs.

From that day, the well was never seen again. The ground at the back of the house was suddenly too hard to dig. Grass refused to grow in a perfect circle around where the well had been. The Pak Husains’ story faded, but the memory of that grasping hand stayed with me. Sometimes, at night, I still feel a cold grip on my ankle, and I hear that low, guttural hum, calling me back to a well that no longer exists.