The Last Candle on Viharagala Road

It was a Saturday in the dry season, and the entire island of Serendib was rationing electricity. Every evening from seven to ten, the lights would die, plunging neighborhoods into a thick, tropical darkness. My friend Ravi had invited me to spend the night at his friend’s house, a place I barely knew. The friend’s name was Nimal, and his parents were away at a funeral for a distant aunt who had succumbed to a long, wasting illness. Nimal, a quiet, serious boy, stayed behind to guard the house, and Ravi thought a card game and some spicy kottu roti would make the blackout bearable.

We arrived at Nimal’s house just as the sun bled into the horizon. It was a sprawling, colonial-era bungalow on Viharagala Road, surrounded by overgrown gardens and a rusted iron fence. The house had a musty smell, like old books and dried flowers. Nimal’s parents had left a single oil lamp on the dining table, and a stack of worn playing cards. We ate our kottu in near silence, the only sounds being the clinking of forks and the distant hum of cicadas. Ravi tried to lighten the mood with jokes, but Nimal seemed distracted, often glancing at the dark hallway that led to the back of the house.

At exactly seven, the fan above us shuddered and stopped. The refrigerator gurgled and went quiet. We were plunged into a darkness so complete that for a moment I couldn’t see my own hand. Ravi struck a match, and we lit two candles we had brought, their flames dancing nervously. We started a game of rummy, but Nimal kept losing track. He finally said, ‘There’s something in the store room. I heard it scratching earlier when my parents were still here.’ Ravi laughed it off, but I felt a chill. Nimal’s voice was flat, not joking. ‘It’s probably a rat,’ I offered, but he shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. This house has a history.’

He told us that his cousin, the one who had just died, had once lived in this house. She had been a recluse, collecting old photographs and trinkets. She had a habit of leaving notes in strange places, little reminders to herself. When she got sick, she started talking to someone only she could see. She called it ‘the silent visitor.’ Nimal had never seen it, but he had heard it: a faint rustling, like dry leaves, moving through the corridors at night, especially during power cuts. He thought it might be a spirit, or maybe a figment of his cousin’s madness. But now, with the house empty except for us, he wasn’t so sure.

As he spoke, I noticed our candle flames were leaning, not from any breeze, but as if something was passing between us. The air grew cooler, and a faint odor of camphor and old paper drifted from the hallway. Ravi, ever the skeptic, said, ‘You’re just spooked because of the funeral.’ He shuffled the cards and dealt. ‘Let’s play something else. Ghost stories?’ Nimal gave a weak smile. ‘I’d rather not.’ But the cards were already laid out. We tried to focus, but the scratching Nimal mentioned began, a soft, rhythmic scrape from the direction of the store room, behind a partially closed door at the end of the hall.

We froze. The scratching grew louder, more deliberate, like fingernails dragging across wood. Then it stopped. A moment later, we heard a faint, wet sound, like something being dragged. Ravi whispered, ‘That’s not a rat.’ I wanted to leave, but the darkness outside was impenetrable, and the nearest neighbor was half a mile away. We had only one flashlight, which Nimal produced from his pocket. He aimed it down the hall. The store room door was now ajar, though we were sure it had been closed. The beam of the flashlight trembled, revealing a pile of old cardboard boxes and a dusty sewing table. On the table, propped against a wall, was a framed photograph of a woman with hollow eyes, her lips slightly parted as if about to speak.

Nimal gasped. ‘That’s my aunt. She’s not supposed to be here. This photo was in the funeral parlor.’ Ravi said, ‘Maybe your parents brought it back by mistake.’ But Nimal was already shaking his head. ‘No, I saw it in the coffin yesterday.’ We stared at the photograph, and in the dim light, it seemed to shift, the woman’s gaze turning toward us. Then, from the store room, came a voice, low and dry, like dead leaves rustling: ‘You should not be here.’ The three of us jumped, knocking over our candles. The flames died, plunging us into total darkness. The flashlight in Nimal’s hand flickered and went out, as if its batteries had been drained instantly.

Panic set in. We stumbled over each other, trying to find the way to the front door. But the hallway seemed longer than before, the walls closing in. We found ourselves in a part of the house we hadn’t seen, a narrow corridor lined with doors, all closed. A faint glow seeped from under one door, a sickly yellow light. Nimal whispered, ‘That’s my aunt’s bedroom. She died there.’ We should have run, but something drew us toward it. Ravi, his voice trembling, said, ‘Let’s go back.’ But when we turned, the corridor behind us was a dead end, a plaster wall where the hallway should have been. We were trapped.

The door creaked open on its own, revealing a room lit by a single oil lamp on a bedside table. On the bed, a figure lay, covered with a white sheet. The shape was too small, too thin. We could see the outline of a face underneath. A rasping breath filled the room. The sheet began to move, sliding down as if pulled by invisible hands. Beneath it was not a body, but a heap of old photographs, yellowed papers, and a single, long, black hair. The hair seemed to twitch, coiling like a snake. Then the voice came again, louder, right behind us: ‘You left me alone. You forgot me.’

We screamed and ran. We crashed through the door, back into the dark hallway, but now the house was different. The walls were covered with dusty photographs of people we didn’t recognize, their eyes following us. The floorboards creaked under our feet as if something was crawling beneath. We finally burst through the front door into the night, gasping for air. The power came back on exactly at ten, the streetlights flickering to life, and the house behind us stood silent and benign. We never spoke of that night again. Nimal moved away a few weeks later. But sometimes, when the power goes out, I think of that house, and I know that the silent visitor is still waiting for someone to remember her. And I wonder, if I close my eyes, I can still hear that dry, rustling voice: ‘You should not be here.’