The Man with the Iron-Handled Shears

My grandfather, Arjun Mehta, was a man of rigid routine. A lawyer by trade, he spent his days in the dusty district courts of Madhya Pradesh, but his heart belonged to his village, Khirni, a speck of mud and thatch nestled among the Satpura hills. The path between the two worlds was a fifteen-mile walk from the main road, through fields and scrubland. He always carried three things: a stout bamboo staff, a pair of rusted shears that his father had used to trim grapevines, and a small silver talisman shaped like a crescent moon, given to him by a traveling sadhu. On this particular night, the full moon hung low and heavy, casting a silver sheen over the landscape. His case had run late, and the last bus dropped him at the crossroads near a crumbling water tower at 11:45 PM. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and wild jasmine. He should have felt safe. He had walked this path a hundred times. But as he left the faint glow of the bus’s tail lights behind, a chill crawled up his spine. He tightened his grip on the staff.

The path wound through fields of sugarcane, their tall stalks rustling in the breeze like whispering phantoms. Arjun kept his eyes ahead, counting his steps to keep his mind calm. He had walked about a mile when he noticed a figure – a man with a shawl draped over his head, sitting motionless on a large black stone at the edge of the field. Arjun’s steps slowed. The man’s posture was unnaturally still, not even a twitch. As he drew nearer, he saw that the man’s face was hidden in shadow, yet the moonlight glinted off something in his hand – a long, curved blade. Arjun’s heart hammered. He greeted the man in the local dialect, a respectful ‘Ram Ram,’ but got no response. He shifted his staff to his right hand, feeling the familiar weight, and quickened his pace. When he was twenty feet past the stone, he glanced back. The spot was empty. The only thing left was a faint, cold draft that made his talisman feel like ice against his chest.

The incident unsettled him, but he forced himself to move on. The fields gave way to a patch of scrubby forest, and then he saw it – the fork in the road. To the right, the main path continued to the village; to the left, a narrow dirt trail that cut through a dense mango grove, which was his shortcut. The grove was a place of legend in the village. An old banyan tree at its heart was said to be haunted by the spirit of a woman jilted at the altar, her sari still hanging from its branches. The villagers avoided it after dusk. But Arjun, a rational man, always took it to save time. This night, with the memory of the vanished man fresh in his mind, he hesitated. But the village lights were just a couple of miles away, and the thought of his warm bed and his wife’s coffee pushed him forward. He turned left, into the grove.

The moment he entered, the air grew still. The moonlight filtered through the dense leaves, creating a shifting patchwork of light and dark. The only sound was the crunch of his boots on the dry leaves. He walked for ten minutes, the banyan tree looming ahead. He noticed the sari, a red one, still hanging from a low branch, fluttering despite the absence of wind. Arjun’s mouth went dry. He passed under the banyan, and as he did, he felt something like a cobweb brush his cheek. He swatted it away, but his hand came away sticky, like wet clay. He wiped it on his trousers, feeling a pang of disgust. A few steps later, he heard a sound – a muffled sobbing, coming from the direction of the banyan. He forced himself to keep walking, but his feet felt heavy.

He had just cleared the grove when he saw the woman standing by the side of the path ahead. She was draped in a white sari, her face pale and indistinct. She didn’t move. Arjun’s staff trembled in his hand. He stopped, and for a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then, she raised her arm and pointed towards a rusty well, half-hidden behind a bush on the left. Arjun’s blood ran cold. He knew that well – it was where a young farmhand had drowned last year, after a fight with his brother. The district police had ruled it an accident. But Arjun, being a lawyer, had read the post-mortem report; the man had a deep, clean laceration on his neck, as if made by a very sharp blade. He had never shared the detail with anyone, fearing it would start a rumor. Now, the woman’s gesture made him think she knew something. He took a step back, and the woman vanished, leaving only a cold spot in the air and the faint smell of rotten flowers.

Shaken, Arjun decided to run. He sprinted, his staff thumping against the ground, his breath ragged. He reached the edge of the village just as the temple bell rang a single, mournful note – but that was impossible, the temple was a mile away, and the bell was only rung at dawn. He stumbled into the main square, relieved to see the dim glow of lamps in the windows. He hurried to his house, his hands shaking as he unlatched the door. Once inside, he bolted the door and collapsed against it, sweating. His wife, Lakshmi, woke up and asked what was wrong, but he waved her off. He told her it was just a scare from a wild animal. He did not want to frighten her.

That night, he barely slept. The next morning, he examined his hands. The sticky substance from the grove had dried into a dark, almost black residue with a faint metallic smell. He scrubbed it off, but the image of the woman and the vanished man haunted him. He tried to convince himself it was a trick of the moonlight, a wild dog, a drunkard. But as he prepared for his next trip to the city, he noticed his talisman had developed a hairline crack. A cold dread settled in his stomach.

He told his wife he was going to the city for a week to argue a property case. He packed his bag, but at the last minute, he slipped his grandmother’s old iron shears, the same pair he always carried, into his waistband, along with a fresh pair of scissors. He did not know why, but he felt he needed them. As he walked out of the village, he avoided the mango grove, taking the long road. He did not look back. But as he reached the main highway, he glanced over his shoulder. A man in a shawl was standing at the village’s edge, watching him. The man’s face was in shadow, but Arjun saw the glint of a curved blade. Arjun raised his staff, and the man turned and walked away, melting into the fields.

When Arjun returned a week later, he took a different route. He hired a bullock cart from the neighboring village to drop him right at his doorstep. He avoided the grove altogether. But the strange encounters did not stop. Occasionally, at night, he would hear a soft sobbing from the direction of the well. And once, he woke up to find a red sari draped over the branch of the peepal tree in his courtyard. He burned it, but a strange stain remained on the ground, shaped like a handprint. He began to sleep with the shears under his pillow.

Years passed. Arjun grew old, and the stories became a part of his legend. But he never spoke of them. He only told his son a fragment of the tale, the part about the mango grove and the woman, and then he would fall silent, his eyes fixed on the distant hills. On his deathbed, he made a final request: he asked his son to pour a handful of soil from the banyan tree into his coffin, and to place his iron shears in his hands. He whispered, ‘She may come for me, but I will have my iron.’

I never learned the full truth of what my grandfather saw. But I know that my father carries a small pair of scissors with him everywhere, just as my grandfather did. And in my village, the people still avoid the mango grove after dark. They say that on full moon nights, a man with a staff and a woman in white can be seen walking side by side, heading towards the well, and that the sound of shears clipping through the air can be heard just before the bell rings.

I don’t know if it’s true. I never dared to look. But sometimes, when I travel to my village late at night, I feel a cold chill, and I remember my grandfather’s hands, stained with something that never quite washed away. And I take a deep breath, tightening my grip on my own staff, and I whisper, ‘He survived. I will too.’