Glow in the Dark

1968, Bukit Tunggu Rubber Estate

Paruthi knew that the sliver of crimson piercing through the dense branches would melt in the next ten minutes. If they were quick enough, they’d be on their way back before the light dropped completely. Crunch, crackle, crunch, crackle. It was all he could hear as their bicycle tyres crushed over the dried leaves. 

Of all the chores, lighting up the oil lamp was his least favourite. Good thing, they only had to do it when Appa was away, which happened at most three times a year. Bad thing, the temple was in the deepest centre of the rubber estate, which, according to Paruthi, was the part that made the strangest sounds if you lingered too long. A trip to and fro would take about half an hour. Time definitely wasn’t on their side today, but, they had Appa’s bicycle. Bigger and faster, maybe a tad too large for their tiny bodies, but it meant that they could accompany each other. 

“We really should have left earlier,” Cheran muttered, pedalling as fast as his feet would allow. 

“No, they told us too late,” Paruthi responded to his brother. 

Cheran kept his gaze forward, focused on the structure in the distance. As weathered as the rocks nearby, the grey shrine waited their arrival, almost clad in twilight. Unevenly made by blocks of stones, with a rounded top, it bore no carving, no pillars, or any other marks of a temple. Built before the plantations came about, Appa had tended to it since before the boys were born. 

The smell of jasmine wafted through their path as they moved closer. A cathedral of rubber trees for miles and then, the shrine. Cheran parked the bicycle a few steps behind, took off his slippers and led the way. At twelve, the older of the two, Cheran took pride in taking charge of situations. More so in the presence of his nine-year-old brother. 

Paruthi looked up to the sky, which had turned fully navy, with light patches of pink. It reminded him of the faded quilt his parents would wrap around his shoulders during chilly monsoon evenings. He wished tonight were one of those nights when he would not be asked to leave his warm bed, but could instead sip Amma’s ginger tulsi tea and listen to Cheran’s adventures as raindrops hit the aluminium can placed beneath the leak in their wooden house.

“Take off your slippers!” Cheran’s voice brought him back. 

Paruthi did as he was told, revealing feet dirty from the ground that had long since eaten through the soles. Cheran lit up the lamp with a matchstick and adjusted the cotton wick so it sat right. He added enough oil to last till morning prayers. Paruthi grabbed the plastic-wrapped pack of incense and pulled a few sticks out from the roll. He passed them over to Cheran, who dipped their tips into the small flame and blew. Then, Cheran stuck the sticks into a tiny brass holder. Sweet jasmine. 

The large, intense eyes of Ayyanar, the deity in the shrine, watched them. The kind of eyes that followed you when you moved from left to right, as Paruthi had tested. Ayyanar, known to guard villages from nocturnal spirits and dark omens, sat imposing upon his clay steed, his curved sword resting across his knees. His terracotta skin caught the lamp’s glow, casting massive shadows behind him.  

Paruthi turned to his brother, who had his eyes closed, deep in prayer. He didn’t dare to look past the lamp, as he was well aware they were surrounded by the blackness of the night that had instinctively arrived. He too, tried praying, however, many thoughts often came to him during prayers. Although he knew they needed to head back home, for a very short minute, he wished they could stay for a longer minute at the shrine. 

The boys walked back to their bicycle, put on their slippers and braced themselves for the ride back. 

“This can’t be happening!” Cheran said. 

Paruthi leaned in close, following Cheran’s gaze down to the rear wheel. From the faint glow of the oil lamp, he could see the back tyre sagging against the dirt. Cheran pinched the tyre between two fingers; flat as paper.

“What are we going to do now?” Paruthi's question sounded more like an exclamation. 

“I don’t know… I don’t know what happened. We left the bicycle for five minutes. The tyre, it was fine when we left it.” Cheran grabbed the silver torchlight from the front basket and clicked it on. He took one good look at the bicycle and figured they had no choice but to walk the entire way back home. 

“So… we walk then?” Paruthi asked, even after knowing the answer. 

“We walk,” Cheran said, and after a pause, “unless you want to sleep here till morning.” His frustration was plain, directed as much at the dead tyre as at Paruthi. Without waiting for a reply, he took off on foot, pushing the limp bicycle along. 

“But it’s more than three miles! I don’t think my slippers will last that long!” Paruthi grumbled, lagging a step behind.

“Then you’ll walk barefoot!” Cheran snapped. “Look, we’ve got no choice. The sooner we get out of this place, the better. So quit complaining and shine the torch.” Cheran handed the torch to his brother. 

Everything apart from their path forward was engulfed in darkness, and Paruthi was grateful that his brother could not see the tears forming in his eyes. If only the bicycle had a flat tyre before they left home, they wouldn’t even need to be here.

Sensing his brother’s silence, Cheran said, “It’s a straight path. We just have to keep looking ahead and we’ll be home before we know it.” After another minute of silence, Cheran added, “Ayyanar protects this place, don’t you worry.” 

Paruthi wanted to believe in Cheran’s words, so he did. Sometimes, he decided, you just have to hold onto something. He continued walking, his eyes not darting from the narrow beam.  

The boys must have covered half a mile when they realised the circle of yellow light had begun to dim. Before they could react, it all went pitch black. 

“No no, no no no!” Cheran cried out. He grabbed the torch back and started tapping the torch head against the handlebars. “Come on, work! Not right now!”

Cheran took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s not panic. We got this. It’s a straight path, like I said before. We just got to keep walking.” It sounded more like he was trying to convince himself. 

Paruthi held onto his brother’s arm, clinging to the only familiarity in that void. Cheran’s arm was rigid under his sleeve. They trod, accompanied by the sound of their breaths, light footsteps and the slight crunch of the ground. 

A minute. Another minute. 

Their eyes slowly started adjusting to the darkness, although not fully. For Paruthi, it was at the odd stage where your mind started creating shapes and shadows out of nothingness. It turned branches into looming figures, and when he turned left to look at Cheran’s face, it looked warped. It was still his brother, but Paruthi just could not stop his mind from spinning and every scary story he had heard, especially ones of the estate, floated in his head. 

After a few minutes of silence, Cheran said, his voice a low rumble, “If you are afraid, just think of Ayyanar.”

“Hmm, I think we crossed his border a mile ago,” Paruthi muttered. 

Cheran let out a breath that was half-sigh, half-chuckle. “Ayyanar protects the whole district, idiot,” he replied, though his voice lacked its usual conviction. 

“How far do you think we have walked?” Paruthi asked. 

“I can’t smell jasmine in the air anymore. Only the sharp, sour scent from the trees. Which means we are quite far from the shrine. Possibly close to being halfway home,” Cheran said. And a few moments later, he paused in his tracks. He held his brother’s hand a little tighter. His eyes darted, from the centre to the left, back to centre and left again. He whispered, “We’re not alone.”

“Yeah, yeah, Ayyanar is here with us, bla bla bla, tell me something new for once,” Paruthi seemed unaware. 

“Shut… up…” Cheran uttered between his teeth. “We are not alone.” 

Paruthi turned to his left to look at Cheran and that’s when he saw it! A movement! On their left! If they could sense it in the dark, it could not have been far from them. Whatever it was. 

“Just keep moving,” Cheran said through the shivers. 

They stepped forward and whatever it was, it seemed to be moving in parallel with them now. Paruthi felt a dizzying fear creep up his body. 

Whatever it was, it could not have been an animal as it made no sound and moved almost perfectly in step with them. It moved like a human. “It’s a person, right?” Paruthi asked in barely a whisper. And then, it was gone. No movement from the left. 

They took a step. And another. And another. 

A minute passed. 

Then, a heavy, deliberate tread falling in line right behind them!

Their legs felt glued to the ground as they struggled to keep moving. They could not go on, knowing that out in the pitch black behind them, there was someone. 

If Paruthi’s fear was visible, it must have formed a halo around his whole self at this point. His heartbeat roared in his ears. He thought of every possible thing that had gone wrong tonight, that had eventually led them here. 

The footsteps behind them stopped. 

Cheran and Paruthi looked at each other, their vision well-adjusted to the dim starlight now. Fighting the urge to look back over their shoulders, they locked arms, gripping each other as they pressed forward, Cheran hauling the dead weight of the bicycle beside him.

From somewhere deep within the darkness, miles away, came a desperate, echoing wail. It sounded like a woman weeping. For Paruthi, this was straight out of the old estate legends their grandmother used to warn them about. 

Cheran swallowed hard, his throat dry. “Just ignore it,” he said, though his own legs had momentarily locked. “It’s just... wind through the branches. Keep going.”

Light travels faster than sound, but for some reason, the wail seemed to get closer and closer to them, before a soft glow of orange ball appeared. At this point, smoke, sharp with camphor, wafted past their faces. This can’t be good, Paruthi thought, his throat tightening. Smoke in the middle of the dark estate was almost never a good thing. He recalled the warning words of his grandmother, whispered over kerosene lamps on rainy nights:

“If you ever smell burning camphor where no shrine stands, or see a ball of fire floating in the dark estate, don’t speak, don’t look it in the eye, and above all, never step toward it. That is no lantern, child. That is the Kollivai Pey, the fire-eating demon, calling for a soul.”

Paruthi kept his gaze locked on the ground, watching himself put one foot in front of the other, terrified that looking up meant looking it in the eye.

Beside him, Cheran suddenly came to a halt. Paruthi glanced up at his brother. Sweat was pouring down Cheran’s forehead and across the back of his T-shirt.

“I don’t think it was a person,” Cheran whispered, his throat raspy with dread. “The thing that was trailing us.”

To Paruthi, whatever was behind them no longer mattered. Because whatever it was... it was right in front of them now.

A fiery blaze hovered, casting a sinister orange light onto the endless rows of rubber trees. Their breathed in ashy air.  

Ahead on the path, the floating ball of fire seemed to grow bigger and taller, swelling to the height of an adult human. Slowly, the flames expanded, stretching outward until the fire began to morph into a larger silhouette.

The boys did not need to discuss what they did next. They veered off the path as one, plunging between the rows of trees and running wide around the glow, the useless bicycle clattering to the dirt behind them. Neither of them looked at it. They ran and ran, even when Cheran’s lungs felt like they were on fire, even when Paruthi’s slippers broke. Their legs trembled, their calves were burning, almost giving up but they didn’t. 

They came to a breathless stop only at the first sign of the lamp pole. They collapsed against each other, gasping for air as the dark expanse of the rubber estate stretched behind them. The row of wooden houses was finally in sight. 

“We’re safe now,” Cheras said, relief loosening his voice. Still panting, the boys began to walk the final stretch home. Paruthi limped along, one sole bare against the ground, the other slipper’s snapped strap dragging at his ankle. Beside him, Cheran walked with his arm draped around Paruthi's shoulders. 

After a few minutes of silence, Paruthi blurted, “You were right about one thing after all.” 

“What’s that?”

“We got home before we knew it!” he said, a chuckle escaping his throat. 

*  *  *

For a week, the smell of burnt camphor clung to him, and Paruthi couldn’t say why. He couldn’t tell if the acrid scent was trapped in his hair or in his skin.  

Mostly, he struggled to sleep; some nights from dreams of the encounter, and others from two fiery, unblinking eyes staring at him from outside their bedroom window.