The hot autumn wind catches at our ankles as if it’s egging us on, tearing at the leaves in the trees. I can’t help imagining some wild thing stalking our footsteps.
“I don’t know about this … people say she spreads curses at night.” My voice is quiet.
“It’s just superstition, Asha.”
“Then why are we going?” I whisper. He doesn’t reply.
“Remember that boy Amir in the year above us?” I say, too jittery to look behind. “He said she digs up dead babies’ skulls and uses them to conjure up their spirits.”
“He was only trying to scare you,” says Jeevan. “They’re just stories, that’s all.”
I press myself closer to Jeevan as we skirt the edge of the mountain, following the moon, then cross my fingers behind my back as the house looms closer and we begin to drop down the hill.
I push the gate hesitantly, expecting it to be locked, but it swings open with a loud creak to reveal a tumbledown house with a straggly roof of twigs strapped to its beams. It’s tucked into the far corner of a cavernous yard full of eerie black moon shadows. Our flashlight makes a halo of light ahead of us and we step cautiously toward it, my mouth dry and my stomach churning.
I can’t believe I’m standing in front of this crumbling wooden door. It’s like papery bone, bleached silvery white by the sun and rain.
“Do you want to go back home?” I ask, willing him to say yes this time. “We can still sprint to the gate. It’s not too late.”
“Let’s get it over with.” He speaks quickly, his voice shaking. “L-let’s hope we find the answers you’re looking for.”
Was it right to come here knowing that this place might hold dangers?
A gust of wind billows behind us and a sudden clatter makes me look up toward the doorway. Beaks! They’re strung together and suspended from a hook hammered into a stone alcove. And dangling by a thin, weathered rope is a skull, brimming with a powdery gray ash that floats onto the ground in front of us.
“Let’s knock,” he says. “Before we change our minds.”
“I’ll do it,” I say, swallowing my fear and stepping up to the door.
“Use this.” Jeevan picks up a large stone. “In case the witch has put invisible poison on the door.”
I take the stone and bang loudly. The dull thud echoes into the dark night, cracking the silence of the yard. But nobody comes.
We wait, my heart thumping in my chest.
Just when we think no one’s coming, the door flies open and we both leap back in horror.
Perched in the low doorway is a woman barely taller than me, lighting up the darkness with the stub of a candle. Unfathomable musty smells billow out of the house.
I stay right beside Jeevan, square my shoulders, and try to control the beat, beat, beat of my heart pounding in my ears.
The woman’s white hair is parted in the middle and twisted into a loose bun with a pointed black-and-white porcupine quill sticking out of it. She wears a green cotton sari, the loose fabric thrown over her skinny shoulder, the bottom of the fabric the same color as the ground, as if she’s sprouted from the earth.
“Oh, look who it is,” she says, flashing a row of crooked teeth like stunted tombstones. “It’s the thunder baby and her friend.”
Only Ma ever calls me that, so how does this old woman know my special name? My stomach folds in on itself and I suddenly wish I’d run back when I still had the chance.
“Chitragupta,” she says, pointing to herself with a twisted fingernail. “So you want me to look at your palm, do you?”
Have I mentioned my palm? It’s as if she’s already reading my mind, and it sends fear coursing through me.
“Welcome.” She beckons us into the house.
“No, Asha, let’s not,” whispers Jeevan. “Who knows what’s in there? Let’s make a run for it.”
“No,” I say, surprising myself. Thinking about Ma’s words, I pull him into the house, even though my nerves are jangling and I’m more frightened than I can ever remember. “Come on, Jeevan, we can’t turn back now. It’s the only way I’ll be sure what to do.”
It’s a hot night but strangely Chitragupta has a fire burning in the hearth and something bubbling away in a heavy pot etched with ancient-looking writing.
We exchange a petrified look, staring with horror toward the pot. I grip Jeevan’s arm, sliding myself as close to him as possible.
“Sit, sit,” she says, pointing to a tattered woven bench on one side of the fire. She dips a steel cup into the pot and brings it out filled with … milky chai; it’s not what I thought at all, but I still can’t drink it.
“Shukriaa,” I say politely. I hold the cup in my hand, not daring to put it to my lips. Jeevan isn’t drinking his either, just looking down at the floor with his hands firmly clamped around the cup. He concentrates on holding it still, but the chai trembles.
“Yes,” I say. “I—I need you to read my lines.” My words come out slowly, as if I’m still unsure. “And tell me what to do.”
“Drink a little chai first,” she says, challenging us.
She stares so hard that I’m forced to take the tiniest sugary sip, and a strange herbal taste that I don’t recognize clings to my tongue. What have I done? But before I can warn Jeevan, he does the same.
Chitragupta sits on her stool and gives a beaming smile in the semidarkness of the room, the candlelight and the fire showing the lines and wrinkles carved into her ghostly pale skin.
She pulls the porcupine quill from her bun, releasing a tangle of wild white hair, which floats around her face like writhing serpents. “Now,” she says, her voice as crackly as wizened winter leaves
