The leaves rustle every night, and a branch scratches my window. And the breeze does not cause it; I know.

Someone lives on that pipal tree.

Last night my friend paid me a visit. Meeting after a long time, and gulping down whiskey pegs, we never knew when midnight befell. Nikhil was drunk and so was I. I suggested that he sleep over. I shouldn’t have.

The pipal tree is restless and has been since half a century. “The angrez”, Ramu once said, “hung a mad youth on that tree… We weren’t allowed to take his body off even the next day. He had raped the Sahib’s daughter. It was ghastly. The Sahib agreed to take the body down only when the stench began drifting towards his villa, the old ruin, now…”

Ramu knows these things. He was born here, and has been here since the pipal was a sapling; but he is still strong and takes care of this house alone. I came here seeking peace from the city soon after I divorced my wife.

Peace is something that sidesteps me nowadays. Nikhil has disappeared. He slept in my room last night and when I woke amidst hangovers, I saw that the bed was empty. I searched for him, made calls to his house but he was not to be found. And that is when I saw the moss and a few leaves strewn on the bed near the pillow.

I did what I thought I had to; I called Ramu. He walked to the window and there a creeper had grown from the tree to the ledge. Some parasite infests that tree.

Ramu called the neighbors and they all walked up to the tree. I watched them from my window, sipping hot and bitter coffee to expunge my hangover and bafflement at Nikhil’s disappearance.

I noticed that the creeper had climbed all the way from the branch to the ledge and anyone could climb it up to the window. That’s when Ramu called me holding a ragged red woolen cloth up in my direction. Last night Nikhil was wearing a red sweater.

The crowd gathered around the tree and chanted some thing I could not clearly decipher.

Ramu says that the people are scared and want to burn the tree down. Nikhil is still missing; his mother is depressed. The leaves are rustling in a rhythm this evening, like a specter’s grinning. The branch, I can see across the table, seems to be trying to reach me through the window; it has gotten inches long suddenly. I will sleep in Ramu’s house tonight; but I don’t fancy my chances for tomorrow. Maybe I won’t be writing into my diary tomorrow; the tree dweller will emerge tonight, I’m sure.

The Tree-Dweller