The Leaky Wall

“Greed is the root of all evil.”

Raju looked at his watch, it was 10:05 PM. As he looked out through the window, he saw the name Secunderabad in one of the saree advertisements painted on the boundary wall of one of the houses overlooking the railway lines. He was happy that the train was on time and had even reached 5 minutes before its schedule. The train slowly chugged into Platform 2. He was super excited to start a new chapter in life, and had been day dreaming about it the whole day. It was hard for him to believe that he had finally reached Secunderabad. He felt extremely happy and proud of getting a high percentile in the MBA entrance exam for the prestigious college of World Business School (WBS), Hyderabad. He was felicitated by his college, and his mother distributed sweets to the entire society. After all, he was the only one to get selected from his college in Jharsuguda, Orissa.  

It was already late when he came out of the station. He was travelling with very little luggage and hence did not require a porter. He decided to stay the night in a nearby lodge and go next day to see the college campus. After a frantic search and bargaining with several hotel managers, he settled for Saraswati Lodge which was right opposite the Secunderabad bus stop. It would be easier to get a bus in the morning for college, he thought. After having a light dinner he went to his room.  As he lay in the bed and looked up, he saw the dirty fan blades and cobwebs around the corner of the room. He wasn’t very happy with the room’s condition, but given the circumstances he had got the room for a pretty good bargain. He closed his eyes and thought of everything he had planned for the next day. He had already planned to first check out the vast college campus, and then look for rooms near college campus. He had only two days to book a room. He had made up his mind to stay closer to the college campus in order to get an easy access to the college library.

Next day, he woke up early by 7:00 AM and quickly gobbled some idli’s from a roadside vendor. He needed all the time he could get. Owing to less traffic on the roads, he managed to reach his college campus in Donthanapally by 9 AM. The huge campus had several departments spun around the central building. He walked around for a while in the vacant lobbies and checked all the class rooms. Since the classes hadn’t started, there were very few people, mainly clerical staff present on the floors. After spending almost two hours roaming inside the campus, he finally decided to check out a few rooms. He decided to check with the locals for help. After a brief chat with a guy at the bakery, he knew the names and direction of the nearby lanes where empty rooms are available. So, he decided to take a quick walk and check out as many rooms as possible before it gets dark.

He was searching for a single room with an attached kitchen. He saw many rooms by 3 PM, but being a student most were out of his budget. Just when he was beginning to lose hope and was about to sit down on a nearby rock, he noticed a house at the end of the lane. The house looked pretty old and had a handwritten advertisement on its gate, “1 RK Rs 5000. Call 9800432692”. As he took down the number he noticed that everyone was staring at him. A woman walked past him and signalled not to take the room. He decided to ask a few others to check the reason behind it. While most of them denied to answer, they all reiterated that the room offered in this house was not a good one. Some said that a boy had drowned in the room. The whole thing seemed pretty strange to Raju. But he did not believe in hearsay and was not a guy who could be scared easily. He ignored everyone and looked down at the screen of his smartphone. He was not sure whether the number on the page was of a broker or the owner. He was avoiding the trouble of approaching a broker, but at the same time he had not been very lucky without one.

Tired of searching for rooms the whole day, he decided to give it a try anyway and dialled the number. Thankfully, it was a 60-something old man that answered the call. While he was on the phone, a guy from the laundry shop in the adjacent building who was watching him all this while came and gave him a key. “Take at your own risk”, he murmured as he went back to the shop. Raju ignored the verbal warning and went upstairs. With his phone still in his right hand, he pushed the key into the key hole. After a slight twist and turn, the door cracked open with a squeaking sound. He stepped in and searched for the light switch. The room was tiny but had an attached toilet. The paint on one side of the wall had started peeling off. There were marks on the wall indicating that there might have been a leakage of water from the roof at some point in the past when there was heavy rainfall. The kitchen was decent and had shelves to keep the utensils and jars. He enquired about the room to the owner and asked about its past. When the owner heard about Raju’s experience with the locals in the neighbourhood, he laughed it off and said it was the cowardly act of some of the neighbours who were trying to push off tenants out of jealousy. He also rubbished the claims made by locals about the story of boy that drowned in that room. After a brief discussion, he settled for paying a monthly rent of Rs 4800. Considering the proximity of the room to the campus, he thought the amount being quoted to be quite reasonable. He was satisfied and asked when could he move in. Since there was nobody staying at the time, the owner agreed to let him move in with his luggage the same day. As he had limited luggage with him, he put the luggage inside the room and went for shopping. In a nearby shopping centre he bought a nice mattress, a pair of buckets, mugs, and trays, apart from other toiletries. By the time he finished shopping it was 8:30 PM. He decided to head home and skip buying any furniture, and decided to place the mattress directly on the floor while sleeping.

The next few days went by uneventful as he went to college during the day and studied the rest of the time in his room. He kept a limited number of friends, and even among them only a handful had seen his room. The old man would come occasionally to visit the house and would chat with him. He had started to like him and would occasionally bring home-cooked Biryani for him. It was during one of these conversations that the owner spoke about the guys who were in the room before him. The guys belonged to a wrought iron manufacturing firm and had been told to vacate after repeated complaints from the neighbours of playing loud music.

Soon two months went past and it was the month of July. One night as he went to sleep he heard noises outside the door. He got a bit scared and frantically searched for a weapon. He noticed the umbrella kept in the corner and took it in his hand. He opened the door but could not see anyone. As soon as he had opened the door the noise stopped. He went back in and went to sleep. No sooner had he closed his eyes he heard a whisper, “help!” He jerked up from his sleep and switched on the light. He could not find anyone. He stayed awake for the rest of the night.

For next few days nothing happened. Then, one night, it happened again. As soon as it was dawn, he left the room. He thought to himself, “the old man is lying…he has not been telling me the complete truth”. Over the next few hours he spent time chatting with many of the local shop keepers and people in his neighbourhood. They all chanted the same story of drowning. He confronted the owner about the weird noises he had been hearing at night. The owner went back to his old rhetoric and denied everything.

He was in no mood to hear lies and decided to leave the room by end of the month. He noticed that whenever he spoke on the phone about a new room, strange things happen. For instance, the utensils in the kitchen would start to fall, the toilet seat would go back up on its own, among other things. These events were making it difficult for him to continue his studies.

Then the fateful night - July the 18^th appeared. It was his birthday. He was hanging out with his friends till late night after having dinner at a restaurant. Later, he came back to his room exhausted and went to sleep. At around 4:00 AM he woke up to the sound of water dripping. On stretching his arms a bit he realized that his mattress was soggy. The floor had water till the height of his mattress and he could feel it rising. He knew instantly that there was something definitely wrong with the valves. He turned on the light only to realize that one side of the wall was completely wet. The wall had cracks all around it and water was dripping through these cracks. He quickly went to the bathroom to check for any leakages. It was at this precise moment that he sensed the presence of someone in the bathroom. No sooner did he had that inkling, he noticed a face in the mirror right behind him. He heard the whisper again. He turned around immediately but could not see anyone. A chill went down his spine and he fainted.

He woke up the next morning and stepped out of the bathroom only to see the room completely dry. He was convinced that there was a paranormal activity behind this. His mind revolved around the ghost in the mirror. He decided to report the matter to the nearby police station. The policemen although reluctant at first, decided to give a visit. When they finally arrived, he narrated the whole story. The police was all too quick to rule out the ghost theory. However, the police couldn’t find any explanation for the sudden influx of water in the room and the unexplained phenomena of weird noises. They were unable to find any motive behind it. Who and why would someone target him? This question compelled the inspector to stick around for a while longer. The inspector took a closer look at the wall that Raju claimed was leaking at night. He noticed a nearby switch board that seemed to have been moved from its original location. He noticed that the switches had black cello tape over them in a criss-cross fashion. Also, the switches were unusually protruding in spite of the rest of the unit being a modular switch casing. The inspector asked the constables to break the plaster of the wall to check the wiring. The constables soon pointed out something strange about the relocated switchboard. The switchboard did not have any wires connected to it and was a standalone structure in the wall. It seemed as though it has been deliberately put there to conceal something. The plastic of the old switch board had become brittle. A slight jolt with hammer, broke the whole switch board and three big gold bricks fell on the ground. As if that wasn’t strange enough, they noticed old cement pipes attached to the wall running from the ceiling to the floor.

As they broke the plaster further to check the origin of the pipe, they noticed that the pipe had a bulge which appeared like a two-sided valve. While the handle of the valve on this side of the room had been conveniently broken off with a sharp tong, the other valve seemed to be etched between the common walls between this and the building behind it. The police went to the back-side building in the next lane. The room in that house was also given on rent, and the owner did not stay there either. On calling the owner of that house, it was discovered that the room belonged to some employees of a wrought iron manufacturing firm. This arose the suspicion of the police.

The guys at the wrought iron manufacturing firm had gone for their duties and would only return after their respective shifts in the evening. Unaware that the police was waiting for them, they returned to the room that evening. The police soon knocked on the door, but no one answered. They were preparing an escape. The policemen were given orders to break open the door. After a few attempts, the door latch broke and the police entered the room. The three men tried a last ditch attempt to escape from the door, but their attempt was fouled by the presence of constables posted outside the door. The police starting looking for clues and saw the valve hidden behind the cupboard. On asking the men about the valve in the wall, two of the men denied of any knowledge, while the third kept staring at the revolver near the left side holster of the inspector. The cops found the behaviour of this man named Kunder, rather strange. They immediately took him to the police station for further questioning.

After an intensive round of questioning the man broke down and admitted to the murder. He revealed a more sinister plot of how the murder was put into effect, and also exposed the involvement of the other two men, as he told a spine chilling tale of murder and deceit. He showed the cops the picture of the deceased. The inspector showed the picture to Raju. Raju instantly recognized it, it was the ghost in the mirror. After a thorough investigation followed by a trial, all three of them were arrested. The gold bars, all but one, were recovered and returned to the jeweller. As a gesture of goodwill, the jeweller paid off his rent for the entire tenure of his stay. The owner got the room re-plastered and also replaced the internal pipe with an external one. Raju also requested the police to find the body of Utkal and give a decent burial. The police agreed to do it as quickly as possible.

A week after the arrest, the police visited Raju and the owner to give them an update regarding the case. Raju insisted on hearing the whole plan the trio had made. The inspector agreed and began telling them both the narrative as revealed by Kunder during the interrogation, “A year and half back, four of them had robbed a local jewellery store. They had gotten off with four 22-carat gold bars. As per the deal, each one was to take one bar. However, greed soon took control of their minds. Utkal being weaker of the three men was also a liability if he ever was caught. So, Kunder managed to convince the other two fellows to get rid of him on the pretext that they would share the amount after selling his gold bar. Being in the wrought iron firm had gotten him closer to some guys who could deal with gold bars in the black market. The plan was simple. They had known of the hidden two sided valve since the time they had taken the room for rent in the old man’s house. They had manipulated the night duty roster sheet to ensure all of their names were there for the night duty at the firm, except for Utkal’s. This would absolve all three of them of any wrong doing. On that fateful night, the three of them pretended to sleep,biding their time. As soon as Utkal fell fast asleep, they got up and opened the valve behind the wall. This concrete pipe was very old and was connected to a 5000 litre overhead tank. It was meant to bring the excess water after overflow down through the pipe to an underground tank.

The day before the crime, one of the men had clogged a piece of rubber padding into the overflow pipe to keep the tank from stopping to fill at the overflow point. Hence, the water in the tank was filled to the brim. The plan was to take off the rubber padding at night and let the excess water come through the pipe and fill in the room. They had planned to seal all exit points with tarpaulin sheets, letting the excess water convert the tiny room into a swimming pool. They had got this idea from a video being widely circulated across the net showcasing two men convert their tiny little room into a swimming pool. They intended to forcibly hold Utkal’s face down and make him drown in the water. The whole thing would look like an accident.

The plan had worked, at least for the time being. Soon after burying his body in a dump yard in another part of the city, they returned back to the room. They decided to sell only one bar at a time to prevent any suspicion. Thus, they kept one bar with them to sell and share the money, and decided to hide the rest of the three gold bars inside the switchboard and cut all connections to it. They requested the owner for changing the location and eventually an electrician installed a new switchboard close to the door entry. Finally, they sighed with relief and decided to celebrate with booze. They drank all night and played loud music. However, in the morning they were jolted out of their reverie when the owner asked them to vacate the room. The owner had been tolerating them for quite some time in spite of getting several complaints from neighbours for playing loud music at nights. But now he was fed up and was not ready to negotiate. They knew that they needed to come up with an alternate strategy quickly or risk losing it all. Over the next few hours the trio tried every trick in the book to convince the owner of the building on the backside of their building to give the room to them. Though that house had a common wall with this house, it belonged to another society. The owner of that house was completely unaware of the complaints against them and finally agreed to give it to them. They soon began intimidating anyone who came to rent the room in the old house and would pass on stories about bad omen associated with that the room. They would tell the story of their friends’ accidental drowning while they were all on night duties. This would scare everyone away. In case it didn’t they would resort to knocking on the doors at night, creating noise and whispering through the crack. So when Raju came, they tried to scare him the same way. Much to their dismay, the intimidation tactics didn’t work on Raju. This made the men nervous, and they decided to get rid of him the same way as they did in the past. As the two-way valve was on their side as well, they could easily open the valve and drown him in his sleep.”

Raju was still listening to the inspector, when the inspector abruptly stopped and said “And then you know the rest! Hope you now know the reason behind it all?”

“Yes…I would like to think so. I haven’t seen anyone in the mirror for quite some time”.
Raju thanked the inspector for coming by and said, “As it appears, the ghost wasn’t trying to kill me after all.  It was only trying to warn me!”