ISSUE 15 

Sushanth Shyamsundar​​​​

Asking Strangers for the Nearest Graveyard

 

​Inspired by Natalie Ezelle’s “looking for ghosts: 2007”

Pondicherry, 4 a.m.
Drunk as fuck, but with a mission,
which is worse than being drunk without one.

The sea behind me, black and busy. French walls asleep in their peeling colours.
Dogs at the corner deciding whether I was food, threat, or plaything.

I stopped people on the road and asked, very politely, I thought,
“Where is the nearest graveyard?”

A man on a scooter stared through me like I had arrived pre-haunted.
One couple crossed the road at the careful speed of people avoiding both ghosts and drunks.

“Nearest graveyard?”
As if it were a tea shop. As if the night owed me directions
because I had ruined my body convincingly enough.

A watchman lifted his hand, not blessing, not help, just the old municipal prayer:
“Please take your problem elsewhere.”

But I was serious. I wanted ghosts.

Real ones. Old ones. Catholic ones, maybe. Names sweating on stone. 
Brown flowers. Marble angels with blackened mouths. 
A shape in white slipping sideways between crosses and rain trees.

I wanted proof that the dead were not done making themselves known.

By the cemetery gate my breath had gone wrong.
Rum, salt, metal. Sweat cooling under my shirt like a second, frightened skin.

Inside, the graveyard held its dark patience. Not empty. 
Worse. Occupied. I stepped in. Two steps. Five. Muttered gibberish.

The stones leaned in their sleep. A plastic flower clicked against another.
A branch moved without permission. 
Somewhere, the sea kept chewing at the edge of the town.

Then the air changed. No face, sheeted visitor, or hand from the grave.

Only that old bad cold, the body knowing before the mind
that it has entered the wrong home on the wrong night under the wrong moon.

My blood sobered first. My legs made the announcement. I ran.

I ran like the soul had looked around, read the terms of tenancy, and refused the body.

Out through the gate, past two nuns walking early,
white habits, sensible shoes, the full administrative calm of God.

They saw me burst from the cemetery at 4:20 a.m., drunk, sweating,
eyes lit like broken windows, and arranged their faces into professional mercy.

One stepped aside. The other weighed prayer against police.

I wanted to say, “Sister, I am not possessed.”
But possession is not always a demon in the throat.

My ghost had no white cloth. No unfinished business except thirst.

No grave except the one I kept entering while still alive.
​​​

​​​​

​

Sandalwood Haunting

 

Inspired by G.A. Hindy's "Haunting at Home Depot"

My Aja gave me his computer so I could teach him
what the machine wanted from him.

Click here, I said. No, once. No, not twice.

He clicked like the mouse was a suspicious fruit.

He kept asking where the letter went after he typed it,
as if email was not technology but migration,
as if every message needed someone at the other end
to light a lamp and receive it properly.

After he died, the house kept making small errors.

A chair faced the wrong way.
A cupboard opened with no one near it.
The old monitor held its blank face
like it still had one more question.

My grandmother had already gone quiet in the walls.

But Aja was different.

He had left behind passwords, receipts,
files named New Folder,
New Folder 2,
Final,
Final Correct,
Final Correct Use This One.

The dead are not mysterious.
They are badly organised.

For weeks, sandalwood followed me.

Actual sandalwood.

In the stairwell.
Near the bathroom.
Beside my laptop when no incense was lit.

That was when I understood
a ghost does not need to appear.

Sometimes it only has to make the air
remember how a prayer was shaped.

I still think of him
whenever a computer freezes
and asks if I want to wait
or force quit.

Aja would have asked what force quit means.

I would have said
it means the thing is not responding.

He would have nodded,
very serious,

then asked
whether waiting

ever works.

​​​​​​

​​

​

​​​​