Amballore House Read Online Free Page B

another amusement for weeks.

2THE DEMONS IN THE BACKYARD
    Deep in their heart, Thoma and Ann—especially Ann—had believed that their lives’ evening was bound to be peaceful and rife with happiness. They were looking forward to their old age, a sanctuary away from the cares of life. Ann prepared herself for that phase all along by regularly reciting the prayer of Cardinal John Henry Newman:
    May He support us all the day long
    Till the shades lengthen and the evening comes
    And the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over
    And our work is done.
    Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging.
    And a holy rest and peace at the last.
    They were at last peaceful and content. They were given a safe abode to reap rest and peace, just as Ann whole-heartedly hoped for and fervently prayed for throughout her life.
    For them, the evening of life played out in the form of ruminating about their difficult past. This mental exercise gave them joy. They knew that those reminiscences opened door to relive their past, this time without having to be saddled with heartache. God gave them a second chance to live their lives. They were lucky.
    Thoma got accustomed to spending his time just by sitting in his easy chair, turning his back to the world, totally unaware of the cares of life. The chair was conveniently placed in the rear hallway. The hallway surrounded the entire home like a wraparound snake. It was a venue where visitors usually came to chat with the couple.
    He just sat in his chair and stared intently in the distance and yet stared at nothing. There was speculation that he was having a face-off with invisible men who were trying to drag him back to his rental homes. Nothing would scare him more than going back to the rental homes, especially the one in Mannuthy.
    The neighbors said that he was having a staring contest with demons that lurked in his backyard. They speculated that he was trying to stare them down as a way of exorcising them. They haunted him, as they always had been in the past. He liked to believe that his retirement life in Amballore was his reincarnated life where peace prevailed, an antithesis to his previous life—the life of rental in Mannuthy, and therefore he was baffled that the demons still haunted him. He appointed himself as a one-man exorcising team to get rid of the menace.
    All along his life he had fought the demons, and therefore it came as a second nature for him to stare down them. But they still stayed in his yard as a constant reminder that one day they could win over him. They always appeared in front of him in his direct vision or his peripheral vision.
    During those moments that he did not have a staring contest with the demons, no one really knew for sure what he was gazing at. Staring at the big nothingness was not foreign to his nature. He had always done that. To escape into long moments of inaction was what he achieved by sleeping with his eyes open. Even when big challenges loomed in front of him earlier in life, he had escaped into a cocoon of inactivity. He was lulled by this pointless staring at the void. He found it soothing.
    The jackfruit tree wondered aloud at the attention given it by Thoma. But then, maybe only God knew that Thoma was staring at the vivid void beyond it. The coconut palm trees not far away from him probably knew what he was up to, since they always felt that his penetrating stare went right through their leaves without a care for anything but what was beyond.
    “There sits the man with the penetrating gaze,” the coconut palm tree told his neighboring mango tree.
    “There sits the man with the penetrating gaze,” the mango tree repeated to the neighboring areca nut tree with a wink.
    The roosters repeated this message to the ducks, and the ducks conveyed it to the crows.
    The message went from tree to tree, from plant to plant, fromflower to flower, and from animal to animal. Soon it was a topic of conversation among all the flora and fauna