It so happened one day

Mr. Oliver, an Anglo-Indian teacher, was returning to his school late one night, on the outskirts of the hill station of Shimla. Mr. Oliver had been teaching in the school for several years. The Shimla bazaar with its cinemas and restaurants was about two miles from the school and Mr. Oliver, a bachelor, usually strolled into the town in the evening, returning after dark, when he would take a short cut through a pine forest. When there was a strong wind, the pine trees made sad, eerie sounds that kept most people to the main road. But Mr. Oliver was not a nervous or imaginative man. He carried a torch and moved fitfully over the narrow forest path. When its flickering light fell on the figure of a boy, who was sitting alone on a rock, Mr. Oliver stopped. Boys were not supposed to be out of the school after 7 pm, and it was now well past nine.

“What are you doing here, boy?” asked Mr. Oliver sharply, moving closer so that he could recognize the miscreant. But even as he approached the boy, Mr. Oliver sensed that something was wrong. The boy appears to be crying. His head hung down, he held his face in his hands and his body shook convulsively. It was a strange, soundless weeping, and Mr. Oliver felt distinctly uneasy.

“Well – what’s the matter?” he asked, his anger giving way to concern. “What are you crying for?” The boy would not answer or look up. His body continued to be rocked with silent sobbing. “Come on boy, you shouldn’t be out here at this hour. Tell me the trouble. Look up.” The boy looked up. He took his hands from his face and looked up at the teacher. The light from Mr. Oliver’s torch fell on the boy’s face – if you could call it a face.

He had no eyes, ears, nose or mouth. It was just a round smooth head – with a school cap on it. And that’s where the story should end – as indeed it has, for several people who have had similar experiences and dropped dead of inexplicable heart attacks. But for Mr. Oliver, it did not end there.

The torch fell from his trembling hands. He turned and scrambled down the path, running blindly through the trees and calling for help. He was still running towards the school building when he saw a lantern swinging in the middle of the path. Mr. Oliver had never before been so pleased to see the night watchman. He stumbled up to the watchman, gasping for breath and speaking incoherently. “What is it, Sahib?” asked the watchman. “Has there been an accident? Why are you running?”

“I saw something – something terrible – a boy weeping in the forest – and he had no face!”

“No face, Sahib?”

“No eyes, nose, mouth, nothing.”

“Do you mean it was like this, Sahib” asked the watchman, and raised the lamp to his own face. The watchman had no eyes, no ears, no features at all – not even an eye brow! The wind blew the lamp out, and Mr. Oliver had his heart attack.