“Mom,” the little girl yelled plaintively. “It’s the evil bogeyman who’s come again to take me far away from you.”
“Don’t worry, go to sleep!” came the reply, articulated by a sweet voice from the next room. “You’ll see he can’t do anything to you. Besides, if you look at him closely, you’ll see he’s quite transparent and harmless. He’s our family bogeyman, and he’s not very bad.”
“I want to sleep with you, I don’t want him near me anymore,” the plaintive voice continued. The little girl risked a sideways glance, and indeed, he did look very pale and unlikely to harm anyone. That said, something in the cold stare he cast—the only thing quite visible in his entire being—froze her.
“You know perfectly well that’s impossible. Sleep now and you can come see me tomorrow,” the sweet voice continued, slightly tense from having to contain itself in the darkness of the night. It then started a chant that would have filled the heart of the happiest with the deepest melancholy, but which, through force of habit, had a profoundly calming effect on the little girl. The quintessence of melancholy was now the only possible representation of peace and gentleness in the little girl’s mind.
“You’re a mean bogeyman, but you don’t scare me because Mommy will take care of you if you bother me,” the plaintive voice continued with a hint of defiance. With that, the little girl brought her little puppet closer to her pillow and fell asleep, absentmindedly twisting its hand while the bogeyman looked at her, contrite and pained. He too, seemed under the very powerful influence of nostalgia from the chant sung by a voice that sought to blend into the night.
The next day, the little girl walked past the next room and, standing on tiptoe, placed a kiss on her mother's cheek through the square that made her accessible. She watched her again as the nanny, with her tentacled hands, braided her and put on her daily school uniform while preparing her takeaway lunch, pausing only to button her top and smooth the wrinkles in her uniform skirt. The uniform was so heavy that she felt like she was wearing armour.
Her mother watched her leave through the square until she was out on the street and out of sight with her sisters. As the door opened, a gust of rain carried by the wind rushed into the cramped hallway, and her mother shivered. She called out to the nanny to lower the screen that separated the entrance from the street. It was a kind of foresail and did a good job of keeping the rain out, but the nanny deliberately didn't use it properly, knowing that the mother couldn't get to the front door to do it herself. This procession of small misfortunes she inflicted on the mother seemed to satisfy her petty spirit, seeking revenge against the life that had made her a servant to families more fortunate than her own.
The little girl had often observed this battle between the two women with a mixture of pity, anger, and helplessness. The nanny knew full well that the price of her defiance would be paid later when the father returned, provided the mother dared to complain, but she probably told herself that just being able to delay the outcome of the punishment was enough to give her the petty satisfaction of being able to have the upper hand, at least for the day. Outside, the trash was piling up in front of Mom's window, another petty act that gave boundless satisfaction to the nanny, who knew Mom was incapable of getting them out from under her window without her help. On monsoon days, all this created a vile cesspool which odours ended up bothering everyone, including the nanny. After the first attempts, which she personally suffered, she had lost her composure and had made sure to ensure regular trash collection during the monsoon.
The daily departure to the Good Shepherd School of the eponymous character, the greatest of shepherds, the saviour of our human sheep souls, or in other words Christ, took place in the early morning hours to avoid the rush that could have contaminated the path that separated the four girls' school from the parking lot, which was quite far from the building, with sweat and foul language. They returned home in the late afternoon, always as early as possible after school for the same reasons.
Everything was proceeding in the same daily routine that offered few, if any, variations on the same theme until that fateful evening. The little girl, after her daily routine with her mother and the bogeyman—who, oddly enough, was developing more defined contours each night except for the non-existent legs—had fallen asleep as usual when she was awakened by a dull thud. She slipped out of bed and found the household in a state of supreme excitement. It seemed that her mother, fed up with the garbage under her window, had thrown all her food and the utensils it was in out the window. This was to create enough anger in the neighbourhood about the garbage left there and the general state of the street. Phrases flew in all directions, and the little girl saw her mother yelling through the door at the nanny who was trying as best she could to justify the whole garbage business.
The little girl slowly slipped back behind the wall to escape all the noise made by these adults, which was causing her intense pain in her head and ears. She felt the bogeyman's presence beside her and saw that his body had now become completely visible except for his legs, so much so that he seemed to be floating. He was no longer just a cloud of water droplets giving the impression of a face like before. He was now a real person with a body that stopped at his hips and a well-defined face. She reached out to him with her hand and he gently took it in his own, which seemed immense. The touch of his skin was cold. Without a word, she followed him out of the room to her bedroom. She turned her face towards him and said in a soft voice, "I'm not afraid of you anymore. You're not that bad, and it's not your fault that I'm afraid anyway." The bogeyman said nothing but simply walked beside her with unsteady steps, the slowness of which tried to match the little girl's short stride. He looked at her with his large, unfathomable black eyes, but she was truly no longer afraid.
"What is your name?" the little girl asked.
"I have several names," several voices emanating from the bogeyman answered her. "My name is Deck Aurum," one replied. "My name is Dess Peration," a second replied. "My name is Disilu Shan Men," a third replied. She lost the rest of the names in the ensuing racket, but suddenly the voices fell silent and from the silence emerged the following exclamation: "My name is Gro Wing Up," echoed by several voices emanating from the bogeyman.
"That's strange," the girl retorted. When Grandma died, they put a fire epita on her stone that said Grandma, Mom, Aunt, and everything, and at the end, Rajambal. For you, that's going to be too many names. There won't be enough room on one stone.
"It's called an epitaph," said the bogeyman in a gentle voice, “but it doesn't matter because, you see, I'll never die and I'll never need one.”
And it was as she followed the bogeyman that evening that the little girl felt how futile it had been to try to make him leave before. That evening, something in her chest had made a strange noise in her head. She had felt, just below the satin band that her mother usually tied for her on holidays in a beautiful, bright white bow, on the left side, a kind of quivering like a bird trying to escape. The pain was very brief but tangible yet it would never equal in intensity what she would feel the next day with the events that took place there and which made her give a permanent presence as well as legs to the bogeyman.
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