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«He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ » («Mending Wall» by Robert Frost)

My neighbour, Mr Roy, never read Robert Frost’s «Mending Wall». That’s why when the monsoon wind brought down the bamboo wall separating our gardens, he didn’t care. I had no objection to witnessing his cabbage bed every day from my cauliflower one. Our gardens bled into each other, his fluffy cabbages, my flowery cauliflowers. He made no effort to mend it, nor did I.

But the thing that disturbed me was the scarecrow that adorned his garden. It was at the south corner of the garden where the cabbage bed ended. Since the wall was there, I never had the chance to meet him in a baggy, tattered shirt, with straw-stuffed hands stretched wide as if reaching for something or someone. Its button eyes seemed fixed on mine, unblinking and sparkling. They seemed pretty happy meeting me, as if they had been waiting for this very moment. And the thought ran a shiver inside me. But I could not take my eyes off it.

“It is an ordinary scarecrow”, I told myself and forced myself into the house.

But the next morning, when I opened my window to welcome the morning sun, the scarecrow was clearly visible from my bedroom. It seemed to have shifted slightly from its earlier position.  And it looked different, too. The baggy, tattered shirt was not on him. Instead, his straw body was wrapped in a length of black plastic sheet, fluttering in the wind like a parachute.

From then on, it started changing its outfit every day.

On Monday, it wore a butcher’s apron. The cloth sagged with wetness, dripping dark red stains into the cabbage. As I opened my bedroom window, a smell of iron clung to the air, sharp and nauseating.

On Tuesday, it was wrapped in a burial shroud. The veil stuck to its face in a way as if something beneath it struggled for breath. Loose earth sifted from its sleeves in a steady fall. I shivered and closed my window.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And the thought made me insane. “Am I going to be mad?”

By Wednesday, when I peeped through the window. The frame had dressed as a soldier. Medals hung tarnished on its chest, and one glass eye gleamed pale in the mist. I felt that eye gazing at me congealing my blood in my veins. I shut the window with a slam. I vowed not to look at it again, but the attraction of it was unavoidable, and it seemed as if it was calling me, an irresistible call that I couldn’t ignore. So, on Thursday, I tiptoed on the front porch and looked at it.

The scarecrow was standing naked. Its straw had knotted into a ghastly anatomy: ribs pressing outward, jaw stretched into a scream, stalks jutting like splintered bones. The crows huddled on its shoulders. This time, I couldn’t turn back, but looked at it for a long time. My heartbeat stopped under my ribcage. Then I collapsed. When I gained my consciousness, I found Roy beside me. His wife fanning me. They had heard me screaming and ran to my rescue. I thanked them, then told Roy everything. He only shook his head.

“We left an old coat there months ago. Nothing else. You should get some rest, you’ve been overworking yourself,” he said.

On Friday, I should have kept the shutters shut. I should have left the garden to its silence. But something drew me, some dreadful pull. I could not stop myself.

And there it stood, vindictive.

The scarecrow wore a pressed white kurta, my kurta. Its straw fingers clutched the broken fence, scratching, scratching, until wooden splinters dropped like brittle teeth into the soil. The head, once painted, had slumped into a dreadful familiarity: the nose sagged, the mouth parted, the skin-colour dull and slack.

I froze.

It was my face.

My own eyes stared back at me from that withered head, glassy, dry, unblinking. My own mouth gaped, stiff with silence.

And then I felt a tightening beneath my skin, as though something coarse had sprouted there. My joints ached and cracked. My arms grew heavy, stiff. When I glanced down, I saw dry fibres poking through my wrists, thin, brittle straw. The air rasped in my throat, parched, rustling as stalks rubbed together in the wind. I clutched at myself, but the flesh beneath my fingers was no longer soft. It was splitting, hollowing. I looked across Mr Roy’s garden through the shattered fence. Our eyes met. My own face grinned back at me.