Second Lodge

Chapter 3

‘Blossoms’ belonged to Rexin"s family, it was renovated into a concrete skeleton with glass panes by his father Mr.Alex Mathew, an expatriate engineer worked in the oil mines of gulf deserts. Rexin Alex Mathew and his younger brother Robin Alex Mathew spent their childhood with their parents Alex and Anna in the middle east.

Rexin came back to India for graduation. He got himself enrolled in National Institute of Technology, Suratkal near the port city of Manglore in south Karnataka. During the final years of his graduation Rexin was devastated by a terrible accident which took life of his parents and little brother. The pileup happened in the December of 2003 near Sharjah, took lives of 75 people. The incident made him an orphan, but his Grandmother, a bold sharp-witted septuagenarian came forward and consoled him.Katrina Mathew in her early seventies took in charge of blossoms, she made sure that Rexin come out of trauma and complete his engineering.Rexin did complete his graduation in engineering and got placed in a well known consultancy company in Bangalore, for several months he continued, as moving further the job and environment became torturous to him. He wanted to come back, under the wings of his old granny he found some relief, his grandmother didn’t object, she was also missing him badly.

During college days Rexin was an Atheist, he devoured books of Dawkins, Hitchens, young atheist like Sam Harris became his role model. One day from a Higgin bothoms he bought a book, which was bestseller written by a yogi. The book was full of mystic adventures of seers who lived during the pre-independence era. Many incidences described in the book actively or passively suggest the existence of afterlife. The atheist in him was slowly becoming an agnostic, Rexin"s mind wanted to believe in life after death, because that is the only way he can console the death of his beloved parents and younger brother. He believed that they exist in some other dimension in this universe. The intuition of life after death concreted in his mind after reading ‘MANY LIVES AND MANY MASTERS’ by Brian.L.Weiss, the psychiatrist who revealed a case of early lives in a patient. The quest for life after death brought Rexin into the fold of paranormal researchers. He met Hemant Nair through a mutual friend, Hemant had completed post graduation and was in a preparation to commit full time paranormal research.

Hemanth proposed an idea of volunteering for a paranormal research team investigating an old jewish house in Mattanchery, Cochin. The team was led by a lady named Anushmitha Chatterji. The house was built in late 19th century and was abandoned by a rich jewish family who left for Israel after formation of the Jewish state. It was under the possession of a well-known Muslim spice merchant named Kannamkandy Rawther, after his death his elder son Ibrahim Rawther sold the house to a group of entrepreneurs who wanted to convert that into a heritage café. But one after another hard luck followed those who ventured into this project. When a young entrepreneur was killed in an accident, they were forced to back off from the project.

The house become a instant internet fame and aroused interest in paranormal research team to investigate the truth behind it, Anushmitha Chatterji was the team leader, she was very particular in getting a person acquainted with Jewish traditions in her team, Noah Yehudi was an enthusiast in parapsychology, he was introduced to Mrs.Chatterji by a mutual friend. Mrs. Chatterji had learned the history of Kerala"s Jewish settlement, myths, beliefs and rituals of early Jewish community from him. Noah heard stories about sorceries done by some persons in old days, and rumors about black Sabbath, it"s a communion of the cult to honor the devil and proclaim their subjugation to the Satan. Bed time stories about ibburs and dybbuks were his favorites and he insisted his grandmother to tell those stories. But as he grew old Noah passed these stories as mere myths, old jewish fairytales.

They got items used in the alter of devil, a femur bone of some goat like animal, a china petridish with dried semen and blood, human hairs, ambergris, ivory handled fillet knives, black candles. These suspicious items were in a huge wooden box above the attic. Mrs.chatterji could easily make out that the early inhabitants of this vintage jewish house were sorcerers who practiced Black Sabbath. There might be some curse spelled upon the house and because of that the inauspicious things happened to those who try to deal with it. Mrs.Chatterji recommended a Kabbalist exorcism to be done to wade of the evil in the house and lift the curse, but the young businessmen were not ready to spend more money on the house, they wanted to dispose it and move on. They sold the house to another restaurant.

Noah and Hemanth were the late joiners, Anamika was helping Katrina in the kitchen preparing some snacks and tea. Rexin was in his room browsing internet, and when both came, he showed printouts about various things he was searching for the background study.

“What is this printout?” asked Hemant.

“Description of similar stories world wide” said Rexin.

“Made the list of all equipment that we needed for the mission, and I think the vehicle for our conveyance will be given by the company, “. Rexin handed a printout to Ana, a paper which contains name of some items.

Ana started reading

“DSLR Camera, Full spectrum Camera, CCTV Camera, Thermal Camera, EVP Recorder, EMF meters, Motion detectors, EM pump”. Ana stopped.

“We have to buy all these?” asked her.

“Yes these are all basic equipments.” Rexin confirmed.

“OK..Guys”…Hemant continued. “We have to assing specific responsibility to each individual. Rexin is good with gadgets we can choose him as the Equipment manager. I prefer Noah to take up the task of Case manager along with that he may deal with the finance.”

“Hemant, then you lead the team” Rexin insisted.

“I too have that opinion” said Ana.

“I have no objection in that”. Hemant agreed reluctantly.

“Any way we need two or three volunteers, an offsite consultant who is reliable, whom we could regularly contact and seek help. A team documentarian to assist the Equipment manager and above all a veteran psychic.” said Noah.

“ We have to accommodate another five people in our team.”

“Five or four”.

“I will update it on our website and volunteers will folk around”. Said Ana.

“No, we will use our contact to get the best, online publicity will harm the covertness of this mission.” Said Noah.

“That"s right” Said the Team leader. “We will publish the details of our investigation online, after completion of the task”.

“What is our next move?” asked Ana

“We will call the lady”

“Which lady”?

“Rebecca Kurian”.