Title: The Old Manor House
Genre: Horror / Psychological /Supernatural
Author: George Manavalan
Synopsis:
A married couple moves into an old family Manor in hopes of converting it into a resort. But the house seems to have a mind of its own. The locals tell tales of strange spirits in the house which the couple must now deal with while fighting their own demons.
Plot Summary:
Act 1: Inheritance
Jathin and Radhika have been married for three years, and had started a restaurant that is currently on the verge of shutting down. With no real other options financially and to escape from the judgmental eyes of their society they decide to move to jathin’s old village where he technically has a large manor and land that he inherited from his mother.
Jathin has never visited this place. as his mother till her death was very against the house and heading back to their parent’s village. When Jathin asked about the house to his mother her response was always “ah vidu nashichu ponam”
But now with no other financial options, the couple decides to move in and renovate the old house, to either convert it into a resort or sell it off to a buyer.
Radhika having studied architecture could help with this as well, greatly keeping down the cost.
The house itself is in the outskirts of the village. The estate is perched alone atop a hill, overlooking a decaying village in northern Kerala. The Manor is huge with acres of land around it that makes it quite isolated.
Act 2: The Manor
Jathin and Radhika move into the old house and hire local contractors to renovate the house. The house has electricity but no water supply. But there is a large well in the back garden which they must use for water.
They run into some trouble finding workers as the house has a reputation in the village and no one ones to work there. But they find a contractor from the next village called Muneer who agrees to work with them.
Muneer explains how the locals believe how the land is cursed. And fills them in on how the place is where the old family used to do “chattan seva”. Jathin is shocked to find that his grandfather was a cultist of some sort. But both Jathin and Radhika being modern educated people say they don’t believe in such things and neither does Muneer.
But over the next few days the workers face strange occurrences. Scratching’s in the walls, seeing shadowy figures, and even find the mutilated carcass of a deer nearby.
A week later one of the workers fall from the 2nd floor gravely injuring him. Jathin and Muneer suspect it was old railings but a young worker who had witnessed the fall insist that the had seen a shadowy figure near the man.
The man is hospitalised and Muneer informs them that the workers refuse to return to the house after the incident.
Left with no other options Jathin and Radhika decide to try and finish the rest of the renovations themselves.
Jathin rants about everyone believing in such superstitious crap. But Radhika reveals that she too has been experiencing strange things in the house. She tells her husband that for the past few days she has been hearing crying at night and the sound of moving chains, but whenever she tries to find the source there is no one there.
Act 3: Radhika
Jathin seems the only one immune to the hauntings, the focus shifts to Radhika. Radhika has been having bad dreams ever since she arrived at the Manor. She hears whispers in the walls, shadowy figures and of course the chains and crying.
That night she awakens to hear more crying this time coming from right next to her in bed. She first thinks it’s Jathin but when she looks instead of her husband she sees a women there chained to the bed crying, who starts to scream when she meets her eyes.
Radhika wakes up sweating, realising that was a dream. But she couldn’t help but feel it was more real than a dream and she couldn’t forget the women’s face.
Using her drawing skills she tries to draw the young girls face as a side project while working on the blueprints of the house. On the blueprints she was working on she realizes that something was wrong as well, as the spaces did not add up. She soon realizes that a wall in the downstairs library was hollow. And mention’s this to Jathin asking him to break it down.
Jathin refuses as it would add more work and financial burden to the project. A rift had started to form between the couple ever since coming here, And Jathin had begun to drink more since the workers left leaving Radhika to feel even more isolated.
As the days go by Radhika’s hallucinations get worse and Jathin gets more and more frustrated with the project. Radhika keeps seeing the women in different corners of the house.
All this accumulates one night when Radhika is drawing water from the well. When Radhika takes out the bucket she finds it filled with blood instead of water. She throws it on the floor and screams.
Jathin comes running to check on why she is screaming he finds her as a mess on the floor, but when she tells him what happens, there is no blood only water. They fight once more and rift between them grows worse.
Act 4: The Past
That night Radhika has the dream of the chained women again and she gets up panting and sweating. She decides enough is enough. She goes downstairs grabs an axe and starts smashing down the false wall. She soon discovers a set of stairs leading downstairs.
She set’s the axe down and walks downstairs to a large abandoned basement. But suddenly as she turns around the basement is light with fire, and a scene plays out in front of her almost like a vision.
The basement no longer looked abandoned instead it looked like a place where a cult would perform rituals. There were markings on the floor and walls. And there were three people in the basement. The first was a girl around 20, and Radhika immediately recognise her as Jathin’s mother.
Then on a stone table in front of her was the women from her dreams in chains she had seen in her dreams, the woman was unconscious. And standing above her was a man in cult robes holding a sacrificial knife.
Jathin’s mother spoke fearfully: “Appa, ithinu verre vazyi onum ille?”.
After mumbling a prayer the man said: “ninte ullil oru jeevan valarem engil adhyam namal Ganishka devanu oru Jeevan nalganam”
Then he continues to mumble his prayers. But then the girl in chain starts to wake up. This flusters the man as the ritual was not complete, but as the chained women begins to cry and scream, the man plunges the knife down into her heat killing her.
Radhika falls to the ground and covers her mouth in fear. But then the chained women open’s her eyes looks directly at her and screams. The vision fades away and Radhika is back in the abandonded basement. But the only difference is the women in chains is still there, standing up now menacingly. And it runs at her.
Radhika runs back up the stairs and the man is chasing behind her. As she enters the house again she can hear the chains clinging all around her. The chained women keeps disappearing and reappearing as it chases her.
After a few rounds she reaches back in the library where she broke down the wall. She finds the axe and decides to make a stand there. She listens and hears the chains running towards her and instinctively swings the axe, getting the axe in the gut. But when she looks at what she had struck she realizes it was not the women in chains but Jathin who had been struck.
Jathin had woken up and come down on hearing the commotion only to get struck by the axe by his wife. Radhika falls to the ground with her husband but Jathin bleeding out and dies a few seconds later. Radhika looks up to find the women in chains, no longer crying but smiling down at her.
Act 5: Finalle
Muneer comes back to the house with a couple of his workers. The nearby locals were worried as they had not heard from the couple for a while. As Muneer enters the Manor house, he finds the dead body of Jathin on the floor still being held by a now insane Radhika who keeps mumbling:
“Aval avallude jeevan thiriche eduthu”
The story ends with a final shot of the old Manor house, with a shadowy figure of the women in chains still seen at the window.