As Darkness Reigned

It was the peak of winter in India and the air was embraced by a blanket of white fog. Rupali Mehrotra was underneath her blanket in the breezy cold night. She occasionally peeped out just to reassure herself that she was safe in the confines of her bedroom. She was scared to fits by what had happened today and she was unable to get the horrific visual out of her mind. She replayed the events of the evening in her mind again and again. She had never known fear like this ever before. She wanted to run away from here but had nowhere to go. She was lonely in a deserted place and every shadow was like a potential foe. Every whisper was like the call of Satan.

Rupali was the younger child of Kamal and Anita Mehrotra. Since the birth of their first child Annay, they had moved out of Kamal’s elder brother’s house in Canada, where Kamal had been working as a historian and journalist. A research company in Canada had found the perfect man in Kamal as per the requirements of their new project- to find out every possible secret and hidden supernatural mystery in the ‘ghost’ dwellers in remote regions of India. They knew that Kamal was a practical yet adventurous man. He had immense intellect and was very often praised as an absolute genius by fellow colleagues. After consulting his elder brother, Kamal had consciously decided to move to India along with his wife and newborn baby boy Annay.

Since the research was regarding the ‘other’ world, Kamal had decided to house in a village in one of the most remote states of India- Jharkhand. The age old Peepal trees were the supposed niche of the daunting souls. So he did not want a comfortable town or city, but a small village near the woods. While searching for such a residence Kamal came across a website that had captured a beautiful cottage and the caption read- “Ranchi’s most beautiful cottage left abandoned”. The article said that a peasant family who owned this cottage had mysteriously fled from the village many years ago. Since then the house was vacant and was very often used by the forest research departments to hold meetings due to its proximity to the dense forest of Jharkhand. This bore the answer to all his queries. Very soon, the research company of Canada had completed all the legal formalities and acquired the cottage for Kamal.

One day before he had to fly to India, Kamal was sleeping on the left side of his bed adjacent to the bay window of his apartment while Anita was on the right. A sudden wind brushed across his face. Within a second of this, he was feeling high, his head was spinning like crazy. His chest felt heavy and his heart was pounding furiously. He was perspiring breathlessly. Yet again, a wind blew towards his direction. But this time the wind hushed in his ear- “Don’t Come”. Soon after this, everything felt pacified. He got up in an instinct. His palms were dry, face was cold. No sweat. His chest felt back to rhythm. He side a glance. Anita was sleeping soundly. Baby Annay was lying in his cradle at the side of Anita’s bed. “It must have been a nightmare”, he thought. “But how could it be? It all seemed so real”. Exhausted from all day’s packing, Kamal went back to sleep.

15 days later, Kamal and Anita were comfortably settled in their new house. It had been cleaned up and did not seem as if it had ever been abandoned. Days passed and nothing strange happened. Kamal had started his work. Most of his day was spent in the woods while Anita stayed at home with Annay. They were soon blessed with a baby girl, whom they named Rupali. Life was now perfect. Kamal was digging hard for secrets along with the research department. He regularly sent reports and updates to the company back in Canada.

Months turned into years and Annay was now a grown up teenager. He was very bright in studies. So Kamal had decided to send him to Canada for higher studies where he would live under the guidance of his uncle. Rupali was now 16. She had insisted that she would take care of the house while Kamal, Anita and Annay would be off to Canada. Her parents hesitated initially but eventually agreed. In the absence of family, Rupali had a lot of personal time to read, walk and paint. She often went to the woods to observe the exquisite serenity of nature and wrote verses to its beauty. She found solitude immensely consoling and satisfying. One usual day, she went to the woods after having her lunch. She was listening to music on her iPod while walking swiftly. She heard sudden rustling of the leaves behind her. But when she turned around, the wind was as still as a coffin. To Rupali’s utter shock, there were no bundles of leaves on the ground whatsoever. She was now tired and had come a long way from home so she sat down on a log under a Banyan tree. She felt the blood rush out of her body when the aerial roots of the Banyan tree clutched her from the abdomen. By the time she could reckon anything she was not on her feet. She was carried and swung ruthlessly by the branches of the Banyan tree. She tried to break through, but only vain attempts. She put in every ounce of effort she could and ripped the roots off her body. She fell with a thud on the log and broke her phone. But she had no time to halt and reconcile. She ran like a wild beast, unaware of any direction. She must have remembered the way back home, because she was now standing outside her cottage. She jumped in and briskly locked all the doors and windows and hopped up to her bed.

As a coincidence of sorts, the night was exceptionally dark and gloomy. Her own house was giving her an eerie feeling. Rupali did not even dare to blink, let alone sleep. She was afraid what lied ahead. She was repeatedly visualizing the day’s events, trying to get some sense of it. But replaying those horrific moments traumatized her even more. Even the tick-tock of the wall clock and voice of the cricket invoked a chill down her spine. She couldn’t turn up to anybody for help. So she silently prayed.

“Mom and dad would be here any hour. And then, everything will be fine”, Rupali consoled herself.

As the clock struck 4 A.M, the doorbell rang. Rupali hoped for the best but was not prepared for the worst.

“Fear has its own phantoms which are more fearsome than the fear”, she recalled what her father used to teach her. She gathered courage and pushed aside her quilt. She closed her eyes and ran to the door.

“Who is it?” she stammered.

“Rupali, open the door! It’s us.”

Rupali breathed a sigh of relief as she recognized her mother’s voice. At this moment, it seemed the most melodious voice that had ever hit her eardrums. She slammed the door open and hugged Anita tightly. Anita caressed her lose hair and tried to look at her. But Rupali wouldn’t let go.

“What is it child? Why are you so distressed?” Kamal asked out of concern.

Rupali had turned deaf ears to anything anybody said. She was sobbing uncontrollably. Anita held her and brought her inside. She made her sit on the sofa and sat beside her. Kamal went to the kitchen and brought a glass of water. Rupali drank the whole glass in one gulp and calmed down a bit. She looked at her parents who looked unsurprisingly baffled.

“And then I just ran back home and didn’t move an inch from my bed until now”, Rupali said as she concluded her explanation.

Anita and Kamal looked at each other for a moment, and then started laughing. Rupali stared in awe.

“What is wrong with both of you? Do you think it’s a joke?” Rupali burst out in anger.

Kamal composed himself and politely told her, “See, you’ve been living alone in the house for quite a few days. And you’re just a child Rupali. You must have been over-thinking because it is practically impossible for such a thing to happen.”

“Dad do you think I’m mad?”

“No! I’m just saying that ----”

“But that is what you’re saying exactly!”

“Calm down Rupali.” It was Anita who spoke this time. “Your father is right. Just think for once, if it would have been real how could you manage to escape? You aren’t more powerful than the spirits that you can just rip them off and run!”

Rupali was now silent. Was it really an illusion? Have I been hallucinating all this while?

“I think you should go get some sleep or else you’ll fall ill”, said Kamal.

Rupali blankly walked to her bedroom and without a second though, fell asleep. When she woke up, she was all alone in her bedroom. She put on her slippers and went out of the room. The drawing room was also empty. Nobody was there in the kitchen too. Rupali had started panicking now. She checked inside every room and corner of the cottage but couldn’t find anybody. She was feeling sick in her stomach. Where have they gone? It was already evening and Anita rarely went out of the house after dark. Rupali went out to the lobby and found Anita sitting on the staircase. She could see only her back but she noticed that Anita was knitting a grey sweater.

“Mom, you’re sitting here and I have been searching for you all over”

Anita did not answer.

Rupali walked forward and as soon as she kept her hand on Anita’s shoulder, she disappeared. It was Rupali standing alone in the lobby. She wanted to shout but simply stood there, frozen. Just then she saw Anita and Kamal from a distance. But now she was reluctant to believe anything she saw. Kamal walked over to her. “My princess has woken up. We had gone to the market. Sorry for being late. How are you feeling now?”

“Uhmm—I’m fine” Rupali didn’t want to tell anything to her parents now when she was not even sure of her own self. It was as if she was living in two worlds at a time. And she did not know where to belong. But the link between both the worlds was gradually drifting apart beneath her feet.

After dinner that night, Anita sat with Rupali in her bedroom. Rupali kept watching Anita as she knitted. It was a grey sweater; just like the one that lady had been knitting in the lobby. Rupali couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Mom, I wanted to tell you something”

“Yes?”

“I saw a lady sitting on the staircase today. She looked exactly like you and she was knitting the same sweater. But then she simply disappeared”

Anita just smiled.

“Please trust me. I feel something is terribly wrong”

“I know”

Rupali stared. All the facts now came running to her brain. Anita did not even know how to knit. And her father, Kamal, he was a researcher himself, always keen on supernatural mysteries. How could he just rubbish off what Rupali had experienced?

Now she knew. The lady sitting on the bed was not her mother. The man in the next room was not her father. But how did it matter now anyway. She was no longer Rupali, either.

The next morning when the doorbell rang, Rupali opened the door.

“Rupali, how have you been? And where is your phone? We wanted to tell you that our flight had been delayed so we’d come today. You must have been waiting for us yesterday!”

“I told you, Don’t Come.” She grinned.