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It’s midnight and the bus screeched to a halt at the bus-stop. The conductor pushed the door open. I alighted from the bus and observed the signpost. Yes, this is my destination, I told myself. A few hours back, I got a call from my parents asking me to come to my grandparents’ village for my grandfather had suddenly taken sick.

A gravelly road ran across the vast plains to the village. The moon’s shining brightly above me, and I didn’t even need a torch, needless to say, these remote villages do not have electricity.

I am reminded of my childhood holidays I’d spent at my grandparents’ place. Grandpa and grandma would tell me stories which I used to listen with great interest. The only thing that I never liked about them, they always quarreled. Last year, they had a bitter quarrel and my grandma had hurled abuses at him and cursed that he would die a miserable death. And my grandfather had returned the curse by saying that he would haunt her till her death.

Lost in my thoughts, I seemed to have walked a long distance from the bus-stop. I looked around; the vast stretches of the land were barren except for scattered vegetation. Not a single soul in the visible horizon. My legs started to tremble and my heart started to skip a beat.

The loose clips suspending from my bag were striking against each other and were making weird sounds. ‘Sanjeev….’ I heard someone call me, a whisper, when fear gushed from my spine and surfaced as goose bumps on my skin. I stopped there and stood motionless, not knowing if I should turn behind. The surroundings were tranquil again. Silence is sometimes scary.

‘Sanjeevvvvvv………’ I heard the whisper, this time, more clearly as if the thing was gaining on me. Shivering with fear, without even looking back, I broke into a sprint. Somebody was behind me, I clearly heard him call my name. It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t my imagination.

The village was getting closer and I mustered all my strength and ran faster and faster. As I reached the village I slowed down, and was gasping for breath. I have never experienced such a thing in my life before. Whatever it was, scared the shit out of me.

There was nobody in the village. Not an uncommon thing though, people living in villages are seldom awake at this time in the night. But this didn’t bother me. I was all alone. If the thing that followed me at the outskirts attacks me again, I would have nobody to come to my rescue. But my thoughts seemed to kill time and I’d already reached my grandparents’ home.

I expected relatives and others, around, but there wasn’t anyone. Perhaps they were all inside, I walked to the door and knocked at it. The door was not locked though. I gently pushed it open. It was eerily dark and that there was no one inside made me cringe in fear.

I switched on the torch and flashed it around. The house was empty. There are no chairs, no tables. As I frantically searched for everyone, I just realized that I’d seen something move. I heard a low purring sound and I could gauge its distance from me, by the soft platter of its feet and the claws striking the ground. I flashed my light in the direction of the purr.

I saw two glowing red ambers and I jumped back in terror. The torch slipped out of my hand and rolled on the ground. The beam had circled the walls of the room before the torch stopped rolling. I slowly extended my hand to fetch the torch when I suddenly saw on the wall, a shadow emerge from a corner, so huge and so dark, so ghastly. I pulled the torch and flashed the beam. The cat, phew, how much it had scared me.

Then I heard a low wail. I flashed the torch in that direction. I was even more freaked out. A woman was sitting down on the ground with her hands folded and her head buried into her knees. A banshee? What if it is someone whom I knew? I gathered all my courage and walked to her. And put my hand on her.

In the faint moonlight, I could see the wavy hairs and as she slowly raised her head, I could see her face weighed down by old age as seen from the wrinkles on her forehead.

“Grandma?” I shrieked in delight. There was no sign of joy on her face. She again buried her head and started to cry.

“What’s wrong grandma, where are others, where is grandfather?” I held her knee and shook her.

“Grandpa suffered a stroke and passed away on the way to hospital. Everyone had gone to pay the last rites,” she sobbed.

“Why did they leave you alone?” I was angry at them, for they shouldn’t have left her behind, all alone. She didn’t reply. “Let’s go and get you some sleep,” I tried to comfort her.

“No,” she screamed pushing me aside. “I will not go into that room, its haunted, haunted by your grandpa’s ghost. He said he would come back to seek his revenge, and he will keep his word,” she spoke with such assertiveness that I almost believed in what she had said.

“Our fear is the ghost. There are no ghosts,” I told her as I led her to the room. The door was huge and was made of rosewood. Only a man of my grandfather’s stature can open it effortlessly. I had to push it hard enough, and then it slowly moved on its hinges, with a creaking sound.

The room, for it was properly ventilated, was illuminated with the moonlight. The giant rosewood four-poster stood infront of us projecting a splendid and a magnificent look. The rocking chair would have missed its owner, but for its inanimateness would never let us know.

I helped grandma climb the four-poster and as she lay on the bed, I pulled up the quilt. “There are no ghosts,” I reemphasized, “I will be sitting on the sofa over there.”

She smiled back at me and I loosened my clasp. I was tired partly because of the journey and partly because of the unknown thing that made me run. I slowly fell into a gentle slumber.

It must have been an hour or so, when I was woken up by a thumping sound. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The heavy four-poster was up on two legs and it came crashing to the floor. This repeated for two to three times before it finally stopped.

Silence ruled the surroundings once again. I immediately ran to the bed, whispered, “Grandma, get up… get up, we need to get out of here” and jerked her, trying to wake her up.

She pushed the quilt aside and stepped down from the bed. I looked around while she held onto me, firmly. Outside the window, the branches shook gently under the wind, and the wind howled in the trees. The rocking chair creaked on its own and swung back and forth.

Grandma clasped my hand tightly as we started to walk towards the door. As I placed my hand on the door, I was thrown aback as if somebody had pushed me with brute force. The doors suddenly closed on their own and banged against the sill.

The room was freakishly cold. I could feel the malice and the deep rooted hatred. This couldn’t be my grandfather. It was even more evil. Or perhaps it was him?

“Sanjeevvvvvvv, don’t……” I heard the same chilling voice again. The voice sounded very clear and was very familiar. Grandma was frightened downright. I could feel her hands tremble in fear.

“See, I told you he’ll come,” she said in a tremulous voice. I flinched at the sight of a man in the rocking chair appear and then vanish in quick succession. The shadows of the branches outside the window, cast on the walls, suddenly started to grow in size. They looked like giant arms trying to grab us.

I ran to the door and tried to open it frantically. The door suddenly opened and I held the hand of my grandmother literally dragging her out as we ran away from the house.

My grandmother who was looking behind all the time shrieked, “There he comes.”

I never looked behind, all I had to do was to get as far as I could from the house. As we ran into the streets, I realized that the huts and other houses had been deserted. Not a human being or an animal in sight. The entire place had been abandoned.

Something sinister had happened. Grandma was already panting and covered in sweat, and so was I. In a few minutes we had reached the gravelly road that leads to the bus-stop.

‘Sanjeevvvvvv, don’t…….’ the same haunting voice, I heard again. Why me? Grandma was already dead tired and she collapsed to the ground. I heard a low whirring of a bus; we’d almost reached the main road.

But grandma was not in a position to move. I loosened her grip and started waving my hands and shouting for help as I ran towards the bus. I’d almost reached the main road when I looked behind.

An apparition was sitting on its knees next to grandma. It hadn’t taken me much time to realize that it was the ghost of my grandfather.

His skin was very pale. And the thick blue veins formed striations that swelled through his skin. There was no sclera in his eyes. They were so dark that you feel that you will be sucked into the vast emptiness if you stare at them for a while.

There was no smile on his face and the lips were chapped. And he ran his whitish hands over the face of my grandmother; she became more and more lifeless.

I was scared. My grandfather’s ghost was looking at me with the totally blank eyes as he sucked the life out of my grandmother. I was scared. A chill ran down my body, the warmth slowly vanished. My legs couldn’t carry me anymore and I slowly fell to the ground.

‘Sanjeev, don’t be afraid,’ I heard the voice very clearly and then everything suddenly blanked out.

**************************************

“The same result again, from the MRI scan,” the neurologist said. Nothing’s changed. “It’s a very peculiar case. He was pronounced brain dead when he was admitted to this hospital. But there wasn’t a complete necrosis of the cerebral neurons.”

“Shock pushes him into a dream like state, and then he remembers what had happened a few minutes before he jumped into the current state. In the state of shock, his eyes and ears seem to carry some message to his brain which is otherwise in a vegetative state”

“So there is no way in which he can recover?” the psychiatrist asked.

“This is amygdala where fear memories are formed,” he said pointing to a portion in the scan, “as compared to the normal brain, this fear is inhibiting his brain from sending and receiving responses. And hence his comatose condition.”

“In simpler words, if he needs to wake up, he should not be scared.”

“Let us start the shock treatment once again”, he said.

**************************************

It’s midnight and the bus screeched to a halt at the bus-stop. The conductor pushed the door open. I alighted from the bus and observed the signpost. Yes, this is my destination......

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"The reasons why puncturing the skin should be regarded with some degree of awe are not far to seek, for in the first place, there is the drawing of blood, which to the savage world over is full of significance as a rejuvenating and immortalizing factor. There is in addition to the opening of numerous inlets for evil to enter. . ." (Hambly Wilfrid D. 1925. The History of Tattooing and its Significance, p. 233)

Every ghost story normally starts with the protagonist being a paranormal skeptic but finally ends with him believing in the inexplicable phenomenon. But this is different. I’ve always believed in the negative energy; ghosts, elves, demons do exist, in the same world in which we live.

This may sound as weird as it can be. But this only bolstered my belief in demons. It was a perfect winter night. A thick fog engulfed the street, which was more desolate than ever before. Few hippies were making themselves comfortable in front of a bonfire. There was a chill surrounding me. I would’ve considered that normal but for the reason why I and my old friends are meeting over.

The streetlights flickered; an electrical disturbance is always an indication of an evil lurking around the corner. I could hear a dog howling at a far off distance. With hands in my coat to keep myself warm, I ambled towards the old building at the street’s end.

Over the past few days in Tia’s life, some abnormal events had occurred that finally led to her death. Niki too died under suspicious circumstances. I’ve seen their bodies, post mortem. In both cases, it was clearly evident that they’d undergone through a great deal of pain and anguish at the time of their death, though there were not any marks of external injuries that could’ve caused their death.

The only thing that seemed weird to us is the fact that Tia visited a psychic, days before she died. The very next thing that plagued my thoughts, Was she possessed?

We had invited the psychic, old man Joe too who had been treating Tia.

My friends were already waiting for me. As we started to greet each other, an elderly gentleman knocked at the open door with his walking stick.

“That must be old man Joe,” a voice from the gathering spoke out.

“I can feel the presence of a negative energy. It’s so bad,” old man Joe said as he walked towards us. He adorned a white beard and his cheeks were full, and looked very healthy for his age, except that he carried a walking stick.

“It is very close by. I can sense it. It’s very strong. It’s not a human spirit. It’s far more powerful..” he spoke and held his head. He was about to fall when one of us helped him sit on the chair.

He took a deep breath and looked at all of us.

“Sir, we know that Tia had visited you on some purpose. In case you didn’t know, she passed away a few days back,” I said when his face turned pale; clearly he looked scared.

“Does anyone believe in ghosts?” he cleared his throat and started to speak louder. I wanted to say an ‘Yes’ but fearing that my friends will make fun of me, I remained calm.

“There are a few believers as there are nonbelievers,” he said staring at me. I felt very uncomfortable by the way he stared at me.

“Your personal belief has nothing to do with their existence. The devil has existed long before man. Different religions have different ways of explaining their existence. For example, Christianity says that these devils are nothing but fallen angels.”

There was a long pause.

“A man of science may not believe in demons and ghosts, because his observation is purely based on his sensory perception. But is that all? There are more things around us which we cannot see and which we cannot feel. Has anyone of us ventured into the dark, all alone? Well, let me not deviate...”

“... There are spirits surrounding you and so are the demons. A devil or a demon is different from a spirit in the sense that a spirit may be human, the soul of the same person. But a demon is not human, though it may infest a human being. A demon is something more powerful, filled with more negative energy and hence you attribute the terms rage and malice to it; negative energy, obviously means destruction.”

The skeptics looked perplexed and unconvinced while I, the believer knew whatever he was trying to say was perfectly true.

“We don’t understand the connection,” a voice from amongst the skeptics, spoke.

Old man Joe took a deep breath, “Your friend Tia consulted me, after she started having visions. It’s a very rare case of possession, when the person possessed knows that she’s been possessed.”

“What visions,” yet somebody interrupted again.

“Visions of a demon, she could feel it inside her, the coldness and the deep rooted hatred. The moment Tia stepped into my place, I felt it too. Never before have I felt so much negative energy concentrated in a single entity,” Joe answered.

“So why Tia and how did it find Tia,” I asked him. He leaned back gaping at me, “That’s a nice question. I don’t know why Tia, but I can explain how it found Tia.”

“Demons as I said are a form of negative energy. And as your laws of physics would state that most forms of energy need a medium to be transferred, a demon would need a medium too. Hence they choose vulnerable people, why people, why not animals is again a case of convenience; humans are dexterous and adept at performing many things which animals cannot do. Why vulnerable, to attain complete control of the being. And the inlet for it to enter Tia’s body was a tattoo on her hand.”

He paused for a while, as we all panicked and started to sweat. Perhaps, Joe hasn’t noticed this and he continued.

“The art of tattooing is not a fashion statement alone. Tribes from various parts of the world throughout ages have tattooed religious and spiritual symbols on their bodies to denote their statuses, talismans to ward off evils etcetera.”

“She had a sigil tattooed on her arm and when she showed me her tattoo, I knew it was something related to demons. The tattoo resembled closely the insignia of Lucifer, Azazel and even Baphomet. My limited knowledge on tattoos couldn’t give me an idea of the demon but for sure I knew how the demon had entered her,” He paused for a while and noticed our pallid faces.

“You do know something about the tattoo, don’t you?” he questioned.

All of us nodded in affirmation. And then one after another we raised our sleeves to show him the tattoos on our arms.

“Oh God!”

“It’s the same one I’ve seen on her arm,” he cried aloud and jumped out of his seat. He collected his walking stick and started to walk away chanting some prayers.

“I am not involved in this, I am certainly not involved in this,” he said as he approached the door. “You all are going to die. This demon is so wicked that it will consume you all. You cannot escape its fury... May God save you all,” he said as he slammed the door behind him and walked away.

Inside the room we were looking at each other’s face, not knowing what to do next. The door suddenly opened with a thud much to our bewilderment and fright. A huge dark figure stood there at the door with a gleaming knife in his hand. It was old man Joe again. I saw him grip his fingers around the hilt and he slowly walked towards us.

“Watch out,” somebody shouted.

“We are four, and an old man can never match us,” another was confident.

As we were about to pounce, he stopped us, “let me do it please, the only way you can save yourselves” and without warning he thrust the knife into Jeremy’s arm. Jeremy screamed in pain. And Joe dragged the knife down Jeremy’s arm, tearing apart the skin.

“Now the devil shall not find a way to enter your body,” he exclaimed triumphantly.

Jeremy writhed in pain holding his bleeding arm. Joe then looked at me and proceeded to cut the flesh containing the tattoo part.
I found his theory credible and logical. We all thanked him for saving us and then we left the place with a heave of relief.

Few days later, I received a call from Jeremy, “Jonathan is dead just like Tia, just like Niki...”

A chill ran down my spine. I pulled back the sleeve and looked at my arm from where the tattoo was cut. The wound was healed but there were no traces of the tattoo.

How can this be? We have closed the door for the demon to enter. How could it have possibly killed Jonathan?

“What if the demon has already entered our bodies even before old man Joe sealed the inlet?” Jeremy’s voice quivered from the other end.

“We will have to reach old man Joe as soon as possible,” I suggested.

The very evening I reached his home. An elderly gentleman opened the door. His cheeks were tucked in but he was cleanly shaven, and his forehead, wrinkled. There was a magnetic charm in his eyes.

“I have come to meet old man Joe,” I spoke.

“I am Joe, please tell me,” he said.

I was shocked to hear that. “Y..you... Joe...” I stammered. And he nodded. “Any problem Sir?” he extended his hand. I just pushed him and ran away.

I don’t know how far I ran, for how long I ran. I stopped by a tree far away from old Joe’s home. I was panting heavily; my mind was blank except for the person’s face I saw during the meeting, that white beard and broad forehead. This man looked puny.

Who could that be? Could he be the devil himself? He cut the tattoos from our skins so that he could seal himself permanently inside us?

Thousands of questions crisscrossed my mind. I don’t know if I’ll ever find the answers. Recently I came to know that Jeremy too had passed away in the similar fashion.

I’ve started to feel it inside me. I suddenly suffer with bouts of cold breaths. I feel that my energy is being sapped away and a pointed object being shoved into my heart with so much thrust that I writhe in pain. My spine freezes that I refuse to move lest it might break. In that moment of vulnerability I see the demon inside me. There’s so much malice and fury, so dark and so evil.

I’ve isolated myself from the rest of the world. I live in the dark and dingiest corner of my apartment, hiding and trying to save my life. I don’t know when it’s going to devour me, inside out. I just count my minutes and await for it to consume me.

What would you do? Will you believe that you are possessed and that you are under the influence of an evil power? When your rational mind cannot explain things that have happened and are still happening before your eyes? When more particularly you know that for no apparent reason you’d killed your friends who you’d loved throughout your life!

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The following is a work of fiction that revolves around a fact.

The blades of the grass swayed from side to side by the prevailing upwind. The cirrus clouds floated swiftly in the azure sky. The shadows they cast moved even swifter and the entire grassland looked like a giant tiger’s glossy coat being brushed by the wind.

The silver radiator-grille of the 1919 model open top Cockshoot Tourer glimmered under the sun as the car chugged up the road and we reached the highest ground. The Maharaja impatiently gripped the front seat and stood up, looking around in anticipation. He signaled the driver to stop when he’d sighted a gazelle at some distance.

There, he pointed his finger in that direction. The grass in these parts of the world grows to a staggering height of one and half metres making this a perfect hunting ground for any predator. But the same provides a perfect cover for the prey too.

Amidst the ashen coloured grass, I saw a fully grown horned beast with an alternating brown and white coat and the distinctive black streak across its back that could be accounted for its visibility from a quarter mile.

It raised its head and looked around cautiously. The whirring of the engine was too low to scare it away. The gazelles have a very keen auditory perception, to warn them of their predators. Even the slightest deviance from the norm could make our hunt flee the place.

Unaware of the hunter, the gazelle again stooped low to eat the grass.

The Maharaja pulled a rifle from the front. His rifle was one of a kind, specifically designed for long distance shots. With the stock against his shoulder and one eye closed, the other eye keenly lining up the sight, his finger was about to pull the trigger when the gazelle suddenly leaped to one side and broke into a sprint.

It was definitely not because of us. Something else should’ve scared it away. Till that minute, I thought that there was only one hunter. But I was wrong. Something else was stalking the gazelle.

I slowly stood up adjusting my trilby with one hand and with the other a binocular. The Maharaja too leaned forward in excitement. It’s one of those rare occasions when you go for the hunt and your hunt is actually hunted by another hunter.

From behind the grasses the gazelle ran to its left and then leaped to its right; it was running in a serpentine course, towards us. Gazelles are good sprinters. They can run for long distances too without getting tired. From behind the gazelle emerged a spotted animal.

Its head was small, like that of a cat. No tiger or lion has that small a skull. It wasn’t a leopard either. Leopards are not so lean and don’t run so fast. It was long. Definitely longer than a tiger. There was a black streak from its eyes that stretched beyond its cheek. And there were black spots all over its golden coat. It was just mesmerizing.

The gazelle which was running in our direction suddenly maneuvered to its left and continued running, sparing us by a few hundred meters. It has very thin and pointed legs that allow it to run in any direction without lowering its momentum.

The spotted animal too quickly followed the trail without lowering its speed. The long tail perhaps was acting like a rudder steering the animal. The animal was almost a straight line when fully stretched in the galloping state, and its backbone was a perfect ‘U’ with its hind and forelimbs crisscrossed in the contractile state. I’d never seen a vertebrate with such an elastic spine. In two quick successive jumps the animal had crossed over twenty meters, in probably a quarter of a second.

And with one giant leap, it sprang into the air and reached for the flank of the gazelle. A swift blow with its paw was sufficient enough to bring down the gazelle. The gazelle shuddered to a halt. With another blow on its throat the gazelle that was writhing in pain then lay lifeless.

The cheetah impatiently walked around its prey and lay down for a while. It then reached for the throat, tearing it apart with its canines and then feasting on the flesh. It devoured a substantial portion of the gazelle in a very short time and then sauntered away. The grass cover was too good a camouflage that we lost him in no time.

“What is that animal?” the Maharaja was spellbound, and so was I.

“It’s called the cita, Sir!”

“Cita means a spotted body in Hindi,” the driver said.

I’d read about the cheetahs in books. I’d heard that the mogul emperor Akbar had hundreds of them domesticated and used them for hunting. But this was the first time I saw a cheetah, that too while it was hunting its prey.

The agility was unmatched. The precision was pin-pointed. There was no room for error. I’d seen tigers hunting deer, lions hunting antelopes but this was different. No lion hunts alone. No tiger can run so fast. No leopard hunts in the scorching sun. The cheetah is undoubtedly nature’s greatest hunter.

“I need him,” the Maharaja said looking at me.

“He would come again. I shall’ve him then,” the Maharaja said with a gleeful smile.

For over a week, we’d waited for the cheetah to return to the same place, without any success though. Cheetahs don’t move out of their comfort zone. But we have never seen the cheetah again.

The Maharaja had already killed a thousand royal Bengal tigers, a couple of Asiatic lions, mountain leopards and other big cats in the name of ‘shikar’, his favourite sport, but he could never lay his hands on the cheetah’s skin.

“Can I ever have the head and skin of the indomitable hunter?” the Maharaja felt that the trophies of the animals he had collected over years were of no value infront of the cheetah.

But his dream was soon to be fulfilled.

Almost a year later, on an fateful night, the Maharaja and I were driving through the countryside. The engine sound should have frightened the animals in the vicinity. The maharaja chanced upon three cheetahs a few metres away. The headlights of the Daimler we were travelling in, blinded them instantly and the Maharaja reached for his rifle. His aimed at the cheetahs, with a mind that was never weighed down by a humane conscience.

Thrice he pulled the trigger, the bullets swirled through the cold air and the innocuous beasts had fallen in quick succession.

Then we were not aware that the last surviving cheetahs in India were killed, and that we’d wiped the variegated beast off the Indian grasslands. The indomitable hunter will never look beyond those high rise grasses again.

The Indian cheetah was officially declared extinct in 1952, with the last of the cheetahs being killed by the Maharaja of Surguja in 1947.

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‘Beyond the mountains at the horizon, it is said that a cat deliberately walks into the snare set by poachers to capture a bear or a tiger. And unable to bear the pain, it bites off its own paw and walks away three legged. The remnant paw is considered to be a lucky charm, but it still holds in it, the trials and tribulations of the cat when in captivity’

Human beings are need driven creatures, the need to live life, luxuriously. It can make them do anything, even if it means to make a deal with the devil. I was in dire need of money, the money I lost in poker, horse-races; I need to earn that back. Much beyond that I needed a factor called luck.

After emptying four pints of lager and some whiskey, I was well away at the party. And then I started to drive back home. The road down the hill was extremely dark. I was cruising along the treacherous serpentine course.

And suddenly the car started to shake as if it were going down a rough track. Before I could realize what happened and braked, I have driven off the road by a few kilometers. Still reeling between a state of consciousness and inebriated ecstasy, I opened the door and staggered along the gravelly path.

The clouds engulfed the moon. The cold wind cut through my skin and the surroundings chilled me to the marrow for there was no flora in the vicinity. All I could see was an old dead tree with the branches spread out from its trunk.

But what swept me off my feet was a body hanging from one of its branches. Somebody came this far to commit suicide? I better investigate, I thought as I ambled towards the tree.

The sounds of the creatures of the dark, the absence of any human soul dint deter me from going to the tree. I slowly walked to the person and examined him. The body was half rotten. I could see the folds on his exposed parts. The skin on his face was green in colour and it shrunk completely almost exposing his skull. One part of his body was crushed as if it were run over by some truck.

He presented a frightening look that would scare even the most seasoned horror buffs. Suddenly my eye caught the attention of a crumpled paper he was holding onto. Must be a suicidal note. I broke a twig from the branch and tried to free that paper from his grip. After a while, I was successful.

Folded in the paper was perhaps the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. It looked like the paw of some animal. I immediately dropped it to the ground before I was reminded of a local legend, about the lucky charm of the cat’s paw. I unfolded the paper and had gooseflesh when I read the few words written on it.

“I would rather die a thousand times than living one more life”

I couldn’t understand a word, but I saw the pain cos of which he committed suicide. I slowly bent down to pick the cat’s paw from the ground when I heard the creaking of the branch behind me. I raised my head and what I saw almost stopped my heartbeat.

My blood ran cold for a while. The intoxication, all of a sudden, wore off completely.

He woke up. There were no eyes in the eye socket. He held the rope and started to shake, probably trying to get off the rope. And he was screaming in an unknown language. I took the cat’s paw in my hand and started to run towards my car, holding onto my dear life.

I tried to run as fast as my feet could carry me, before I tripped over something and fell down. I was hurt very badly after my ankle hit a stone. Lucky enough, it wasn’t paining though. Haven’t broken any bones. Still lying on the ground I turned around to see the thing that caused me to fall down.

It was a bag. I was a little circumspect about opening the bag, but fear is the last thing, a man would be worried about when he has problems, my problem being bankruptcy and desperation to get out of that situation.

I opened the zip and was aghast to see a huge amount of money, all in denominations of five hundred rupees. I valued the entire stash at more than a crore. My lucky day, I thought looking at the cat’s paw.

I made my way to the car and drove back. After reaching home, I ran a search for the cat’s paw. The legend was indeed true. “Let me see how my luck’s gonna change from tomorrow on,” I told myself.

I couldn’t get a wink of sleep. ‘So much money, let me win more in horse-race’, I told myself. I held the cat’s paw in one hand for I feared that I might lose it. I slowly slipped into sleep.

A few hours later, I was woken up by a purring sound. A cat? Gripping onto a vase, I slowly started to walk in the direction of the sound. A few feet ahead of me, I saw a huge Cat, with eyes red and claws drawn-out, standing on its hind legs and screaming in a callous voice ‘my paw, my paw’ to the man on the ground, the very same man whom I had seen hanging from the tree.

Then the man pointed his finger to me as the cat lifted its head and threw a furious look at me. With a sudden jerk, I woke up. A terrifying nightmare.

I held onto the paw. I was soft and cold. For a while, I felt frightened and then sorry for the animal, but nevertheless happy to have it for the luck factor, it brought along.

The following day, I travelled to the nearby town to invest in horse racing. As anticipated, I tripled, quadrupled my finances. It had been a wonderful day. I had all the money to pay debts, in fact I was be left behind with a decent amount. All cos of this lucky charm, I kissed the cat’s paw.

It was almost dusk and I had to travel back home before it gets dark.

I felt my leg too heavy when I looked down. The ankle was swollen as if it were sprained. But there was no pain, surprisingly. So I couldn’t drive my car faster, for the fear of hurting my ankle even more.

Within an hour, it was dark. The country road was almost deserted with no sign of any vehicle in the vicinity. It’s dangerous to travel with a lot of money, in these areas. And so I was a bit tensed.

I slowly stepped up the gas, before I heard a bursting sound. The car swerved like a snake before I maneuvered it to one side of the road. I got down from the car to see that I was running on a flat tyre.

Damn, I kicked the tyre, I don’t even have a spare tyre. The entire place was dark. There is every possibility of me being robbed and hence I decided to hide the money in some place.

I slowly walked into the nearby sparse vegetation and started to dig the loose sand with my hands. I then placed the bag into the pit and covered it up, before I felt someone watching me from behind.

I turned behind and saw a big cat growling, must be a panther. I looked into its eyes, they were same as the cat’s, I saw in my dream. I sprang to my feet and ran towards the car. The panther chased me.

I was almost nearing the road when I looked behind to see the panther. It was nowhere. I then turned to my front when I saw a beam of light and a loud honk. Something dashed me real hard and I fell to the ground. Before I could realize that I had been hit by a lorry, one of its rear tyres ran over me.

I was shell shocked when I realized that I was not under any kind of pain, and that I am alive too. I looked at the portion of the body over which the truck ran over. My left leg was completely crushed and I was bled profusely. I managed to crawl to the car when I heard the growl again.
The big cat appeared again and this time, he caught hold of my other leg with his jaws and dragged me into the woods, as I watched helplessly.

After dragging me for some distance, he stopped and walked over to my head. He slowly bent down sniffing all over my body and without alarm caught hold of my neck and plucked it brute force.

The blood splattered all over his face and he drank it with great relish. Surprisingly I had no pain at this juncture too, and I was able to watch all this happen to me.

The tiger left in some time, leaving behind a petrified me and a gaping wound on my neck. I touched my own body when a chill ran down my spine. There was no temperature. The body was totally cold. I tried to feel my pulse. There wasn’t any either.

All the things that happened since yesterday flashed through my mind. And then I realized. That I am not alive any more. But, why aint I dead either?

I slowly pulled a piece of paper and started to write something. After that I lifted a huge boulder and dropped it onto my own head. I could feel the crushing of the brain and the splatter. My hands were dead and lay motionless, but I could still feel and hear.

I don’t know for how long I lay in that position, hours, may be days, when I heard the footsteps of somebody walk towards me. Definitely a human, I thought. I could feel his hands run over my body. He seemed to be searching for something.

And then I realized that he pulled the cat’s paw outta my pocket as he read the paper, I wrote.

“I would rather die a thousand deaths than living one more life”

No, no… I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. With all my strength I jerked my body, hoping that he wouldn’t get away with the cat’s paw.

But the man screamed in fright and all I could hear was the sound of fading footsteps …

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There are certain things you don’t want to see.

The day was June 25th. After a tedious day at work, I walked back to my car. It’s around 11 ‘O clock. I longed to reach home. All I wanted was a good sleep to relieve me of the work pressure.

I slowly lay on the four-poster as my back ached under the day’s strenuousness. My eyelids were heavy and they slowly dropped dead. In the subconscious mind’s eye I was further able to see the necrosis of my senses.

Why is it different today? Have I stretched myself beyond the endurance levels? Why do I feel like a dead body? Why do...

Amidst these thoughts, the subconscious vision blurred and everything was blank and dark.

I didn’t know what time it was at night but I was back to my senses when I heard a flapping sound. A bird?

The room was dimly lit under the streaks of light from the street-lamp. The bed, actually a four-poster was close to the window and I lay half-asleep on it. My bones ached under the sleep induced laziness but my mind was conscious of the surroundings.

The blades of the fan cut through thin air making a swirling sound. Outside the window, the crickets were chirping and the leaves, rustling due to the wind. Where did I hear the flapping from? Must be from the tree outside the window.

I looked out of the window, still lying on the bed when I saw a silhouette spread its giant arms, at least 50 of them. No birds were perched on its arms. And since I was unable to learn the origin of the flapping sound, I tried to get back to sleep.

A few minutes later, I was disturbed by the sound of footsteps which subsequently became more clear, indicating that somebody was walking towards my room.

I concentrated, to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating. There are two doors in the line of sight which needs to be crossed to reach my bedroom and I constantly stared at them. My heartbeat increased and I started to breathe heavily. I was waiting impatiently for that person to turn up at first door whence I could plan an evasive action.

The drapes at the first door were slightly pushed aside and I knew that the person had reached. I tried to push my body off the bed but it refused to move. It took me a while to understand that I was seized by a bout of paralysis. My whole body was numb, though I was conscious.

All I could do was to wait and watch. As I kept staring at the door, a white figure emerged from behind the drapes and walked towards me with calculated tread. She had long hair which fell over her face and so I couldn’t see her.

The air became colder as she approached me. I trembled under fright. And I had no other option but to watch. She came close to the four-poster and pulled back her hair.

My eyes enlarged under fright on seeing her face. Her face resembled mine but was chillingly frightening. It was pale and her lips were white devoid of any blood. She was very lean and had a scar, an open wound running across her forehead. Blood trickled down her eye as she slowly bent down.

But what terrified me even more was her voice. She was screaming in an unknown language. And the scream slowly converted into a growl. The only thing I could understand was that she’s in excruciating pain and that she was trying to convey something to me.

She lifted her head and looked at the frame of the four-poster.

And what I saw scared me to death. A huge raven perched on one it, flapping its wings continuously. Its eyes were burning like red ambers.

Even before I could raise an alarm, the bird swooshed down to my side and without any warning pecked my eye with its sharp beak. I was screaming at the top of my voice. Neither could I nor anybody else hear my screams.

I slithered in pain as she spread her arms like wings and continued to laugh. The bird was looking at me with its blood dripping beak. It slowly spread its wings and in a single flap made its way to the top.

I turned to my side and she was gone too. I wondered if all this happened for real but for the pain that was inexplicable. I could feel the blood trickling down my eye ball and wet the bed beneath me. Fear was conquered by pain.

I still lay helpless waiting for someone to help. But to no avail. And then my worst fears came true when I looked above me. She was floating in thin air, above me. She slowly came closer to me. ‘I will do whatever you say. I will help you,’ I meekly submitted.

And she started to laugh hysterically and gave out a loud cry before rushing into my body and merging with me. My body jerked violently before I felt a stinging pain in my arm.

I heard more voices as I tried to see what’s going on around.

A few days later I was discharged from the hospital. On the ill-fated day of June 25th, I crashed into an oncoming vehicle, as I was trying to overtake another vehicle ahead of me, causing a severe spinal atrophy. The debris damaged my eye which was operated upon the same night. Doctors said that I miraculously survived the crash. Even more miraculous was the fact that my pulse dropped to zero and when they thought I wouldn’t survive after their attempts turned futile, I suddenly started vibrating and the pulse regained to its normalcy.

I understand that it was my subconscious mind that was still awake while I was being operated upon in the hospital. And the disconnect between the conscious and subconscious minds deluded me to see the horrors that night.

But there is one thing that matters me even to this day whenever I stand infront of the mirror and see the scar on my forehead. The duty doctor who attended to my treatment when I was rushed from the accident site, maintains that I never had a wound or a scar on my forehead.

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So true and disturbing are the incidents written here that I’ve stopped making and collecting clocks, the only thing I’ve always wanted to and loved the most.

‘Tick tock.. tick tock..’ and my heartbeat would sync with it. For more than twenty years, I’d lived with clocks. I called myself a clock mason, one who pioneers in the extraordinary art of designing these intricate pieces of time.

My fascination with clocks began at an early age when I repaired them at a local shop. My job was to repair, finish and polish. I used to repair ten clocks a week, a far better standard in those days. Slowly, what started as a routine job became a hobby and then, a passion and an obsession.

Nothing else captures the exuberance as you run your fingers through your favourite piece of creation which is far more profound than anything.

All my life, I’d collected clocks of various shapes and types. There were hundreds of them including the rare Simon Willard banjo clock, a kit-kat clock, a tête de poupée, and an 1890’s grandfather clock. My daily work was to wind them up and sit listening to the overlapping ticking sounds and occasional dongs which were euphonically better than a Beethoven’s quartet.

And then there was Helen, my beautiful Helen, in my life. We’ve been married for two years. She had a special dislike for the one thing I loved the most, clocks, the reason, she thought I neglected her and spent most time with my clocks.

I too tried my part to keep away from them. But few things are as immutable as my addiction to something as low as a ticking of a clock. Helen gradually started to hate me.

I loved her. I tried to explain my passion for the clocks. She refused to listen.

On the fateful day, I was repairing an old torsion clock. Helen was as usual complaining. Her nagging seemed to have crossed the limits, that day. She walked into the room housing my clocks, with a sledge hammer.

And raised her voice, ‘I don’t want to lead a life of neglect’. A grim silence ensued but...

But the harmonious ticking sounds dissolved it. In the midst of which I saw her grip the hammer and without any warning she started to smash them one by one. She couldn’t contain her anger anymore.

It took me a while to react. With every blow landing on a clock, I felt like my life draining out of me. I pleaded with her. I persuaded her. She wouldn’t heed. As she was about to smash the rarest of ‘em all, the Willard banjo, I pushed her aside in the nick to time, hence saving the clock.

She hit the wall and lay motionless. The posterior of her skull forced its way through a nail protruding out of the wall, splattering blood all over. I looked at her in utter distraught as she breath her last.

I was terribly shaken at the turn of these events. My wife was very precious to me just like the clocks were. I wish she understood my passion for clocks, in which case an accident like this would‘ve been averted, I lamented over the loss of my wife. But the next thing that occurred to me was that I would be charged with her murder and subsequently jailed.

I have to evade punishment. I couldn’t move the dead body out of my apartment. It may raise many a curious eye-brows. There had to be a way. Yes, there is a way.

I slowly dragged her body to the sink and lifted her onto the perforated table. I reached for a cleaver and started to chop her body. My intent was to transport the body out of my building by placing the chopped parts into the clocks.

The Grandfather’s clock was long enough to accommodate her legs. The kit-kat clock could accommodate her hands and so on. And now that the entire job is done, I dint have the heart to dump away her body parts through these clocks.

And I decided to keep the clocks with me till my last breath, for they hid in them a terrible secret. One day, I will be gone too. Even then I wanted people to take care of my clocks, more particularly the ones that contained her remains. I wrote a similar note and placed it in each of those clocks.


‘An earnest appeal to who-so-ever owns these clocks, please handle the clocks with care for they carry my heart...’

And I finished reading the manuscript. Nisha was in a state of shock and it took her a few minutes to recover from that shock. After that she never entered my clocks room, where I’ve collected all the clocks over the years as a part of my hobby. She never questioned my commitment towards her and my spending lots of time on clocks too. I commentated on the manuscript to Aakash who had gooseflesh after hearing my narration.

“So you scared her out of her wits by revealing about the clock? So you have his original clock that contains his wife, Helen’s remains,” he was curious.

I smiled and shook my head, “no.”

“Just to keep Nisha at bay.”

“What about the manuscript, she never bothered to look at it?”

“A scared woman won’t see the difference between an old looking manuscript and a blank crumpled paper,” I finished.

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The suicide

I woke up from my bed only to find her hanging to the ceiling. ‘My wife was killed by some one’ I couldn’t even digest the fact. The police were at the place in a few minutes. Just below her body was mine with a knife stabbed in my heart and her fingerprints on it.

The peeping tom

Natasha wrapped a towel around her naked body and walked slowly into the bathroom. Mike frantically peeped through the keyhole in the bathroom door. The entire bathroom appeared dark. Mike pushed a divider to clear the dirt from the keyhole when he heard a shout. Natasha comes out of the door with her eye, bleeding.

The headache

I was having a splitting headache. I gulped a tablet. I applied a balm. No avail. And finally I removed a hammer and started banging it onto the head. First time and the pain reduced. Second time and it reduced even further. And third time. All my three roommates lie in a pool of blood.

Wrong number

“Hello,” a sweet voice called me up on my mobile. “Is this Rakesh?” she asked. “No ma’am, wrong number, but you can still talk to me,” I said as I was bored at my workplace. “Come home in the evening and the pan will do the talking,” the voice said and she cut the call.

Why should boys have all the fun

“Shhh.. Don’t shout. We’ll start to Goa tomorrow. Nobody’s gonna tell the guys,” the girls were contemplating in the next room. Having overheard the conversation, I said “Destination Goa.” We were off to Goa. Two days later, we don’t find the girls in Goa.
“Guys, where have you all been? We are enjoying at home”

My monkey wife

“I woke up today morning when I looked at the window. I then saw this monkey so huge and fair and dressed up well, imitate me.” I was trying to make fun of my wife, who normally imitates me, by calling her a monkey.

“You call this window?” my wife asked pointing to a mirror.

The Split

I slowly placed my head on the wooden platform and she slowly raised the axe. I closed my eyes in fear and she gripped the handle firmly in her hands. I said my last prayers and ‘thud’ fell the axe onto the wood splitting it apart. She was in Tokyo and I was in California.

My first love

The first time I saw her, she was shaking her body in the aerobics class. I almost drooled over her beauty. She looked at me and smiled. The world beneath me vanished and the sky appeared to be coming closer towards me. I opened my arms wide open and said, “Illeana darling, I love you”

The portrait trilogy

At the museum, we reached a dark place. Three portraits were hanging. In the first, a bloody ghoul was feeding on a woman. In the second, a demon ripped apart itself and in the third there was a female, still and calm. “Damn, She moved” I shouted. “Stupid fool, that’s a mirror,” my wife remarked.

The hitchhiker

A beautiful girl on the highway was flashing two fingers. I crossed her and looked at her, through the rear view mirror. She was gone. Next moment she was behind me in my car. I swerved left and hit a tree. Later, a truck driver came that way and saw the girl showing three fingers.

The race

I was driving home when a car vroomed past me. I started to race with that Civic. Swerving to the left and cutting across the lane, I was about to overtake it when I showed my finger and then vanished from sight. Later that night, my dad asked me the meaning of showing the finger.

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More than 0.2 % of the patients undergoing major surgeries suffer from ‘anesthetic awareness’ when they are being operated. Anesthetic awareness is a condition in which the patient is aware of the being operated upon even when he’s under the effect of anesthesia.

‘Reeves, kill me, else I am not gonna let you live…’ I heard Sam say and I immediately fired in the direction of the voice.

Boom.. boom.. two shots were fired as we both fell to the ground. I was a detective trying to solve the murders at San Andreas where seven innocent girls have fallen to the gun of a rampant serial killer.

Going by a tipoff from a local man, I zeroed in on to this serial killer. And an exchange of gunfire ensued afterwards until both of us were hit and fallen to the ground.

A few minutes later the police were at the crime scene and they rushed both of us to the hospital. I was lying partly conscious and I was able to hear their discussions when I blanked out before knowing that Sam was already dead.

And when I regained consciousness, I was lying on the operation table with some one in a green dress and wearing a mask make an incision on my chest with a scalpel and slowly cutting my ribs after cleaning the blood and slowly they started to bypass the veins and arteries before cutting them off transplanting another heart. All this went on for a few hours but I was awake all the time still reeling under the pain of being operated upon.

But the greatest shock of my life was when I overheard the doctor telling his counterpart, ‘Sam shot the detective through his chest, when the pericardium is ruptured making him difficult to survive on his own heart. And Sam breath his last but the detective is lucky enough that he found his donor in the form of Sam, whose heart we have transplanted to him. This will be a secret according to the rules of our hospital, as we don’t divulge the names of the donors’ when I blanked out once again.

And when I woke up again I was in an ICU with lots of instrument panels around me. I shouted, ‘Doctor… doctor…’ when somebody rushed to me, injecting a needle when I lay asleep once again.

Within a few weeks I was discharged from the hospital and the physical pain slowly subdued but the mental pain of carrying the heart of the serial killer Sam, was something very hard for me to bear with. The pain traumatized me for a very long time. Other than the two doctors who transplanted the heart to me, and me myself, no one else knew that I was surviving on Sam’s heart.

Not very soon after my discharge from the hospital, the killings with the same pattern started once again. Newspapers read, ‘Sam the serial killer haunts even after his death…’ and so on. I couldn’t resume my duties because of post operation complications and hence my knowledge was limited to the newspapers and news channels.

One day I came to know that the doctors who operated upon me were killed in the same pattern. Half the time I never had any idea of what I was doing. Now serious thoughts crossed my mind.

‘Did the devil possess me cos’ I am transplanted with his heart? Or some one else knows this and is trying to lure me into these crimes? Or is it a copy cat serial killer or an inspired one on loose…’

And I decided not to be confined to the four walls of my room again. I need to check out what is happening.

As I slammed the door behind me, my mobile rang and I picked the call. ‘It’s too dangerous for you detective to walk behind me, on my trail. You were saved once, but I assure you, this won’t happen again…’ and the person on the opposite side hung-up. I recognized that voice, it’s that of Sam.

And my heart, actually his heart inside me started to pound. It seemed like it wanna get back to its owner. And my head started to reel under this. And I opened the door once again and went back to sleep once again. After a few minutes I was awakened by the sirens of police cars plying down my street when I rushed to the outdoors and asked a by-passer.

‘We have one more victim to Sam…’, he said. And I was shocked. ‘How can that be possible, his heart has been transplanted to me, how can he live…’ and I decided to investigate his death. I reached for the keys and started to drive towards the graveyard where he was buried.

I called another detective friend of mine who also made his way to the graveyard. He along with a few other personnel reached the place and they had already started digging the grave and inside it was a skeleton. ‘Collect few bone samples and send them for DNA test’, my friend ordered and he put his hand around my shoulder even as we started to walk across when I divulged to him that I am carrying Sam’s heart.

He was in disbelief for a moment and then said, ‘So, you think that it’s you who’s killing people under the influence of his heart which has taken over you…’ and started laughing out loud.

‘Please don’t make fun of this serious issue…. And I believe this is happening’ I said and continued, ‘anyways, lets await the DNA results’ and I walked away from the place. The same night I installed a camera to capture what’s happening around me when I am asleep.

The next morning I checked the newspaper and there was one more kill. And I immediately rushed to the camera and pulled out the tapes to play it on the VCR. It was around 1:00 PM in the night when I woke up and yet I don’t remember anything. It seemed that I was under the puissance of a foreign force and I opened the door and walked out of it.

Even when I stood wondering, my mobile rang when my detective friend called me out and said, ‘Reeves, Eye witnesses and circumstantial evidence suggest that you were at the place of all these killings ….’ And even before he could finish I hung up.

The next day police were at my house only to find me already hung myself. My friend was at the place sobbing and continued, ‘...Eye witnesses and circumstantial evidence suggest that you were at the place of all these killings… but they were killed even before that by serial killer Sam, who’s not dead yet. The DNA of the bones proved to be of some one else and the heart transplanted to you belonged to a different Sam’

Few hundred miles away from the place, Sam was watching the news of my death on TV and grinned. ‘I have already warned you Reeves, you kill me, else I will kill you, and you fell for my cheap trap’ and he opened the bottle emptying the wine into a glass and saying, ‘In the loving memory of my friend Reeves’ and closed his eyes for a moment as if he was mourning. And the minute he opened his eyes, I was sitting infront of him with my gun pointed towards him.

‘You aren’t dead yet…’ and I burst into laughter. ‘You played the dirty trick, and now it’s payback time…’ I said and boom there was a sound.

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When the hounds bay for blood, when the vampire bats squawk for life, when clouds engulf the crescent and when the stars align in an inverted pentagram, the creature of the dark will rise to life - the relic.

Recently we moved into a new house. And that’s when we brought home our new pup, Mike. The retriever pup was so active and friskily naughty. As days passed by, I found a gradual decline in its activity. ‘Growing pups are normally very active,’ a friend of mine suggested me to consult a vet.

“Nothing’s wrong with Mike, atleast physically. Don’t leave it alone all the time,” was the vet’s suggestion.

Plagued by the thoughts that the pup’s unwell, I couldn’t sleep a wink the following night. I was tossing and turning on the bed. Suddenly the lights blanked out. A thunderous lightening made me worry about Mike.

In the dark milieu, I managed to reach the window. It was raining heavily outside. I tried to look out for my pup. It wasn’t in its kennel. I was worried. I looked around and was about to go outdoors when something caught my eye.

In a lightning jolt, I saw a kinda projection out of the lawn infront of my house. In another jolt, I saw my pup trying to pull that thing. Perhaps a pipe or a piece of wood, I thought as I focused the torch and tried to get a better look. What I saw frightened me beyond all means.

It looked like a bone. Yes, it’s a human hand with the palm wide open. Of a recently buried corpse?

And I rushed to the outdoors; I wanted to confirm the same before I disturb my parents. My hands were trembling as I pulled down the latch and opened the door. I wasn’t worried about me being drenched. My primary concern was the human hand, the image that I couldn’t take off my mind.

“Mike… Mike…” I hollered when the pup looked in my direction. In a flash of lightning I saw its sharp canines dripping some slimy liquid. I wasn’t very sure if it was blood but before I could reach to any conclusion, I heard a growl which sent a chill down my spine. In the next instant, I saw it jump towards me at a gallop.

Shell shocked at the unexpected outcome of these events, I stood still when my pup whimpered as it dropped something at my feet. The bone? No, a book. The book’s soaked completely, it looked a little old with a tattered hard bound leather cover.

Having my dog leashed, I walked back to my bedroom and opened the book when I found a letter. Under the dim light from the torch, I unfolded the letter and started to read.

‘Centuries ago, a diabolic ghoul robbed the graves and ate the corpses of human beings. A priest cast a spell on the ghoul thus making it lifeless and the ghoul’s laid to rest once and for ever. Legend talks of a relic containing the spell that binds the ghoul.

In the early years of this millennium, on his quest for fossils, Paleontologist Mark Heines finds the so called relic with a hand clutching onto it. The hand was in such a preserved condition that Mark basing on the hairs spoke of the race of the human to which it belonged.

Nobody knows what happened to the hand, but a few years later, Heines was found dead, hanging to the ceiling, and with one of his hand, amputated. His severed hand was never recovered though.

Many are of the opinion that the ghoul’s back with a vengeance and it kills the one in possession of the relic. And the hand of whom will guard the relic forever. This is a vicious cycle’

I folded the letter and then started to read the relic. True, I dint believe in ghosts. They are just a figment of human imagination. As I flipped page after page much to the discontentment of my palpitating heart, I began to see visions. Visions of a goat inside an inverted pentagram called sigil of Baphomet, a ring of fire that almost engulfed me when I pushed aside the relic in fright, pushing myself to another corner of the room.

I buried my face into my knees seeing some impending horror when I looked out of the window. It was still raining incessantly. And in one strike of a thunderbolt, I saw the entire milieu, the sky and the clouds turning blood red.

Dogs were howling at a far off place. I approached the window and looked out. I saw a few bats cluttering at the place where my pup dug out the relic.

When hounds bay for blood, when the vampire bats squawk for life, when clouds engulf the crescent and when the stars align in an inverted pentagram, the creature of the dark will rise to life - I remembered a line from the relic.

And I felt a sudden drop in the temperature. A cold wave sent a chill down my spine. Sometimes, you have this feeling that someone’s watching you over. And tonight, I felt it. It’s more than just a normal human being.

I can feel the malice, the coldness of this diabolic being. In a wink, I was lying on my bed. The chill that cuts through your skin, the icy state when you are frozen and paralyzed when you know you are not alone, that’s the most frightening part.

For a while, I wasn’t able to fathom what’s happening. When something flowing touched my body, I regained my senses. It was warm and all over the bed.

I touched it with my hand. ‘Damn, its blood,’ I screamed and tried to push myself away from the bed. A stinging pain in the left part of my body prevented me from doing so. I looked beyond my shoulder and to my dismay found my hand amputated. I pressurized my palm on the open wound to arrest the flow of blood.

And I looked around. In the dim light, far in the corner lay the severed portion of my hand on the relic.... My hand now becomes the guardian of the relic? and I cried loudly in pain before I lost consciousness.

I don’t know for how long I lay in that position. But the next morning I woke up trembling. I looked around for the relic.

It was lying on my bed with my hand still on it. But my hand wasn’t severed. Was it my imagination? I saw things so close to reality... And I pulled the relic close to my body.

It indeed had the bite marks, probably inflicted by my pup when it was digging it up y’ night. And I saw the face of the relic. This was more frightening than all the things that happened over the course of the night. It read, ‘Domain level certification’.......

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The entire room was dark except for a cone of white light that illuminated a reclining chair beneath it, on which I was seated. The door creaked open. And a woman in her late twenties walked into the room clutching a notepad to her chest. She was wearing a straight formal skirt and a white shirt jacketed by a black tuxedo cinching her waist.

She came close to me and pulled a chair. Then she opened a document and started writing something. Where did I see her before?

I was playing with the long curls over my forehead and entwining them over my finger. “Can I know what you are writing?” I asked in a rather feminine tone whiffing the curls off my forehead. She pushed the papers to me. It read, “Session 6 - Marcus Solly : psychoanalysis by Dr. Lewine”

Yes, that’s me. Marcus Solly. A graduate from the Stanford school of business, a successful entrepreneur and a happily married man. You couldn’t ask for anything better. But there’s this devious twist to my life when my wife was found murdered in cold blood in my apartment and I was accused of killing her.

“My name is Dr. Lewine,” she said, “and I would be asking a few simple questions.”

I nodded. If it’s regarding my wife’s murder, I have nothing to say.

“Just relax Solly,” she said as the chair reposed at a higher obtuse angle and I reclined on it. “Free your mind Solly. We’ll not talk anything about your wife’s murder. Just tell me about your childhood. Tell me something that you’ve always wanted to confide in some one,” she spoke in a soothing tone.

And I started to speak. I dint know how well I was able to channelize but thoughts flowed and I subconsciously narrated to her my entire life.

“Do I know you prior?” I asked her. I’ve seen her somewhere. She smiled and nodded, “No.”

“So what happened on the night of murder,” she asked. I was least interested in talking about it but for her mesmerizing voice.

“Sasha was lying in a pool of blood by the time I reached home. She was pointing to someone in the kitchen. I ran behind him and I was able to get hold of the jacket he was wearing, but he managed to flee the scene. I ran back to Sasha and she was holding onto her stomach, crying in pain.

She was stabbed multiple times and was bleeding profusely. Seeing her in excruciating pain, I pulled the kitchen knife outta her abdomen and she bled to death even before I could call for an ambulance. In a matter of few minutes, the police invaded the place and they arrested me on homicidal charges,” I concluded as she keenly listened to my story.

She wrote something in her notes and she looked at me. “The knife had your fingerprint marks,” she said. “Of course there could be. The murderer must have donned gloves. In the frantic move to save my wife and free her from pain, I pulled the knife outta her body when my fingerprints must have been registered on the knife,” I said in an anguished tone as I plunged my face into my palms and started to weep bitterly.

“I am not going to leave that sick …” I hollered in anger.

“Relax,” she said, “So where’s the jacket you confiscated?” she asked, “You found anything in that?”

“Yes,” I said with bated breath, “A card which read his name!”

“The name, Allison!”

She smirked and stood up and started saying something that baffled me beyond all means.

“Don’t you remember Solly, that Allison is your middle name? Marcus Allison Solly, that’s you. You killed your wife. On the fateful day, you walked into your house wearing the said jacket. You were talking to your wife regarding something. And the talk converted in a squabble and later a big fight.

In a fit of rage you stabbed her multiple times with a kitchen knife lying by your side. Seeing your wife slithering in pain, you removed and threw away the jacket you were wearing and pulled out the knife from her body.

Allison, the other dissociative personality of yours fled the scene after killing your wife while Solly, the softer one came to the fore and tried to save her,” she ended.

“Your childhood events as narrated by you and these records prove that you’ve suffered from dissociative identity disorder more commonly known as split personality,” she appended as she pushed a bunch of papers towards me.

“There is something more than a twist to this tale. The court thinks that either you are extremely sick or you’re pretending. I have to prove to them that it’s your split personality that killed your wife. Not the normal you and hence we can have the charges framed against you, dropped,” she said as I stood in utter disbelief.

Her words echoed in my ears. My mind was filled with the clamor and chaos as I tried hard to understand Dr. Lewine’s words. When I heard a creaking sound again, I turned to the door and saw a woman and a man walk towards me. The woman was dressed in a tuxedo cinching her waist just like Dr. Lewine’s.

“This is Solly, your newest subject. He’s suffering from a split personality disorder. Right now, as we see his personality is split to Solly and Allison...” I overheard the man speak.

The woman walked towards me and pulled a chair.

“Hi Solly, this is Dr. Mary, dean, Institute of Psychological Disorders, North Hampton” she greeted. “I see that you are writing something?” she asked. I returned her a smile and pushed a scribbling pad which read, “Session 6 - Marcus Solly.... Psychoanalysis by Dr. Lewine”

“Solly, Allison and ....Lewine....” she turned back and replied to the man.

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Prachi’s a big time beer aficionado. Though I never tasted it throughout my life, I’d known a lot about beer, thanks to her. The first time, I saw a highly delectable her at a friend’s party in the local bar. It was love at first sight. After the regular dilly dallying, she finally reciprocated my love.

With a few tufts of hair falling to the fore and captivating luscious features, she could even make a devil ogle her. She attributed her good looks and youthful features to beer. She strongly believes that drinking beer can actually make you look younger. I really don’t know if that’s true or some lame excuse to drink.

That particular night we were returning from B’lore to Hyderabad on NH7.

“Enough, you drank enough,” I screamed at her as I tried to snatch the bottle.

‘No dear, it’s just my second bottle,’ she mumbled as she clenched the long necked bottle like a kid clutching to her Barbie doll and gave me that inebriated look with a wide lipped smile and blinking eyelids.

And that’s when I try to distract her by narrating a horror story. Anything related to horror spooks her. I remember her watching “The Exorcist” when she screamed like hell for all those scenes of demonic possession and including the spider-walk of Regan.

‘No, please,” I heard her speak faintly.

“Not so far from Hyderabad,” I started narrating. “There’s this place called Shankerpally. It’s a hamlet, a normal village except for one house. The house was circum-fenced by thorny shrubs and other outgrowth, the most remarkable feature being the stone statues that stood behind the house. They looked like the grandeur of perfect human art. Yet nobody in the village was qualified to chisel with such intricate magnanimity. And nobody knew who brought them there.

But everybody opined that it must be the work of the stone-witch as the kids called the woman who lived in the hut. For ages, she lived in the same old hut and anybody who pays her a visit and stays over night is bound to become a statue, according to the local folklore,” I finished as she trembled under fright.

“Wwwa… wid… stone statues?” she stuttered.

“The witch in order to keep herself young snatched the souls of the trespassers and converted the soulless bodies to stones.”

“Your voice cut through my skin like ice and I can still feel the chill running down my spine,” her teeth chattered and she opened the bottle and gulped down some beer.

I had to take an alternate route through a relatively uninhabited zone to cut short on the time of journey. The entire stretch of the road was dark as the moon slipped slowly behind the prevailing clouds. The trees on the either side swayed perilously close to each other under the heavy gust of wind.

She was silent for a long time, and so were I, staring at the seemingly never ending road and still clutching onto the bottle.

And as if the devil had the last laugh on Prachi, the car came to a screeching halt. “Damn,” I said, as she peeped out of the window, “We have a flat tyre, in fact tyres”

As we stepped down and looked around, we found ourselves stuck in the middle of nowhere. I pointed to a flickering lamp at some distance and said, “Let’s move to that hut. It’s dangerous to stay in the open dark. Wild animals could be lurking around.”

Trampling over the high rise grass and stepping stones, we reached what seemed like a small hut. “Excuse me,” I spoke in the local dialect when a middle aged woman opened the door. I explained the situation and she welcomed us in.

She was a queer looking woman. She stooped a little cos’ of a hunch that’s too early for her age. But there was a charm in her face. Prachi stood at a distance and was suspiciously staring at our host. I crossed her looks and gestured not to embarrass the woman.

An unprecedented breakdown enforced no feasible option other than an overnight stay. Our host spread the bed as we prepared to rest for the night after a good square meal.

Prachi clasped my hand tightly. “Your description of the stone-witch fits her,” she exclaimed. I dint reply. Lost in those words, I slipped into a deep slumber. Not for long when an owl’s hoot brought me back to my senses. I looked to the side and saw Prachi in deep sleep. I heard a flapping sound, perhaps from the owl’s wings, followed by a gentle rustle of leaves when I walked to the window.

Through the opening, I saw our hunched host holding onto a lantern and walk across in a hurry. Where to?

I slowly stepped out of the house and started to follow, hiding from her view by crouching behind the high rise grasses. After following her for a few minutes, I realized that I was surrounded by stone statues double my height.

Too many thoughts crisscrossed my mind. After all, the story I narrated to Prachi was indeed a figment of my imagination. There was no stone-witch in reality. The stone statues were in a particular pattern, lined up, a few feet from the hut, imposing a hauntingly leering look that scared me beyond all reasons.

The wind was cold and I felt like my blood freeze in the veins. She never cared to look back.

I followed her for a hundred feet, atleast, before I saw her walk into a graveyard.

She sat cross legged infront of a grave. I couldn’t see what she was doing for I was behind her.

My heart was palpitating, say out of fright or excitement to know what she’s up to. Then she moved her hand aside and seemed to slash her wrist with a knife. Blood started to ooze from her slit wrist and she seemed to wet something on the ground with her blood.

What’s she up to? Some ritual? Or reviving the dead? Or...

As I watched with wide opened eyes, she suddenly started vibrating. All this was too much for me and I wanted to flee the place. But my legs couldn’t carry me anymore. I felt so lifeless as if a knife’s pierced through my spinal cord and my fingers were numb. That’s when I realized that I had been seized by a bout of paralysis.

She was shaking violently a few feet ahead of me and suddenly she turned back. In the faint glow of the burning ambers, I saw blood spurting from her eyes. Her facial skin blistered and she fell to the ground, painfully hollering.

I almost fell to the ground but with a conscious effort to save myself from some evil that has taken her down, I crawled drawing all the power to my hands. And...

Prachi, she’s all alone in the hut, my thoughts raced in that direction.

In the foggy darkness, I could faintly see a silhouette approaching me. The witch, I thought. No, it’s Prachi. She must have come searching for me. I could hardly speak and I was trying to grab her when she came close to me. She helped me stand on my feet as I tried to narrate the incident and we fled the place.

I was terribly shaken and so was she as we walked back to the car. The clouds cleared and the moon was back to the fore. The nightmare’s over, I heaved a sigh of relief, when something strange caught my eye.

“Even in this state of fear, you still clung to this bottle?” I stared at her with bloodshot eyes. The bottle was empty though and corked.

“Of course, I had to look young for my boy friend!” she replied.

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I slowly opened the door of my car and stood before the huge building which read ‘The San Jose Asylum’ and I started to walk towards the facility. As a curator of the facility I made it a habit to visit each and every patient in the asylum every day.

This is the biggest asylum in this part of the world where people are treated for various mental disorders. I have spent more time of mine with these insane people than anything else in my entire life over a period of 29 years. And that compelled me to author few books called ‘The lines of sanity’ and ‘Living with the sane in an insane world’

Our patients are kept in huge cylindrical glass chambers where they are constantly monitored and treated. And hence our medical facility stands out of the crowd for these state of the art equipment and the ways which we adopt to treat our patients.

A renowned psychologist and the curator of this asylum and also the author of these books have earned me respect from various quarters of the world.

A cool wind blew away the dried leaves infront of the facility and even as I approached the door, I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine. As I turned back, I saw a young woman probably in her twenties approach the asylum.

She introduced herself as Jemina Stevens. She said that she was a journalist and that she was writing a book called ‘The mind of a psychopath’ and hence she wanted to interview a few of the patients.

“No miss, this is a prohibited area. And more over the patients cannot be exposed to strangers which may cost you as well as them,” I said.

“Please sir, I have been a fan of yours. Particularly the way in which you described how people are insane while thinking themselves to be sane is really outstanding. I am doing this thesis work for my criminology project,” she pleaded.

I looked at her from tip to toe. She had great curves with a pleasant face. The face of a perfect beautiful woman to whom you can’t deny anything. But as per my book ‘The lines of sanity’ goes, beauty is only skin deep and more beautiful people are cleverly insane.

I felt even more apprehensive because of the chill factor whenever I stood close to her. A negative force always makes its presence indicated by a drop in the temperature of the surroundings. Nevertheless her beauty masked my fears and I allowed her inside the asylum.

“The world now is a dangerous place. There is a thin line that divides sanity from insanity. The brain is a very sensitive organ in the human body. It can bear or receive adverse shocks up to a certain stage. It is an individual characteristic as to what that limit can be.”

“But once that limit is crossed a person will still look sane from outside. But what happens inside his mind, nobody knows. And ultimately he may turn out to be a psycho. But he’s still normal outside. This is what is called The mask of sanity.”

“Look at this man,” I showed Jemina, “Look at his face. It’s so still and so calm. Yet you would be surprised to know that he’s killed more than 20 people. This is what is called the mask of sanity,” I said. She looked closely at the glass chamber and tapped on the glass.

“No ma’am, since the day he’s come to this asylum, he has never spoken a word, either with me or with his investigators,” I said.

And then we proceeded to the next patient. “This man has murdered his wife and children in cold blood. He always complained that he under the puissance of a negative force perpetrated to the bloodshed. And one day he started to vibrate under psychic trance. Initially he said that the negative force inside him was trying to kill him. And a few hours later he blanked out. But his brain is still caught in the same psychic trance that at one point of time or the other he starts vibrating again. Very interesting case.”

“This is a classic case of possession. The patient believes that he’s possessed and belief makes him do all this,” I continued.

And then I lead her to most of the chambers. She interviewed few of them. A few of them who have significantly showed some medical improvement spoke to her.

“Thank you so much sir, I will now be able to complete my thesis,” she said and left the place.

I too was tired and left for the day. The next morning I was back at the asylum when I found some of the glass chambers were broken and few of the insane have escaped when I called 911 and complained.

“I guess its Jemina who’s freed them all. As she was the first person whom I led to the interiors of the asylum. Normally no one else has the access to these interiors,” I testified before the judge.

The judge was looking at me. “Have you suffered from any psychological disorder?” he asked. “Yeah, I was treated for Obsessive Compulsion Disorder,” I nodded.

“And this is the girl, Jemina?” the judge pointed his finger and I looked in that direction. “Yes, she’s the one,” I shouted.

“In what seems to be one of the most bizarre cases I have ever seen in my life, Dr. Wary Jones, the man who testified here infront of me is suffering with some major psychological disorder,” there was a pause of a while.

I looked at him, completely confused. Is he insane? Why is he trying to convict me?

The San Jose county sheriff will now narrate the exact incidents that happened when a man wearing a hat walked forward and spoke.

“The police have raided the area where the San Jose Asylum is located. In fact there is no such institution in that area. We could only find the residence of Dr. Wary Jones with a placard displayed with ‘San Jose Asylum’…” and he paused for a while.

“We broke into the house and were more than surprised to see huge glass chambers as indicated by the doctor. But… but the glass chambers aren’t any state of the art treatment facilities but huge vats containing vinegar used to preserve the dead bodies that were lying in those vats,” and he looked at me.

“We have ultimately caught one of the most prolific serial killers in the history of US of A who for over a period of 29 years has kidnapped his victims and preserved all of them in the vats in the cellar of his house which he called himself, San Jose Asylum. This girl Jemina is his last victim.”

“The previous night, Jemina was walking along the street when the doctor kidnaps her and eventually leads her into his death trap. In this affray to save her life, Jemina broke two glass cylinders from which the bodies came out and the doctor still under his mental state thought that Jemina helped some of them to escape called the police and helped us catch him,” the sheriff concluded.

And he handed over two books to the judge and said, “these diaries named ‘The lines of sanity’ and ‘Living with the sane in an insane world’ would give a complete account of how he killed people.”

“No, this can’t be true, you people are insane,” I shouted my heart out. But none of them heeded to me.

“The doctor will be treated for his medical condition and the judgement will be pronounced after further notice from the curator of the treatment facility,” the judge said.

The next morning I was lead to the medical facility. The door opened and I slowly got down from the car. And I looked around. The place seemed familiar. The huge words read, “San Jose Asylum” struck my eyes like a lightning. And I shivered under fright.

They slowly lead me into the asylum and I saw the huge cylindrical glass chambers before me.

Even before I could understand what was happening, “Please, don’t let me into those chambers. I am not insane. Please…..”

The next day newspapers read, Dr. Wary Jones escaped from trial the previous night. And the judge as well the sheriff too went missing. The police stormed the house of Wary Jones and found the dead bodies of the judge and the sheriff in the cylindrical glass vats still preserved in vinegar. And Wary Jones is reportedly missing. The police however recovered a diary with the name ‘The mind of a psychopath’

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I know how many times I haven’t slept properly cos of the issues that invaded my dreams.

Neglected my health, harried it and never applied a leave, whatever be the means!

There is nothing called a personal life, when I dedicated my life to Her (personifying work), the dame that absorbed me into her reams.

Alas, where did I lose that beautiful life of mine that once beckoned me with all its gleams?

That looked so promising with all its insincere and deceitful deems.

Those days when I even had the efficacy and moxie to swim against life’s biased streams.

But now, I am torn between my passions-many (work @ workplace, indeed is one of my greatest passions) burdened alongst my shoulder beams.

All the tumult and chaos which fill my mind and body will erupt into maddening screams.

Frightened of so many things, if this were to continue, I will have to resign soon before I kill (not literal) myself, ripping apart my skin’s seams.

Damn thy soul for there art no soul, I walk along soulless amidst Life sans We, that teems.

And hark, these are life’s unsung themes...

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Sunday night. And it was raining cats and dogs, here in Hyderabad. I and Atul were returning from ‘The Dark Knight’ movie. The torrential downpour almost reduced our visibility to a few metres on the road.

Atul was driving the car. “Damn it, just glow slow. The car will skid,” I kept warning him.

“Do you think any soul would be walking down the roads in this rain,” he turned towards me. The wipers were sliding along the windshield as the droplets of rain lashed it.

Suddenly I saw someone clad in a white dress obstruct our way. “Atul…watch out,” I shouted. And he rammed into ‘it’. There was a loud bumping sound before he applied the brakes and the car skid for a few meters, coming to a screeching halt.

Both of us were terribly shaken. “Let’s get out of here,” Atul said.

“What about that someone on the road, he or she must have been seriously injured,” I objected. “We’ll call 1098, and inform them. I don’t wanna involve myself in a hit and run case,” his voice quivered.

The next day, I rummaged through all the newspapers for reports on yesterday’s accident.

‘… a woman clad in a white dress, was run over by a car. The woman later succumbed to injuries in a local hospital. Nobody came forward to claim her body yet…’

I was telling him; drive slow, drive slow…

I decided to pay a visit to the hospital. “You’ve gone crazy, you will spill the beans, infront of the police,” Atul was furious. “I will pay my last rites. Atleast we can do this much for her,” I said and hung up the call.

Another friend of ours, Aniket worked in the same hospital. He took me to the mortuary where her body was preserved.

“Last evening, I was the duty doctor, when they brought her in. She had a fractured shin bone and I thought she would recover soon. Later that night, she developed complications. She suffered from some internal hemorrhage and she bled to death. But before she died, she wrote something with her blood, on the floor,” he said.

“What…” and I had gooseflesh.

“Who’s next?”

What in the hell, does that mean?

I thanked him and left for Atul. “Atul, we should immediately contact some seer, or a witch. I know you would believe this. Neither do I, but circumstances are forcing me to,” Atul read my worried face.

But he dismissed it all. And I dropped him at his house. A lot of persuasion fell into deaf ears. He wouldn’t listen to me. I reached home still thinking about the girl. I couldn’t get her image outta my head. With those bruises and scratches on her face, and her eyes which were still and blank and they haunted me.

In a few minutes, I received a call from Atul. He sounded as if he were freaked out.

“Aniket’s dead”, he said, “His wife just called me. He slipped from the first floor and fell onto a glass dining table when he died instantly. And...” he hung up. I tried calling him back, but of no avail. I immediately rushed to his home. He lived all alone. Observing that the door was open, I slowly pushed it open.

The whole place was so eerie and dark. I could only hear the sound of blood gushing through the inner canals of my ear. I suddenly heard a sound from upstairs and slowly climbed the stairs. His bedroom door was open and through the door I saw him.

He was sitting in a corner of his bedroom constantly staring at the mirror affixed to the dressing table. I walked closely to the mirror and was aghast to see these words.

“Who’s next?”

And I rushed to him. “Atul… Atul… let’s see the seer,” I said. And we started immediately. He still kept looking at the bedroom as we reached his car.

“I will drive,” I told him and he handed me over the keys. “The windshield looks pretty new,” I asked him.

“Yes, remember, that day when we hit that girl, a portion of this windshield was damaged and so I got that one replaced,” he said.

The seer’s place is a 30 minute drive from Atul’s. And we reached his place in no time.

We spoke to his disciple who led us to him. The seer was sitting cross legged and meditating when he suddenly opened his eyes as we approached him.

“I know the reason, why you guys are here,” he said. He closed his eyes once again and started to talk.

“Mirrors are a medium between the real world and trance. A mirror or a glass may be the manifestation of one’s own soul or can be holding another’s soul also. The girl was nearly killed in the accident, and her soul slowly moved into the trance via the windshield.”

“But soul can’t be at two different places at the same time. I mean, how can the windshield trap the soul when she still walked on the road?” Atul asked.

“Death isn’t a sudden process. It’s gradual. It is the process in which the soul moves from the mortal state, I mean the body, into some medium, where it will remain immortal forever.”

“The girl was destined to die at that point when your car hit her. But her soul cannot jump into this immortal medium immediately. The soul searched for a glass medium which can lead it into the trance. And then it found your windshield.”

“And when the windshield got destroyed, her soul was liberated. Else, she would have been trapped in it.”

“Then, what about this?” I interrupted, “The girl wrote ‘Who’s next’ in blood. Also, on this mirror at Atul’s home, ‘Who’s next’ was written on it, in blood.”

“I can’t see that far. Some soul trapped in a mirror is trying to contact you, you either have to help it, or help yourselevs” he said as we slowly got onto our feet when I looked at Atul. He was vomiting blood, spurting all over the place. He was coughing heavily and blood started to ooze through the fine pores of his skin.

“You’ve seen something written in blood on a mirror? Hi soul already started making a transition to the mirror. He’s gonna die soon,” the seer finished as I pulled Atul’s body close to the car and placed him on the rear. “Try to destroy the mirror as soon as possible, so that his soul is not trapped in that,” the seer gave one final piece of advice.

Let me take him to a hospital first, I thought. I drove his car at break neck speed with thousands of thoughts racing through my mind. I rushed him to the nearest hospital when he was pronounced dead.

The girl’s soul transitioned into the mirror and then she’s dead and she says, who’s next. And it was seen by Aniket. He’s crashed onto his dining table and then, he’s dead. Then it was again seen by Atul at his home whose soul transitioned into the mirror before he died. This is a vicious cycle. Who’s next?

And as I walked across the corridor which was almost deserted. The lights flickered as I walked. I was looking around when my eye caught the glimpse of something colored in red and dripping.

I peeped into the adjacent room through a small opening in the door. I slightly pushed the door. ‘Creak’, it opened. I saw a mirror right infront of me. And there were words written on it, dripping blood.

“No, I am not gonna allow my soul to move into the mirror,” I shouted and flung a flower vase onto the mirror. It shattered into pieces.

And I looked at myself. I am fine. Nothing’s wrong with me. My soul wouldn’t leave me cos I broke the mirror. So the transition is not gonna happen.

And I kneeled before the broken pieces. I could see something move. A dark silhouette. I slowly bent down and started to arrange the broken pieces when I saw a reflection. It was dark and hooded and the eyes were burning like red ambers. A chill ran down my spine. And when I looked behind, it slashed the broken glass pane across my neck when blood gushed through....

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I never believed in prophecies until this day when…

“I hate this astrologer Guruji. Nisha’s parents broke our marriage cos’ this guy told ‘em that we weren’t compatible. And Nisha’s not bothered about me. Astrology my foot,” my voice echoed the anger deep within my heart.

“Neither do I believe in him. But I had to come here after my parents pressurized me to get our horoscope compatibility checked by him. If something goes wrong, I can still manipulate him, though,” Aman said. His love, Athiva too accompanied us.

“The same drama company dude. Vermillion and turmeric powder smeared on the walls...”

“Shhhh... you supposed to be quiet inside,” a man, seemingly a disciple of the Guruji, said as he approached us. And he led us into a room from where smoke was emanating. I was about to make a call to the fire station when I realized that this entire setup was from some incense sticks.

Guruji sat infront of an idol, with some chakra drawn infront of him. As we slowly approached him, he opened his eyes and stared at me.

“Guruji,” his disciple disturbed him, when his piercing gaze shifted and he was handed over the horoscopes. I wondered how people still believed in horoscopes and matching even in 21st century.

There was silence for a few minutes. Stark silence. The Guru closed his eyes, enchanted some spells, before he suddenly opened his eyes. “All of you are gonna die soon. Just go away from me. The evil spirits are already getting closer. Three of you, all on the same night. First you, you and then you,” his voice trembled as he said this pointing his hand to Athiva, me and Aman respectively.

“What shit?” I said. “And you,” he pointed towards me, “I will tell you why your marriage with Nisha was broken. Your life will end very soon. And the guy who marries Nisha will live for atleast 80 years. Your horoscope was never destined to match with Nisha’s”

A kinda fear started brewing inside me and I started sweating all over.

“The messenger of evil, a dark feline will enter your home, the day the bright constellations are invisible and when heavens start pouring down,” he warned and then stood up and walked away. I haven’t understood a single word but, “What if, your sooth saying goes wrong, sir?” I shouted. He turned back with those bloody red eyes. “I won’t be prophesying anymore,” he retorted.

Aman and Athiva pulled me away from this place.

Our house was only a few blocks away from this place. So we started to walk home. What if his prophesy was really true?

“Guys, I don’t believe in this prophesy. Nothing’s gonna happen. I guess we aren’t characters out of a Stephen King’s novel, right?”

Aman and Athiva nodded. And we reached our home. The whole problem was how to convince their parents for marriage. “We’ll think of other ways,” I convinced them.

A few days passed without this black feline thing or whatever happening, the soothsayer foresaw. And we completely forgot the same. I stayed two blocks away from Aman’s home while Athiva stayed with him.

One evening, I got a call from Aman. “Athiva’s dead,” and he started to cry.

“What?” I shouted.

“I reached the home a few minutes back when I saw a black cat run across my feet. Sensing danger, I walked into the home and..” and he started to sob. “I am coming, just hold on,” I said as I ran towards his home.

I looked at the sky. It was totally clouded. And it was slightly drizzling too. Then, I understood the prophecy. A black feline stood for a black cat, invisible constellations for heavy clouding and heavens pouring for rain. “Damn, today’s the day,” I thought as a chill ran down my spine. And the very thought that, the astrologer pointed his hand to me after Athiva, indicating I was next, frightened me even more.

I reached Aman’s home. The door was partly open. I called out his name, but none responded. I slowly walked into the house. All the things were strewn around. Apparently, there was a lot of struggle. And there she lay, Athiva, in a pool of blood. With scratches all over face and her abdomen ripped apart as if she was mauled over by a wild animal.

I was god damn freaked to see her in such a situation but was even more freaked out when I felt some strange shadow walk past me from behind. I turned behind and I saw a black cat looking at me with those golden yellow eyes, marked with the black contracted pupils at the centre. A low purring started to get louder when I saw its canines dripping blood.

And I ran out of home, closing the door behind me. I dint know where to run. I just kept on running holding onto my dear life, when I tripped over something hard and fell down. It was a man, who was lying on the road. He was bleeding profusely.

“Aman,” I shouted. “What happened Aman?” I was crying.

“b….bl….c….. caa….t….” was all he said before passing out. I fell on his body and wept for a while. Before I was reminded of something.

The astrologer said, first Athiva, then me and then Aman. I am still alive. So, why did Aman die? Something wrong with his soothsaying? And I knew where I was supposed to go.

I rushed to the astrologer’s place. Everything seemed different. No commotion. No hustle bustle. I walked into the astrologer’s room when I saw something that frightened me to the core. For the first time ever in my life, I started to believe in astrology and prophecy.

The astrologer lay down amidst the plates of vermillion and turmeric powder and his tongue was cut and was lying close to him. ‘I won’t be prophesying anymore,’ his words still rang in my ears.

I knew, I had no work there and I started to walk back, with so many thoughts flooding my mind. It was still drizzling and the clouds loomed the entire sky. Athiva’s dead and so was Aman. First it was Athiva, and then somehow, I managed to escape. So the prophesy’s gone wrong and hence the astrologer couldn’t prophesize any more. And then it was Aman. This is vicious.

Let me get back to Aman and Athiva, as I started to walk along the street. Let me inform the police, first. And I reached for the cellular in my pocket. There was a missed call from Aman. I dialed the voice mail.

‘Hey, the prophesy is gonna be true. The only way we can prevent ourselves from being killed is to stop the astrologer from foretelling the future again. And this can be done…’

So, it was Aman who slashed the astrologer’s tongue. But he still got killed. My head was reeling and I was confused. Should I be happy that I am still alive and that the prophecy has gone wrong in my case or should I lament over the loss of my two dearest friends?

And my cellular started to ring all of a sudden. A call from some unknown number.

“Son, I just wanted to warn you. Today is the particular day, I’ve spoken about. I tried to call Aman and Athiva. They were unreachable over the mobile. So I am calling you,” a recognizable voice from the other end spoke.

“But, how could you sp… speak? I was dumbstruck to hear Guruji speak. “I mean I came to your place and I saw you lying in a pool of blood,” I told him.

“Some murderer came over to my place and they slashed my disciple’s tongue, before he fled the place,” was his answer.

That could be true. I saw a man lying in a pool of blood and in that utter chaos and tension and also in the dark, I dint bother to look at his face or his body. All I saw was a man, lying still, in a pool of blood.

“But you pointed out to Athiva, me and Aman, stating that we would die in a sequence,” I asked him.

“When did I tell that you are gonna die in this sequence,” he said.

When I realized where I am gonna be in my future! Hell!

There was a heavy gust of wind and the trees started to shake violently. Occasionally a loud thunder would deafen my ears.

I rushed to my home. The windows banged against the sills due to this wind. I rushed to the windows to close them when I heard a purring sound from behind. I turned back and I could see the black cat.

It slowly moved towards me. My hands shivered as I bent down and took the cat into my arms, running my fingers through its fur.

“Had a nice meal, my baby?” I kissed it and looked at the mirror. I was standing infront of the mirror with the cat in my hands. My eyes looked blank with two dark black lines cutting across the whites and my canines were still dripping blood and the claws slowly retracted.

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