about his decision to cross the line. It looked no less than a witch’s den.
He opened the wooden gate, and stepped in. The marbled path he had walked many
time before was now buried under many layers of sand and grass. It's useless to think.
He entered the house, and a unknown fear gripped him. The wind was slow, and cold.
The Sun hadn't disappeared yet, but tired and orange, ready to dip in the horizon.
Raman looked at it, and knew something was coming.
Nobody could ever want to stay around that house, let alone inside. Not even after a
hundred rounds of cleansing and sweeping, the house could become habitable.
Something told him to walk away, to not trust his master this time. And whenever
something doesn't feels right, it usually isn't.
He didn't listen to himself, and tore apart the spider webs to make way to the main
door.
The door was locked. He pulled out a tiny saber from his pocket and placed it at the
mouth of the keyhole.
The saber was one of his many inventions, meant to open locks without its key. It
worked on the lock bumping technology and 3d printing of the key. He clicked a
button on it and an extremely thin membrane nozzled out of its head. It entered the
keyhole and as he pressed another button, a stream of pressurized air filled inside the
membrane. It took the shape of the key, by modifying its crumbs along the shear line.
A green light beeped, indicating the design of key has been prepared. He pressed the
third button and a material replaced the air inside the key pouch. It became rigid as
soon as filled inside the bag, and the gadget became one object, a key. He rotated the
saber which had become the key handle now, and the door was unlocked after many
efforts. It had been jammed during its years of rusting.
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A tiny window on the left was the only source of light inside. And it came to his mind
that the light was fading away faster than normal. He hovered the flashlight around,
and all he could were the layers of webs so dense that it appeared to be a home of a
giant spider. Anything but Aragog, he remembered the giant spider from the
abandoned forests in Hogwarts, taking pleasure in eating human beings.
He pushed the sofa aside and removed the canvas on the floor. A secret underground
hall was hiding beneath the sofa, and Raman pulled the chain that was shoveled
inside the wooden door. The door fell an inch away from his feet, and smoke erupted
out of the opened mouth. And what followed was a dang, rotten smell that could
choke anyone’s nose and deadlock the brain. It was acidy, because it burnt his eyes as
well. He moved back, as began pushing air out of his lungs. The smell gave an effect
of swalloiwing suplphuric acid through the nostrils.
The toxic smell was momentary, but another one was continuous. It was the smell of
a decayed body, or many. He pressed his nose with a handkerchief, and entered the
underground chamber, the once workplace of a thief who believed in magic, a man
who spent his life looking for the evidence of it.
He moved down the stairs into the pitch black chamber. It was not a discovery for
him. He had been here before, and he was will acquaint with the place. To my right is
a wood that burns for years. MAGIC. He smirked, and captured the lamp under the spotlight.
‘ Cedrus Libani, or Cedar of Libanon has been used in black magic for centuries.
Persians, babylonians. It is used to start the sacred fire for any ritual,’ he remembered
his master explaining him once long ago, how long he could not remember.
Beside the lamp were two bowls filled with purple and red chemical salts. He took a
pinch of purple salt on his and placed it on the floor Everything in the room was
covered with sheets of plastic. The roof was invisible because of the layer after layer
of spider webs, thick enough to trap a lizard.
He found a jar full of ash, a dead crow wrapped in transparent plastic sheets, a sack of
bones, but what terrified him the most was a silver colored trunk below the bed that
seemed to be unusually protected by many locks in a horizontal row.
It's not a box, master. It's a mini trunk.
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The Sun, Moon & the Muse
He knew where the keys could be: kept in a box inside the locker of his almirah. He
found the keys and attempted to open the locks that seemed to have not been touched
for a decade.
The locks were jammed, but they did open after great efforts. And as he lifted the
flip, a pungent, rotting smell filled the room. He found it hard even to breathe. It was
as if a human body was rotting inside the trunk.
What appeared next chilled his nerves to the bottom. His blood froze as he identified
the body to be of Rummy, his master’s dog. He was said to have died in an accident,
a year before his master. The body was preserved in a jute sack, sewn up at stomach
and neck. Unable to breathe due to the smell, he blocked his nose with a scarf and
rubbed his hands over the partially decayed body in the trunk. As he ran his hand
over it, he realized it was filled with something else other than just flesh and blood.
There was something even more terrifying. Something unusual was placed inside his
stomach. He cut off the stitches and something very black leaked out of the dog’s
belly. It was sack, but black. And with it, a scream echoed in the room. It longed for
just a second, loud and cutting through the ears. It was the scream of a woman. His
heartbeat raised and sweat erupted over his head. Without wasting any time, he pulled
out the package from dog’s stomach and rushed out of the room.
The packet was wrapped by a very old yellow paper, with strange symbols
handwritten in blue. It was a cryptic language, with strange symbols and phrases
handwritten on it. The package was tied with a red thread and sealed by wax.
He couldn't stop himself from knowing what lay inside the packet that had been
hidden and locked so mysteriously. As soon as he was on his way back, he broke the
wax seal. As he did it, the thread caught fire and turned to ashes in no time. The
packet dropped off his hands on seeing fire without any smoke. He lifted it again in a
hurry to avoid any paper from being burnt. It wasn't. The old, faded parchment was
unaffected by the burning of thread over it. Strange it was. But how much we really
know?
He unwrapped the packet, removing layer after layer of the papers with similar
writings. What lay hidden beneath the many layers of paper was a diary. A diary with
brown leather cover having a symbol of an eagle engraved at centre. The eagle was in
the shape of a W, with a beak at the intersection of two inverted cones. He flipped the
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The Sun, Moon & the Muse
diary and at the back were two letters marked at the bottom right. H.G. Who could
this H.G. be?
He opened the diary and to his surprise, it was empty. Not a single page had been
touched by some ink, not a single word i could find in the yellowish, dried pages.
Who hides a diary in a hound’s stomach? And that too, a virgin.
He flipped through the empty pages of the diary and suddenly, the diary slipped out
of his hands. It hit the floor of the car an
d swung open from the middle. And he saw
something coming out of the gully between the pages. Waves of sparkles erupted
from between the pages, and rose to a height of a few inches before evaporating in
the air. Bright silver glitterings with pink and blue color fused in them, shining like
diamonds made a fountain over the diary. The brightness was enough to catch the
driver’s attention and as he turned back to see what was happening, a scream filled
the automobile. The driver turned his head to see what had caused so much glitter,
and missed a truck appearing from the opposite side.
The driver applied brakes and the diary fell to the other side, colliding with the door.
And before he could catch his breaths again, a woman’s screaming voice eroded his
ears. The voice was stingy, and painful, as if someone had been burnt alive, as if a
woman was scratching her nails on a stone, not being able to bear the pleasure of
burning. He pressed his ears as hard as he could, but it didn't work. The voice was so
striking that his eardrums seemed to explode, bringing a stream of blood. More
unusual than the screaming voice was the sudden change is weather. Black clouds
appeared in no time and the sky turned dark. The voice didn’t stop, the burning
woman continued straining his ears and drowning him into unconsciousness.. With
his half closed eyes, he saw the diary closing itself and the screeching voice slowed
down, vanishing slowly. When he opened his eyes again, his world had changed.
9 Namrata
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The Sun, Moon & the Muse
10
His car was surrounded by half a dozen white scorpios, forming a semicircle around
him. More than a dozen men were standing outside, loaded with guns and
interrogating a weeping driver. As soon as raman showed signs of life, they pulled
him out of the car and grabbing him by collar, pulled him up into the air.
“Have you found it? It is evening already.’
‘It is about to rain,’ said Raman while in air, held up by a man who equaled three
normal, well developed urban men.
‘You’ll experience the rain first today...rain of punches and #kicks.’
He dropped him on the ground and headed toward the car. ‘Lets see what you’ve
got.’
The tall man found it tough to bend and look inside a less high car, and he got hold of
the first thing he saw inside. Lying on the floor was a diary and he bought it out.
‘Does this belong to your grandpa?’
‘Ah, no. It belongs to my grandpa's grandpa.’
The man threw the diary at his face and bolted toward him to plant a kick at him, as if
shooting a football.
Raman closed his eyes. He was ready to be beaten up again. He felt the heavy
footsteps approaching him. Anytime now.
The kick never arrived. With his eyes tightly closed, he felt a bright flash of light
spread outside, warm and real. It was so intense that even with his closed eyes, he
could feel the illuminance. And was too scared to experience it with open eyes. The
screaming woman’s voice appeared again, and long with her were the voice of men
screaming and yelling and begging for forgiveness. The thunderstorm continued for a
few seconds and everything turned black and silent again. He opened his eyes, and
the men who had captured him earlier were now lying on the road, in their worst
conditions. Torfn clothes, bleedings, fractures, damages, and what not? The driver
was at his knees, his hands spread wide and offering a prayer to his divine master.
‘Time to go.’
‘Anywhere you say, master.’
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The Sun, Moon & the Muse
‘Some things just can't be measured, or quantified,’ he heard her voice loud and
clear, ‘like love. You can never measure love, or weigh it.’
And in response, he explained her how al the emotions are just a combination of
various chemicals in the brain. And what we feel is just an ef ect, like a drug. And he
didn't stop there. ‘Love is a chemical state of mind, and the chemicals in crime are
dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin.’ He lectured her with the categories of love, and
areas of brain responsible for romantic o
utrages. N
ucleus a ccumbens, Ventral pal idum,
Ralph nucleus and only god knows what else.
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When I Tell You A Story: Book 1 (Black River Trilogy) Page 18