"Do you want to play hide & seek?"
"yesss"
"Come on then, I will hide and you have to find me."
Nodding my head I turned around..
I woke up with a jolt and looked around to see Nakul still sleeping peacefully.
It's been five days since I arrived here, five days since I have been constantly dreaming about him. He used to love playing Hide & Seek, although I wish I knew that it would be the last time I would see him. I woke up and headed towards the window, the moon was barely visible and all I could see under its light was silhouettes. The silhouettes that looked more comforting than the house I was in.
A week ago my parents died right here, they were here to visit my grandparents among the few families that lived here. I and Nakul stayed back, being twelve years older to him, I have practically been there for him most of the time.
My parents were always out visiting saints to know about what could have happened ten years back. On one such visit the saint advised them to conceive again and that is how Nakul was born.
A month ago my grandpa called my father to tell him that grandma was too sick and they should come to see her for the last time. That's when my parents decided to leave but a week ago we got a call from our grandparents to get back to Chhatrapur, my parents were dead.
All I could say was OK; locking myself in the bathroom I cried for an hour. When I told Nakul, he just sobbed for a while but was back to his normal self soon.
Soon we packed our bags and were here to cremate the bodies.
I was the first one to enter and what I saw made me cover my brother's eyes immediately. The person who was inside covered them without even looking anywhere and asked me to leave.
I went to grandpa's house and headed straight to my bedroom.
It was as if blood had been sucked out of their bodies, mouths wide open, the tongue missing, the eye sockets hollow.
I fell asleep with a shiver running down my spine at all times.
On questioning my grandparents, the only answer I got was,
"They chose their faith."
"What do you mean by that?? They were here to look after you and your health and now you tell me that they died and it was them who asked for it?"
Nakul came around and held my hand, that's when I noticed that I was shivering.
" Its better you are here now, you can see for yourself, they will show it to you."
"Wh.." they left the house and I was left to deal with my brother's questioning gaze.
"Let's go out and play something."
Nodding he came back with a big ball in his hands. I started walking ahead when he stopped me.
"You should hold my hands while walking, what if you get lost somewhere?"
I couldn't help but smile at that and held his hand, we stumbled across a bridge, it looked eerie yet inviting, I remember that it was the same bridge my father was working on before we left this town. We started playing and were having fun, that's when the ball drifted away and my brother went after it. I waited for a while but he did not come back, worried I went ahead to look for him only to see him holding a broken toy.
"Do you know that I am the only one to own this claw man toy? No other boy here owns it."
I immediately snatched it from his hand and knew the toy all too well. I decided to go back home, it wasn't the right place to be. We ate whatever my grandma had left for us and went to sleep.
"Have you forgotten me?"
"No I haven't."
"Then why didn't you ever comeback? Why didn't you look for me Ria?"
He started crying, tears of black blood fell down his cheeks, his nails came off and it was as if he was crying in pain, someone started cutting his fingers, he howled and cried looking at me with those questioning eyes, I went towards him and that's when..
I woke up again panting, it's been a week since the bridge incident and I keep getting such dreams, but today it was different. I immediately looked around and realized the bedroom door was open, Nakul wasn't here anymore. Running downstairs I found that the front door was open too and that's when I saw my brother.
He was smiling laughing and giggling to himself, he was holding a hand, a hand that was barely there, a hand that had its fingers clipped.
"Didi, come with us."
"Come with us Ria."
I went ahead and held my deceased twin's head. The twin I lost ten years back, whose death made my parents sick and eventually die.
I rubbed my eyes with my one hand trying to get rid of this dream but they were still there.
"It's not a dream; you need to know the truth. Come with me."
It was all blurry until I could see my father and mother, they were sitting with a saint, all I could do was see, and the noises I could hear were of kids, lots of kids whispering in the background. I focused my eyes again on the scene in front of me.
My parents bowed their heads and went home. The next scene was of kids playing near my house; my father invited a few of them inside and asked me and Rishi to stay out. I recalled that those kids were never seen by anyone again, my parents were walking towards the constructions site of the bridge, with the help of my mother; he took two bodies out of the sacks.
It were the bodies of the two kids who were playing with us that day, they made a pillar like structure using the bricks and tied the bodies to them, they didn't wait for the cement to dry and immediately covered them with bricks and cement too, I heard two sobs beside me and looked at their spirits crying beside me.
They took a vessel out and poured a red colored liquid on the pillar, they then painted the entire pillar red and went back home.
The scene repeated a lot of times, every time a different child but I never saw remorse on their faces. One day the police came to question them, while they dodged the questions of the police they got back to their rooms and that's when Rishi heard their conversation. They knew he had heard everything and that night they called him in the bedroom.
My mother gave him milk to drink after which my brother couldn't talk. My brother touched me and showed me broken pieces of glass in his hand. He cried and those evil people ignored him, they used a cutter to chop of his fingers, the glass shards stopped him from crying, they plucked out his eyes and drained all the blood by inflicting cuts all over his body. He was taken just like other kids and the pillar was made again.
I was on the bridge with Nakul, Rishi and the souls of all those kids.
"We killed them before they could kill you. Father was offered 10 million to build this bridge but he couldn't build it just like no one else could. That's when that vicious woman told him about black magic. The man instructed him to kill kids and plant their bodies so he could make the bridge perfectly. The bridge needed lives to stand still, they were always into black magic, they knew a life and blood could change things. He fed us all glass shards so we could never shout and clipped our fingers so we couldn't claw. They came back to start a new cycle and that's when we decided that this had to end. I always loved you and will try taking care of you."
With a look of satisfaction and content they drifted into dust; Rishi planted a kiss on both of our foreheads and vanished. I fell down and held Nakul as close as I could.
"Didi, the bad people are finally gone."
I with the help of town folks got the bridge destructed, the town folks knew and were happy with my decision, and with a small ceremony all the bodies were put in the grave. I found out from my grandparents that the police couldn't do anything about those two was because they had the support of a lot of powerful people.
That night I could finally fall asleep when a foul smell surrounded me.
Two hollow held my gaze and held me tight, "We will come back for you our little one."