Next morning, a yellow bus took a begrudged and disappointed Avish to school.
He didn't pay an ounce of attention in class. Just kept gazing out the window the whole time, chin cupped in his hands, wondering about the man in black. Whether it had all really just been inside his head, maybe that was why he hadn't shown up the next night. His homework he had done, so at least Avish was safe in that respect. But whatever his teachers taught, he had no idea. His English teacher, Mr. Mathur, called him a few times before he snapped back into attention. 'What happened, child?' Mr. Mathur asked. 'Seen a ghost recently or what?'
Maybe, Avish thought, would be a fit reply. Meanwhile, Mr. Mathur went on about a whole rant as to how literature can be the most dangerous weapon used in war.
Roy approached him numerous times, but Avish didn't feel like talking. Roy was bewildered at his friend's eccentric demeanor; just yesterday on the phone, he had seemed so eager to tell him something. What had happened?
Avish didn't eat his lunch. He didn't write a single sentence in his notebook when the teacher dictated.
He didn't care.
His teachers knew he was a good kid, so they let him off, seeing as how disoriented he looked.
During dispersal, Avish hurried toward his bus, not caring to even say goodbye to Roy or any of his pals (of which were few any way; four, in the whole world, to be exact) while other children did the same leisurely, chittering and chattering and eating ice-cream and what not.
But along the way, he tripped over an extended leg and stumbled down hard. It all happened too quickly, too unexpectedly. It was like the ground rose up to his face and slam! The metallic taste of blood corrupted his mouth.
'Oops,' said the boy who'd deliberately caused Avish's fall.
Another taller, more muscular boy patted the leg-extender smartly on his back. 'Well, what do we have here?' he cajoled.
'Leave me alone, Raghu,' Avish said, standing up. Not furious, not in pain; just plain annoyed. 'Please.'
'Did you hear how he just squealed?' Raghu glanced with amusement at his fellow Boogies, who guffawed while blocking Avish's way. ' "Please". Like a puppy. And what if we don't leave you alone, puppy? What are you gonna do then?'
Raghu thumped his large hand on Avish's rucksack, moving around Avish, like a wolf appraising a sheep. This was how it always went down. Avish was kind of used to this by now. He kept his eyes down.
'Look at me when I'm talking to you!' Raghu raised his voice a ton.
Avish had always regretted being a weakling. He was short for his age, relatively thin, and not particularly intimidating. Not at all intimidating, in fact. It was at moments like these that he foolishly wished he had the strength of Hercules so he could just . . . but of course not.
Sighing, Avish looked up.
And his eyes sparkled.
The man in black was standing a few meters behind the Boogies, under a huge, shady tree.
Other students were ignoring him - or, as Avish knew better, they were downright unable to see him.
A timid smile touched his lips. Avish presumed he was safe.
The man in black is here.
'What're you smirking at?' Raghu bawled. 'What's so funny, eh?'
The man in black is here.
'Your face,' Avish said, unworried, unafraid of the consequences now.
The man in black is here. The man in black is here. The man in black is here.
There was a momentary shock, quite understandable, on Raghu's face. Then one of the Boogies howled 'Show him, Rags!' and a sharp kick landed in the pit of Avish's stomach. Suddenly he was glad he skipped lunch.
He still kept a diminutive smile pasted on his face. He was confident the man in black would help him.
Only he didn't.
The Boogies seldom resorted to such violence as they did on that day. No other kid interfered, not until Avish had tears welled in his eyes from the volley of kicks and punches and insults thrown at him. After that a senior student, a prefect, appeared out of thin air and made the Boogies go away. She asked Avish if he was okay, if he needed to go to the medical-room (to which he answered that he was just fine, thank you very much). She asked Avish the names of the Boogies, said she would get them punished (to which he lied that he didn't know any of their names, that he was really perfectly fine, thank you very much).
And when Avish looked up next, there was no one near the towering tree.
___________________________________
At home, Mom was concerned. Avish told her he fell down during PE, also that a ball hit him in the face, that there was nothing to be bothered about. That explained both the slowly developing bruises and his bloodied mouth.
But mothers are mothers, and a mother always knows.
Shweta applied a balm on his injuries - one on his jaw was especially bad, and would likely become all purplish and ugly by the next day - while Avish strived his best not to let the pain show.
He just didn't want to be a weasel. His Dad hated him being a weasel. He had to be a man, rough and gruff, like Dhruv always said.
He didn't know this yet, but Avish would grow to despise his father in the years to come.
But he was just a kid as of now. A kid who did not want his Dad to be mad or condescending.
So despite Mom's manifested concern, he wouldn't rat out. He was a brave kiddo.
He was also very, very pissed.
Infuriated, would be an apt word. At the man in black. What had he said?
I have been with you forever. Watching you. "Protecting" you.
Protecting me indeed, thought Avish.
He had no idea why he was so full of rage against a man he hadn't even been aware existed until the night before tonight. Had he actually started trusted the man? Funny, because he wasn't sure still if such a person - person, ghost, phantom, it was all the same to him - was real at all.
Yes. He guessed that explained it. The man must not be real, after all. He had always had an overactive imagination. Mom concurred. So he must've hallucinated the man that night. Had conversations with himself. Or maybe it had all been in a dream.
Then how do you explain the imprints on your face? enquired his brain.
I did that to myself in my sleep, he told his brain. Or in a make-believe encounter with a non-existent stranger.
Oh, really? Those impressions were long, Avish. Your fingers are shorter than a burnt candle. At this point, you're just lying to yourself.
'If he's real,' he whispered to nobody, 'why didn't he help me when I was getting beaten up? Why didn't he?'
Avish finally let the tears he'd been holding in for so long out now. Crying felt good. The tears felt good. Hot against his clammy cheeks.
At least as the droplets tumbled down onto his hands, he could be sure they were real.
_________________________________
Avish halted at the door to his parents' bedroom, his hand placed on the knob. He had just come to say goodnight, but another heated argument was going on in there. A loud, raucous, scary one.
'No, Dhruv! It's not right!'
'Oh, you sick little runt, you-'
'Why don't you try to understand? There's Avish - at least think about your own goddamn son for a-'
'Aaahh! Why did I ever marry this bitch?!'
His mother sounded crestfallen. 'Why did you ever marry me?'
A frightening thud came from the room then, like an object had been slammed against something wooden.
Heart racing, Avish returned to his own room.
__________________________________
Meditation didn't work for him. Never had, never would. But the poor eleven-year-old tried anyway. There was so much going on in his life, so much unrest, that he prayed for long minutes to the Almighty to make this stop. To make everything alright. His grandma, Mom-Senior Bibi, always said God listens to kids because He finds them innocent. Hopefully she was right.
Avish slept weeping.
___________________________________
It wasn't music that woke him up that night. It was the clock on his wall.
The Mickey-Mouse one. The one he so adored.
It started screeching deafeningly loud all of a sudden, like a clock possessed (can clocks act as conduits?). Jerking Avish awake almost instantaneously.
He blinked a thousand times before he realized he was awake and his clock had gone bullocks. It had never done that before. Avish wasn't even sure it had any such feature.
Now, even as he squinted at it against the dark of the night, it calmed down. Regained its hinges. Starting to act like a normal clock, leaving but steady clicking and standard tick-tocking as the remnant sounds. Squinting against the murk and with the help of the meagre moonlight, Avish could faintly make out the time the clock read.
Exactly two hours past midnight.
Thinking he'd tell Dad later about this nutty haywire-ism of his favorite clock, Avish tore his eyes away from it to sleep.
But just as he closed his eyes, he thought he glimpsed something. Someone.
He opened his eyes back up.
The man in black was there. Sitting silent and still on Avish's bedside table. Ogling him gloomily.
Moonlight falling right on his somehow-hatless profile. Highlighting his disturbing face. Making his one good eye gleam like a cursed jewel. Emaciated skinfolds loosely dangling from his seemly pebbled throat.
Avish wasn't afraid this time around. He closed his eyes again.
He could barely resist himself, though. The man's charisma was doubtlessly sleep-disruptive.
'Say it,' the man said. His voice every bit as idyllic as last time. Making Avish feel like it was murmuring in both his ears.
'Say what?' Avish reprimanded, lids rising a tad.
'What you want to say so badly.'
'I don't have anything to say to you.'
'That is not what your tone suggests,' teased the man.
Avish hopped into sitting position, taking reins. 'Alright. You are un-honest . . . no, uh, dishonest. You say you've been guarding me my whole life. You won't tell me from who. Now when I am beaten senseless, you stand there and enjoy the show! What am I supposed to make of that?'
'Make of it what you will,' said the man. 'I did not deem it necessary to save you from those children.'
Avish chortled. 'Didn't deem it necessary.'
'There are bigger hurdles in life than petty bullies and raggers, Avish,' said the man, calm as a monk on meth. 'You need to understand that. I am not here to handle things you should be taking care of yourself. I am here to guide you. Help you find the path. Protect you from the one true enemy you have.'
'And who's that?'
'Yourself.'
Avish gaped at the man's dry, lifeless visage. This was unbelievable.
'Do not get me wrong,' the man clarified. 'I do not aim to offend. I am simply reflecting a universal truth which you humans have always hesitated to accept, for some unforsaken reason.'
'You do realize how much I am going through?' Avish yelled, hapless against the tears leaking out of his eyes yet again. 'Other kids, they don't have to listen to their parents' fighting twenty-four-seven! They don't have to fend off the Boogies! They don't have to brave for creepy traitorous men who haunt their nights!'
The man in black extended a malnourished arm forward and wiped the tears off with his bony, misshapen hand. The touch alone gave Avish goosebumps.
'That right there,' the man began, 'is your flaw. You humans pity yourself, think the other is better off than yourself. Avish, you are a good child. You have such-' here a guttural quality entered the man's tone, and Avish saw the torn shreds of skinfolds oscillate about the man's throat '-great potential. Capable of moving mountains and rivalling rivers.'
'That's an exaggeration.'
The man smiled, revealing his teeth. Teeth which were more like musty old books placed unorderly on the shelf of his mouth. 'Another arena where you humans flunk miserably. Who is to say if my words are exaggerated or your notions small? Who is it to say if the rocks cannot talk or you simply cannot comprehend them? Who is to say if the lion is mightier or you underestimate your strength? Life can be viewed from endless perspectives, my friend. You simply have to choose yours.'
Avish was dumbfounded. 'Well. Alright. Why didn't you come yesterday night?'
'I did. You were afloat in your dreams. I did not desire to disturb your rest. It was a school night for you.'
'Well, so is tonight.'
'Tonight I had to come. You know why.'
Avish lightly nodded. Somehow all his anger at the man was slowly evaporating. 'I have a question for you,' he said suddenly.
'Ask away.'
'How old are you?'
'I am ageless.'
'Okay, another. What's your name?'
'I am nameless.'
'That feels wrong. Everyone must have a name. Let's see. What should I call you?'
'Anything you deem fit.'
'Uhm, well, you're a Bhoo-' Avish stopped mid-sentence. He was going to say Bhoot (which essentially means ghost), but now realized names don't work that way. 'No, I'm sorry, that must be offending for you -'
'You want to call me Bhoo?' The man's chipped brow arched up, pulling a multitude of thin, taut skin with it.
'Can I?'
'Whatever suits you is fine by me.'
Bhoo. The man in black.
Bhoo.
Avish smiled. 'Sounds good to me.'
The man grinned as well. Again showing those hideous teeth of his.
'Uhm, Bhoo?'
'Yes, Avish?'
'I have a request for you.'
'Yes?'
'Don't take it in the wrong way, please.'
'Of course not.'
'Please don't smile in front of me. I mean, your mouth, your teeth - no, they're really pretty - but kind of gross, so . . .'
'Of course. Anything else?'
Avish considered for a moment, then asked the one question that had been bugging him since so long: 'Are you real?'
The man took his sweet time to answer this one. Then he said: 'If you say so.'
Well, that eased things a lot.
At this instant, Avish barely managed to stifle a yawn. It was very late. When the man - Bhoo, is his name - was around him, Avish didn't realize how fast time passed. The experience became ethereal, incomprehensibly so.
'You should probably sleep now,' advised Bhoo.
Avish nodded. 'Yeah, I guess.'
He started lying down in bed, which pained him greatly. He groaned. The Boogies had done their job well.
'Does it hurt a lot?' Bhoo questioned.
'Yeah, you bet.'
'Close your eyes,' the man said out of context.
Avish did as instructed.
He felt the man's lengthy drumstick-fingers trace his knees, his stomach, his face. An overwhelming urge to open his eyes took over him, but Avish desisted. Something prickly was pinching his skin from within. Butterflies died in his gut. The air in his mouth felt dirty, contaminated. A throb developed in his bones. His head started swimming.
Then it stopped. And all pain was gone.
Avish opened his eyes. Bhoo was smirking again, despite the very recent request made by Avish. Yet it did not trouble him now; this smile actually looked sort of beautiful. Mystically so. The man's left eye, the one which was halfway shut and had a scar running over it, was fluttering intensely. The other eye seemed dimmer than usual, with a glint of ivory in its seaweed shine.
'How does it feel?' the man asked.
'Spectacular, really.' An energy was buzzing throughout Avish's body. He didn't think he'd ever felt better, physically at least. This was magic. 'Thank you very much.'
'Let me ask you a single thing before I leave,' said the man. 'Are you still afraid of me, Avish?'
'No,' Avish replied. 'Not anymore.'
'Good,' said Bhoo, seemingly satisfied with the answer. A harsh quality came to his voice just then: 'You will be.'
Somehow that made Avish's insides somersault. 'What does that mean?'
As a retort, the curtains along his window-sill slid by themselves all of a sudden, blocking all light in the room. Avish could see virtually nothing.
'Bhoo? You there?'
But the man in black was gone. Bhoo was gone. And he had left with a daunting foreshadow - which had sounded almost like a warning.
The clock ticked normally as Avish drifted off with but one thought clobbering against his skull.
What on Earth did he mean by that?
What do YOU think the man in black meant by his statement?
Comment your thoughts and stay tuned, because this is really just the beginning . . .