It was half past eight that evening when he stood in front of the school building. He had an early dinner and then stepped out of the house under the pretext of meeting old friends.
He had been waiting for night to fall, for that was when the school would be empty and silent. The shadow had led him up to here, but now he was not feeling his presence. Standing on the desolate road, he was engulfed in the feeling of utter loneliness. He had to think of his next steps. The school was in front of him. If he could only smuggle his way in somehow... maybe the way he did when he was still a student, by hopping over the back wall. He remembered there was one narrow patch that did not have broken bottle shards embedded in the wall to deter trespassers.
He stood for several minutes on the opposite side of the road, surveying the school building. Holy Heart Convent stood proudly even after a hundred and sixty-three years of its existence, a landmark of this part of the town, which was otherwise devoid of much population. Truth be told, the building had always been a bit creepy. It was all white, and on virtue of being the tallest building in the vicinity, it looked like a white giant looming in the night sky, just about to break out into a rampage. Then there was the chapel in front of it. It was a white structure too, with a pointy triangular roof and a large lighted up red cross at its apex. Seen from the ground, the white chapel resembled a gargantuan hooded figure emblazoning the dark starry sky. And even today, as the night wind swept past the board that announced the name of the school, it made it judder with a repeated thudding sound, enough to send shivers down the spines of the faint-hearted. Anay remembered how the boys were afraid to walk past the school building at nights. There were talks of it being haunted. On this night, more than ever, Anay realized how true that was.
The main gate was closed as expected. He walked around the building. The back gate opened out in an alley, across which was a residential complex. Anay scrutinized the place carefully. Then he looked at the high wall. It was still the same, but would he be able to climb now as he did when he was fifteen? There was only one way to find out.
He landed on the ground of the school compound with a louder sound than he had expected. He quickly took cover in the bushes behind him and waited. No one came. Heaving a sigh of relief, he stepped out.
Now, he had to analyze the situation. He had come here—nay, he had been brought here—but what was his purpose? What was he to truly find out? Deep Mishra. The boy he had hardly seen when he was alive, would he be able to unravel the mystery of his death and shatter the sword of death that was dangling above his head? He hoped to. This was his last chance. If he did not, that sword would plummet right down and pierce his skull.
"I am here now just as you wanted!" he said softly. "Isn't this what you wanted? Now do whatever the fuck you want to. Let us end this tonight." He waited, hoping against hope for some kind of reply, some sign, some manifestation, but none of that happened. He feared if this wasn't a dead end.
He walked with agile steps toward the main building of the school. Where should he begin his search? The best place would be the Office of Records. If the school had suppressed the news of Deep Mishra's death at that time, there was the possibility they knew more about his death. Like a cat prowling a house at night, he walked along the long corridors of the school. The office, if it hadn't been shifted all these years, was to the extreme left of the main lobby. He moved on with silent steps and came to the lobby. But the moment he reached, he grunted in disappointment. The office was locked. Of course, it would be. What else did he expect?
He stood there for a long minute contemplating on where else he must go, what else he must do, when, without any sign, the cold around him began to grow.
Alert all at once, he turned.
"Is that you?" he said. "Where are you? Don't play games with me. I have come to help you."
His gaze then fell out into the compound of the school. There in the corner, at the stands around the basketball ground, there was something. Stunned, he looked closer. There seemed to be people there, surrounded by some kind of aura. They were in school uniforms, and he realized they were students. Three tall boys, in fact, and down on the ground was another. A smaller boy. He had been pushed by the tall boys who were now laughing at him. It did not take Anay long to understand that this was a vision from his past. The boy on the ground, looking terribly humiliated about something, had curly hair. His glasses had fallen off and were next to him. And, standing in the middle of those tall boys—Anay realized in utter shock—was himself, pointing and laughing at the plight of the fallen boy.
The next moment, the vision vanished. The compound was again in darkness.
A wailing sound grew in the darkness, accompanied by a long gust of wind. The cold grew again, so terrible that Anay's teeth began to chatter. He felt it jabbing his fingertips as if they were so many pinpricks. He wrapped his arms tightly around his torso and fell to his knees.
"Fucker, I am here for you! What are you trying to tell me? Don't punish me like this for something that I don't know about. Tell me. Let me know."
There was a whoosh. It was as if a wind had suddenly run past him. He looked in the direction of it, and then he discerned something. A shape in the darkness. It was what had caused the whoosh. Even now he could see it—a figure in black, no more than a wisp of smoke, floating away along the corridor. It was him.
Before Anay could get back on his feet, the wisp was gone, having turned around the bend of the corridor.
Anay shook himself from his stupor. There it was, the thing that had called him. He found his limbs again and started to run, and when he came to the corridor, he saw that the door of the boys' bathroom was open. A glow came in from there. Slowly, dragging his heavy feet that seemed to be made of lead, he walked into the bathroom.
It was brightly lit, as if it had suddenly turned day. There was no one in there for a moment, but then he heard the furious thumping from the corner toilet booth. There was someone in there; he could hear the muffled shouts. Anay walked up gingerly and proceeded to place his hand on the doorknobs to open it.
But all of a sudden, there was loud laughter behind him. Anay shuffled to one side as several boys entered in at once, and there he was among them again, he himself in his school days, laughing and slapping his friends' backs. Someone opened the toilet booth. And Anay was aghast to see what was in there. The curly-haired boy was in there, stripped to his underwear, muffled with a sock in his mouth, his hands tied behind his back. The taller boys laughed at him. Someone took off the sock from his mouth and slapped him so he would not scream. The younger Anay looked on, enjoying the scene, and then, upon being urged by his peers took the little boy's head and dunked it into the commode.
The scene vanished again. The bathroom was dark. Anay found himself in there, teleported back into the present, now shaking as the memories came back to him. He looked at his face in the mirror. Someone had scribbled a cussword over it. The juxtaposition seemed perfect to Anay in that moment. Had he really done all that to his junior? To Deep? Was he such a bastard? That was all playful fun; everyone in school did that. But was that the reason for his torment? It didn't make sense. Who could bear such a terrible grudge only for some juvenile schooltime ragging?
Something whooshed behind him again. It was as if a cold finger was jabbed into his back to grab his attention. Anay turned and ran outside that filthy bathroom, where the stink of his past memories was worse than anything else.
***
The shadow slipped around the corner. The thing had chosen to guide Anay's path. There was a secret to be unveiled. He was going to see the truth about himself, and that was the bigger fear.
Every step fell heavier, every breath came out shorter. What would he see? Where was he being led? His life, the veritable nightmare that it had become—was it coming to an end? As he ran along the corridor, his footfalls cracking on the floor, no longer worried that someone might hear him, he was gripped by an increasingly morbid sense of doom.
He turned the corner and peeped. There it was—just a flash of it again. Its black billowing form swished past the water cooler and took a sharp left where the stairs were.
Weird noises escaping his mouth due to the intense cold, Anay came up to the bend of the stairs. They were there, going upward into the viscera of the building. The intense feeling that he was being led somewhere specific continued. Despite the fact that his limbs were trembling, he stepped into the staircase area. Over his head, he became aware of the chaotic fluttering. He looked up and saw the obscure form still ascending the stairs, taking the wind along with it. It wasn't unlike a gigantic bat flying up to the belfry of an ancient cathedral.
For a moment, he was disoriented. A haze had overcome him which engulfed his head. It was like being drunk all through the night and then walking into an examination. Everything whirled around him. Looking up at the staircase where the macabre being spiraled upward with a dizzying speed did not help at all.
And then there was a wail. It was unlike any wail he had ever heard. A loud cry it was, that rent the roof of the school building and escaped from the topmost window. It wasn't the wail of any human or beast; it was the caterwaul of the undead, and that was the moment that he knew—these stairs were not just a means to go upstairs; they were a portal to another dimension.
He walked up with heavy gasps now, no longer physically capable of running up them, which was surprising for during his morning jogs in better days, five miles used to be no big deal for him. But he no longer had the sense of being alive. The increasing cold suffocated him. The only fact that guided him through was the sick nostalgia that swept him time and again. This was the same building where he had spent thirteen years of his life, from preprimary to his tenth grade. He knew every corner of the building like the back of his hand. But had he, in those thirteen years of playfulness and mischief, caused irrevocable harm to someone?
The thing stopped on the seventh story, the topmost floor, and so did he. It disappeared into the corridor that led out of the stairs, and with a slightly quickened pace, Anay followed it too. "What do you want from me? Where are you taking me? Are you going to kill me?" were the questions he kept asking. He knew that he would not be responded to, not until it was time for whatever that malevolence had planned for him, but hearing his own voice gave him a sense of being alive.
Somehow, he came up to the corridor. There were two directions he could take. He discarded the right, for it was on the left where the windowpanes and photo-frames on the walls had turned foggy with mist—the cold trail of the specter.
He followed through, not seeing anyone or anything now, calling out frequently, hoping that there was at least some light here. He tried turning on some of the switches, but nothing worked. Either the lights of the building auto-switched off in the evenings, or—the more plausible explanation—that devious being had something to do with it. Anay had to make do with the only illumination there was—that of the moonlight filtering in through the windows, but that wasn't much either. It was the New Moon Night, the Amavasya, the night when ghosts and spirits are at their strongest and meanest.
Then he heard behind him—a creak. He turned. There were two colossal doors and they were partly open, slightly swinging. Quickly he recognized what that was—it was the big auditorium of the school, the place where he had spent a lot of time as a boy, practicing and performing in many school plays. In a flash, he remembered the scene at the movie hall with Shanaya. He remembered that thing he had seen in the vision—the stage with many garishly-painted actors. This was the same stage!
Good Lord! That thing had been giving him hints since ever. He had been too thick to recognize them.
He was sure this was where he had to go in.
Swinging the doors open, he walked in. It was cold as if the air-conditioner was on full blast, but he knew the cold wasn't from any air-conditioning.
He walked the aisle between the many rows of red upholstered foldable seats, his gaze flitting in many directions all at once. He could feel it here—not just the cold and the darkness, but also the despair. Whatever it was, it had happened here, in the bowels of this theater. The soundproofed walls of the auditorium were upholstered in black foam, and everywhere he looked, he felt as if that ghastly shadow of his nemesis was scraping itself out of the wall and gliding toward him, but he also had a measure of courage now, for he knew that if the ghost had brought him here, there was a purpose.
There was a tale he wanted to tell.
And then, up there on the second row, he saw a man.
He was sitting with his face buried in his hands, as if slightly meditating or weeping; he could not say which. The man was definitely human. Anay looked around in surprise; there was not a trace of the ghost anywhere. The cold had receded. All there was, was the man in the front seat in his white shirt, which was all he could see of him.
Anay walked up to the man. He stood in the aisle and said, "Hello... can you help me?"
At that, the man stood up. And before he even stirred, Anay knew who it was. His mouth fell open as the man stood his full height and turned to look at him. Apart from his blazing blue eyes, which resembled cold hellfire, Anay knew every inch of the man's face.
In extreme shock, he said:
"Kautuk?"
***
The moment of truth is finally coming close.
But, Kautuk?
Who of you expected something of that sort?
And, why?
You know how to find out... read on...