When I Tell You A Story: Book 1 (Black River Trilogy)

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When I Tell You A Story: Book 1 (Black River Trilogy) Page 12

by Himalaya Goswami


  -----*-----

  16

  ‘Do you have a cure for my pain?’

  ‘Depends. if you you want to be cured or not.’

  ‘Will you tell me?’

  ‘Yes, sure. Death is the answer to your sufferings.’

  ‘I’d have to die?’

  ‘Thankfully, yes. Die, you must, if you want to wake up.’

  ‘And will that end my pain?’

  ‘Nothing can end your pain, my dear. Gather courage- you must, and make yourself

  believe that the wounds have been healed. And one day, they’ll return back. And

  erode all the buried thoughts that, in the beginning, made you happy, and then later,

  they gave you pain. But you never stop moving.’ Guha swallowed the saliva

  that

  had

  been produced in his mouth, and continued again, ‘This life of pain and regrets, of

  heartaches and regrets, of sleepless nights, this is not your reality. It is your

  ignorance towards yourself that has caused you so much pain. You must wake up,

  because consciousness is creation, and creation is life.’

  ‘And how do i wake up?’

  ‘As i said, you must die. Death is the stop.

  It

  is

  blackness.

  Emptiness.

  And

  only

  when

  you’re dead that you’ll discover your truest nature.’

  ‘But master, death?’

  ‘Why are you so intrigued about death? We die every night, anyway, and wake up

  every next morning.’

  Raman was in a limbo. Deep down in the matrix of his thoughts, he was drowning,

  falling deeper into the well that had no end because it had no beginning. It was his

  consciousness flashing dim lights in the attempts to turn on the light. But the

  blackness was defeating his conscience every time he tried to pull up a purposeful

  thought, a thought that can turn him alive, again.

  The scene flashed again, and it was not his memory. Someone wanted him to see

  what he was about to see.

  Guha was seated in his room, locked in the underground chamber inside his

  house in Dehradun. The room was lit by wax candles, and on the bed a woman

  was seated. Her hair were misplaced, and rough, and were hiding his face. She

  was bruised up, and her body was scarred. She was holding a diary in her lap,

  and shedding tears over the marked letters HG.

  Guha was watching her from a distance, glued on his blue chair. Her white dress

  was torn at many places, and the stains of blood that had dried up indicated an

  unfortunate series of events that might have happened to her. She flipped

  through the pages of the diary, and didn’t stop crying. Her tears were falling

  between the pages, and were soaked as soon as they touched the yellow pages of

  the diary..’I’ll hate you forever,’ she said and buried her face in the diary.

  ‘But what happened to you?’ Asked Guha, his voice pressed as low as he could.

  Vyana didn’t respond. She kept her head buried in the diary of his beloved.

  ‘He didn’t just betray me. He destroyed me. All his love, everytime he said he’ll

  be there even when my shadow would abandon me; it was all a lie. A game that

  he played, perhaps many times before. His promises were a bubble, and his love

  a trap.’

  ‘So he trapped your soul inside this diary?’

  ‘The soul has a body. Not the other way around,’ she said. ‘And yes, he trapped

  me in his notebook. He snatched the stones out of my navel chakra...that bloody

  stone,’ she burst out in tears. Still sobbing, she said in a low tone, ‘he could

  have just asked once.’

  ‘But how did you get those stones?’

  ‘It was I who freed the stone from the Blue Menhir.’

  The scene dissolved, and a new scene flashed in his conscience. He saw himself

  in his laboratory, the R&D department of his company, in Veritas tower,

  Gurugram, where he had been locked for many months, working on something

  as revolutionary as the invention of web.

  He had built a computer that could manipulate minds. It was a mobile sized

  device with infinite display (a screen without fixed edges) and a triangular

  button

  //if the machine is not required, it can be omitted. But it is a perfect angle for a

  story climax. Raman will pull her out of nothingness.

  *

  The red clouds began thundering, and a lighting bolt shook the white tube into

  quake. Raman bolted out of the lightning and hit the red surface, sinking deep

  into the cloud and his face popped out of the other side. He looked down, and

  the view below left him amazed.

  He was looking at his bed, far, far below. It appeared to be the size of an

  airplane as seen from the ground. Am i in a wormhole?

  He recognized his bed. He pulled back his head, and as he turned around, he

  found the metal box being opened. Its inner surfaces were covered with red

  velvet, with a vertical partition at centre.

  The box is an optical illusion. The box is a portal to another dimension.

  He pushed his hand inside the invisible surface that was rippling like water waves

  when a pebble

  is

  thrown

  on

  them.

  His

  hand

  disappeared,

  but

  he

  could

  feel

  his

  fingers

  behaving on his command. As he waved his hand into the invisible, another

  dimension and his hand touched with an object. It was burning hot at some places,

  and ice cold just a finger away. Raman grabbed it in his hand, and pulled it into his

  dimension. The tube began shaking as he tried to bring it out, but it didn’t move.

  Raman forced all his strength into getting it out and he

  was

  thrown

  back

  due

  to

  jerk

  when the stone finally moved. He fell behind, and stone dropped off his hold. His

  hand was both, cold and hot. And a black spot had appeared on both his palms.

  ‘ROCHA…….ROCHA…..ROCHA,’ the ghost reappeared, with his depressing voice and

  same words as it always uttered. But this time, it appeared more agitated, perhaps

  saying, ‘You shouldn’t have touched it, moron.’

  The fell on the cloud and melted the portion in contact with it. The stone fell down,

  and continued going down, melting every red cloud that came its way. Raman

  followed the stone hurriedly, jumping and hopping from cloud to cloud. And all of a

  sudden, the stone warped out from the white tube, taking Raman along with it.

  Raman crash landed on his bed with a

  bang,

  and

  every

  bone

  in

  his

  body

  was

  shaken.

  His muscles were stretched so much that they were about to rupture, and his head

  struck on the floor of bed like it had collided with a

  truck.

  It

  was

  now

  that

  he

  noticed

  the black marks that had appeared on his palms.

  The stone fell nearby him on the bed, and bumped down on the floor. Raman

  dragged himself to the other side of />
  the

  bed,

  he

  could

  not

  wait

  to

  see

  the

  miraculous

  blue light that had

  turned

  his

  room

  into

  bright

  blue.

  Its

  glow

  was

  divine.

  When

  Raman

  took a close look at it, he could not believe his eyes.

  It was an brain shaped gemstone with bumpy blue surface. It was blue, with yellow

  scars spread unevenly all around it as if it

  was

  smoldering

  from

  inside.

  Raman’s

  two

  eyes could not bear the energy that has the capacity to build new worlds. He was

  looking at the Pale Crystal, the energy source of Odysseus, stolen of King Suran by

  his daughter herself. The beloved most also damage the most. The blue light filled

  inside his nerves, veins, bones, inside his

  memories

  and

  it

  vented

  out

  from

  his

  pores,

  a million hair sized rays of blue from a million pores. And when it stopped, his body

  had lost every single hair. The blue light spanned his mind clutter to a side and he

  blacked out into the nothingness.

  ‘R...O….C…..H….A…..’ the ghost appeared again, and flipped open the diary with a

  stormy push. The pages flipped

  in

  turbulence,

  and

  fell

  silent.

  A

  wave

  of

  pink

  and

  blue

  glitter emitted from the gully between

  the

  pages.

  More

  waves

  emerged

  out,

  but

  all

  of

  them tinier than the first one. They formed a thick cluster of pink and blue

  intermingled in each other forming a tail. Its head was approaching the stone while

  its tail was still rooted in the diary.

  As the wave touched the stone, a yellow scars in the stone began glowing. It was a

  bright golden yellow luminance that was a response to the wave’s touch. The ghost

  was watching everything from above

  the

  diary

  and

  all

  of

  a

  sudden,

  it

  flew

  to

  the

  head

  of the wave and pulled it back into the

  diary.

  The

  wave

  struggled

  to

  come

  out,

  but

  he

  immersed himself in the diary and shut it closed.

  17

  // This chapter needs a whole new lookup.

  Guha’s death was a mystery. But for a

  person

  who

  himself

  was

  full

  of

  mysteries,

  and

  who spent his life behind the shadows, a mysterious death was

  his

  fate.

  Just

  like

  all

  crazy men with absurd

  dreams

  set

  out

  on

  an

  adventure,

  his

  quest

  was

  to

  gain

  power.

  Incredible power.

  He didn't

  remember

  where

  he

  was

  born,

  what

  his

  mother

  looked

  like.

  He

  remembered

  none of it. His name wasn't even Amigos Guha back then.

  Born and raised in

  the

  collate

  streets

  of

  Asansol,

  he

  was

  taken

  by

  a

  gypsy

  to

  her

  tribe

  in the sunderbans delta.

  She had named him Debon.

  And

  she

  taught

  him

  the

  power

  of

  spells,

  black

  magic

  and

  the occult. She taught him how to captive a spirit, and how to make it do as per his

  wishes.

  She told him of the three creators, the omniscience force that maintains a balance

  between dark and light, and good and bad. She explained him how the wheel of life

  works, and the divine tree that provides thought energy to every living being in the

  universe.

  The gypsy grew old and the end of her days approached. It was her last night on

  Earth that she called her son, Debon, and told him a secret she has been hiding all

  her life. In the last moments, people show who they really are.

  The gypsy told him a story, a tale she decided long ago would be her last story to

  him. The story of Sun, Moon and the Muse.

  And through the night, she told him of the sun, moon and the misfortune that fell

  upon them. She told them of the king, his dismay and the curse he put on the energy

  source of his kingdom.

  ‘When the stone was taken away, a darkness fell upon the kingdom, as if happiness

  and hope had vanished from Odysseus. The king was never seen again. Some say he

  went to the sea, some day he died of his own wounds.’

  ‘And the stones…..what happened to them?’

  ‘They were brought here by the traveler, who could not control the power of the

  stones.

  18

  The rain had slowed down by the morning, after flooding half of New Delhi the past

  night. The rain hadn’t stopped since the last evening, and still it was showering

  water. The sun had appeared, and unbelievable things were happening in the sky.

  The black clouds over New Delhi were melting in the sun. Tiny holes were forming in

  the dense cluster of smoke. Those who were headed toward the capital city from

  Haryana or uttar Pradesh could see the black sheet in the sky that had pushed the

  city into darkness and turned day into night.

  The street lights hadn’t been turned off since evening, and people were inside their

  homes. Water was running over the limiting level, and had flooded the ground floor.

  Raman’s phone was ringing from hours. And he was lying unconscious on his bed

  which was soaked in blood. He was turned upside down, his face buried

  in

  the

  nose

  of mickey mouse on the bedsheet. Hair on his head and brows had reappeared.

  Wake up. The world needs awakened men.

  Raman woke up to a shock, his ears hurling in the continuous sensation of the

  ringtone. The pain is gone. He

  rushed

  to

  his

 

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