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