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

by Himalaya Goswami

  about his decision to cross the line. It looked no less than a witch’s den.

  He opened the wooden gate, and stepped in. The marbled path he had walked many

  time before was now buried under many layers of sand and grass. It's useless to think.

  He entered the house, and a unknown fear gripped him. The wind was slow, and cold.

  The Sun hadn't disappeared yet, but tired and orange, ready to dip in the horizon.

  Raman looked at it, and knew something was coming.

  Nobody could ever want to stay around that house, let alone inside. Not even after a

  hundred rounds of cleansing and sweeping, the house could become habitable.

  Something told him to walk away, to not trust his master this time. And whenever

  something doesn't feels right, it usually isn't.

  He didn't listen to himself, and tore apart the spider webs to make way to the main

  door.

  The door was locked. He pulled out a tiny saber from his pocket and placed it at the

  mouth of the keyhole.

  The saber was one of his many inventions, meant to open locks without its key. It

  worked on the lock bumping technology and 3d printing of the key. He clicked a

  button on it and an extremely thin membrane nozzled out of its head. It entered the

  keyhole and as he pressed another button, a stream of pressurized air filled inside the

  membrane. It took the shape of the key, by modifying its crumbs along the shear line.

  A green light beeped, indicating the design of key has been prepared. He pressed the

  third button and a material replaced the air inside the key pouch. It became rigid as

  soon as filled inside the bag, and the gadget became one object, a key. He rotated the

  saber which had become the key handle now, and the door was unlocked after many

  efforts. It had been jammed during its years of rusting.

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  A tiny window on the left was the only source of light inside. And it came to his mind

  that the light was fading away faster than normal. He hovered the flashlight around,

  and all he could were the layers of webs so dense that it appeared to be a home of a

  giant spider. Anything but Aragog, he remembered the giant spider from the

  abandoned forests in Hogwarts, taking pleasure in eating human beings.

  He pushed the sofa aside and removed the canvas on the floor. A secret underground

  hall was hiding beneath the sofa, and Raman pulled the chain that was shoveled

  inside the wooden door. The door fell an inch away from his feet, and smoke erupted

  out of the opened mouth. And what followed was a dang, rotten smell that could

  choke anyone’s nose and deadlock the brain. It was acidy, because it burnt his eyes as

  well. He moved back, as began pushing air out of his lungs. The smell gave an effect

  of swalloiwing suplphuric acid through the nostrils.

  The toxic smell was momentary, but another one was continuous. It was the smell of

  a decayed body, or many. He pressed his nose with a handkerchief, and entered the

  underground chamber, the once workplace of a thief who believed in magic, a man

  who spent his life looking for the evidence of it.

  He moved down the stairs into the pitch black chamber. It was not a discovery for

  him. He had been here before, and he was will acquaint with the place. To my right is

  a wood that burns for years. MAGIC. He smirked, and captured the lamp under the spotlight.

  ‘ Cedrus Libani, or Cedar of Libanon has been used in black magic for centuries.

  Persians, babylonians. It is used to start the sacred fire for any ritual,’ he remembered

  his master explaining him once long ago, how long he could not remember.

  Beside the lamp were two bowls filled with purple and red chemical salts. He took a

  pinch of purple salt on his and placed it on the floor Everything in the room was

  covered with sheets of plastic. The roof was invisible because of the layer after layer

  of spider webs, thick enough to trap a lizard.

  He found a jar full of ash, a dead crow wrapped in transparent plastic sheets, a sack of

  bones, but what terrified him the most was a silver colored trunk below the bed that

  seemed to be unusually protected by many locks in a horizontal row.

  It's not a box, master. It's a mini trunk.

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  The Sun, Moon & the Muse

  He knew where the keys could be: kept in a box inside the locker of his almirah. He

  found the keys and attempted to open the locks that seemed to have not been touched

  for a decade.

  The locks were jammed, but they did open after great efforts. And as he lifted the

  flip, a pungent, rotting smell filled the room. He found it hard even to breathe. It was

  as if a human body was rotting inside the trunk.

  What appeared next chilled his nerves to the bottom. His blood froze as he identified

  the body to be of Rummy, his master’s dog. He was said to have died in an accident,

  a year before his master. The body was preserved in a jute sack, sewn up at stomach

  and neck. Unable to breathe due to the smell, he blocked his nose with a scarf and

  rubbed his hands over the partially decayed body in the trunk. As he ran his hand

  over it, he realized it was filled with something else other than just flesh and blood.

  There was something even more terrifying. Something unusual was placed inside his

  stomach. He cut off the stitches and something very black leaked out of the dog’s

  belly. It was sack, but black. And with it, a scream echoed in the room. It longed for

  just a second, loud and cutting through the ears. It was the scream of a woman. His

  heartbeat raised and sweat erupted over his head. Without wasting any time, he pulled

  out the package from dog’s stomach and rushed out of the room.

  The packet was wrapped by a very old yellow paper, with strange symbols

  handwritten in blue. It was a cryptic language, with strange symbols and phrases

  handwritten on it. The package was tied with a red thread and sealed by wax.

  He couldn't stop himself from knowing what lay inside the packet that had been

  hidden and locked so mysteriously. As soon as he was on his way back, he broke the

  wax seal. As he did it, the thread caught fire and turned to ashes in no time. The

  packet dropped off his hands on seeing fire without any smoke. He lifted it again in a

  hurry to avoid any paper from being burnt. It wasn't. The old, faded parchment was

  unaffected by the burning of thread over it. Strange it was. But how much we really

  know?

  He unwrapped the packet, removing layer after layer of the papers with similar

  writings. What lay hidden beneath the many layers of paper was a diary. A diary with

  brown leather cover having a symbol of an eagle engraved at centre. The eagle was in

  the shape of a W, with a beak at the intersection of two inverted cones. He flipped the

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  diary and at the back were two letters marked at the bottom right. H.G. Who could

  this H.G. be?

  He opened the diary and to his surprise, it was empty. Not a single page had been

  touched by some ink, not a single word i could find in the yellowish, dried pages.

  Who hides a diary in a hound’s stomach? And that too, a virgin.

  He flipped through the empty pages of the diary and suddenly, the diary slipped out

  of his hands. It hit the floor of the car an
d swung open from the middle. And he saw

  something coming out of the gully between the pages. Waves of sparkles erupted

  from between the pages, and rose to a height of a few inches before evaporating in

  the air. Bright silver glitterings with pink and blue color fused in them, shining like

  diamonds made a fountain over the diary. The brightness was enough to catch the

  driver’s attention and as he turned back to see what was happening, a scream filled

  the automobile. The driver turned his head to see what had caused so much glitter,

  and missed a truck appearing from the opposite side.

  The driver applied brakes and the diary fell to the other side, colliding with the door.

  And before he could catch his breaths again, a woman’s screaming voice eroded his

  ears. The voice was stingy, and painful, as if someone had been burnt alive, as if a

  woman was scratching her nails on a stone, not being able to bear the pleasure of

  burning. He pressed his ears as hard as he could, but it didn't work. The voice was so

  striking that his eardrums seemed to explode, bringing a stream of blood. More

  unusual than the screaming voice was the sudden change is weather. Black clouds

  appeared in no time and the sky turned dark. The voice didn’t stop, the burning

  woman continued straining his ears and drowning him into unconsciousness.. With

  his half closed eyes, he saw the diary closing itself and the screeching voice slowed

  down, vanishing slowly. When he opened his eyes again, his world had changed.

  9 Namrata

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  10

  His car was surrounded by half a dozen white scorpios, forming a semicircle around

  him. More than a dozen men were standing outside, loaded with guns and

  interrogating a weeping driver. As soon as raman showed signs of life, they pulled

  him out of the car and grabbing him by collar, pulled him up into the air.

  “Have you found it? It is evening already.’

  ‘It is about to rain,’ said Raman while in air, held up by a man who equaled three

  normal, well developed urban men.

  ‘You’ll experience the rain first today...rain of punches and #kicks.’

  He dropped him on the ground and headed toward the car. ‘Lets see what you’ve

  got.’

  The tall man found it tough to bend and look inside a less high car, and he got hold of

  the first thing he saw inside. Lying on the floor was a diary and he bought it out.

  ‘Does this belong to your grandpa?’

  ‘Ah, no. It belongs to my grandpa's grandpa.’

  The man threw the diary at his face and bolted toward him to plant a kick at him, as if

  shooting a football.

  Raman closed his eyes. He was ready to be beaten up again. He felt the heavy

  footsteps approaching him. Anytime now.

  The kick never arrived. With his eyes tightly closed, he felt a bright flash of light

  spread outside, warm and real. It was so intense that even with his closed eyes, he

  could feel the illuminance. And was too scared to experience it with open eyes. The

  screaming woman’s voice appeared again, and long with her were the voice of men

  screaming and yelling and begging for forgiveness. The thunderstorm continued for a

  few seconds and everything turned black and silent again. He opened his eyes, and

  the men who had captured him earlier were now lying on the road, in their worst

  conditions. Torfn clothes, bleedings, fractures, damages, and what not? The driver

  was at his knees, his hands spread wide and offering a prayer to his divine master.

  ‘Time to go.’

  ‘Anywhere you say, master.’

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  The Sun, Moon & the Muse

  ‘Some things just can't be measured, or quantified,’ he heard her voice loud and

  clear, ‘like love. You can never measure love, or weigh it.’

  And in response, he explained her how al the emotions are just a combination of

  various chemicals in the brain. And what we feel is just an ef ect, like a drug. And he

  didn't stop there. ‘Love is a chemical state of mind, and the chemicals in crime are

  dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin.’ He lectured her with the categories of love, and

  areas of brain responsible for romantic o

  utrages. N

  ucleus a ccumbens, Ventral pal idum,

  Ralph nucleus and only god knows what else.

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