Chapter Three - Why I Prefer the Dark

Summer ended early that year. It had started to rain in June, which took away the heat. The wind breezed through trees, fields and houses, the weather was pleasant, and the sun wouldn't show up for days. It was still behind the dark clouds as if it was taking a break from its job of heating the land and keeping people inside their houses for the entire day. Now the heavy rain had taken over this job. But unlike the sun, it couldn't keep everyone inside. Some people would still come out. One of those people was me.

Though, I wouldn't step out of my dormitory if it was already raining. But I wouldn't mind heavy rumbling clouds, thunder, or stormy winds. I enjoyed a walk through the fields or sitting beside the lake, thinking about nothing. I would enter my dormitory only after it got dark, have dinner, and go straight to bed to wake up the following morning and go through the same routine.

That's pretty much how my summer went.

It had been five years. I completed high school and left. There was no reason to stay where I was a freak. I got a scholarship and started college. It was not difficult with what I could do. My campus is located in this distant foreign land near a village. I chose this place because it was peaceful there. I found myself at ease when I walked through fields. No people, no traffic, no noise. You would only hear the pleasant chirping of birds and the wind blowing through trees. People here were also benevolent. The thing I liked about them the most was that there were fewer of them here, so I rarely crossed paths with them. I was living my life peacefully.

When the summer holidays ended, my campus got crowded again. It was my senior year. I was planning to live the rest of my life alone somewhere I wouldn't have to worry about my powers which were still growing unchecked. In my first year, I would look at people and their thoughts, emotions, and recent memories would pour out into my mind as a balloon popped, but now they would look at me, just one eye contact, and it was like I would become them. Their life flashed in my mind like an old projected filmstrip.

The first time it happened, I was walking down the only pathway from my college to the road connecting the village to the outer world, a student crossed my path, and the moment my eyes met hers, everything went electric fast. I saw images and memories that weren't mine. I felt emotions that didn't belong to me.

"Congratulations! It's a girl."

"Hey honey, look! She's opening her eyes."

"There she goes again."

"Oh! My baby!"

"99, 100, here I come."

"Did you do this?"

"Honey! Dinner's ready!"

"Don't talk to your mother like that!"

"Hey! I'm Meghna. Call me Meg."

"He was staring at you like an owl."

"Hey, this is Vivek!"

"How'd you do that?"

"Honey! See what your father needs now, will you?"

"Yes! We won!"

"Come here! Look at this."

"BUT WHY DON'T YOU WANNA GO TO THIS COLLEGE?"

"I miss you, mommy."

"Hey! New girl!"

"Excellent, correct answer!"

"Yes, mom. I'll have to stay for the holidays."

I woke up on a bed in the campus hospital. I didn't have a clue what had just happened. I had to find out. I had to understand, and I knew what I had to do. Whenever I needed answers, whenever I didn't understand something, whenever I wanted someone to talk to, I called my only friend in this place. My dead foster sister.

"Supriya."

"Yes," she would come instantly nowadays.

"Did you see what just happened?" I asked.

"I did," she replied, "you saw her entire life."

"But how?"

"I think you know".

"Oh crap! They are still growing! How long will they keep growing?"

"I think you know that too."

"Yeah," I sighed, "but what's next? I mean, I can see their whole past. What will come next? Will I see their future too?"

"I don't know," she said. But whatever it will be, I am afraid it won't be good."

It took me some time to control this thing. At first, I avoided making eye contact. Then I focused on staying in the present whenever I looked into someone's eyes. With each day gone, my powers kept growing, which helped me. Now I wouldn't pass out, wandering in somebody else's memories. It would just take me a partial second, and I would know everything about them. But I would rather stay just in my mind.

After college, I would go to my dormitory to rest and have a quick meal. In the evening, I would walk through the fields, sit beside the lake, avoid people, and avoid life. But all things considered, I was happy. I was alone, but nobody called me a freak, at least. I was at peace. I thought I could be like this for the rest of my life. Everything would stay fine. Nothing could ever go awry.

I had no idea how wrong I was.

The evening it all started, I was following my usual boring and people-less routine, taking a walk through fields to the lake. I had a favourite spot beside the lake. It was a big hemispherical rock lying with its flat face down. It was big enough that a man could barely move it. I chose that spot because it gave me a perfect place to sit, and it was the lonely side of the lake. People would only come to the other side by the road, closer to the village. I would sit there soothing myself, easing my senses. Nobody disturbed me, but that evening when I reached my spot, someone was already seated on my rock. I was looking at the other side of the lake, so I didn't notice him until I was just a few feet away from him. I stopped at a distance from my spot and looked at him. He was a funny-looking man. He was wearing clothes that went out of fashion two decades ago. He seemed tired as he had walked for miles. He stared at the lake like he could drink all of it, even wanted to, but something held him back. And the most bizarre thing about him was not his fashion sense or gaze but the fact that he was not thinking or feeling anything. It was utter silence in my head for the first time in ten years, which startled me. Before I could say or do anything, he turned.

The man looked at me, and his eyes met mine. The sanest thing to happen (for me anyway) would be that his life flashed, and his memories, happy or sad, would melt in my head but what happened was very eerie. It was one of those spooky, bizarre, uncanny things I was talking about. I looked into his eyes and saw nothing but darkness. I felt like I was standing at the edge of an endless, dark pit.

I stumbled back, fell, got up, and ran as fast as I could have in the opposite direction. When I was a few hundred feet away, I looked back. The man was still looking at me, and then he turned back to the lake. I did not stop until I reached my dormitory. I locked myself in the room and stayed there until dinner time.

After dinner, I tried to take my mind off that man and tried to sleep, but I couldn't. I even drifted off for a few minutes but woke up immediately. I heard voices, heard them calling my name, my real name. Maybe it was just my imagination. I got up and went to the terrace for some air. I was walking on the roof of my dormitory. Air breezed through my hair, and it calmed me down. I walked up to the coping and stared at the village. It looked beautiful from a distance. Very few lights were on. It was quiet. I turned my gaze to the road and further to the lake. I looked across the water, and my heart jumped.

I saw the silhouette of a person sitting at my exact spot on the rock. I freaked out. I couldn't see his features, but I knew it was the same man. Then the dark figure moved. I was not sure, but I had a very uneasy feeling that he was looking at me, and that feeling pumped so much fear in me that I ran for the stairs back to my room. I hid under the covers on my bed, breathing heavily. Fear rose in my mind. I tried to sleep again but couldn't. I kept hearing voices for the rest of the night. Supriya helped me calm down and made me sleep for a couple of hours before sunrise. When I woke up, I had forgotten about the man.

I dressed, had breakfast, went to college and attended all my lectures. Everything went back to as normal as it could get. The buzzing came back, and not once I remembered the man at the lake but something else happened, something even creepier that didn't even give me a chance to think about that man. It was the last lecture of the day, so everyone was tired. Nobody was paying attention to the class, and some had already drifted off. I was barely awake, trying to understand whatever the professor was saying, and then I heard someone sobbing behind me. I looked back. It was a girl. She was sitting with her head on the desk, weeping badly. I wondered what could've happened to her in the middle of the lecture. I got curious and tried to look into her memories, and suddenly everything went dead quiet. The buzzing stopped again. The fear came back. The girl's sobbing was echoing in the classroom. I felt myself again at the edge of that familiar dark pit, and I was just about to fall when–

"Sumit? Hey! Sumit!"

I snapped into reality. I looked in front. The professor was looking at me, and so were the students, who were awake.

"What are you looking at?" the professor asked me.

I looked at her with confusion. Did she not hear the girl? I tried to tell her, turned and pointed at the girl, except there was no one on the last desk.

The girl was gone.

I couldn't think. Where could the girl have gone in a few seconds without anybody noticing? The professor was still looking at me for some answers, but I had none. Luckily, the bell went off, and everyone picked up their stuff and left. I was left alone in the classroom. Then finally I too picked up my things, put them in the bag and started to walk out. I stopped at the door and looked into the empty classroom, and suddenly a crazy thought crossed my mind. Maybe that girl didn't go anywhere. She was still there, but I couldn't see her. I stayed there standing for a while, and then I left.

In the evening, I stepped out of my dorm and started walking towards the lake by habit, but then I remembered the man. I didn't want to see him again, so I took a turn and started walking away from the village to the highway which connected my college to the outer world.

The sun was low, and it was lonely. For a moment, the only thing I could hear was my footsteps. Then the soft sound of another set of footsteps fell into my ears. I looked back and saw a little girl walking behind me. She must've been ten. She seemed scared. Maybe she was lost. I stopped to ask her if she was lost, but before I could open my mouth–

I felt chills down my body. Everything around me started to fade to black. It seemed like she was carrying darkness with her. My heart started pumping faster and faster. I took a few steps backwards, but the little girl started running. I tried to run away from her but tripped and fell on the road. She was still running towards me, and following her was utter darkness. She didn't slow down even when she was just a few feet away from me. The dark abyss was just about to engulf me when, all of a sudden, she disappeared.

She dissolved into the air just a few inches away from my face, but before disappearing, she looked right at me and said, "Help!"

I was still on the ground, breathing like a dog, drenching in sweat and fear. What the hell was happening to me?

I was lying in bed wide awake, terrified by the recent events. First, the man stared at me with his dead eyes. Then the girl in my classroom disappeared. And now, this little girl on the road almost engulfed me in darkness. But who are these people? I asked myself, and as I did, I remembered Supriya. I couldn't think of her earlier, maybe because of the trauma. But now I asked her.

"What is happening with me, Supriya?" I was alone in the room, so I didn't need to worry.

"I thought you would've figured it out by now," she replied.

"What?"

"Those are dead people you are seeing."

And suddenly, it all made sense. It was like I had all the data, and Supriya closed the circuit. My abilities were still growing. These abilities were given to me by a dead person, a spirit. I had been interacting with only alive people. Now, I was interacting with dead ones, stuck here just like my sister. I couldn't read their minds and memories because they didn't have any. All they remembered was darkness. The dark, endless pit. I remembered how it was just darkness beyond that man's eyes. Those were looking at me in a disturbingly pleading manner. I remembered that little girl had asked for help just before dissolving into nothing. They all were stuck here, on the land of the living. They didn't have any traumatised, fear-stricken foster brothers to share their darkness with or maybe they couldn't. Supriya wasn't even born, she didn't have any memories of her childhood or any sense of her existence, so maybe, it was easy for her to bind her leftover life force with me. But these people lived–not for long, but they did. They made memories, and they knew who they were when they died. Maybe they couldn't share that with anyone, and now they are stuck here, asking the only person who could perceive them for help, me.

But how could I help them?

For the next few days, I couldn't concentrate on anything whatsoever. I skipped my last lecture because of the weeping girl. I stopped going to the lake or anywhere because of that man and the little girl. I would get up and go straight to the college. And after that, I would come to my room, stay there until the evening, get out just for dinner and get right back in. Supriya tried to persuade me to come out, but I didn't listen to her, and after some time, she stopped asking. This could go either way. In my case, it got the worst.

I was trying to sleep one night, lying still in my bed. I was dreaming, or maybe not. I was in a park when this woman came to me but said nothing. She looked at me with pleading eyes as if she wanted to say something. Her wrinkled skin and tattered clothes were crying for help. Something about her made me very uneasy. I felt myself slipping out of that dream and back into my bedroom. I felt myself turning uncomfortably under the sheets, and then, the dream dissolved. It faded away like smoke. I was awake. I slowly opened my eyes and saw the same woman sitting on my bed.

My heart jumped to the ceiling, and I jumped back so fast that my head hit the wall behind me. I tried to scream, but no sound came from my mouth. I was choking on my fear. Had that woman done anything like drawing out some sharp teeth and long fingernails, looking at me, grinning, or moving and coming closer to me, I would've died right there, but she didn't. She just sat there, looking at me with those pleading eyes glimmering in the light from the window right by me. It was quiet except for my heart pounding out of my chest.

I could breathe after a while, but I still couldn't move. I sat there all night just looking at the woman. When the sunlight hit the horizon, she finally moved, stepped off my bed, walked to the other end and sat in the corner, still looking at me. I jumped off the bed at the first chance and ran for the door. I spent the next few days in my friend's room and said I didn't like it in my room. He didn't ask many questions, but he seemed concerned when I asked him to go to my room and get some stuff.

And this was what had become of my life.

I couldn't live like this forever. I had to do something. One day I decided to go to the lake. That evening I stepped out of my dormitory and started walking towards the lake. I was thinking about how Supriya got stuck in this world. It was an accident. Did something like that happen to all of them too? I reached the lake. I didn't go to my spot but watched from a distance. The man was still looking at the lake, and then he turned. He looked at me, and I couldn't focus on anything but him. He was radiating the darkness. I kept looking at him, but I didn't go any closer, and I was ready to run in case he moved any closer to me, but he didn't, and suddenly I had this crazy thought. He can't even move from this place, he's not just stuck in this world, but he's stuck to that spot, this rock. A train of thoughts started in my mind; I was thinking something.

Could this be?

I spent the rest of the evening on my computer, reading about ghosts and spirits. I knew nothing on the internet was concrete, but I had to start somewhere. I found a blog by some guy named Arjun. He had written a lot on these kinds of things. He had all sorts of ideas about spirits stuck in the living world, but they all seemed to have one common belief. The soul or ghost gets attached to something. It could be anything, ranging from its remains to longing for this world. And to move on, they need to get rid of the thing they are attached to.

Now I had a plan.

That night, I slipped out of my bed. I took all the stuff in a sack made of a sheet from the storage room where I had put it before going to bed and started walking towards the lake.

It was dead quiet. The whole village was asleep. I reached my spot and looked at the man who was already looking at me. I put the stuff down and dared to get closer to him. I got so close that I couldn't see anything except him and the darkness. My heart was racing. I slowly moved forward and tried to push the rock. I tried with all my strength and moved it a little, and the man just dissolved into the darkness around him. He was still there. I could sense him. After I moved the rock out of the way, I took the shovel from under the sheet and started digging. I didn't stop to catch my breath, and I didn't stop until I hit something. It was true. The man, indeed, was lying there. I looked at his remains which had been reduced to just bones. I wondered if these bones were holding someone who once was controlling them. I finally stopped to catch my breath. I stepped out of the pit, and the man appeared again by his grave, still looking at me. If he could say something, I believe he would've said 'thank you'. I took the rest of the stuff from the sack, a can full of gas and a match. I emptied the can on the man's remains and lit them. The heat and light soon took over the darkness. I felt a warmth both from the fire and this man's redemption. He looked at me one last time and disappeared with the rising smoke.

I left with a sense of accomplishment. When I got into my dorm, I went into my room. I looked into the corner. The woman was still there, still looking at me, pleading with her eyes, but I wasn't scared now. I got into my bed and fell asleep. I had the most peaceful nap in weeks, with no dreams, nightmares, or voices.

I began to think I could live like this. There was still hope after all. I didn't hear any voices for the next few days. The woman was there, but she stayed in the corner of my room. The weeping girl didn't appear in my classroom. Supriya told me it was just a matter of time.

"It's gonna happen again, very soon."

"How are you so sure?"

"Those ghosts haven't gone anywhere. They are still there. They will return like I do every time."

"So what do I do?"

"You can try to help them like you helped the old man at the lake, but I'm not sure you can help all of them."

"What do you mean?"

"What are you gonna do about the woman in your room? You can't dig up your walls. And who even knows if she's there? Maybe it's not her corpse. Maybe it's something else."

"Something else?"

"Yeah, remember we read on that guy's blog that spirits can attach to objects too. Something they were fond of when they were alive."

Though there was no proof that it was true, I had to give it a little consideration, as I had just tried a way that I read on the internet to get them to move on, and it had worked perfectly. Supriya was right. There was no chance I could ever help the woman. But I did help the little girl on the road.

One night I got out of my dorm with my sack and walked to the spot where I had seen her the last time. I waited, walked around a bit, and even called her. She didn't appear the first night. I kept repeating my ritual until one day, she appeared. I felt her presence. It got cold too quickly, and my vision got blurry. There was nothing else except for the little girl and me. Everything else drowned in the darkness. She looked at me, and I felt the same pull. The one that I felt the first time. I saw the dark pit and the endless suffering. It was like falling into eternal darkness but never reaching the bottom.

She looked at me with pleading eyes and uttered just one word – 'help', and started walking away. I followed her. She walked for a minute in the darkness. It was far from the road, and I realized something. No one could have heard her screaming, even if she could cry for help. There were dense trees all around, so no one could have seen her taken away. She stopped at the base of one of the trees, turned around, looked at me, and disappeared.

I didn't wanna see it. I didn't wanna dig, but I had to, so I did. I could not look at it. I didn't wanna believe a human could do this to a child. I was thinking on my way back that this world is full of monsters. One could never feel secure here, and one could never feel happy.

A few more days passed, and it became apparent that I could no longer live an ordinary life. I was stupid to even think of such things in the first place. I started hearing voices in my sleep again. The old lady would now sit on my bed all day and night. She followed me wherever I was in the room. She wouldn't say anything, wouldn't do anything. She would follow me as long as I was in the room. I couldn't live with that. It was still alright until the day that changed everything in my already cursed life, the day that mutilated my already massacred happiness and forced me to feed on it for the rest of my life, the day that finally gave me hope, a way to get me out of my misery and then took it away.

The day started like any other day of my cursed life. I woke up sweating and breathing heavily after having a nightmare. I heard voices just like any other day. The old lady followed me everywhere, which didn't bother me. I kept hearing voices even when I was awake. But I made it through all of my classes until the last one.

I was hoping for the lecture to end soon, but a part of me wanted that lecture to last forever. I was trying to focus on my professor's words, half asleep, drooling and drifting away just when I heard it, which made my heart jump, my body shiver, and pulled me out of my slumber and gloom. It was that same sob of the girl that I heard days ago. She had come back. I couldn't dare to look behind, not because of the professor, but because I was scared. I almost knew that if I turned, I would see her looking right at me with those eyes which were the edges of the eternal pit of the darkness. I covered my ears so I couldn't hear her, but the voice was in my head, like all the other ones, they always have been, like my parents used to say. She was getting louder with each sob, and my professor's voice was fading away. I was forcing myself to stay in the classroom, but I gave up when I saw the darkness emerging from the corners of my vision. It was not advancing like a humanoid figure; instead, it was growing like a shapeless entity, flowing like a dense fluid, engulfing everything. Everything around me was drowning in the darkness, taken over by dead silence except for the sobs of the weeping girl echoing in my head.

I conjured all my strength, got up, screamed and ran. I don't know how long I ran, don't remember how far. I just kept running. Directions and pathways were obsolete to me. I ran until I could. I ran until I couldn't remember anything anymore. The next thing that I do remember was that I was sitting in a lighthouse. The noises of the clouds, winds and lightning told me there was a thunderstorm outside. I looked up and out of a window, and the sky lit up for a second and then it was completely dark.

"Vijay…"

The clouds made the noises again, the sky lit up, and I, once again, found myself in my crib, throwing hands and feet, waiting for any of my parents to return. I wanted to see their smiling faces once again and hear their comforting voices, but all I heard was–

"Vijay…"

–and the sound of my mother, my dying mother dragging herself on the floor towards me.

"Viijaay…"

She crawled up to my crib, reached in and patted me with her warm, blood-soaked hand, and just like that, I was calm again. I held onto her finger tightly and drifted off to sleep. At that moment, I missed her so much that I wanted her to come back, and I missed her even more because I knew she could never come back, but then, my eyes lit up in the darkness with the thought that if she couldn't come back to me, I could go to her.

It was dark. Peaceful and comfortable. I liked it there, but it hadn't always been the same.

The wind was still strong. The clouds, however, had gone quiet, and the storm had calmed down. I looked at the sea and beyond. Everything looked so tiny from up here. As if nothing meant anything anymore. All that mattered was the darkness beyond life. The eternal pit. The everlasting calm. I closed my eyes, took a long breath and let go of everything. I let go of the voices in my head and my grip on my life.

"Wake up! It's time for the medication."

The nurse walked in and turned on the light. I looked at her and squinted my eyes, focused very hard to stop the flashes of her memories. She gave me my pills and poured me a glass of water. I took the water and smiled at her. She smiled back but barely because she seemed stressed. I gulped down my pills, handed the glass back to her and said–

"Thank you, and don't worry, your boyfriend's mom is gonna like you. You're sweet and kind."

She looked at me. This time she smiled, really smiled. "They told me about you, warned me that something like this would happen but thank you. Now you take rest."

"Okay, and could you turn off the lights on your way out?"

"Sure." She started to walk out of the room and was almost at the door.

"And blinds too."

She turned back. "Blinds? Why?" She walked up to the window anyway and closed the blinds. She then turned off the light and started walking out again.

"Nothing, it's just that..." I put myself in a more comfortable position and closed my eyes. She was already out of the room and probably didn't hear me, but I said to myself anyway, "I prefer the dark."

Go to XTales.net to read more stories.