It was a new year. The start of a new time. I had resolutions yet undecided. Our car zoomed past the bridge when the phone ringed. Happily, we picked and…
“He’s no more? They couldn’t save him?” Dad said. Our hearts soaked in for a moment, but death was inevitable we thought, for an older person. But what the next minute brought us, was something I would never forget.
That new year took me into a new world, where I was caged but never dared to leave. He left us with nothing behind but memories that keeps haunting our hearts everytime we come across the pictures we framed ourselves with him.
"I’d never forget the moment they told me your heart had stopped. Even though mine broke in that second, it strangely kept beating."
Had I known that it was the last time I was talking to him, that I would have hugged him a bit longer. That I would have revealed that I’d always joked about his looks and that he was the loveliest brother anyone would get. That I would have held his hand and pecked his little nose like I’d always do and that he would have smiled a bit longer. I wish I’d have told him truly for once that my scoldings had love within and that without him, life wouldn’t be life anymore.
For a day or two that I couldn’t feel right to see myself alive. That I was surviving when he was tying the knots to the fan. That I was breathing when he got his tiny head into the loop. That I was living when he let himself go. Go somewhere none of his mates did, somewhere cowards feared to go, somewhere we fear to lose our loving ones too. That he braved through the way. My little boy with his little feet stepped into the world he had never seen or heard of. He left with nothing behind but traces. Traces that finally ended up to relieve our hearts that it was not him who roped himself. That it was someone else. Someone who hated us.
The story begins.
“He was so odd that day. He would never touch tea but he sipped it more than twice that day. The kids of the village had planned a new year party and he was very happy for it. They had collected money and his father had left for the cake. Everything was fine by the evening. Though he was a bit different in the morning, he didn’t speak the way he used to. His words were different. But that was all about the morning. He was alright. Even at evening. But suddenly there was a little fight. He wanted a balloon. But he was denied. He was furious. He dashed into the room, locked the door and hanged himself. And…he would never open the door.” his mother broke down as she said. But then she couldn’t . She had lost her only son. What else could she lose?
Mom narrated me the story she found behind it. She had forced me back at Bhubaneswar, restricting me to go to the village to see. I would cry to that, but she hadn’t moved any inch. I had no other but a phone to check out why he had left us. Determined to never forgive to person who made him do that.
By and now, everything was normal and no other trace was scraped out of the abandoned room then. His body was cremated and his eleventh day served well and everyone was back to their daily chores, trying harder as me to forget and forgive him. that he was never showing his face to us. That he was gone. He was dead.
I spent a week more thinking but less about him. And everytime I’d come across his picture in my album, I’d think of the path he braved. I’d never known my little brother, who had once pee-ed on my top when he was just four, had been so strong that he hung himself without uttering a single word of pain. I had never known he was so strong. The doctor had told, he had died in 72 seconds. But whatever it was, something wasn’t right about the whole of it. I remember he had never learnt to tie a single knot but that day he had tied 9 to 10 knots to the fan and hung. Moreover, the rooms of the village are so small that if he would stand on the bed, his head would touch the roof. But he was found hanging in a way someone had pushed him and not let him stand straight on his feet. Everything was so odd. The possibility of a 12 yr old happy-go-lucky boy, hanging himself for such a reason, had not satisfied me or anyone in the village.
But we let our doubts go until just the next week arrived and a complete same behaviour was seen in a man of our village. He would not eat and speak similar wordings of hatred and malice. No one took it serious until he never left the cremated area of my brother. He would act to vicious and push down three to four men altogether. That was when the blur pictures started sharpening. We found our killer. I found him. But…
The man was chained, until he blurted out the truth. The truth we had known since the 30th of Dec’ 2017 when a 20 yr boy had hung himself in our nearby village for a family fight. He wasn’t cremated but dug beside the road that led to our village within the vast stretches of green fields which had already been home to many such stories that had been hidden to be revealed to the living ones. That the deads are not yet gone. That they are still looking at you behind your back. That they are never leaving, who died without age.
My spine chilled as my cousins at village narrated me the story. My eyes were wet. I believed. Yes, for the first time, I believed, it was true. Because it was happening, I was getting daily updates. It was getting much clearer. The soul in the man was hungry. This was until he threatened, he would kill everyone in the village. He had stayed in the man for three days from now, killing the man with his powers, though he has been chained restricting from suicide.
I hadn’t expected it. I hadn’t believed. I hadn’t known my fight to be with someone who I can’t see or touch. That he is more powerful. That he can kill anyone in my village within seconds. That any moment I can lose my whole family there. That I fear him and don’t want to accept this seclusion.
Whatever it is, it took a life. that a dead one killed a living. What else can be more spine chilling than it. My parents have finally banned our entry to the village, because we cousins often play around in abandoned places, away from the village…at roads, near trees. Somewhere we felt happy and alone. Somewhere our parents wont disturb. I had never known we’d risked our lives. Calls inform the man in our village is dying soon.
The world doesn’t know…that far in a corner of earth, there’s a village whose people don’t sleep at nights anymore. That they couldn’t leave or come back to their families. That parents fear to lose their children and children fear to lose their parents. The fear has only grown. The picture is clearer now. like a coward, I’ve feared to call for anymore news. Maybe…with the deads rising, the living have only risked their lives.
But I hope something gets done sooner before anyone loses any of their loved ones…like me.
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