Fire and Shadows

The beer bottles were empty; even the VAT69 too. I turned back to ensure there was more wood for the bonfire. An inclined smile blocked my view, close enough that I could feel her warm breath. One could have been lost in those sparkling eyes and delve into the irresistible perfume emanating from her hair. Ignoring the pulses, I shifted my chair back and pretended to cater to the burning woods in the centre.

“Daljeet and Shikoh gave up early. It’s just one; the forest isn’t yet sleeping.” I tried to fabricate a new talk and bent her focus towards the distant howling of a fox down the woods in the fog-huddled valley.

“They’ve had almost three-fourths of this stuff. It’s good they retired to a sound cottage sleep.” She added, signalling sudden reminiscence, “This one’s smooth and has nice effect… the VAT69…”

I smiled back and reached out to another chair for my recently bought jacket to stuff myself away from the increasing chill. She zipped up her black jacket and started rubbing her hands close to the fire. Against the hazy moon, I could view the drifting clouds on that dark, virtually silent hill slope of Coorg. For almost a minute, no conversation took a form between us. Only the crackling sounds of ignited woods…

And then, all of sudden, her eyes widened, her smile grew mysterious, and there it was- a familiar leather bound notebook- that she had been hiding behind. I jumped to grab my possession back, but she wouldn’t let me have it. “I went through some of what you’ve scribbled here. Nice stories though!” She announced with a tone of assumed victory.

I had to make an appeal, “Ahh… Preferably you shouldn’t have done that… Give… Please…” As she nodded, I started fiddling over the notebook, and that’s when my fingers brushed over her soft palm skin. Shredding my diversions, I had to manoeuvre my grip on it and pull it out with a jerk on her wrist. She cried aloud, probably because of a sharp agony triggered by the jerk.

“Huh”, she exclaimed letting out a massive sigh, “I wish my parents were here. Their being gone to our uncle’s engagement seems like an advantage to you.”

I sensed a discrete flirtatious hint in her voice. Ignoring it, I started towards the car parked towards the end of the backyard garden. Breaking the sheer howling of the misty winds, she asked me out, “I half-read the one where the guy goes psychic and falls for a female ghost. Is he finally treated out of his imaginations?”

For a second, as I unlocked the car door, I wondered, ‘Come on! I have got much more than my stories. Is she really interested in knowing the psychic, insomniac guy’s romance life with a ghost-ess?’ As I tucked the notebook down the lowest depths of my backpack, I satisfied her anxiety, “He lives on to believe she is real, secludes himself from the rest of the world, writes his own love story, which soon becomes the bestseller.”

She probably started walking towards the car; her footsteps made it evident. Her eyes, gleaming against the distant flames of the bonfire, were soon staring at me right from the top of the car’s door. For a moment, I wished I could forget she was our owner’s daughter. Her slowly growing smile made me realize as if I could stop my scrupulous and judicial thoughts.

“Brissss… SSSSS… Dhushhh...”

The sound filled my ears; immediately I knew it wasn’t the winds, it wasn’t the trees. My involuntary actions pulled me in a sequence to turn off car lights, let the doors remain open to avoid making a noise and signal the already cautioned Vidya. The short-term noise was loud enough, as if something dragging through the dark, windy and thickly forested slope, right at the end of the garden where our car was parked. I bent on all fours and tried to peep through the bricks lined up at the edge, down towards the valley. Nothing moved but the distant ripples of Cauvery, producing intermittent lapping sounds.

“Some animal”, she said vaguely in an audacious tone, almost causing me a cold shiver, “Don’t be worried. We are used to this.” I was absolutely left aghast by her carelessness. A better advice would have been: ‘Let’s rush to our rooms or wake the servants up from their quarters!’

Vidya stood intrepid as I attempted to explain in whispers, “An animal slipping through these slopes… It’s not a kid’s tale; ideally this causes fright to normal people.”

She gave me a teasing smile, turned about and walked back towards the chairs, “I told you I’ve been staying here since five years. Travellers like you people get terrorized by these incidents. Whatever’s there won’t cross a habitation. You’re our guest; so enjoy freely; I know to fire a gun, if at all it’s needed.”

The assurance seemed to come from a colonel’s daughter. Well, that’s what she actually was- I realized and eased up a bit. I thought to myself, “Why would her parents leave the guests only at her watch? She’s a tough daughter, obviously. These ‘brisssses…’ might be a daily soap for her.”

I recalled Daljeet had cautioned us as we had headed from Madikeri to Gonikoppal, just to avoid the holiday crowd and stuffed up hotels at Madikeri. He had done some googling, “Are you sure you’re ready to drive forty-eight kilometres more? It’s already five, hills are going dark and we don’t know what the road condition is.”

His precautionary arguments had been convincing enough that I had slowed down our car. I would have taken a U-turn unless Shikoh wouldn’t have warranted, “I know, that resort is almost the best here. Gonikoppal has the lowest habitation, yet is the most beautiful, in Coorg. The resort’s owner is a wealthy retired colonel, so obviously he would have a full stock of miscellaneous drinks. Let’s exhaust his supply, guys!”

We had been still unsure, unless he had tapped at my back and reassured, “Believe me, my friends stayed there. It’s worth the extra drive!”

Not yielding to the confusion, I had pressed on the accelerator, driving towards this place: surrounded in all directions by forests, tucked on a hill slope in a fashion we couldn’t make out in the darkness of the night, accessible from the main hill road through a winding, unlit and muddy road having precisely the width of a car.

“Are you okay?” Her shrill tone intercepted my chain of recollections. Since she was confident of her experience, I let my suspicions shrink away. Her salubrious smile was enough to render me into a state of belongingness. I weirdly felt myself being a part of that place.

As she took her chair by the bonfire, my mind ran in a different lane. Quickly, I hovered inside the dark car for the aux cable. As if some foolishness had clouded my reasoning, I thought to better grope for the cable without turning on the car lights, but eventually caught hold of the wire. I twitched it, gave it a few jerks, unless I got the end-point to plug it in my phone. It was stuck somewhere below the seat, but who cared? Tuning the old Jab We Met song ‘Tum Se Hi’ in the best, softest volume, I stepped towards her to ask her for a dance.

Deliberately, I dragged my chair quite near her. A curiosity rose in me; I was attempting to spot the same anxiousness in her eyes, as was in mine. But she wouldn’t let me have a look. Her eyeballs moved repelling my gaze, her hairs shone like a dark, golden shroud over her expressions, and her hands engaged themselves adding wood to the burning pile.

‘Krrrrkrkkrrk…’ The speakers in the car yelled out a piercing disturbance followed by the continuing song.  I turned back instantly… There was nothing except the growing fog. A weird emptiness lurked inside me; anything that came in my vision behind was eerie, silent, swaying with the breeze if it could.

Her chair shifted behind, giving me sudden creeps. ‘What is she doing?’ It was totally perplexing. Her eyes were focussed, her hands straight on the sides. She circled the bonfire and took a step or two towards the end opposite to where our car was parked.

“Vidya, are you okay?” As I asked her, I noticed the small cosy-seeming villa on the left. I realized there was no one inside. From outside, its porch and side-windows gleamed in the reflection of the fire. From inside, it had an omnipresent darkness inhabiting it.

She stood firm, her gaze fixated towards the right corner where the servants’ quarters were dimly visible. I gave her shoulder a nudge, but she didn’t care to reply. I forcefully bent her towards me. Her eyes were grim, unmoving, not blinking at all. I stepped back catching hold of my trembling hands.

‘Daljeet… Shikoh…’ My brain worked something and forced me to rush towards the guest cottage on the right.

“You won’t find them there!” A hoarse voice put brakes on me. That instant, I wished my suspicions to be false, my imagination to be fake, or perhaps the resort to be located somewhere in the middle of a city, maybe Vidya’s parents’ car to arrive in the garden behind the villa, or actually a fictional, bright sunrise to happen, some new guests to hop up in that midnight to occupy the other two empty cottages. Her words had instilled fear in the silence that followed. I just wished my stories to be just illusions…

‘Was that the reason she mentioned about the story I had written? Was she giving an inkling of what she was? What has she done to Daljeet and Shikoh? Who were those people I met as her parents?’ Confounded by the battering questions, I moved hitherto and that’s when my gaze fell upon it. I almost skipped a couple of heartbeats as I twitched back to collide with the chair. Whatever it was, it had been there all the time, hidden and merged with the darkness it resembled. I saw her giving a frightful smile to the silhouette beneath the turned-off lamp post in the corner.

‘Can I run?’ Practically, yes! But according to what would generally happen, no! I groped quickly for car keys, rushed inside the vehicle locking the doors. A flashing and disappointing thought crossed my unstable mind. ‘Daljeet… Shikoh…’ I wished I could have listened to Daljeet and stayed back at Madikeri. We could have got a small, hotel room, but safer from this desolated, and now actually haunted, resort.

The last time I had seen the dark figure hadn’t moved an inch from the corner. Unlike what usually happens in movies, the car engine throttled, favouring my escape. With a quick recollection of the way I was supposed to take, I pressed on the accelerator and steered the handle. And it caught my legs! I freaked out, left the handle and gave a jolt to my legs. I could feel its hands tightly clutched right above my ankles. The car sped with the jolted acceleration and before I could make an amending movement, it crashed straight with the edge of the villa. I choked; the steering handle had come right against my chest. I thought I would faint away… There were fumes, a sudden flash of white light, a couple of concerned and familiar voices, but in the end, the darkness took hold of me…