Un-Haunted Grounds

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Bitty was excited right from the morning. She could hardly concentrate in her Maths class, or her English class. The only thing she kept thinking about was her afternoon plan with her friends. And that one sentence she had written countless times to practice handwriting in her junior classes kept buzzing in her head.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Bitty didn’t know why she couldn’t get that sentence out of her head, but she did polish her bicycle in the morning with a little extra care and patted its seat as if it needed a special encouragement to jump high and quick over exceptionally rough roads. She had told her mom she might be late home today (extra classes mummy, just one extra hour!).

The last bell for the day rang at sharp 3:00 PM. Five minutes of evening prayer and she would be out of school on her special mission. Bitty stood at the end of the Assembly line behind Tiya and Rowana.

‘Thank You God, our loving Father…’

Bitty mechanically mumbled the prayer without really thinking about the words; she had learned all the prayers by heart years ago, like all the other students. The Prayer service got over in a bit, they were being dismissed now. Bitty ran to the garage with her friends, and the three of them pulled out their bicycles in a hurry.

Bitty, Tiya and Rowana had been long time friends. They lived nearby, and even visited each others’ places. Their parents thought it was for the best. (‘Oh they could cycle to school together, maybe share homework in emergency and even study for tests together’). And it was for good indeed, they turned out to be best friends. So one lunch break as they sat together gossiping about what the other girls in their class were up to, Tiya suddenly mentioned about one of the girls going with her boyfriend to this small forest kind of place by the Delhi Road, known to all as a forbidden place. She heard there is an abandoned temple in ruins at the end of forest which people believe is haunted. Story goes that this temple served as a residence to robbers who sacrificed a human once a month to the Goddess in charge of the temple. The victims ranged from pedestrians to villagers.

‘Let us go there this Friday after school’, Bitty had suggested. Rowana’s face went pale, and Tiya simply stared at Bitty unable to utter a word. It had taken Bitty a while to convince her friends. (Don’t worry. Just remember your Karate classes, and make sure your cycles don’t fail you). On the fateful day, none of them could concentrate on their lessons. Bitty was bubbling with excitement, Rowana was terrified but didn’t want to chicken out, and Tiya felt uneasy – she hated risks and complications. (Why can’t we just cycle back to our homes in peace?)

Nevertheless, when the time came, the three girls raced and reached the edge of the forest in less than ten minutes. In spite of the broad daylight and the sunny afternoon, the tall trees bordering the forest made the place beyond it look dark and sinister. Bitty and her friends got off their cycle, stood for a while (their hearts hammering louder than general), and pushed into the forest together. It was full of bamboo trees. The bit of sunlight that got through was significantly less, but the ground was free of shrubs and had scattered dry leaves all over – easy to walk their cycles. Bitty walked a little ahead, followed by Tiya and Rowana trying to keep close. This can’t be romantic, it’s scary – Bitty thought as she recalled the story Tiya had said. The more they went in the darker it got, and it didn’t seem adventurous anymore to Bitty. Miles and miles of bamboo forest, dark and silent (what if robbers and killers still hide here?). But curiosity made her keep walking, and her friends were too loyal to leave her alone.

The ground was getting rougher by the minute. It was full of uneven stones and ups and downs. Their cycles rattled loudly as they rolled and bounced, ringing through the forest breaking the silence of that forsaken land. A surprising rather steep slope stopped the girls short (Tiya almost toppled with her cycle and somehow got hold of her balance in the last minute). It was a short fall ahead of them, below which the land was free of forest growth. As if even the forest was scared of that place and refused to spread its growth. It was a short clearing, at the edge of which loomed the dark ruins of the infamous and controversial temple.

The building was mostly broken, and even from the distance Bitty noticed it had been missing most of the walls. The front of the temple stood like a abandoned construction full of weeds and creepers hanging all over, and one of the adjacent walls was partially standing with a pile of broken moss covered bricks by it. And the top of the temple had a metal dome that shone in the sun from certain angles, peeking from beneath the creepers covering it. The door of the temple now stood as a hollow with absolute darkness behind it. Except the dome, the roof of the temple was gone exposing a dirty lawn stretching behind what could have been the room of worship in the temple (once upon a time).

‘Someone clears the forest here?’ Bitty broke the pregnant pause after a couple of minutes. She had a tone of surprise in her voice, even shock at the prospect of having human life around there. Tiya and Rowana simply stared in the direction of the temple. ‘Maybe we should go back’, Tiya whispered finally. ‘Yeah, mom would freak out if I am any more late’, seconded Rowana. Bitty debated with herself for a moment before speaking.

We are going. We have come so far, let’s just see what’s in there. Come on you guys.

They parked their bicycles, and slowly started climbing down. The late afternoon sun rays hardly reached the insides of the temple. Even standing in front of the building they couldn’t see a thing inside. They held their hands and stood in the clearing for a bit, before Bitty decided to take a step ahead. Pin drop silence. Rowana thought uneasily – perhaps this is what it means. Teachers had told them a numerous times in school to maintain pin drop silence, but that was impossible in a girls’ school. They always had lots to whisper and giggle about.

Something dark and big flapped its wings right in front of their faces and vanished in the dark in a moment breaking Rowana’s thoughts and scaring all of them. Tiya let out a low sharp gasp. ‘Just bats’ Bitty laughed nervously. Of course it was a dilapidated construction, they should have been mentally prepared to deal with a couple of small bats. Bitty, Tiya, and Rowana took baby steps through the temple door.

What are we going to do now?

Even Bitty felt scared this time. Before they could get their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Tiya let out a shrill scream that echoed in the walls before dying out. Bitty turned to look at Tiya’s face, but Rowana had her eyes large and fixed somewhere in the dark. At the moment Bitty heard a faint hissing sound and jumped around to look inside in the dark along with Rowana. In the faint light coming from the broken roof they noticed a bulging gray unkempt stone roughly shaped out to look like some deity. And on top of it was (Oh My God!) a pitch black thick snake slowly sliding down, its belly reflecting a deadly shimmer!

‘Th-That’s poisonous. I wa-want to get out of here. There might be more, I ca-can’t see a thing. Please girls’, Tiya was hysterical. At a very young age she had once seen a yellow snake coiling in their bathroom and freaked out when it had moved towards her at a lightning speed, slid past her in a blink and bit her little brother playing just outside the bathroom. Her parents had yelled helplessly, ran about in the house, tied tight strings round his leg above the bleeding area and had rushed him to a hospital in her father’s scooter. It hadn’t taken him long to heal, but Tiya had a snake phobia ever since.

Bitty and Rowana quickly regained their senses and pulled Tiya behind the stone statue, the snake had now slid to the door and was still again, with its hood up this time. They were huddled in the dark, and the only place from where they could see the daylight was being guarded by the venomous snake. Another soft rustle of leaves, this time from their left. The girls tried running backwards away from the source of sound and Bitty tripped on something and fell to the floor. When she looked up a cold chill ran down her spine. She noticed a pair of eyes in the dark staring directly at her. This time it was her turn to scream. Her friends tried pulling her up but her whole body felt paralyzed.

As if waking up from a dream, it suddenly dawned on Tiya that she had a pen that had a tiny red light on its upper end. She could flick the switch and use it as a torch. The light would be hardly significant but it was better than nothing. She stepped back a step, snapped open her bag and started fumbling for her pencil box. A minute later a reddish glow was handed over to Bitty whose hands began to shake as she tried pointing it at the source of the eyes.

It was a boy! A young boy with scared eyes sitting in the corner among broken bricks and withered plants. There was a dirty thick piece of cloth tied across his mouth. Further movement of the light showed his hands were behind him (probably tied as well), and his legs had iron shackles clamped around his ankle against a stump of cemented pillar. Rowana shrieked. It was a shocking sight for all of them, and they did not what next to do. Slowly Bitty reached out towards the chain at the boy’s feet. The boy did not move at all. She tugged at it and realized it was impossible to break the chains, no matter how rusty they are. She pulled and pushed and tried to twist it out, nothing worked. By this time Rowana had come and knelt beside Bitty. She slid her hand behind the boy and found that his wrists were tied together with a rope. ‘Just try to get the chain off the pillar’ Rowana whispered.

‘Tiya will you help me lift the boy, that way we might get the chain out of the pillar’ Bitty sounded busy now. She was past the fear of snakes now, they had a tougher situation to deal with. They got to free the boy and get the hell out of there before whoever tied up the boy comes down. Tiya hesitated for a moment and then bent over the hold the boy in a kind of clumsy half hug and started pulling him upwards. Bitty put the glowing pen between her teeth and tried to push him upwards by his legs, while Rowana got her arm around the boy and started pulling him forward. The boy was still as stone, he had shown no sign of being alive except his staring eyes and his shallow breathing. After quite a few minutes of painful struggle and multiple scratches here and there, the girls managed to pull the chains out of the stump and tumbled along with the boy still tied up and folded in awkward angles. The girls didn’t need any thing more to say, they all felt the fear creeping. The sun was setting by then, evening was setting in. If anything the place was just getting darker, and they could still see the silhouette of the snake up against the door.

No other option left, they decided to move more backwards in the hope of reaching the lawn behind the temple they had seen from the forest above. Half dragging, half carrying they got the boy pulled along with them. The temple walls shortened and disappeared in piles of bricks after a while. They were out in the lawn. It was dusk. ‘Get me that brick Rowana, I’ll try to break the chain’, Bitty said. Tiya had pulled the cloth knot at the back of his head and managed to loosen it enough to lift the cloth above his head, free his mouth. Rowana got the brick and started hitting the chains at the boy’s feet lightly, afraid she would hurt him, it was utterly ineffective. Bitty got behind the boy and started cutting the rope tying his hands with the sharp edge of her school badge. Once his hands and mouth were free, the boy jolted into his senses and started fumbling with the chain round his ankles. With a little effort from all of them he managed to slip one foot out of the chain with great difficulty, and the other one came out easily after that.

No time to think. Bitty and the girls started running away from the lawn, towards the steep clearing leading up to the place where their cycles were locked. The boy limped behind them, still dazed and paranoid. Every two steps he kept looking over his shoulder and desperately tried keeping up with the girls. They were all panting heavily when they reached their cycles. They hadn’t seen a single other person yet fortunately, but they were still scared. Bitty turned to look at the boy once they were all up by their cycles. He looked no more than 10. He had scars in his face and feet and hands. No shoes. A very dirty shirt which had once been white, and short khaki half pants. He looked unwashed and starved. ‘Where do you stay? Who tied you up? Where are they?’ Bitty asked him without pausing for breath. He kept staring silently, until Bitty got impatient and told him to just sit behind her on the carrier of her cycle. It was hard cycling back through the woods, harder because by then it got pretty more dark with the onset of the early evening.

Nevertheless they were faster than they believed it was possible. They raced for their lives this time. Neither of them had ever felt so scared, so helpless, so lost before. ‘We should take him to the Police Station’, Tiya was saying. ‘Are you crazy? My parents will kill me if they come to know what we did today’, Rowana sounded scared. ‘He will tell us where he stays. Or maybe we will just drop him near the station, he can figure out his way from there.’ Bitty was speaking more to herself. The boy remained silent as ever, he just held on the seat and sat tight. After fifteen minutes of blindly racing, speeding up every time they heard a sound, the girls finally reached the edge of the forest. Here was the main road again, safe zone. Panting heavily they got off their cycles, they needed a break from frights and flights.

Suddenly Bitty’s cycle jerked heavily, she almost fell off. She spun around, only to see the boy running away from them by the road at a very high speed.

‘Hey where are you going?’ Tiya yelled. Rowana was already turning her cycle around, she would track him down and make sure he reached his home safe. It was as if their responsibility to ensure that, them being his rescuers.

‘Don’t’, Bitty commanded. ‘We don’t know where to take him anyway, he must know his way from here’. She knew they could help him no further, but at least they saved him from a situation they thought happened only in movies. The three girls stood and stared down the road, the boy had now reduced to a tiny line getting shorter by the second. ‘Do you think we should inform someone about this kidnapping?’ Bitty asked her friends. ‘Not if you want to stay out of trouble yourself’, replied Tiya.

Slowly they started heading back to their homes. The events of the afternoon still stunned them to the core, and they knew it would leave them a life time memory. Yet Rowana could not help mumbling ‘ What should I tell my mom? I am so late she will kill me when I reach home’. Bitty couldn’t help notice even in the dark – both Tiya and Rowana still had grave pale faces.