The darned night began on a very bright note. There was a party going on in the MBA building. The ground floor was choc-a-bloc with students, faculty members and freeloaders, hobnobbing with each other, treading on each others toes, generally making a lot of din. I always found myself wanting on such occasions. I really hated shouting while talking and there was so much noise hitting you, music, loud voices, shrieks, hoots that by and by it started getting on my nerves, so after saying some hellos and grabbing a beer bottle, I headed outside in the cold to light up and to soak in the cold. I loved solitude and the sound of crickets and the gentle rustling of leaves was what my heart craved. I am not a loner but every now and then I crave for silence and woe betide me if I can't get it. Anyways while I was outside, just standing outside the main gate, the door cutting off the noise, I spotted another person. It was a girl who was dressed very outlandishly. She was wearing an evening gown and she was looking so pretty walking on the grass, while the moonlight bathed everything in its pale yellowish light. I was transfixed by her, somehow the scene captivated me. And then suddenly she caught me staring at her and walked towards me. Initially I had assumed she was a student, but when she came closer, I could not place her so I assumed she was a student of Grande Ecole and I felt a mild trepidation. Those students would always speak in French and my French was atrocious. Anyways when she came near me, I called out "Bon Jour" and got a "Good Evening" as a reply. So she could speak English and my life just got easier.
We started talking, she even took one cigarette from me. To all my questions about her, the only things that I could learn was that she was from England and she was a visitor over here. She had absolutely loved the campus, The school had such a beautiful campus that anyone would fall in love with it and she was just roaming around. Then she made a very unusual request. Could we head down to the lake? The lake was some distance away from MBA building, you had to go down the stairs and then you reach a wide expanse of land which had the lake on its north end while the other playing fields surrounded it from the other two ends. And it was getting late too. I had to go back to my room and finish up my assignments. But she was beautiful and it was a full moon night. And for some reason I did not want this moment to end. And despite all my forebodings, I said yes and we headed towards the stairs. Her name was Angela, I could not comprehend the last name and I let it go. We made decent speed and while on the way we discussed some inane matters like weather in this time here and the general environment at the school and I made some remarks about the people and their idiosyncrasies and she laughed at my poor jokes. And so before I knew it, we were near the stairs and then we went down very swiftly. The thing with the stairs was that you could always run down them but when you had to climb up, it almost always knocked the sails off your winds. I always found it very very tiring to climb them but then when you have company, you simply do not care for such things. While going down, Angela made some remarks about the trees as to how they appear to remain same year after year but all the time they change bit by bit so that if you look at a tree after some time, it would change its appearance and probably nature too. I seriously thought that something was wrong with her head and then attributed the same to evening refreshments. The wind was getting stronger now and it was almost a struggle when we finally reached the lake.
The lake appeared very very beautiful. The moonlight all over it gave it a pale look and the wind was making waves which caused the moonlight to break in million small pieces of glass so that it looked like the whole lake had gone yellow. I was so awe struck by it that I did not even notice that Angela had kept moving on and when she called out to me I found her waving at me from near the trees. The lake spread to the north and the forest started after the running tracks. The forest was unkempt and students generally kept away from it. But Angela was almost in the woods now and she turned back and called out to me. I really did not want to go in to the woods, not in the night time. Who knew what kind of creatures roamed in there? But when Angela disappeared amidst the trees, I had to follow her. Chivalry? I don't know, something made me go after her. And so it started, the game of hide and seek, with Angela moving faster and faster and I losing her sight and then regaining it fleetingly and then rushing after her. After some time of such rapid, random walk, I was furious with Angela. I was scared too but the anger masked the fear. And then I found her standing still near some trees.
I shouted at her to stop being such an idiot and told her that I was heading back to the Expansiel and if she was not following me back, she could go to hell. She did not protest and she did not even talk back. What she did was that she grabbed my left arm and gently pulled me around so that I saw what she was looking at before I came upon her. It was a door, more like a postern, small wood door. Where did this lead? What was going on?
"I have been waiting for this for a long time. Please help me"
And then she touched my forehead with her palm. It was cold, very cold. That's all I can remember. I must have lost consciousness then and there because when I woke up a little later, I was still there, right in front of that wooden door, in the woods and I found myself on the grass with the wind howling all around me. It looked like a storm was coming. I got up and realized that I had a terrible headache. My head throbbed and my eyes saw stars everywhere. After a few moments, I started seeing properly and realized that I was right outside the door. Where was Angela? I could not see her around me. And then I saw that the wooden door was ajar. It was hidden in such a manner that the wind was not causing it to swing but the door was ajar. Did she go right in? I would not have gone in for it looked foreboding, but it started raining and the water droplets were big and it was cold, very cold. Despite my trepidations, I had to step in through that door.
It was dark inside but quite spacious although it smelled funny, a kind of musty smell from a place which had been locked up and left locked for too long. At first I thought I would throw up due to the stench but the feeling soon passed and I was able to stand in there. It was very dark in side. The dark clouds had hidden the moon and there was no light inside the space. I heard a strange scraping sound from deep recesses and I felt a slow cold terror shooting up my spine. I was petrified, I had never been so afraid whole my life. Where was I? What was there inside? An animal? Wild? Where was Angela? A thunder was rolling up in the heavens and the rain had intensified. I would wait for the rain to ease off and then I would head back. I had no idea of Angela's whereabouts and I did not care any more. What kind of game was this? While I was thinking about it all, the whole experience appeared really to be a waste of time and I was cursing myself to get entangled in this affair, I heard some sound coming from real far away, a kind of repetitive sound, like someone was repeating one thing again and again. Was it Angela? Was she crying for help? I moved a little ahead and stumbled badly.
Stairs!!! Stairs leading down some where. And exactly at this moment, a lighting flash lighted up the sky and in that fleeting moment of luminance, I noticed many things. First that I was not in a cavern or a room. I had seen the sky lighted up in the pink and white psychedelic show. And I saw a winding stairs going down first and then leading up towards surface. And in the next flash I saw something unmoving in the middle of the stairs. Was it Angela? Why was she not moving? She might have been running up and then maybe she met some accident. And so again I moved. I could not see anything at all, I was stumbling across the steps. The steps were broken. Most of them had one or two big stones intact and some of them had nothing at all on them, just the dust. The lightning flashes kept guiding me but most of the time it was just instinct. I groped all the way down and then I realized I was going up, all along the way, stubbing my shoes on stones and at one point of time I really thought I was floating on air. And then I stumbled on something. It was not a stone. It was a body. Angela!!!
Why was she not moving? Did she twist her ankle? I checked her and found that she was alive. She was repeating something very feebly. When I paid attention, I heard "help me". She kept repeating it again and again. It was very dark there and when I tried to make her sit, I felt some jelly like thing on her face. It clung to my palm and started burning it. I tried wiping it on my jeans but it would not come out. When Angela grabbed my hand, I realized that jelly like thing had spread over her too and it must have been very painful for her. She was unable to move and was lying there, breathing with difficulty. I had to help her and the only way out of this mess was up. I tried hauling her on her feet but her legs gave in and she crumpled to the ground which forced me to kneel too. And I felt something stick to my knee, go right through the jeans and sting my skin. That gooey thing was all around us, we were positively ankle deep in it. I tried carrying her in my arms and found that either she had passed out or was in so much pain that no sound came from her. I kept my right foot on the next step and forced myself to go up and somehow, probably because weight was not properly distributed, I put too much weight on the right ankle and twisted it badly. I lurched towards the wall and leaned on it, trying to get back my breath. I felt that something was oozing through my shirt from the wall and it was stinging like hell. I almost felt like I was being burnt alive by some kind of chemical. There was no looking back now. Every step was more painful than the previous one, every breath was a reminder of the pain that my body was suffering. Somehow I kept dragging myself up. The rain had ceased off and I could feel the cool fresh rain laden air on my face and that gave me hope. I could now see the opening ahead, I could now see the end of stairs approaching. After a really really long period of time, I managed to get on the very last step, pushed Angela over the edge and dragged myself up. The pain knocked me down. I kept on gulping air while I lay on my back. The whole world was swimming and there was an awful humming sound in my ears. I closed my eyes and the sound slowly ebbed and then finally went away. I opened my eyes and found that the world had stopped swimming but I could still feel the pain, from my hands, arms, chest, back, legs. I forced myself to look at my hands. They had turned black, like the chemical had burnt my skin to cinders. I was so preoccupied with all this that I did not realize that there was a welcome party for us. There were three person who were helping Angela stand up. The gentleman looked at me and lumbered towards me, smiling with his hands outstretched. There were two ladies with Angela who were all smiling at me. The gentleman took my hand and kept thanking me repeatedly. He helped me on my feet and then asked me to accompany him for a walk down the woods. I had one more fleeting glimpse of Angela leaving with the ladies while the gentleman walked with me the other way. His choice of words were quaint, very old kind of English, which made it very difficult for me to converse with me. He kept a decent pace and he was saying something when my ears suddenly started aching, sort of like what you experience when the plane you are in makes a descent for touch down. The pain was so terrible that I had to close my eyes and after some seconds when the pain was bearable, I opened my eyes and I found that the gentleman was not around. Did he keep walking without looking back at me? I limped that way for some more time and when I came out of the clearing, I found myself right near the lake. I had come back. And then the moon came out of clouds again. In that feeble light, which illuminated the lake once again, I saw that there was no one around. I was all alone there, down by the lake. I checked my hand. They were not black anymore, nor dead. I could still feel the pain though, but it was very less. The lake undulated before me, there was a pale corridor of light right in the middle of it, there was a gentle wind breaking now. All was silent here, everything was at peace here. Did it really happen? Was it all a dream? I thought of going towards that door but when I moved around, I winced in pain. The right ankle was protesting wildly. So instead of heading that way, I limped towards the big stone stairs which will lead me back towards Expansiel. Somehow I climbed those stairs. The pain masked my confusion, gave my thoughts something to focus on, to hold on to so that I was able to make my way to my room. I straight away hit the bed. At around 3 AM, I woke up again and the memories came rushing back in. I could not sleep anymore so I got up and did the assignments. It was good that I was able to do something because I did not really want to think about anything about that weird experience in the woods, right next to the lake. But the memories would not die. In trying to make sense of it all, my mind kept coming out with explanations. My mind can not settle down till the time it has solved a puzzle and this was awfully confusing.
After some days, when the ankle had healed, I went to the same spot and tried to locate the door, which was hidden in the trees. I could not find it. And so it ends. It was a weird night, one without explanations, one with so many unresolved questions. After much agonizing over it, this is my feeble explanation. That I had gone back in time and that Angela was stuck here in this world, she needed help in getting out of the morass which was preventing her from leaving this world, maybe as a punishment, so she needed my help. And that I helped her and led her out of it. And the pain that I suffered in my ears could be due to the time traveling. Does that make any sense at all?I have not yet fully come to terms with it. I am writing this down so that I never forget it. Maybe some day I will be able to make better sense of it all. Till the time I will stick with my explanation.
We started talking, she even took one cigarette from me. To all my questions about her, the only things that I could learn was that she was from England and she was a visitor over here. She had absolutely loved the campus, The school had such a beautiful campus that anyone would fall in love with it and she was just roaming around. Then she made a very unusual request. Could we head down to the lake? The lake was some distance away from MBA building, you had to go down the stairs and then you reach a wide expanse of land which had the lake on its north end while the other playing fields surrounded it from the other two ends. And it was getting late too. I had to go back to my room and finish up my assignments. But she was beautiful and it was a full moon night. And for some reason I did not want this moment to end. And despite all my forebodings, I said yes and we headed towards the stairs. Her name was Angela, I could not comprehend the last name and I let it go. We made decent speed and while on the way we discussed some inane matters like weather in this time here and the general environment at the school and I made some remarks about the people and their idiosyncrasies and she laughed at my poor jokes. And so before I knew it, we were near the stairs and then we went down very swiftly. The thing with the stairs was that you could always run down them but when you had to climb up, it almost always knocked the sails off your winds. I always found it very very tiring to climb them but then when you have company, you simply do not care for such things. While going down, Angela made some remarks about the trees as to how they appear to remain same year after year but all the time they change bit by bit so that if you look at a tree after some time, it would change its appearance and probably nature too. I seriously thought that something was wrong with her head and then attributed the same to evening refreshments. The wind was getting stronger now and it was almost a struggle when we finally reached the lake.
The lake appeared very very beautiful. The moonlight all over it gave it a pale look and the wind was making waves which caused the moonlight to break in million small pieces of glass so that it looked like the whole lake had gone yellow. I was so awe struck by it that I did not even notice that Angela had kept moving on and when she called out to me I found her waving at me from near the trees. The lake spread to the north and the forest started after the running tracks. The forest was unkempt and students generally kept away from it. But Angela was almost in the woods now and she turned back and called out to me. I really did not want to go in to the woods, not in the night time. Who knew what kind of creatures roamed in there? But when Angela disappeared amidst the trees, I had to follow her. Chivalry? I don't know, something made me go after her. And so it started, the game of hide and seek, with Angela moving faster and faster and I losing her sight and then regaining it fleetingly and then rushing after her. After some time of such rapid, random walk, I was furious with Angela. I was scared too but the anger masked the fear. And then I found her standing still near some trees.
I shouted at her to stop being such an idiot and told her that I was heading back to the Expansiel and if she was not following me back, she could go to hell. She did not protest and she did not even talk back. What she did was that she grabbed my left arm and gently pulled me around so that I saw what she was looking at before I came upon her. It was a door, more like a postern, small wood door. Where did this lead? What was going on?
"I have been waiting for this for a long time. Please help me"
And then she touched my forehead with her palm. It was cold, very cold. That's all I can remember. I must have lost consciousness then and there because when I woke up a little later, I was still there, right in front of that wooden door, in the woods and I found myself on the grass with the wind howling all around me. It looked like a storm was coming. I got up and realized that I had a terrible headache. My head throbbed and my eyes saw stars everywhere. After a few moments, I started seeing properly and realized that I was right outside the door. Where was Angela? I could not see her around me. And then I saw that the wooden door was ajar. It was hidden in such a manner that the wind was not causing it to swing but the door was ajar. Did she go right in? I would not have gone in for it looked foreboding, but it started raining and the water droplets were big and it was cold, very cold. Despite my trepidations, I had to step in through that door.
It was dark inside but quite spacious although it smelled funny, a kind of musty smell from a place which had been locked up and left locked for too long. At first I thought I would throw up due to the stench but the feeling soon passed and I was able to stand in there. It was very dark in side. The dark clouds had hidden the moon and there was no light inside the space. I heard a strange scraping sound from deep recesses and I felt a slow cold terror shooting up my spine. I was petrified, I had never been so afraid whole my life. Where was I? What was there inside? An animal? Wild? Where was Angela? A thunder was rolling up in the heavens and the rain had intensified. I would wait for the rain to ease off and then I would head back. I had no idea of Angela's whereabouts and I did not care any more. What kind of game was this? While I was thinking about it all, the whole experience appeared really to be a waste of time and I was cursing myself to get entangled in this affair, I heard some sound coming from real far away, a kind of repetitive sound, like someone was repeating one thing again and again. Was it Angela? Was she crying for help? I moved a little ahead and stumbled badly.
Stairs!!! Stairs leading down some where. And exactly at this moment, a lighting flash lighted up the sky and in that fleeting moment of luminance, I noticed many things. First that I was not in a cavern or a room. I had seen the sky lighted up in the pink and white psychedelic show. And I saw a winding stairs going down first and then leading up towards surface. And in the next flash I saw something unmoving in the middle of the stairs. Was it Angela? Why was she not moving? She might have been running up and then maybe she met some accident. And so again I moved. I could not see anything at all, I was stumbling across the steps. The steps were broken. Most of them had one or two big stones intact and some of them had nothing at all on them, just the dust. The lightning flashes kept guiding me but most of the time it was just instinct. I groped all the way down and then I realized I was going up, all along the way, stubbing my shoes on stones and at one point of time I really thought I was floating on air. And then I stumbled on something. It was not a stone. It was a body. Angela!!!
Why was she not moving? Did she twist her ankle? I checked her and found that she was alive. She was repeating something very feebly. When I paid attention, I heard "help me". She kept repeating it again and again. It was very dark there and when I tried to make her sit, I felt some jelly like thing on her face. It clung to my palm and started burning it. I tried wiping it on my jeans but it would not come out. When Angela grabbed my hand, I realized that jelly like thing had spread over her too and it must have been very painful for her. She was unable to move and was lying there, breathing with difficulty. I had to help her and the only way out of this mess was up. I tried hauling her on her feet but her legs gave in and she crumpled to the ground which forced me to kneel too. And I felt something stick to my knee, go right through the jeans and sting my skin. That gooey thing was all around us, we were positively ankle deep in it. I tried carrying her in my arms and found that either she had passed out or was in so much pain that no sound came from her. I kept my right foot on the next step and forced myself to go up and somehow, probably because weight was not properly distributed, I put too much weight on the right ankle and twisted it badly. I lurched towards the wall and leaned on it, trying to get back my breath. I felt that something was oozing through my shirt from the wall and it was stinging like hell. I almost felt like I was being burnt alive by some kind of chemical. There was no looking back now. Every step was more painful than the previous one, every breath was a reminder of the pain that my body was suffering. Somehow I kept dragging myself up. The rain had ceased off and I could feel the cool fresh rain laden air on my face and that gave me hope. I could now see the opening ahead, I could now see the end of stairs approaching. After a really really long period of time, I managed to get on the very last step, pushed Angela over the edge and dragged myself up. The pain knocked me down. I kept on gulping air while I lay on my back. The whole world was swimming and there was an awful humming sound in my ears. I closed my eyes and the sound slowly ebbed and then finally went away. I opened my eyes and found that the world had stopped swimming but I could still feel the pain, from my hands, arms, chest, back, legs. I forced myself to look at my hands. They had turned black, like the chemical had burnt my skin to cinders. I was so preoccupied with all this that I did not realize that there was a welcome party for us. There were three person who were helping Angela stand up. The gentleman looked at me and lumbered towards me, smiling with his hands outstretched. There were two ladies with Angela who were all smiling at me. The gentleman took my hand and kept thanking me repeatedly. He helped me on my feet and then asked me to accompany him for a walk down the woods. I had one more fleeting glimpse of Angela leaving with the ladies while the gentleman walked with me the other way. His choice of words were quaint, very old kind of English, which made it very difficult for me to converse with me. He kept a decent pace and he was saying something when my ears suddenly started aching, sort of like what you experience when the plane you are in makes a descent for touch down. The pain was so terrible that I had to close my eyes and after some seconds when the pain was bearable, I opened my eyes and I found that the gentleman was not around. Did he keep walking without looking back at me? I limped that way for some more time and when I came out of the clearing, I found myself right near the lake. I had come back. And then the moon came out of clouds again. In that feeble light, which illuminated the lake once again, I saw that there was no one around. I was all alone there, down by the lake. I checked my hand. They were not black anymore, nor dead. I could still feel the pain though, but it was very less. The lake undulated before me, there was a pale corridor of light right in the middle of it, there was a gentle wind breaking now. All was silent here, everything was at peace here. Did it really happen? Was it all a dream? I thought of going towards that door but when I moved around, I winced in pain. The right ankle was protesting wildly. So instead of heading that way, I limped towards the big stone stairs which will lead me back towards Expansiel. Somehow I climbed those stairs. The pain masked my confusion, gave my thoughts something to focus on, to hold on to so that I was able to make my way to my room. I straight away hit the bed. At around 3 AM, I woke up again and the memories came rushing back in. I could not sleep anymore so I got up and did the assignments. It was good that I was able to do something because I did not really want to think about anything about that weird experience in the woods, right next to the lake. But the memories would not die. In trying to make sense of it all, my mind kept coming out with explanations. My mind can not settle down till the time it has solved a puzzle and this was awfully confusing.
After some days, when the ankle had healed, I went to the same spot and tried to locate the door, which was hidden in the trees. I could not find it. And so it ends. It was a weird night, one without explanations, one with so many unresolved questions. After much agonizing over it, this is my feeble explanation. That I had gone back in time and that Angela was stuck here in this world, she needed help in getting out of the morass which was preventing her from leaving this world, maybe as a punishment, so she needed my help. And that I helped her and led her out of it. And the pain that I suffered in my ears could be due to the time traveling. Does that make any sense at all?I have not yet fully come to terms with it. I am writing this down so that I never forget it. Maybe some day I will be able to make better sense of it all. Till the time I will stick with my explanation.
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