girl on stairs

The girl on the stairs

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 smoking 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 chatting and she even took one cigarette from me. To all my questions about her, the only things that I could learn were 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 had been 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 land on the south end and on the west end were leveled out for our playing area. There was a woods on the north end which gave company to the lake as it receded farther and farther away from the stairs on the hillock. It would be a beautiful sight indeed with the full moon shining above and complete silence all around us. But I hesitated. It was getting late. 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 patience of trees, how they stood rooted at the same place year after year but still did not complain or did not let it affect their nature. I seriously thought that something was wrong with her head and then attributed the same to evening refreshments. Perhaps she had something strong and it had begun to affect her thinking. The wind was getting stronger now and it was almost a struggle when we finally reached the lake.

Just as I had imagined, the sight of the lake was fantastic. The moonlight all over it gave it a pale look and the wind was making ripples over it 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 woods started after the running tracks. The woods 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 to realize that she had gone hiding again. 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 had to give her a piece of my mind. When I reached near her, 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 wooden 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 sprawled there, right in front of that wooden door, in the woods. The grass was soft and dewy. 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 Angela was nowhere to be seen. Where was Angela? I could not see her around me. 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 the door 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. The first reaction was a violent retching. I would have thrown up due to the stench but the feeling soon passed and I was able to stand in there. It was very dark in side. 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 all my life. Where was I? What was there inside? Was it an animal? Was it 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 anymore. 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!!! There were stone stairs leading down somewhere. 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, a little distance away from me. Was it Angela? Why was she not moving? She might have been running up and then maybe she met some accident. My logical mind shrieked at me to stop this nonsense. How could I know that it was indeed Angela? But a voice inside me told me to go over there and to check it. I am tired of this voice. I thought I would never hear this voice again. When I was a child, I would hear this voice forcing me to do the right thing. When I had broken the favorite vase and my parents had suspected my sister of that crime, this same voice had made me crazy till I had owned up to it and got the punishment for it. I hated this voice. Every time it would speak up, it would keep on repeating the message till the time I gave in and did what was expected of me. Like all those time when my friends decided to bunk school and go for a movie, the voice drilled in me that it was a wrong thing to do. And so my friends watched the latest movie on the first day of its release and I was in the classroom taking notes. The same notes were copied by my friends at the end of the day. I had felt like such a wimp. That night I railed at it and asked it to shut up forever. The voice of my conscience can shut up and let me commit mistakes. It had remained silent for so long and at this precise moment, it spoke again. I knew from previous experience that there was no respite from it. I had to do it.

My first steps were in complete darkness. I could not see anything at all, I was stumbling across the steps. They were made of stones. Who had hewn them? They were old and they were crumbling or perhaps eroded by the wind. Most of them had one or two spots intact where you could put your shoes on and some of them had nothing at all on them, just the dust, so that when you put your foot on it, it would sink a little in the dust. It would have been difficult if there would have been light. But in near darkness, the task became herculean. The lightning flashes kept guiding me but most of the time it was just instinct. I groped all the way down grabbing the wall and even if I stumbled or if my shoes sank so much to throw me off balance, I would find something to break my fall down. Finally and very soon I reached the very last step, still in one piece and without any injuries. I must state here that there was a moment on my descent when I realized I was floating on air. The sensation had made me almost pop out my heart. But I had made it to the very last step and now I was going up one step at a time. I must have some 10 steps when I stumbled on something. It was not a stone. It was a body. I had found 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. It was being repeated very softly so that I had to almost bring my ears to her lips when I heard the cry:

“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 discovered that jelly like thing had spread over her hand 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 on the stairs. I had not expected her to buckle and her weight on my arms forced me to kneel too. Immediately I felt something stick to my knee which went right through the jeans and which stung 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 from the wall and it went right through my jacket and my shirt and which started hurting my back. 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. With every breath, my body would stung anew. 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 long period of time, I managed to get on the very last step, pushed Angela over the edge and dragged myself up. I could no longer bear the pain. I kept on gulping air while I lay on my back while it looked like my bdoy burned with fever. 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 persons 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 grabbed my hand and I winced but he did not take any notice of it all and kept thanking me repeatedly. He helped me on my feet and then asked me to accompany him for a walk down the woods. Either my body had come to terms with the pain or the effect of the chemical was wearing off, but I could not only stand up properly, I was able to walk too. I had one last fleeting glimpse of Angela leaving with the ladies while the gentleman walked with me the other way. His choice of words was 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 to the lake. And then the moon came out of clouds again. In that beautiful pale 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. The only pain that I could feel was from my twisted ankle and a buzzing sound in the ears. The lake undulated before me. There was a pale corridor of light right in the middle of it and 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 would 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 once the assignments were done and my eyes were too heavy to remain open, I thought about it again. In trying to make sense of it all, my mind kept coming out with explanations. My mind cannot settle down till the time it has solved a puzzle and this was awfully confusing. So my mind kept whizzing around, working on different scenarios, making sense of it logically and failing everytime.

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 as 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, and so she needed my help. Once I helped her across the stairs she was united with her family and had moved on. 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. Maybe someday I will be able to make better sense of it all. Till that time I will stick with my explanation.