The Immortal

By Vasudev Patel

'Flying through the air and falling onto the road', that was the last memory of Payal, Rahul had. On that cold summer morning when he opened his eyes on the hospital bed of the recovery room of Vilaspur General. Not much was clear to him but that memory, that moment was clear, as it would be if it were happening right in front of him again and again and again........ "Rahul!", a familiar yell from out of the room broke the loop and his head was falling into the deep unclear again, "Rahul" the yell came again, this time closer, softer, "Rahul, thank God you are awake, hey buddy, you are awake right?", this felt sort of confusing to Rahul, of course he was awake, why wouldn't he be. But when he tried to respond as such to that absurd question, he couldn't, he was not able to utter more than a small moan. He could feel the muscles in his face tighten in an effort to say something, for a moment he thought he could talk on will alone, if this were just a question of will he might have. The voice was almost on him now and he could see the face that voice belonged to. It was Anil, one of his closest friends. “Don’t try bro, you are lucky that you are just unable to talk, Payal is..." Anil stopped abruptly, and the memory came flooding back. Rahul, and his friends were out partying and one of them was Payal, the most beautiful girl Rahul has ever seen, not the kind of beauty you would associate with actresses or models but the kind poems are written about. They were out drinking and partying and when the time came returning home. That was when the dreaded accident occurred. Rahul was drunk, no question about it but he had also driven drunk before, there was no way it was his fault, right? They were driving down the last few hundred meters of road left for Payal's house when it happened. It was like someone had pushed a rod in the front wheel of his bike. That was when he saw Payal fly off from behind him and dive head first on to the asphalt road and slide down a good distance along. In that moment the realization had already dawned on him that this might be the last memory he would have of her. The last moment he would remember of her forever. The next thing he saw was the blured cieling of the hospital room. Anil was going on about how Rahul's parents are out there crying and yelling and praying and doing whatever possibly could be done. "You wait here, I'll go call them", Rahul wanted to stop him and ask about Payal, but for some reason even his will was not with him this time. His parents came in, his mother had been in the hospital all night while his father was out investigating the accident, the way a father would. But they had both cried, they wouldn't admit that in front of their only almost dead son, but they were crying. Rahul could see that in their eyes. He could also see sympathy, for him perhaps but he also felt that it was in some amount also for Payal's parents, because after all they are the ones, whose child was actually lost. The next people to come in his room were them. They looked sadder than his parents somehow. They were not particularly doing anything to look sad but they somehow looked sadder and sadder by each step they took. They were glad Rahul was ok. Rahul had thought he would be blamed for the accident. And he also felt he should be. But Payal's parents never once tried blaming him not even in passing. They wished him well and went back the way they came. His own parents went back after a while. They both needed rest. Anil went right after them and Rahul was left once again alone with the loop. The blocking of the front wheel, Payal's dive, the hospital ceiling. He could still feel the push of the road against his chest as he fell or more like pushed on to the road. Slowly from among his guilt, sleep was creeping in, and he slept surrounded by his guilt. He didn't wake up till later in the night when he thought he was having a bad dream but all it was, was that someone, someone he knew, was trying to strangle him in his sleep. But he was awake now and he could see the eyes, the eyes that said 'you deserve this', and he knew why he deserved this. He knew the moment he saw the eyes; he knew the moment he felt the cold grip around his neck, he deserved this, and what the hoarse almost animal like voice said next made him somewhat glad that he deserved this. "This is for her, she will claim your life, she will be back, she will be back", the almost animal like voice was almost whimpering by the end, like it was crying while killing Rahul. Rahul neither had the strength nor the will to resist. He simply surrendered to his fate and if his death could bring her back it was worth it. It might have been a delusion at his end to make it easier but it helped. Once the deed was done the animal, the man, the beast, whatever it was, went out of the room, out of the hospital and into the dark to whatever place it called home. The next morning a nurse named Raj Laxmi discovered Rahul's body and screamed. Rahul had a smile on his face. A smile of gratitude. There were some writings on the wall, some sort of incantation. Rahul's death was reported as a ritualistic murder. The police were sure it was bound to happen again. But it didn't not for another fifteen years. That was when Payal's Father had come home drunk one night and was going on and on about how it was Rahul's fault all those years ago when Payal went away and how he was grateful for his death and Payal's mother had tried to make him go to sleep and that was when he had beaten her. He was almost unaware of it till he was finished and went to sleep. Payal's mother didn't die right away but was alive long enough for her to see. The beast came back that night for Payal's father. This time its voice was more feminine, still hoarse but feminine and it choked the life out of him and repeated the same lines it had repeated to Rahul years ago on the hospital bed when it had strangled him "This is for her, she will claim your life, she will be back, she will be back"...then the beast went out of the house and into the dark corners of the places it has called its home on more than one occasion. The police had no clue as to who was causing these gruesome murders, but soon a whisper started to take form. A whisper among the children who were afraid of this creature who hunted children who didn't listen to their parents. A whisper among the grown-ups about a madman who creeped into houses for food and shelter and if you see him do any of these things, he strangles you with whatever he could find, with his bare hands if he had to. But this was all speculation and nothing more. In truth there was no madman, there was some creature but it didn't hunt children, it hunted something else. Something even more surreal than children, life. The creature hunted life not for itself, but for someone who is in desperate need of it. Anil, now almost to his forties still sometimes remembers about that accident and is saddened by it. Rahul was one his good friends and he died, as any of the dead ones almost always are, very young. Anil still remembers Rahul's parents crying in the hospital after Rahul's death. Anil has remained a close friend to both Rahul and Payal's families through the years. It was just sad how life sometimes just is what it is...... Unfair. Rahul and Payal made a good pair. Often times Anil was happy for them and some other times he was something akin to jealous of them. Rahul's parents still lived in their old house three doors down from his own and he had passed Payal's house many times on his way to teach the eighth-grade english class at Vilaspur Public school. Sometimes he had allowed his mind to speculate as to who could be the likely culprit, or at least the likely cause for all the death surrounding Payal, first her own, then Rahul's, and then very recently her parents. Nobody seems to have any clue, not even the police. The one thing which has puzzled Anil was the incantations. The incantations on the wall in Rahul's hospital room. Anil felt that the key to solving this was somehow connected to the incantations. But there were no incantations at Payal's house. The police had not found anything remotely similar to what was on the hospital wall. These were his thoughts as he crossed the school gate. The whole day was a blur. Sometimes he was in the class teaching and sometimes he wondered the dark hallways of his mind to make some sense of the two incidents one and a half decades apart but still felt connected, at least to him. On his way back from the school he decided he would go inside Payal's house and try to find something. Something which could help him solve this, make sense of this, something which would finally let him be free. As he pushed the door in he felt something escape. Perhaps it was only his imagination, perhaps it was what had happened to Payal's parents. He entered the house with hesitation. He felt like a willing sacrifice on his way to get butchered in front of a hellish deity or a pretender who just wanted to taste something alive. It was a sickening feeling. He almost turned back. But he managed to stay his ground and climb the stairs out of the living room to the hallway leading to the bedroom where it happened, whatever it was. He heard the fluttering of a calendar at the end of the hallway, a window might have been open. He slowly made his way towards the bedroom. The door was open, there was a man, at first it seemed like a man but slowly as Anil's focus went from the room to the man, it became clear what it was not, and it was not a man, it was something else. It was not clear what it was but there was no need to explain what it was doing, it was strangling Payal's father, right in front of Anil. Anil could stop it from happening, Anil wanted to stop it from happening but he could not move a single muscle in his body except for his head. All he could do was look away as life slowly went out of the sixty-five-year-old man. Anil could not even yell at the creature, if it was a creature. The thing has done its deed and now it was walking or sliding or hovering towards Anil. It was slowly eating up the ground between them and Anil was still not able to move. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was the inevitability of the whole thing but whatever it was Anil just wanted it to end. One way or another, with him alive or without. He wanted it to end... And it did, Anil woke up in his bed at two in the morning drenched in sweat. It was just a nightmare. Just one dreadful, unforgiving nightmare. He was glad it was over. He didn't want to be forty yet. He didn't want his friends to die. He just wanted to live his twenties as freely as possible. Speaking of freedom, he remembered he was invited to a party. He tried to sleep and as the sleep sinked into him he forgot about the thing that came after him, he forgot about Rahul's death. He forgot about the nightmare almost completely, as people always do. In the morning he woke up and had breakfast as usual, went out to college as usual, attended the boring classes on Shakespeare, Byron, Orwell as usual. In the evening he met up with Rahul and told him the glimpses he could remember of the nightmare and they both laughed. Rahul was with Payal. Anil felt a slight bit jealous but, in the end, he was happy for them. They were celebrating something that night, something he didn't clearly remember. But it didn't matter there will be plenty of time to remember. As his friends started to go home one by one, Anil and Rahul decided it was time they went home too. Rahul and Payal were driving in front of Anil. As they reached the speed breaker which marked the last few hundred meters to Payal's house, Anil remembered another glimpse of his nightmare and a smile came onto his face realizing how idiotic it was. That was when he noticed something on the side of the road. There was a man standing there. At least it seemed like a man a t first, it was watching Rahul and Payal, laughing as they went down the road. They didn't seem to notice whatever that thing was. Just as they were about to cross in front of it, its hand extended towards them and went through the front wheel of Rahul's bike. Payal went flying on to the asphalt in front of him. Anil stopped his bike and went as quickly as he could to Rahul who was now spread out on the road and was unconscious. Then he looked at Payal and realized it was too late for her. Anil calked the ambulance first then both of their parents. As he was calling their parents he looked towards the side of the road where he saw the thing which caused the accident. It was still there looking straight at him. But it was not expressionless as before, now a grim covered almost half of what should be its face and a long twig like finger covered its mouth in a gesture to keep quiet.

By Vasudev Patel