In continuation with first part.

Chapter Four

As my brother pulls his bike in the apartment complex, he eyes my hands suspiciously.

“Have you found your book?” he asks. I shake my head.

He smirks. “Was your book in your fantasies too?”

I don’t get what he is saying. “What fantasies?”

“You don’t know?”

“No,” I say as I mount the bike behind him.

“Shocker,” he mutters.

How can you fantasize if you don’t even have a soul? Isn’t it the place from where all the dreams and fantasies arise?

My brother doesn’t understand.

And then I wonder—would he have known it when my soul had gone into him? Does he know now—that I am numb, because he has my property, my existence in himself? As we are riding home, I am staring at his back. He wears a black hoodie. He looks nice. He has changed so much that now the past—the time when we both were kids and we both played together and when we didn’t need anyone else but just the two of us to find every happiness in the world—that time just feels like the past, now not ready to come again.

I know this sounds creepy, but I am trying to figure if I can look...into him for a part of me. Maybe something crammed into him. You can't have two souls at the same time.

I could’ve told him about the lost soul part, but we never actually had the relation. Just...big brother, little sister. Not much more. Nothing.

This realisation was holding me back.

Besides...

How do I even know my soul is with him?

Just because he is acting a little nicer than before—just because he agreed to take me where I wanted to, when I wanted—doesn’t mean that he has some nice soul within him. I can’t do this on this basis. I just can’t.

“Here comes home sweet home,” He parks the bike in the parking area of our temporary residence. Mom and papa said that we won’t live with any of our relatives. I don’t know why they said that. I don’t even know why we aren’t living with grandma. Beats me.

I hop off the bike and then stand beside it. Before Prateek can get off, I muster up my most serious face and keep a hand on his arm. He looks at me.

I think that maybe this moment will do something to him and he'll know what I am asking for.

He isn’t the least bit moved.

“What?” He asks.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But you need to give my soul back to me, okay?”

I am staring at him. Seriously.

He is staring at me. I wish he would do it seriously too. But then his face splits into a grin. “Come on, I am not interested in your latest eyeliner.”

He gets off and my hand falls down.

I look down at my shoulder frantically. Huh.

Thank God, my arm is still attached. Maybe I just had a figure of speech. But it really scared me.

“I’m not in mood for stupid jokes, Esha,” Prateek says, then starts walking towards the house. I am left alone. He pulls out a phone and then gets busy on it—apparently forgetting that he has a sister.

I run after him. “No! Please, what use is She to you? It’s not like you’re a girl so you’ll need Her.”

He freezes.

He slowly turns back to me.

Then he stares, with his mouth falling open with every passing second.

“What?” The word is high-pitched. His voice doesn’t normally sound like this, but then normally he doesn’t look this lost either. “I mean, what?”

He shakes his head slowly at me, all the while with his face set into a permanent disgusted expression. “You talk rubbish,” he says, then turns around and storms over to the stairs.

That’s the precise moment my body wishes to break down. Without a soul, it’s like an orphan. Without a soul, I’m dead.

My legs feel weak, just like they did at aunt’s house, and my knees buckle.

With a thump I fall down on the concrete ground. And I lie there, my eyes open and staring at the blue sky—waiting for it to consume me—waiting to die.

A few seconds later I see the face of my brother appear above me and fill my vision. His eyes are concerned, roaming around my face to look for something unnatural.

“Are you...okay?” He asks doubtfully, letting away by instinct that he already knows I am not. “What game are you playing?”

“I have lost my soul,” I whisper. “You have taken it.”

He frowns. “I have taken what?”

“My soul.”

“Are you kidding?”

“You took my soul. Return it, please. Else I am going to die.”

He blinks rapidly, as if that’s going to put some sense into his head. We sit there like that for some time, the deserted parking area, my deserted mind. “Esha...” Prateek says gently after a couple of minutes. “Get up, please. Come on.” He holds my arm and pulls me up.

We both sit down on the ground.

Ready for some talk.

I look up at him curiously, with wide eyes and childish admiration.

“You have been alone in your room for two months now,” he says. “That has...that has made you distant...from all of us. Are you understanding? Stop living in your dreams and come out.”

“What are you saying?” I ask slowly.

“Stop fantasizing. Just stop with this pretence!”

“Pretence?”

I look down at my hands, my mouth falling open with every passing second, because of which realisation—I don’t know. I actually want to lie down. Close my eyes.

But my brother seems to have answers. I want to listen to them too.

“The world is stories and fantasies is nice,” he continues. “But real life is better. You need to stop with...hating it so much.”

I narrow my eyes at him, irritated. “WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?!”

He looks taken aback at my sudden outburst. But the thing about two months and pretence and all that he said...he has lost my trust. He tries to take my hand but I jerk it back. Then I stand up on wobbly legs and still manage to remain up. He shoots up too, panic and fear visible on his face.

“You just don’t want to return my soul! Aunt was right. She told me about it!”

I’m making this up.

“Grandma agreed too. They know! You don’t want to return me my soul. You like Her there!”

Prateek's face twists in a bizarre expression. “Grandma?”

“Grandma, yes of course. She told me!”

“Esha, wh—which grandma are you talking about?”

“We have only one alive grandma! I'm talking about her. Not about any other grandma who’s come out of the box of ashes!”

“Esha, we have z—”

“She’s our grandma! How can you forget her? She lives in Delhi. We visited her yesterday. We stayed with her! How can you deny?”

I’m breathing heavily.

He's still staring at me. And he's shaking his head slowly, backing away quietly so his shoes make no sound in the complete silence. I stare at him, wanting him to come back and answer me, tell me everything's fine. He doesn't. The sun is dipping low now. The parking area is dark and gloomy.

It feels like the world is going to end.

I shouldn’t have shouted.

But maybe my outburst now will remind him of the grandma who used to change his diapers some sixteen years ago.

“There’s something you need to be updated upon,” he says, almost snaps. “Grandma died two months ago.”



Chapter Five



A shattered glass can’t break twice.



Chapter Six



Is he lying?

Is he lying just to make me forget about my soul and mourn over my grandma?

Besides, how can my grandma die? We met her this morning. Before we went to aunt’s house, it was her residence where we stepped first. And how can I even mourn if I don’t have a heart to feel pain in? That’s why I am asking for my soul in the first place.

I look at him for a few seconds, then turn away from him. A heavy and paining lump is forming somewhere down my throat. It hurts every time I breathe. And my skin is so hot I am afraid it will burn. Are these signs of dying? Are these meant to be the window through which we can hear and see the approaching footsteps of death?

The world around me is cruel. It is massive. It is populated.

But the only people I have ever dared to confine to about my sorrows are the people who come into my dreams. My grandma come into my dreams. She tells me that in this savage world of wisdom, blessed are those who possess emotions in their heart.

You need to be able to hear the soft hum at the end of each day—a hum which is inviting the night to just have a companion for the span of time the darkness is going to bring.

Grandma, is she really there, or is it just what my brother says—a pretence?

Does she really mean good, or is she just...dying and wanting me to accompany her to afterlife? Besides, isn’t afterlife just like the night? People are scared of it. They don’t want it to come. They just want to live in the day, the life. The Immortality.

I am grandma’s companion, ain't I? I should go. With her.

I remember a thing.

Something my grandma used to mutter in the evenings. Sounds creepy?

What isn’t?

She used to whisper, sitting in her rocking chair at the end of each day, facing the dark forest just in front of her house, she used to whisper:

Don’t come forth, people. Don’t come forth. Your true identity is so precious. I must advise you never to drop the charade.



Chapter Seven

ONE WEEK LATER



“Grandma died two months ago. It was a quite funeral. Only a few relatives and family. We all went. Only...Esha couldn’t cope up. She was close to her. Very close. So she broke when she died...like a piece of fragile glass, the piece of glass you’re afraid to touch; when you’re afraid to see what’s written in the destiny of the million shattered pieces it divides into.”

Prateek waits for a few seconds, while his friend notes down everything. School projects can sometimes be interesting, given how you can dig in the deepest secrets of someone.

“I didn’t know mental illnesses could be so frightening,” his friend says.

“I was afraid of the fate the million atoms of Esha had had written in their destiny. We had almost expected her to be angry, to yell, shout at someone to bring her grandmother back. But she didn’t do any of those intense things. She just went into her room, and didn’t return easily. As those who loved her, we tried. We tried to bring her back. But no luck. I still didn’t know what was wrong with her. But I did know one thing. She was not alone. Her room was filled with...things. Books, drawings, stuffed toys, letters she wrote to someone, most probably our grandmother, thinking one day she would read them.

“We weren’t afraid. Esha wasn’t soft hearted. She could’ve never done any wrong thing. And so two months passed. It was 20th June. Hoping she would get reacquainted with the outside world, we thought of taking her to Delhi, where grandma lived—and died.”

Prateek pauses for a few seconds for the moment to sink in. “No one knew what was going to happen within that short time.”

“Cut to the part about the soul thing.”

“I had just come to pick her up from her aunt’s house. And the moment she saw me, she started asking questions, saying sorry but also that she needed her soul back and so I should give in.”

“That’s...strange.”

“She had thought she lost her soul.”

“How can that happen?”

“It can’t.”

“Then why was Esha behaving like that?”

“She was afraid she had lost her soul. She had read so many fantasies in her two months room stay that now she had started behaving like one. Like a fantasy, thinking it was epic. But the truth was that, grandma's death had created a hollow inside her. A void. She was empty from inside, she couldn’t feel anything and as she read in so many books that your soul represents your thinking and all...she thought...no thinking capacity means no soul.”

His friend whistles. “Your sister sounds a little...out of her mind.”

“During the vacation to Delhi, she thought that we were visiting grandma, that grandma was still alive. Fear overtook her senses and she began making stuff up—she began making excuses for things she did. Like...when she didn’t feel like laughing at a joke I told her, she thought there was nothing left inside her. She didn’t get angry at one of her brothers, she thought that maybe it was because of some sin she had done while ignoring and not talking to us during the two months in her room when she shut herself in. That’s the punishment she chose to give herself. She convinced herself that all this is happening because she lacks a soul...so she started on a soul hunt.”

“Whoa.”

Prateek holds up a hand. His friend looks at him, waiting for more.

“We took her to our aunt. In new surroundings, her mind started conjuring up things. It made up the fact that her soul was lost and now she needed to find it. And maybe it was with me. It pushed away the realisation that grandma had died. That’s why she didn’t remember it when I told her. She still thought that her grandmother was all right, at her house; and that we had met her that morning.”

His friend nods. “That’s really helpful, Prateek. I bet my professor is going to be impressed. So now what is going on with Esha? Where’s she?”

“She now takes appointments with the doctor. It’s a pure psychological condition. Just...if you ask me...it feels like a very high level of PTSD. So we hired her a psychologist, who is trying to bring Esha back from the scary world of her dark dreams. I guess she must be having one of her lessons at this precise moment...”



Chapter Eight



I open my eyes slowly, then look at the man sitting in front of me, staring at me curiously.

My psychologist.

“Did you try meditation?” He asks.

I nod.

He grins triumphantly, thinking he has been successful in connecting me to God and spirituality. “Tell me things, then,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “What did you think about?”

I smile a little. “I thought about an incidence in my childhood. When I was younger, I used to like tragic stories, stories with bad endings. I thought they were closer to life.”

He nods slowly. “Okay, go on.”

“So my mom used to teach me lessons in a similar way. Like...many people do...when I didn’t eat something, she used to tell me that I'll be undernourished and unhealthy and that I won’t be able to live a normal life. When I didn’t go to school she said that I'll grow up to be unemployed and uneducated and all.”

“She said true things.”

“One day I felt weak, and sad, and uncertain,” I say. “She didn’t have an answer to that one.”

He purses his lips, then locks his hands behind his head. “Well, she could’ve said that when you are afraid of something, the fear will grip you again, stronger this time.”

“She didn’t want to be negative. No mother wants to be negative about their child.”

“Okay, you’re right in there.”

“So, I used to complete her tradition, of telling me the consequences of everything I did. So the next time when I felt sad and unhappy from inside...like a void, I told her...” I bend forward towards him, not breaking the intense eye contact we are having. “When the devil arrives and sees the empty house within you, do you know what does he do?”

He has a little amused expression on his face. I know it’s going to crumble soon. “Well, what?”

“He enters without knocking.”

~completed~

#story_continued #short_story #mystery #drama #thrill #secrets #soul #lies

© Tanushka