*Read part 1 and 2 before reading this*

***

He stood still for a full minute before knocking on the door. It had been over eight years since he last spoke to his father face to face. He didn't know what to expect behind that door. But he eventually knocked on the door.
The door opened and his father stood there. He was neither surprised nor excited to see his son. He just stood there speechless. The two looked at each other without a word or movement for a while. Then eventually, he asked his son to get in.

Bijoy sat on the chair with a cup of chai on the table before him. Were the tea leaves stolen too? Does this cup at least belong to him? And more such shameful thoughts appeared in his mind.

"Where were you the day before yesterday?" Bijoy asked.

"I was at the garage. I got a job there. Trust me, I've stopped –"

"I want to ask you about the Pearl", Bijoy interrupted.

Bijoy's father was shocked to hear that sentence.

"How do you know about the pearl?" His father asked.

"Why did you steal it?"

"I didn't. It was just a dream. Trust me–"

"No ba...", Bijoy abruptly stopped. He was ashamed to even call him dad. But he didn't want to waste his time. He wanted to get the information he needed to find out about the pearl. "No, baba. It was no dream. I have seen it too. After you stole it and disappeared, I took it with me and then… then everyone seemed to have forgotten it"

"What do you mean? I disappeared?"

"That's what me and dada thought. But seems like dada doesn't remember anything about what happened"

"Where is the pearl? If it's with you, you better throw that away. I don't have a good feeling about it", his father said.

"It has disappeared"

His father wasn't surprised. It had disappeared after he had stolen it too.

"I want you to be honest," Bijoy said, "where did you find that pearl?"

"Why don't we just forget about –"

"Baba, this is serious. That pearl is no ordinary thing. I need you to help me find where it came from and where it is right now"

"My son comes to visit me after years and all we are talking about is some stupid pearl?"

"Listen baba, I will walk away and you'll never meet your son again if you don't support me"

"Come with me"

***
"Hello, is anyone home?" Bijoy yelled as he knocked on the door of the unknown house. His father stood behind him, feeling ashamed to be showing his son which house he was stealing from the day before.
The door opened and they found an old woman standing before them.

"Who?" She asked and adjusted her glasses to see clearly.

"Ahmm… We wanted to talk about the pearl", Bijoy said.

"About the what?"

"The pearl. The cursed pearl. Do you know anything about it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you should talk to Jeet. He might know something", the woman said.

"Yeah sure, is he at home?" Bijoy replied without having a clue about who Jeet was.

"Jeet, beta Jeet!! Someone is here to see you", she screamed from the door.

A middle-aged man came outside.

"Yes?"

"Do you know anything about the… the pearl?" Bijoy asked him.

Jeet looked at him and his father standing behind him.

"Let's go talk outside", he said. "Ma, he's an old friend. I'll talk to him and come back soon"

Then he walked away with Bijoy and his father until they were away from the house.

"The old palace near Belda. Be there tonight at nine", Jeet told the two.

"What does it have to do with the –"

"Meet me there tonight and all your questions will be answered. Almost." Jeet said and walked away.

***
Bijoy and his father stood before a half-broken wall that was leaning toward them. The bricks the wall was made of looked as if they would turn into sand in a couple of days. Plants and creepers covered most of it and there were few holes in which, who knows what kind of animals lived. Rats? Snakes? There was a small entrance towards the left side of the wall. They walked inside and found a huge building that was in the same condition as the wall. The only light sources were the faraway street lights, Bijoy's torch, and a few fireflies dancing around.
Soon, the two could hear footsteps on the dry grass all around the ground. Two men stood before them. One of them was Jeet.

"Hello, Mr. –", Jeet didn't know their names.

"Dasgupta", Bijoy said.

"Mr. Dasgupta, this is Ajay Basu", Jeet introduced the other man to them.

Bijoy immediately recognized the man. "Mr. Basu! You were on the radio. Your disappearance had become very popular"

"Oh is it? Well… maybe I'm famous over there now… haha", Ajay laughed.

"What do you mean by 'Over there'?" Bijoy asked, confused.

"Mr. Dasgupta. Haven't you noticed something weird about everyone around you after you had the Pearl?"

"Yea, I have noticed something is odd. People seem to have forgotten about the pearl. In fact, it's as if it never existed. I thought it was a –"

"A dream? Yup. We all thought that. But as you see, everyone who had the pearl with them still remembers everything that happened", Ajay said.

"So you know what's going on, don't you?" Bijoy asked.

"I have a vague idea. Come, I'll show you something"

Bijoy and his father followed Ajay and Jeet as they walked into the old palace.
They stopped abruptly before a wall inside. It looked very similar to the wall beside which Bijoy and his father stood outside the palace.

"What do you see?"Ajay asked.

"Umm… a wall?" Bijoy responded.

"Look closer", Jeet said.

"What the hell? It's just a damn old wall", Bijoy's father yelled.

But Bijoy could see something. The wall didn't seem to be solid. It was as if there were some movements between the bricks on the wall. He walked closer to see it clearly. The whole wall looked like a big TV screen whose brightness had been dimmed to a minimum. Bijoy placed his right hand on the wall. It didn't feel like a solid, it was more like a jelly that he could push through. So he did it. He pushed harder until his hand passed through the wall. He was astonished by what he saw. His hand seemed to have become wider, and longer in a weird way. It was like somebody peeled off all the layers of skin and muscle from his hand and placed it side by side. Like a strange-looking X-Ray of his hand. But he felt no pain. He immediately pulled his hand out of it.

"My God!" He exclaimed.

"This wall", Ajay said, "was discovered by Mr. Chandu. The fisherman who first discovered the Pearl. He introduced most of us to this place. Some say it is the eye of God. We can see everything that we couldn't see before through it. But some believe that's the path through which we can go back to where we came from. And Chandu was one of them"

Bijoy continued to look at the wall.

Ajay continued, "People who came here because of the pearl started getting crazy over time"

"What do you mean?" Bijoy's father asked.

"Stay here for a few days and you'll understand. The people you knew before are not the same here. You'll start feeling odd. Out of place. Like something is missing, or something has been taken from you. Some people went insane. One of them was Chandu. He was so sure that this was the way back to our world, he went into it"

Bijoy immediately looked at Ajay.

"You mean he went inside this wall?" Bijoy's father asked.

"Yes"

"What happened after that?"

"He never returned"

"Did he go back to our previous world?", Bijoy's father asked.

"Have you heard any news of him returning when you were there?" Ajay said.

Bijoy's father looked down. "No", he said.

"We have a feeling this wall is somehow related to our world. The world we used to live in. But we haven't figured out what happens if we go in", Jeet said.

"It's not a wall", Bijoy suddenly said. He had put both his hands in it and kept looking at them open up and unveil the bones, veins, and muscles inside the wall.

He turned back to look at the three.

"It's not a wall. It's a pathway", he said.

"Pathway to where?" Ajay asked.

"Can't you see it? Look at how my hand opens up when I put it inside. And when I pull it out, it's good as new. It's the pathway to the next dimension"

"What do you mean?" His father asked.

"On the other side of this wall", Bijoy explained, "is probably the fourth dimension. You see, we live in a three-dimensional world. Everything you see in our world has length, depth, and height. But in the fourth dimension, there is another dimension. It's almost impossible for us to imagine what that would look like. But when you put your hand inside this wall, you can see the projection of the four-dimensional view of your hand in three dimensions"

The three others looked at each other for a while.

"I didn't get a thing", Ajay said.

"Let me explain", an unknown voice from behind them said.

When they turned around, they saw a woman, probably in her 30s standing just outside the entrance to the palace. She walked closer to them and smiled.

"Who are you?" Jeet asked.

"You can call me Ananya. I'm a researcher at the Calcutta Institute of Science and Technology. What you are seeing before you, is in fact an anomaly that is letting a lower dimensional being peep into our dimension", she said.

"Wait. 'Our' dimension?" Bijoy asked.

"Mr. Bijoy. You are from a lower dimension. I am from a higher dimension. What you call the fourth dimension", Ananya explained.

"That can't be true. You look just like us. A fourth-dimensional being would look much different", Bijoy said.

"And what do you think they would look like?" Ananya asked.

"Well, we can't comprehend that"

"Exactly. You can't comprehend our dimension the way we do. Your body is designed to stay in your dimension. Anything that happens outside of your dimension is 'invisible' to you", she explained.

Bijoy thought for a while. He walked closer to her. Then he walked around her.

"You look just like any other three-dimensional human. If you were a fourth-dimensional being, I should have been able to see the fourth dimension of you when I walked around you." Bijoy said.

Ananya smiled. "Mr. Bijoy," she said, "to see the fourth dimension of a fourth-dimensional being, you have to walk around her in the fourth dimension. You have only walked around me in the third dimension."

"I don't understand"

"Imagine in your 'three-dimensional' world, you have an apple on a desk and you are looking at it from one angle. How do you prove that it's a three-dimensional apple and not just a picture of it?"

"By walking around it"

"Exactly. You had first seen the apple in two dimensions when you were stationary. But to prove that it was a three-dimensional apple, you had to walk in the third dimension. Which is around the apple. That's exactly what you did here. You just walked around me in the third dimension. That's why you could only see three dimensions of me"

"How do I see the fourth dimension?" Bijoy asked. Then he suddenly answered his own question. "Oh wait. We can't"

"Correct"

"But what if you move in your fourth dimension?" He asked.

Ananya smiled again. And she finally proved what she claimed. Her form started getting distorted. Her body was getting unrecognizable and smaller. And then she disappeared. It was instant. Like magic. One moment she was in front of them and the next moment she was gone. All four of them were horrified and started looking around. That's when she appeared again, out of nowhere.

"Oh, my God. Oh my God! Black magic", Bijoy's father screamed. Even Ajay and Jeet moved away from Ananya. But Bijoy walked closer to her and touched her arm.

"You are –", Bijoy whispered.

Ananya placed her other hand on Bijoy's.
"I'm just like you", she said.

"Bijoy, get away from her!" His father screamed. "She's a wizard"

Bijoy didn't reply to him. He spoke to Ananya instead. "So the fourth dimension is invisible to us", he said.

"Yes. Let me explain to you. Imagine there was a two-dimensional being living in your dimension. To see anything in your dimension, light from the sun should bounce off of an object and reach his retina. But, his retina is in two dimensions. So any light coming from the third dimension will never reach it. Only the light that reflects off of a three-dimensional object in the second dimension will be seen by him. That's exactly what is happening here. You are seeing the light reflecting off of me in three dimensions and hence, perceiving me as three-dimensional", Ananya explained.

Bijoy suddenly realized something. "Wait! That means you can see the insides of me?"

Ananya chuckled. "Only when I move in the fourth dimension. Don't worry, you look fine"

Bijoy felt embarrassed, but he couldn't do anything about it. Do they hide their insides with clothes too? He thought. Then he realized that pearl was a way to get them here from their world.

"What place is this? Why did you bring us here?" He asked.

"This place is the fourth dimension as you can it", she answered.

Bijoy was surprised at first, but then it started making sense. Even if it was the fourth dimension, it would look completely normal to him, because he could only perceive three dimensions.

"You mean my house, the people I know all of them… they are in the fourth dimension?"

"Well, yes and no. Come with me, I'll show you what you came here for", Ananya said and started walking away from the palace. Bijoy followed her without second thoughts. The three others looked at each other, not knowing what to do.

"Do you think we should trust her?" Jeet asked.

"Do we have a choice?" Ajay said.

Then they walked behind Bijoy. His father followed them too.

...

Continued in 4th part (final part)

#thriller #mystery #suspense #science

© arpan