Elora Pt. 5: Infected Reality

If you have just now found this story, be informed that this is the 5th chapter in my ongoing story Elora. I strongly suggest reading the previous chapters before reading this one, as it is a sequel. For all the rest of you, Enjoy Chapter 5...

Wayanad

By some impossible miracle or by mere stroke of luck Tanay had managed to rent a van for an entire week for their trip. It looked hideous, sure, it would be a fuel guzzler, definitely, but it made a lot of sense too. And it suited perfectly the kind of vacation they were having. None of them wanted to be cramped in boring and unnecessarily expensive hotel rooms, preferring to be out in the open, camping. Tanay said he had been looking for an RV but their rents were too high, and he and Soham had tents anyways. So they had settled on the van.

Soham had brought along his rather hefty speaker which he connected to his phone as soon as they hit the road. Tanay, obviously, would be driving, being the only one among them with a car of his own and a regular enough habit of driving. That left Darshan and Manish to occupy the back seats, and enjoy the ride with nothing to worry about, and nothing to either except for being part of the craziness. Manish knew though, that it was just a matter of time before Darshan engaged himself with the scenery outside. He had always had a knack for photography, and after one of his landscape photos got published in a magazine, he was committed.

“How are you all planning to charge all of that?” Manish asked, more out of the utter ridiculousness of it all than real curiosity.

“The van, of course.” Tanay said, as if Mansih was being dumb on purpose. Then he proceeded to reveal three power converters and plugged them into the three DC sockets just below the dashboard. “See, now we have six USB ports. Charge away!” He waved at nothing in particular. Soham upped the volume a bit.

“And what’s in the black box over there?” he asked again, pointing to the almost perfect cube placed under the seat Darshan was sitting on. This time, genuinely curious.

“Just something for later, don’t worry about it.” Soham interjected dismissively. Manish, though not satisfied by the put down, didn’t follow it any further, although he had a couple of guesses as to what might be in the box.

They followed the highway for about forty minutes, after which Google maps led them down another narrow road. Darshan seemed especially excited as they entered the ruddy trail surrounded by dense woods on either side. He took out the camera just as they entered the first patches of forest around them.

“Calm down buddy, we’re not there yet.” Tanay said, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.

“Oh please, you’re one to talk. Weren’t you the one to always preach that the journey should be more memorable than the destination?” He retorted, just as humorously. Tanay nodded, focusing back on the road. Darshan went back to looking at the world through the viewfinder once more, snapping a picture every few seconds.

“Oh hey, what happened to the lady love of yours?” Soham asked, shouting over the sound of the speaker. For a split second Manish wondered how he could have known about him and Ishana, but soon realized that he was talking to Darshan.

“Who, Aashi? I broke up with her.” He went back to looking out through the camera’s viewfinder, then realized everyone else had gone quiet and turned back around. “What?”

“We’re waiting to hear how she dumped your sorry ass after all.” Soham said. He even lowered the volume for emphasis, eliciting laughter from the other two.

“Are you all really going to become the gossip girls now? And just for the record, I dumped her.” He said. Everyone hollered. “What? It’s true!”

“Okay, let’s assume we believe you for once.” Soham said, now turning on his seat, wiggling against the seatbelt. “Did you seal the deal?”

“What do you mean ‘seal the deal’?”

Manish was enjoying the banter, but tried keeping his expression as an uninterested curiosity, not wanting to get pulled into it at all. Soham laughed, “you didn't do it with her, did you?”

“I didn’t what?” Darshan seemed genuinely confused.

“Oh come one, don’t tell me you don’t know what ‘sealing the deal’ means.” Soahm rolled his eyes, making a vile gesture with his right hand index finger and all the fingers of his other hand rolled into a three inch meat tube. Tanay and Manish laughed in spite of themselves.

“That’s called sealing the deal? Guys grow up. It’s called bumpy cuddles now. And anyways, she wasn’t gonna be wifed up by yours truly. Yeah, she was a good ride and all, if you so wanna know, but I ain’t giving you anything more, I’m a gentleman afterall. I don’t kiss and tell.”

The lively and verbally gruesome banter about Darshan’s unestablished yet irrefutable sexual adventures went on for about ten more minutes, gradually moving to other topics, mostly about how their lives had turned out in the past couple years or so. Manish was thankful that he wasn’t made to be an active part of that line of conversation. Even though he wasn’t yet thinking about Ishana in those terms, it would have been very uncomfortable nonetheless, especially since he knew how relentless they could be.

Reaching the heart of Wayanad and finding a suitable area to park the van for the night turned a bright afternoon into early evening. Mostly because of the multitude of spots they found on the way where they stopped to take pictures. However, a large part of that time was spent on finding the route back because Tanay had taken a wrong turn and didn’t realize it for over an hour of driving through rough terrain.

The place they chose for their first night was a lesser known camping ground at the base of a little hill. There were other campers, mostly young men and women of their own age, though there were some older ones as well. It didn’t take them long to figure out that most of these campers were part of a traveling group and Wayanad was a passing stop for them. As night fell, the air turned from mildly chilly to a little cold, although not nearly uncomfortable enough. If anything, the numerous campfires all around probably had something to do with it. The four friends, after having failed to get a good fire started, took help from a seasoned camper from one of the groups. Tanay and Darshan took extra special notes for the next time, although Manish didn’t think that either of them would be willing to try and light a fire in the traditional way anytime soon.

Manish hoped that after the long journey, and his interrupted sleep on the train, he would find it easy to sleep. But it proved to be a false hope. After dinner — which they bought from the little camp service shed at the corner of the campground — they talked for a couple hours. Then slowly but surely, the ground became quiet. Tanay was the first to call it a night among them, and went into one of the two tents they had set up. The others found it pointless to continue with the group broken up. And it was quite late indeed. Within twenty minutes of getting into the tent and taking up his corner, Manish had realized that sleep was going to be difficult. The tent wasn’t uncomfortable, not by a long shot. He simply found it difficult to fall asleep for some reason he was unable to fathom. He tossed and turned for over an hour and then decided to head outside a little, maybe take a small walk and clear his head.

He went and sat in their van. He put in his earphones and started a playlist of tracks he hadn’t listened to in over six months. It was a collection of tracks by Sensitizer, an electronic dance music producing band who exclusively composed instrumentals. He was pleasantly surprised that they had released two new albums in the time since he had last listened to them. He switched over from his collected playlist to the new album, which immediately uplifted his mood. Previously, he listened to this artist only at night. Partly because he found their compositions mildly distracting from his work at hand and partly because there was just something about the tracks that felt better when you were sleepy. And even though he wasn’t sleepy in the least at the moment, he found it relaxing enough. After a couple of tracks had played, his mind wandered to Ishana. He was pretty sure that she was asleep by now. But on a whim, he sent her a text nonetheless.

‘Hey there! What’s up? We’re here, at the base of this little hill. And there are a lot of other people too.’ He wrote, pressed the send button, and then sent a picture as well. Although he wondered how clearly she could make out the things in the image, provided most of the fires were nothing but glowing embers now, and the only good source of light was the flood light at the far corner of the ground.

The minutes passed, the songs kept playing. At half past one in the morning, out of curiosity Manish decided to check the black box he had seen in the van, about which Soham had so vaguely skirted away from telling him. He opened the sliding door, and nudged the box away from its position. It was surprisingly heavy for its size. Manish smiled, about to place a bet with himself for guessing what was inside. With the light from the floodlight, he carefully opened the top and was unsurprisingly delighted to see four black boxes with Jack Daniels Old No. 7 printed on the top flaps of all of them. He chuckled. So this is what you meant by ‘that’s for later!’ he thought. Why not start the party today then!!

He contemplated opening one of them but then decided against it. Booze, though a good relaxing agent, didn’t seem like the right thing for simple sleeplessness. He closed the box and put it back as close to its original place as he could manage. He closed the door to the van, locked it, and put the key back in his pocket.

It was quiet in the campground. The occasional crackling from the fires and some nightly sounds from the forest in the distance were all that could be heard. He walked to the edge of the campground and sat by a doused fire. The closest tent was about twenty-five meters behind him. Maybe it was only the calmness of the night, or maybe the slight resemblance of the surrounding dark trees, Manish couldn’t be sure what, but his mind started wandering. He found himself thinking about the cabin in his dreams and all that had happened while he was there. It was a strange dream and it had occurred twice in a row. He couldn’t point to anything in his life that could have triggered such a bizarre imagination. What felt odd to him though were the people in those dreams and how un-dreamlike they felt. Yes, it was a dream for sure, seeing yourself with a six month long beard and a woman he had looked at for not more than a couple of seconds had no other explanation whatsoever. And yet, there was something in both of those strange encounters in the cabin that felt real.No matter how much Manish felt insane even thinking about it. As if they were truly there, or rather, they were all there. He wondered what would have happened if he had stretched out his arm and touched one of those, like he had touched the chair he had sat on, or the table, the door and the books. Probably nothing, probably…

The books. They were at the forefront of his ruminations as well. He had indeed read somewhere that you cannot read anything in a dream. But dreaming of a whole different language? Then seeing the text morph into one that he recognized from birth? He couldn’t decide whether his mind had simply transitioned into that of a hyperactive author’s or if he were simply, and abruptly going insane.

The sound of a snapping twig broke his train of thoughts and he turned around to the direction of the sound. There was no one there. He looked around a little more from where he was sitting. In the not-so-bright flood light, it was hard to see clearly, but he could see nobody walking around. Manish thought it better to go back to the tent and try to at least close his eyes and try to get some rest. Sitting there and being extra sensitive to eerie noises would definitely ruin the next day for him and maybe for the rest of his friends as well.

He had walked just a few paces when a sudden chill ran down his spine. Within a couple of seconds, goosebumps spread all over his arms and thighs, and the hair on his neck stood up. He felt as if a strong gust of cold air had blown on his skin. His step faltered. The next thing he knew, there were hands on his neck from behind, putting pressure. On instinct, he swung his free hands behind to grab at the assailant. His fear cranked up a notch when his hands waved through nothing but air. There was nobody behind him, but if his inability to breathe properly and the crushing force on his neck were any indication, there was someone very real, very solid, grabbing him. He tried to scream, but no words formed.

The force of the invisible hands changed directions a bit, and now, instead of pressing down on his trachea from behind and above, they were pushing him forward, like a bouncer would throw you out of a bar if you were being indecent. Although this change in pressure didn’t allow him to breathe freely. Only enough to keep his muscles oxygenated and keep his feet moving. Manish was sweating in the cold mid-january night air. A little thought sprung in his mind. If this were in a horror movie, the actor would have had a hard time doing his part, stumbling as if nothing but air was pushing him forward.

He kept moving, the invisible hands forcefully guiding him through the outer edge of the campground, keeping just far enough from the sleeping people that any sound he made would go unnoticed, not that he could make enough of those right now. The darkness around him was growing darker, his mind losing grips on his consciousness.

For the next couple minutes, his body alternated between the flight and fight response. On one hand his body was tired, sleeplessness having made him slightly weak. On the other, the constant pumping of adrenaline was making him thrash and resist whatever was happening to him. But he was simply unable to resist it all. The unseen hands kept a pressure on his throat just strong enough to keep him fully awake but on the verge of losing it completely. And the constant force forward kept his legs moving. He realized finally where he was being led. The storage shed which held the camp supplies. The building looked imposing enough, but added to the fright was the eerie sodium lamp casting that weird yellow glow onto the door and part of the building.

His nose was the first thing that smashed onto the hard wooden door. Then the rest of his body followed. He tasted metal on his tongue, and could only hope that the blood had come down from his broken nose and not from his front teeth being yanked from their roots. The delirium from partial asphyxiation was making him lose command of his senses. He felt himself being dragged back and then was hurled once more to the hardwood. Someone must hear all this noise. He thought. He was beyond speaking up by this point, unable to even form coherent thought. Killed by a ghost on the first day of being on a vacation. It was as if his consciousness had detached from him, commentarying with ridicule at a moment of mortal peril.

All of a sudden the pressure from his neck and back lifted away. He slumped to the ground, wheezing, his palms hit the gravel, but the sting on his palm went unnoticed. His lungs went into overdrive, trying to pull in as much air into themselves as possible. Coughs followed, whooping and restrictive, he was sure he had pulled in some blood from his bleeding nose into his lungs. He was far enough from the area where most of the people were that he was sure nobody would be hearing him anytime soon. I need to get back. I need to get back quick, try to wake someone, scream for help. He forced himself to his feet, though very unsteadily. No sooner had the world swam into focus than the invisible hands gripped his neck again, this time from the front. He was yanked back again, the back of his head hitting the door this time. He saw stars, way more than the ones already shimmering in the sky. And then he saw her.

The girl he had seen while getting into the train. At that time, the girl was wearing a red dress and maroon pants and the white shoes with a gold hairpin in her head. Although now, her hair was loose, partly obscuring her face and falling to her mid torso. The gold hairpin was gone. She was holding his neck with her left hand, unimaginably strong for a woman of her stature. She was at least seven to eight inches shorter than him, but the pressure she had on his neck disarmed him completely. He wondered if he could kick her and run, but when he tried, he found his legs frozen in place. How convenient!

“Don’t even try.” She said, shaking her head. She lifted her right hand and there it was, the gold hairpin. Every thought of whether she was a ghost, an apparition or a real person was gone from his mind. Right now, all he cared for was getting out of this situation alive. The hairpin in her hand was definitely pointy enough to act as an ice pick that she could use to puncture his neck with little effort, and her hand was at the right height to do just that with the slightest provocation. “Tell me how much you know?”

How does she expect me to speak while she’s actively squeezing my voice box? The sarcastic commentary in his head jumped forward. As if the thought itself had provoked her,she pulled him forward by the neck and slammed his head back with as much if not more force than the last time. He was sure that he would crack either the back of his skull or the base of his spine if this repeated only a few more times. His whole body was frozen, as if every muscle fiber was petrified in wax.

“Tell me!” she screamed. Why can’t anyone hear all this? Manish thought desperately. “Tell me what you know about the gem. Tell me what it has shown you. Tell me now!” She sounded desperate now, with just a very fine inflection of pleading in it. But Manish was powerless. Not only because she was pinching his windpipe with enough force to make it seem like she was keeping him alive out of mere pity, but also because he had no idea what she was talking about.

“I don’t —” he began, forcing what little air he had left in his lungs through his throat. It came out as ai-yont. She relaxed her hand just enough to let him draw in a little more air. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” he managed to say, with more effort than he would have needed to lift twenty-five kilos on the bench press fifty times in a row.

Another yank of his head on the door followed. This time, there was no sarcastic comment from the comedic logician in his head. There were no extra stars that winked into existence for a fleeting moment. Just a dull thud when his head hit the wood and another muffled crunch when his whole body hit the ground. The hand on his neck was gone. And along with it the rest of the campground, the floodlight, the hill in the distance, the moon and the stars. The world simply ceased to exist, engulfed in a darkness that was so absolute that it could pass for a time before the big bang.

It was bright, almost blindingly so. Everything was white with scattered blobs of various colors. Those slightly darker shades were moving too. With no sense of direction and the vivid memory of what had happened to him, what was done to him. He assumed this was heaven. He assumed that he had simply died at the hands of the crazy spirit of a woman in red and had gone to heaven. But then he began to notice things. Small things, which had no significance on their own, but together, they formed a coherent chain of reasoning that both reassured him of his continued life and scared him at the same time.

The colorful blobs were moving. They were getting smaller, or put more aptly, they were getting into focus. He did not feel the expected rough gravel and stones underneath him. In its place was a somewhat pliable material, like a very awkwardly angled bed. There was no metallic taste of blood in his mouth. His hearing came next and a stream of vibrations resembling cello and guitar and violin flowed into his mind through his ears. The melody triggered a sense of recognition in his still subconscious mind. Sensitizer. He tried to move and felt a stiffness in his shoulder that comes when you sleep at an awkward angle. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, awake.

When he opened them again, he was in the passenger seat of their van. His earphones were in his ears, Sensitizer playing their relaxing tunes. He had fallen asleep there, he realized with astonishment. But then what in the name of schizophrenic horrors was all that? He took his time to turn to a position more suited for a car seat. His right shoulder was going to hurt a lot throughout the day.

Manish took out the phone from his pocket. Seven forty-three. He paused the music and pulled the earphones out of his ears. His earlobes were going to hurt throughout the day too. He focused on the people moving around near the edge of the camping area to the east. There was a bus and everyone was getting into it. The traveling group, he recollected. They were leaving then. Evidently, his friends had not yet woken up. He unlocked the door and stepped out. The air was crisp, chilly but not prickling cold.

The dream — if it could be called that — had left him badly shaken. He could not figure out what to make of it all. His first thought was that he was suffering from some mental issue that was setting on extremely quickly, manifesting itself more strongly with each passing day. The idea scared him. And yet, what other explanation did he have? Everything seemed too real when it was happening. He remembered clearly having walked to the edge of the ground. He remembered the snap of the twig. He remembered being dragged and yanked along by the neck by an invisible force. And he remembered the three times his head was smashed into the wood. He looked to the other side of the ground. Sure enough, there it was, the storage shed, its walls the same dark color he remembered from the night before. He remembered the girl in red, threateningly holding the shiny gold hairpin in her right hand while she held him in place by her left. He remembered her words too. The threat, the desperation, the pleading in them. All too real to be just a figment of his imagination.

And yet, here he was, in the van, safe, and in the same seat he had taken when he came out of the tent last night. The keys were in his pocket. A curiosity took hold of him. He opened the back door and looked for the black box with the bottles of booze in it. It was there, right under the passenger seat. What was more confusing was the little scuff marks on the side of it. As if someone had pulled it out and then put it back.

So I did open it, for sure. He told himself. But he didn’t remember ever getting back into the passenger side seat or even locking the door from inside. So that is when it began, the visions. I wasn’t even asleep at that time. If this was what the quick onset of schizophrenia looked like, he didn’t want to find out what it would be like when it plateaued.

He closed the door and locked it. He put the keys in his pocket and touched his forehead to the cool metal of the vehicle. He could feel his quickened pulse in his ears and the tips of his fingers. The reality had melded so seamlessly into imagination that for once he had an almost uncontrollable impulse to just tell his friends that he had to return because of an emergency. But what would he even do when he got back? Lock himself in and pad the walls with foam, and throw out all the knives out the window?

“Manish!” The voice startled him. He turned to find Soham standing behind him. “Why are you up so early? And what were you doing in the van?”

“I—” Manish began, his voice catching a little. He held back the fleeting impulse well enough. “I couldn’t sleep in the tent. Didn’t find a good posture. I slept in there.” He said, the best half-truth half-fiction he could come up with in his state of mind. And just so he didn’t let on the nervousness that was still there, he added. “I found your barrel stash. When are we planning to open that?”

Soham paused. Then he let out a hearty laugh. “You sneaky old bastard. I was planning to not tell you all until tomorrow night. Only Tanay knows about that. We will be at the top of that hill tonight. And there, we’ve heard that they cook some amazing meat roast. It’d go along great with that.” he explained, pointing to the hill to the west.

“I’ll have to pass on that. I’m trying to quit.” Manish said. If his mind was losing its hold on reality with just a day’s worth of sleep deprivation, he did not want to figure out what it would do with a few gulps of aged Tennessee whiskey.

Soham just laughed and shook his head in amusement. Then he said, inflecting an eerily sinister tone to his voice which Soham must have thought was funny, but to Manish, it sounded like a warning and a threat. “We’ll see what the future holds, my friend. We’ll see what the future holds.”

To Be Continued...