Let me tell you a story. I don’t know if it’s real or not, it’s for you to judge.
It was a big field. Almost as big as a football field, but not quite. It was in the shape of a lazy tick. Like the lazy tick, your teacher gives in your answer sheet without quite reading your paper, and the sharp end where another line rises is shaped like a “U”. That kind of a tick. There was also a banyan tree at the end of the small line of the tick. It was a young tree, considering how long banyan trees live up to- but not that young either, enough to provide a handful of children shade.
Natasha could see that field from her window, and she would see the children playing in the field every evening at 5. That’s where her best friend Mia went to play while she practiced playing the piano. She’d look down at the children with both envy and contempt. She envied them because she wasn’t playing there with the children, free and dirty and covered in sweat- running and chasing, playing without a care in the world.
But she would also look down upon them. While the children played, she’d master Schubert or Mozart or Rachmaninoff.
The children couldn’t have been more than 13. The oldest was maybe 14, and the youngest 9. They were all running around helter-skelter, as fast as they could with the wind against them. Absolutely free and happy without a care in the world.
No. That wasn’t the case. The children looked scared. No, not scared, terrified, and they seemed to be running from something. But from what?
Natasha didn’t even realize that she’d stopped playing the piano and had reached the window. She was glued to it with her head and waist peering down, as down as she could without falling off the ledge. Something seemed wrong.
The children were running for their lives from something. But from what?? She couldn’t see. But she could hear. Her musician’s ears allowed her to hear faint things that most people couldn’t. Children were screaming- that much was obvious. “But where were the adults?”, she pondered, “to protect the children from harm?”
Then she heard it- amidst all the scream. A deep growling- full of hatred and glee.
“Must be some wild animal”, she thought, but where did this animal come from? In the city where there were no forests or any clearings for miles and miles.
After a while, could’ve been minutes, or hours Natasha couldn’t say, she saw something. Something bizarre and unnatural and wrong in all kinds. The growl seemed to be coming out of a boy. A boy, no older than 15. “But how could that be?” No human is capable of creating such a terrible noise, a noise, no, a growl which seemed to be deeper than the ocean.
The boy was shirtless, Natasha observed, and with tattered trousers, His eyes- oh god his eye, it scared Natasha. It scared her in the safety of her home. It was bloodshot red, and an ugly scar ran through his right eye disappearing into his thick black hair. If it scared her in the safety of her home, she wondered how scared the other children must’ve been.
The boy, no, the creature was chasing all the children, to do what with them- Natasha didn’t dare imagine.
And then, it caught one, to its greatest delight- the smallest, the slowest, the most frightful. The boy it caught was small, as small as the biggest sugar cane you’ve seen. It wrapped it’s dreadful arms around the child and lifted him. The child peed his pants. And then the creature, with its red eyes, as red as a rotten tomato’s, tore the child’s hands apart and ripped the child in half and then began to devour it. Arms first and then fingers. This bought enough time to allow the other children to run and to hide, to find a niche in a corner, safe from the human-shaped creature.
Natasha threw up on her piano and then passed out. She woke up to the sound of banging. Loud, desperate bangs. Still dazed, but hurriedly she went to the door.
“Who is it?”, she asked, her voice quivering and pitched.
“It’s me”, said Mia matching, if not exceeding Natasha’s pitch.
Natasha quickly opened the door and let her friend inside, and then immediately locked the door in.
“What was that, what was happening?” She asked.
“I don’t know,” said Natasha.
Natasha went back to her piano room. Mia followed. They looked downstairs from the window.
There was nothing, no one in the field. All seemed to have vanished. “Was it a dream?” Natasha thought for a fraction of a second, but no. Mia’s frightened white face, as white as a wedding dress’ was proof enough that what she’d seen did actually come to pass.
“How did you get away from it? Did it follow you here?” Natasha asked with fear and worry.
“I got away because it couldn’t see”, replied Mia.
“What do you mean?” “How was it following you then?”
“It smelled us.”
And immediately after saying that Mia hugged Natasha.
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Natasha was in the field now, how she got there she couldn’t exactly remember. Something deep inside of her told her to run, but why and where to? She was being followed, or was she? She couldn’t be sure. She sensed she was being watched, but who was watching her? There was no one around.
Natasha was in the middle of the field now, and that dreaded feeling of being watched only increased. She looked around and upon the first glance saw nothing, but from the corner of her eyes, she could see a figure standing at the banyan tree- not exactly hiding, but not being too conspicuous either.
She squinted and looked at the figure again, only to recognize it in horror. It was the boy- the terrible creature impersonating the terrible boy. Without wasting another second Natasha started running. Running for her life, running for her sanity. She didn’t have time to think or notice where she would run, she didn’t have time to think how long she would run for, all she could think of was that she needed to get away from it. “RUN!”, she was chanting again and again in her mind like a mantra.
She crossed the field, she didn’t even realize she’d crossed the field. She had been running, for how long she couldn’t tell- but it was longer than she’d ever run. She’d run long enough for the sky to turn black from dusky. It was starting to drizzle, and very soon it was graduating to a heavy shower. So it had been long enough- long enough for her to be drenched, in a mixture of sweat and rain, and for her to become numb from exhaustion. Natasha now noticed her surroundings for the first time in a long while. She had crossed the field and was at the end of the neighbourhood now. There was only one old and abandoned rickety mansion at the end of the road. The path that she was on and which led up to the mansion was worn, narrow, and slippery.
Natasha wanted to go back home now, but didn’t dare to. Going back home meant crossing the field and there was no way she was going to do that, at least not in the dark. The rain kept getting heavier and heavier and soon weighed Natasha down like a sack full of rocks.
Seeking shelter inside the mansion in front of her was the only option she could see. Even though abandoned, the mansion didn’t seem too daunting, at least not daunting as crossing the field would be now. She walked up to the gate- it was an old iron gate covered with rust and had spikes at the top. She pushed it open and even the rain’s loud roaring wasn’t enough to muffle its creak.
She followed the cobblestoned path to the big house right up to its ugly dark brown door. It was a grand door once upon a time, but not anymore. Natasha pushed open the door ever so slightly and it opened just as silently as the gate was loud.
She entered into a large and empty hall. It was too dark to distinguish its features, but not dark enough to render its observers completely blind. Right in the middle of the door, there was a bifurcated staircase leading up to the first floor. Natasha climbed the stairs and came upon a long corridor on either of her sides. Without much thought on which side to go to, she went to the left.
The corridor was broad, broad enough to fit an elephant, and long enough for her to not be able to see its end. At one side of the corridor were numerous doors- doors to rooms Natasha didn’t dare venture to. She kept walking and crossing the doors until she reached the end of the corridor.
The end of the corridor somehow seemed narrower and cozier than the rest of the house. Worn out- both physically and mentally, Natasha collapsed on the floor. Using the wall at the end of the corridor as a backrest, she settled herself as comfortably as was possible in wet clothes and a cold dirty floor, and then she dozed off and sunk into a deep slumber before she could even close her eyes.
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It was a warm sunny day, as warm as your bottom- comfortable, and droopy.
The children were out in the field playing cricket as well as they could. They were gay and young and happy. Natasha and Mia were among those children, standing in the corner, trying to catch the ball. They weren’t good players at all so the older bossier kids always put them on fielding duties. This never bothered Natasha and Mia, they were happy just for being included.
The current bowler was a tiny, scrawny boy and the ball seemed to weigh more than him. But that didn’t stop him from being a phenomenal bowler, almost a child prodigy one could say.
The batsman was an older meaner looking kid and failed at hitting the ball miserably. With each missed shot, the kid became meaner and meaner. A vein at his temple bulged dangerously, and his eyes got redder and redder. He started grunting with frustration and couldn’t believe how such a puny little kid brought him to near tears. At last, at the eleventh missed shot he threw his bat away, gave a blood clotting scream which made the crows fly out of their nests, pulled out a tuft of his hair, and ran towards the bowler.
All of this happened before the bowler could register. He tried to run but was too slow. The mean old kid leaped upon the tiny little boy, pinned him to the ground and started punching him mercilessly. Before the first blow could land, the kid passed out from sheer terror. Entrapped in his own rage, the older kid punched and kept on punching the younger one with one thing in mind- REVENGE.
Blood soaked the mud, the grass, and the murderer’s hands. The third blow was enough to knock the life out of the helpless kid.
The other kids had ran away screaming- all of them too young to have the sense to call a parent. The stray dogs and cats too disappeared from the field.
No-one stopped the murderer and he carried on with the defilement of the child’s lifeless body. He kept on throwing one punch after the other, until- thud. Someone had sneaked up on the murder and hit him on the right side of his head with the bat he’d thrown away. The one hit was hard enough to knock him out and fracture his skull. That, someone, was Natasha- a miniature version of her, scared and with pants soaked in urine, but stupid and brave enough to stop him.
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Natasha woke with a jerk, her neck and back sore, remembering instantaneously where she was and why. She’d been asleep for a while, for quite a while in fact for her clothes and shoes had been completely dried off.
She rose up, turned towards the staircase and froze, froze like peas kept in the freezer for days, for in front of her, grinning and waiting for here was the murderer.
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