Carry on my Wayward Son
There’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don’t you cry no more!
I woke up in a desert. In the middle of the night. I looked to my left and right. Stood up. The chilly night straightened up my hairs. It was like one of those nights after a heavy rain. The wind was breezing with a coolness to it. All I can see is blackness. Except to my top. Realising that, I looked above in a sudden movement.
The Moon. It was a full moon. It felt like I can touch the moon. It was so close and so big.
Suddenly I couldn’t feel the touch of the breezy air. It had stopped suddenly. I sensed a movement near my leg. When I reached my eyes below,
I saw her!
.
Dream On!
Dreams are a wonderful thing to have. Especially if it’s a creepy one. Like the dream I had above. In my childhood, I used a have a lot of horrifying dreams. Most of it involves me travelling in an unknown world, alone. The dream I mentioned above was me waking up isolated in a desert.
Sometimes, I would dream on waking up in a bathroom where I would be chained up and isolated. In some cases, I would be wandering in a forest naked.
The scenarios differ but the one thing that remains constant would be my Isolation. That dream would become more creepier when I realise that I am not alone and that I am having the company of someone or something supernatural.
Horror movies I saw and ghost stories I heard in my childhood had a huge impact behind these dreams. But it was one incident I had, in my childhood, that really scared the shit out of me and developed the fear of loneliness inside me.
Even when I think about it now, I am having Goosebumps and a faint state of horror.
It was when a hide a seek game turned wrong.
Motor Room Monster
I was 7 at the time it happened.
I had finished my kindergartens and enjoying my annual holidays thoroughly. It was the time when I was in my hometown Komarapalayam near Erode. Now it was a town which comes under Namakkal district. I lived there till half of my first grade and shifted to Karur and finished my first grade in Cheran school. My hometown had developed a lot after my family’s departure.
But during the time I spent there, it was still a village. A lot of greeneries and looming factories. I can still remember the sound of looming factories and the smell of the thread meld.
We boys would play a lot of games at that period. Since I was the small guy in the gang, I didn’t get to have say in things. I had to obey them or else they won’t allow me to play with them.
One day, we decided to play hide and seek. It was a rainy season. Even the evenings felt like night because of the dark clouds and all. It was a customary thing to do the Saa-Boo-Three (Indian version like rock, paper and scissors) to choose the guy who seek the hidden persons. But no one in the gang felt like counting the numbers and finding. All of them wanted to hide and chill. So, they asked (ordered would be the right word to use) me to count the numbers while they would hide themselves.
I said yes, as if it was my choice to say.
The game began and I started counting the numbers in reverse from 100.
3… 2… 1… Ready or not here I come…
The whole street was our playground and I started searching for people. As a 7-year-old kid, I did well. I found out the first graders and even the third graders easily. Only one or two persons were remaining to find. The guys who I already found out were murmuring something among themselves. When I heard it, it was clear that they were talking about the location of the remaining two guys.
By the time I heard this secret, me and my fellow gang where at the end of our street. Beyond that, there was no path. That’s where the forest starts, and we call it as the infamous “Mullu Kaadu” (முள்ளு காடு)
I felt happy at the fact that I was near the Mullu Kaadu. Because I was nearing the location the guys whispering.
It was the Motor Room.
At the entrance of every forest, there would always be a motor room which has pump sets and other machineries to distribute the water to the fields. By the time I reached the motor room, the sky became full dark. It was no moon day and the only light that was flickering was the light hanged in front of the Motor room.
As I neared the room, I heard laughs inside the room. I stopped and looked behind. My gang looked at me intently. They stopped following me as I approached the door of the Motor Room.
I can clearly hear the laughing sound reverberating inside the room. With a victory smile, I entered inside the motor room. I saw the motor equipment and a slab. That slab was constructed in a way that made it a great place for hiding. I strode myself with as much less noise as I could produce. I wanted to scare the shit out the two guys who were hiding behind the slab.
“Paal ice” – I jumped right behind the slab to point out the hiding guys and mock that they had miserably failed.
Then it became black. Pitch black. Blackness was all I can feel. I couldn’t able to see a thing. Not even the two guys who were hiding. Then it hit me. There were no one hiding in this motor room in the first place. It was all a ploy to trap me inside this hell hole of a room.
As soon as the realisation hit me, I drifted my eyes near the door. I located the door even in the blackness. I wanted to escape this blackness before it engulfs me. When my legs took its first step towards the door, I heard the laughter again.
A sudden gush of air hit me and then there was no more air. All I could hear was a thunderous sound. Even before I realised the source of the sound, my legs started trembling.
I was all alone. All alone inside this blackness. There was no air, no light and no escape.
That’s when I fully realised that someone had locked me inside this Motor Room.
And I heard the laughter again.
Comments
Post a Comment