Monday, August 7, 2017

An Unearthly Ride.

This is not a true story.
Being a huge horror fan I thought why not write a story of my own.This is a small attempt.The setting of the story is true and this trip did take place in Chhattisgarh last year.But none of this supernatural stuff happened.But there are a few things true.

                                                                           Part 1

How did I get myself into this? That was the question swirling in my mind as I was drinking a coke sitting in a ramshackle shop in a small village in Chhattisgarh. The sun was just above the horizon slowly making its way down. Even then my shirt was already wet with perspiration and was sticking onto my body making me feel very uncomfortable.But more than that the thought of the journey ahead was worrying me.I was on a bike ride from Bilaspur, a city, to Tamnar, a remote village which is where I worked in a Power plant.

Now there were two ways I could get from Bilaspur to Tamnar. One was the main road which took a longer route and was used by many. The other was a remote route which passed through the jungles of Korba. These jungles had a reputation of being infested with elephants and bears.I had heard many stories about people encountering elephants and bears.Some people were lucky, they just got only a glimpse of the animals while they were crossing the road but others not so much.There are cases where people have even died.Naturally I was worried.I was through half my journey and right now was sitting in the last proper village before the actual thick jungles started.

My actual plan had been to start in the afternoon and reach my room in Tamnar by evening before darkness sets in. But my being unfamiliar with the narrow village roads and because of a number of wrong turns I had covered only half the distance.The other half was through the jungle and I did not intend to cover it after dark. The sun was setting as I sat there pondering over the journey ahead.There was one more small detail which kept gnawing at my mind. There was a particular stretch of road right at the end of the route which had a reputation of a different kind. There were rumours of it being haunted.Most of the people use it only during the day and people who even think of using it after dark do so only in pairs.Even in pairs there were a couple of stories, recalling ome such story sent a chill down my spine.

Two people on a bike were going through that stretch after a late night party at a dhaba. Normally they wouldn't have dared to take that route but on that particular night a combination of factors, chief among them a copious amount of alcohol made them take that route. As they were passing through a particularly sharp curve, an oncoming bike with high beams made them lose their balance and both of them tumbled on to the field beside the road. Their bike fell on its side and screeched to a halt a few metres ahead. Its headlight flickered for a while and then shut off. Total darkness now. The oncoming biker, god knows who that was, did not stop and was away on his/her/it's way. There were no villages on that route.And because of its reputation there was no one to be seen. One of the guys now barely conscious lifted his head off the ground only to see a small red glowing ball behind the bushes which lay directly ahead of him.As he was trying to make sense of what he was looking at, he saw a sight he wont forget for the rest of his life. As he was focusing on the ball to make out what it was, slowly as if a screen was being lifted in front of it, another similar red ball appeared beside the first one. It took 5 seconds for the guy to realize that what he was looking at was a pair of eyes.Somehow he knew those eyes belonged to no man or animal. With a huge scream he leapt back and crawled on to the road.Somehow in the darkness he lifted his friend and the bike and managed to make his was back to the nearest town. He spent the next two days at home with high fever. His friend was lucky.He didn't see anything.

The fact that I had to pass through the same road was making me very nervous to the point I was on the verge of deciding to go back to Bilaspur. But I had to report for duty the next day and I had to reach home. I always prided myself on the fact that I could lay good plans. This particular one just backfired massively. After weighing my options I finally I decided I had no other feasible alternative but to press forward on the route. I thought Ill take the chance.Little did I know what I was getting into.

To be continued...

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