Thud! Thud!..........Thud! Thud!
Haren woke up with a sudden startle. A blanket of darkness suddenly covered his eyes, until then he was visualizing the world through his sleep, but now everything again turned into a colorless, bottomless pit of nothingness. He sat up to catch his breath and tried to listen properly. Everything was silent again. The clanking sound of the old ceiling fan was the only thing that informed him about the world around him.
Harendra Nath Chatterjee had impaired his vision ten years ago in an accident at his factory, in Durgapur, where he worked as the plant supervisor. The horrible fire had eaten away the whole steel plant, parts of the adjacent staff quarters, the worker’s slum and many lives which could not get out of the buildings in time. Haren had fortunately made an escape, but those ineffective eyes, the bruised right hand and the residual trauma stood as a testimony to the carnage that was caused. For a man who had never rested more than what is needed, to be abandoned to the seclusion of the four walls of a room was equivalent to damnation. He fretted and wriggled and cried and asked to be let out, only to accept the misery that had befallen him. Solitude and idleness drove him mad. He was diagnosed with dementia.
Haren thought he again heard the sound. It was coming from the adjoining room. This time it was coupled with a muffled scream. His son would not be home at this time of the day. God knows what he did or where he went. Haren lived at his mercy, heard from him only at the meals or at the time of his medicines, it was as if in this three-roomed small flat, a vast sea of ignorance existed between the father and the son.
Haren picked up his stick and slowly tip-toed towards the door with some difficulty. He went to the other room. He tried to search for the handle. It was locked. Haren did have a spare key of all the rooms in the house. He had made it secretly, when he had bought the apartment. He fetched the keys and somehow opened the lock.
A damp smell came from inside. This room was supposed to remain locked at all times and was hardly opened after his son’s divorce a year ago. Haren moved inside beating his stick against the floor. He was blind. But he could sense he was not alone in the room. His senses were all charged up trying to catch the faintest evidence of someone’s presence.
There was another muffled scream.
“Is someone there?” he said in a bold voice
There was another muffled shout as if someone was trying to yell something, but it was choked by some object. Haren was shaking in fear. He waved his stick wildly in the air to ward off anything that might attack or harm him.
“Who is this!!”
No sound.
“Is anybody really there? It’s not a game, whosoever it is, come out”
There was a small bed, in the room, with a metal frame. Someone shook it wildly. Haren gasped in fear. Slowly he made to the left of the room where it was supposed to be kept. He reached for the bed. He had a strong feeling that something was on the bed, restraint and coiled, but equally eager to be let free. He bent down and searched to get a hold of that thing. His hands were trembling in anxiety and fear. It touched something and suddenly it moved. Haren gasped and shrieked and jumped two feet back. He went forward again and searched for the thing. It again moved. Haren tried to feel it. It was flesh wrapped in cloth. He touched and felt properly. It…….it was a human body. Somehow he understood it was a female’s body. It was fidgeting and faintly screaming. His hands made towards the face and felt for a cloth. He pulled it. The female person started gasping for breath.
“Who are you?” Haren asked in a shaky voice.
“Please save me….” the female voice started crying vehemently “ I have been kidnapped and kept here for a week. Please save me! I am tied to the bed. That man would come in here any moment, and now you’re here, he would kill both of us”
“Wait. Wait. Let me find your hands. Who are you and who brought you in here?”
“That man brought me here. He lives here I guess. I was kidnapped last week from outside my college in Durgapur. He has locked me up in here. He comes in every afternoon and at night to satisfy his carnal desires. I have been tied like this, tortured and raped and treated worse than a beast for the last seven days. None could hear my screams until now. Please save me, I don’t know, he will kill both of us.”
Haren was shaking in dazed horror as he heard all this. His son has become a kidnapper and a rapist? He was always suspicious of his activities, but that he has fallen to such low pits was beyond his imagination.
Suddenly, there was a noise at the main door. Was he here?
Haren could hear a couple of voices at the outer door. He trembled in fear. He heard the girl crying in desperation.
“He would come here any moment and kill us” she whispered in despair.
Haren picked up his stick, ready to beat out anything that would pose as a mortal threat to him and the girl. It was inadequate but it was the best he had. Footsteps were approaching. Haren could envision his demonic heir standing at the threshold of that semi-lit room, the frightened and exasperated girl by his side who has been, god knows, subjected to ruthless torture for the last few days and he, a blind old man, standing in half-disbelief and half-horror, all pent up to face the imminent doom.
“Dad! What are you doing in here??”
“What am I doing in here?? You scoundrel, you have the audacity to ask me what am I doing!!! What is she….”
“Daduuuuuu!!!!” before he could finish a soft pair hands hugged around his waist. “ See dadu, I am home. Why are you standing here in the middle of the room, why are you holding your stick like that?”
“Moni maa, see what your dad….” He turned to show the captive girl and suddenly felt as if a soul had left the place. He reached out to the bed and groped in the dark and found nothing. It was as if no one was ever there. His face quivered in anguish. Was he becoming mad? But how could it be, he clearly heard those sounds, the touch of her skin was still fresh in his fingers, the tone of her terrified voice was still ringing in his ears, he could see the girl terrified and agonized, puckered up on the bed, begging for freedom. Was all this a delusion, so vivid yet a mirage of his ageing mind?
Haren fell down and sobbed. He then looked up, eyes wide open, those lifeless balls staring deep into his son. Haren went hurriedly to his room, rummaged through his cupboard and came back to his son with an old rusty key.
“Drive me to Durgapur. To my quarters”
“Now!!!! To that junkyard??”
“Do as I tell you. Please” Haren sobbed and implored.
“I thought you were all forgetful and blank but now you’re imagining….”
“Take me there.” Haren growled.
The ruins of the old factory area were a two hour drive from his present home. Neither the government, nor the factory owners had decided to do something with the burnt down plant after its demolition. Like the many people who worked there, dead or alive, the buildings were also left in abandonment. It looked more like a ghosted settlement. Haren’s son somehow made it to his father’s two-roomed quarter. The cranky old gate opened to the worn down building. A part of the floor had fallen down, a locked door peeped from behind the ruins. The sky was getting dark.
“There’s a locked door left of the main entrance. Open it” Haren fetched the key to his son.
He reluctantly opened the door and went it.
Haren stood outside in pent up excitement and anxiety. How could he be so delusional? Certainly he forgot things; he hardly remembered anything more than a week. But he wasn’t mad, certainly making up stories out of thin air was not his thing. It was true and he……..
Haren’s son jolted out of the dark room in dazed horror.
“What the hell is that! It’s a corpse” he screamed.
To the left of the room, on a broken metal bed, was a half-burnt skeleton, still tied to the frame with a rope. Haren gaped into the room.
“I knew it! I’m not mad, I had just forgotten.” Haren cackled devilishly.