Bizarre Encounter

We set out in the silence of the early morning. The light of dawn illuminated the still-sleeping city and coloured the sky in rosy tones.

"The mountains are calling and I must go" - I couldn't render this quote from John Muir any better.

"I must go..."

A feeling of excitement came over me like never before.

We were on our way to Lonavala, a popular tourist spot set amongst the Sylvan hills of the Western Ghats (mountain ranges that form the western edge of the Deccan Plateau of peninsular India), about two hours from Mumbai. I must have been to this place a thousand times since I was a little girl, but this time was different.

Recently we heard a rumour about an unexplored region in the Western Ghats. Not many people knew about this place and those who did know, were quite few and reluctant to talk about it. All this information got my blood pumping. After all, we wanted to 'explore the unexplored'.

Who doesn't want a little adventure in their life?

On the way to Lonavala, we stopped at a place fifteen minutes from the hill station. We always stopped at this shop that sold vada pav (a popular Indian street food) all year round, for locals and tourists.

The shop wasn't shabby, with a thatched roof and about three tables for people to sit at. It was the only shop of its kind in the area. The other shops only sold hiking equipment. We saw a man in his late 70s sitting behind an old, run-down counter when we entered the shop. The counter was exactly as I remembered it; it contained different kinds of sweets in small jars and had some kind of posters stuck to its front. I distinctly remember begging my parents to buy sweets for me every time we came here.

The old man seemed to be busy reading something and put a few almonds in his mouth now and then.

This man was 'Haar'. Contrary to his name, which meant 'defeat', the old man seemed energetic and robust even at this age.

As if noticing the movements in front of him, he looked up. 

With some joy on his face, he exclaimed, "Oh! If it isn't the Agarwals!"

"It's been a while, Mr Haar", I greeted back.

"I am glad you are well", he said, getting up immediately and escorting us to the table near the counter.

We sat down at the table while chatting with Mr Haar.

"The shop is still standing... and so are you," my father said jokingly as he looked at the dilapidated shop that threatened to collapse at any moment.

"I still have a long life ahead of me, my boy," Mr Haar replied as he chuckled and brought us his famous vada pav.

Although the shop looks like this now, my father often tells stories about his university days and the time when this shop was full of people. He used to go hiking with his friends almost every year, never missing the stop at Mr Haar's shop. The shop was much bigger then. However, due to the decline of tourism in the area, Mr Haar had to sell parts of his restaurant to people who wanted to sell equipment.

Since Mr Haar was someone who had lived in this place for more than 40 years, he was the best person to ask about the details of the rumoured region.

"Mr Haar we recently heard a rumour about this unexplored region in the Ghats, do you happen to know anything about it?", I asked excitedly.

Hearing this, Mr Haar's face suddenly seemed to lose its colour.

"How do you know about it?", he said with a pale expression.

"We heard it from an acquaintance of ours and ever since then, the father-daughter duo couldn't wait to explore this secret spot", my mother said as she laughed at our antics.

Suddenly an uncomfortable silence took over the room.

"Mr.Haar?", my mother called out to him as he looked to be spacing out.

"You must not go", said Mr Haar with a solemn face.

"Why?" we asked in unison.

"The creatures, you must ignore them otherwise...", Mr.Haar said in a low, almost inaudible voice, but we heard it.

'Creatures? What is he talking about?'

"Can you please tell us where this place is?" I asked him with a little impatience, typical of a teenager.

"You can not...you can not...you can not..." Mr Haar kept chanting those words and staring into space. To me, he looked as if he was possessed.

We tried to engage him in conversation to elicit valuable information. After a few minutes of talking back and forth, he very reluctantly gave us the location.

"Take the broken road that diverges from the main road for about 2 km. You'll have to pass through a village, beyond which is a heavily forested area. That is the place you're looking for ... but you have to be careful", that was all we could get out of him and soon we headed off.

'Why was he acting so strangely?' I pushed that thought aside when we finally saw the village he had been talking about.                

It was a small, rural village, there were just huts everywhere. As we passed it, I had the feeling that every single one of those "villagers" was looking at us, I don't know if it was just me. They stared at us with wide eyes, sending a shiver down my spine.

'Are we doing something wrong? Maybe we shouldn't go there.' My gut told me that this wasn't a good idea.

"Mum, Dad, why are they staring at us like that?" I finally decided to just ask my parents.

"Oh, they've probably never seen tourists drive by in a car and are fascinated by it. Don't worry about it", my father said reassuringly.

That could be the reason, but something in the back of my mind suggested otherwise.

We knew we had reached our destination when the road we were driving on ended and beyond it was just an endless expanse of green.

It looked "unexplored" as there were no signs or protective fences.

In our excitement, we hurriedly parked the car nearby and headed into the dense forest without even looking back.

It was still the monsoon season. The ground made wet noises as the grass and leaves crunched under our feet. The deeper we headed the foggier it would get. Although the forest was eerily silent, it felt alive. All kinds of life forms, from insects to birds, and even the trees had their own rhythm. It was during moments like these that I felt that nature was truly beautiful.

On the way, my father instructed me to mark some trees in case we got lost in this pathless forest. After about fifteen minutes in, we noticed that the fog around us was getting thicker. It was so thick that we almost couldn't see each other.

"Stay together! Hold hands!" my father shouted.

"I don't feel so good, please let's just go back," my mother said in a worried voice.

"But we have only just arrived," I said to my parents.

"No, she's right, let us go back," my father said as we turned around.

Reality hit us hard when the fog got even thicker and we had no sense of direction. We might as well have been walking in circles. I was scared out of my wits.

'Maybe this was a bad idea. '

At that moment I remembered what Mr.Haar had said: "You must be careful... the creatures".

'We should have listened to him', I thought, as I suddenly collided with my father's back. He had stopped walking. I looked up at him only to see his ghastly pale face.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

"There", he said, pointing to a black figure in the distance. 

It looked like a human being. 

Again, it 'looked' like a human being. 

Its red eyes shone brightly in the surrounding white.

" What... what is that?!" my mother gasped, squeezing my hand tightly in fear.

"Shhh...There's more of them" my father whispered, putting his index finger to his lips, signaling us to be quiet.

'They' stared at us.

About 20 pairs of eyes stared at us like a lion looking at its prey.

Suddenly I remembered what Mr Haar had told us, "You must ignore the creatures or else...."

'Or else what? What would happen if we moved now? I'd rather not know. 'Let's just stay here', I signalled to my parents with my eyes.

We decided to stay put for now.

After about ten minutes, the fog began to lift. The black figures were no longer visible. Finally, we could see our surroundings. As we continued walking, we noticed the trees we had marked on the way.

We retraced the path we had come from and finally reached the opening. We were all shaking with fear. However, only one question remained: 'What were those creatures?'

We were too frightened to stay there even for a second and immediately made our way home. On the way back, we stopped at Mr Haar's to get some answers.

"I told you not to go there, you were lucky," he said as he smiled at us.

It was the same smile he gave us every time we visited him, but after this incident, his smile seemed strangely sinister.

The next day after the incident, we saw something strange on the news. It was early morning when the news reported about a landslide that took place near Lonavala. Since its a heavily forested area, floods and landslides sometimes occur during the rainy season.

Coincidently the place being reported in the news was near Mr.Haar's shop and the surprising thing about the news was that Mr Haar's shop, which existed till yesterday, was nowhere to be seen. As if it was never there, to begin with. 

My father later called his University friends to inquire about Mr Haar and his situation. Weirdly none of his friends seemed to remember someone named Mr Haar, even though they would go to Lonavala often in their college days. 

Another eerie thing was that when father tried to recall which acquaintance had informed him about the secret region, he couldn't remember them nor could he find traces of the conversation he remembers having with said 'acquaintance' on chat.

Who was this 'acquaintance'? Whose shop had we gone to? What exactly did we see? Did this village full of wide-eyed people even exist? Did Mr Haar ever exist? This whole situation gave us goosebumps.

Maybe we'll never know what exactly happened that day.