Staircase

“Pass the ball to me! Pass it to me! I am open! ‘And here jersey no. 10 creates a wonderful chance with a cut back chip, the ball is going towards Prasun who is the greatest footballer of all time and it’s GOALLLL!, a wonderful bicycle from the legend Prasun, the fans are shouting….’”, “Wake up you Stupid!!” I woke up from my dream to see my roommate shouting at me, he was irritated. I asked him what the matter was and got another round of shouting “Don’t act stupid”. He told me that today was the day our new session of class 12 was to start and we were already late by 5 minutes.

‘By the way I forgot to introduce myself, I am Prasun, about to join class 12 in Central Govt. Boarding School, you might have got a hint that our school is not a day school and here I live in a hostel with my roommate, Vinay. That’s enough of introduction required. You all must be waiting for the story so let us just continue with it’.

By then I got all my senses back and got ready for school as fast as I could but still we were late by half an hour.

We carefully sneaked into the class and sat on the back benches but still our teacher spotted us. His name was Mr. Anand, he was our chemistry teacher and was known for his anger more than his teaching. He called us and gave us a very nice round of curses, “You two fools! Aren’t you ashamed of being late on the first day of school, what will you do throughout the rest of the year”. I do not remember him even asking why we were late. Still we knew that the ball was not at our court so we just kept quiet. We went and sat our benches and continued the class. The first day was wonderful except the opening act but let’s forget about it. My friends had already decided to hang out in the park in the evening and play some badminton so I joined them also. In the evening me and Vinay went a bit late thinking that we would not have to wait for anyone but when we went there, we realized that all of us had the same thought process, no one was there. Everybody came after about 15 minutes. There was me, Vinay, Rahul, Rohit and Aman. We enjoyed the evening and returned to our rooms very tired. We literally fell on the bed and were asleep.

‘Now you all must be thinking that what nonsense in this man speaking. I know that and this is where the actual reason why I am writing starts’.

I woke up at midnight. I was not wide awake but still could sense my surroundings. Vinay was still fast asleep. I decided to go back to sleep when suddenly I heard some chatter outside. I went out of the room and looked down and I could see our hostel warden, Mr. Ghosh, and the watchman were talking. It seemed like a very serious conversation. I tried to overhear the conversation and heard some words but couldn’t understand the main topic. I heard “fire”, “mischief”, and “child’s play”. 

‘Dear readers you might make some sense out of them and think that the writer was stupid but believe me I was half asleep then or I must have made something out of them’.

As I was not able to make any sense out of the words so I just went back to my bed and fell asleep. That morning I woke up a bit terrified. Vinay was already awake, he turned and said to me, “Last night I captained India to world cup glory What about you what did you dream?”, I replied, “Last night was a nightmare I still can’t believe what I saw, I saw…, wait… what did I see?...”, I couldn’t remember anything, I tried a lot but failed….

We had our breakfast and went to school. The whole day I was feeling a bit uneasy as if I was forgetting something important I was felling dizziness. Vinay enquired that if I was unwell, I said, “I don’t know I woke up like this today”. Suddenly Aman rushed in and said, “Have you heard the news? Amrita Ashram Boarding School caught fire yesterday night!!! and every building including the hostel is now in ruins and sadly but mysteriously only one of the students died !!, The mysterious thing is he died on the staircase of the building, his body was completely burnt and no one knows what he was doing there at that time, not even his roommate!”. We all were shocked how such a great fire can spread there so easily. Suddenly I recalled something about last night, I had seen our warden and watchman talking about something and now I was sure that they were discussing about the fire. But they were also saying about “child’s play” and “mischief” what did they mean?

That evening I went to warden’s office and told him everything. He accepted that last night they did get the news about fire and were discussing that. So I put my query forward, “Last night you were talking about some kind of mischief, what was that?”, he did not hesitate to tell me, he said, “Yup, you heard right, we were talking about that, police suspected that the fire was not accidental but they are not able to prove whether the fact was completely true, the school authority has denied any such claims but still investigation is going on”. My face turned white on hearing that. Who was such

an inhuman person to do so, why would a person commit such thing, the warden also asked me to not spread any kind of rumours about that or it might result in bad effects on the school. That night I told Vinay all about this he told me, “Keep a calm head there are many people to think about it”. So we went to our beds, but I couldn’t get any good sleep that night.

…

A month passed since that incident, I had almost forgotten those worries until one day a new boy joined our class, his name was Ankur, guess what his previous school was, it’s easy, it was Amrita Ashram Boarding School. He was allotted the room with Rahul as the latter’s roommate went to Kota for his class 12th. As Rahul was one of our friends circle, it did not take long for Ankur to join us too.

One day I suddenly happened to remember that fire incident so I thought of asking Ankur about that, so I went to have a chat with him, but when I asked him, he got a bit upset, kept quiet for a while and went to his room. Now I wished I hadn’t done it, I was feeling guilty for that so I decided to give him some space and will apologize to him with a chocolate bar at night.

That night I was watching a movie and I forgot to apologize to Ankur.

‘Yes you guys must be thinking the writer is an idiot as a friend but believe me I also felt the same at school the next whole day’.

Next morning, some noise outside broke my sleep. I woke up, watched the clock and saw it was 05:45 am, there was so much noise outside. I woke up Vinay and we went to check what the matter was. It was nothing what we had expected. Rahul was found unconscious on the staircase this morning by the watchman. He was taken to the medical room. We were told to go to our room except Ankur. It was obvious as he was Rahul’s roommate. So we all went to our rooms and then to school. After the school hours, we immediately went to the medical room to see if Rahul was feeling well now. He was awake but was sitting quietly. His eyes were wide open and were constantly gazing at the wall in a very strange manner. We asked the doctor about his health status, the doctor said, “His physical health is completely ok but the something mysterious about his mental state, when he woke up he was completely sweating and breathing heavily, I am assuming that he must have seen something really terrifying and that must have made him unconscious”. We felt the sinister crawl into our minds, we all were worried about Rahul. What could he see in the hostel building? We had

only seen these things in movies and never even heard any fake rumors about such a thing and yet this incident occurred. Seeing our worry, the doctor asked us to try and talk to Rahul so we tried, and it worked! Rahul did respond but he told that he will only speak if the doctor left. The doctor understood the situation and left. Rahul then started to tell...….

“Last night at around midnight, I suddenly woke up, I was feeling thirsty so I searched for the bottle but when I found it, it was empty, Ankur was still asleep so I decided to go down to the water cooler to get some water, I went there and filled my bottle but when I was returning to my room, I tripped over the stairs and fell on the staircase. As I tried to get up, I felt some kind of heat on my back and so I turned around and to my horror I saw the school building of Amrita Ashram Boarding School on fire!, The flames were terrifying I wanted to run away but failed, my whole body was paralyzed!, I watched everything in horror, heard screams of thousands of children, it was so frightening that no one could ever imagine, that fire!, screams of thousand children! It was even worse than one’s worst nightmares, I was so terrified that soon I passed out. When I woke up I was in this room, sweating I couldn’t believe that I was alive, I am still in shock. I was a bit shy to tell this in front of the doctor as I thought that he might not believe me and think of me as a lunatic but believe me what I am telling is completely true.”

Rahul finished his story of the incident. We were standing there like statues still couldn’t believe what we had just heard but we believed in the story as we were his friends and you can tell by looking at the gaze of his eyes that he was not lying. We told him to rest and all of us went to their own rooms. That night every one came to Vinay and my room to talk about the incident as every one of us was thinking of the same the whole time I asked Ankur to say his thought about the incident as in the glimpses Rahul saw his previous school so he might know better than any one of us. He hesitated. I asked him, “Why don’t you tell us if you have any problem, telling will ease your mind, last time also you didn’t tell anything”. He kept quiet for a while, a teardrop rolled down his cheek and slowly started to weep. Once again I was feeling guilty, I tried to comfort him by telling, “If there is some problem with that or it might harm you somehow then you are free to choose not to tell us, we are OK with it”. He wiped his tears and said with a shaky voice, “No, don’t think of it that way but believe me I trust you all and I want to tell you but remembering that incident hurts me a lot”.

Vinay said, “Try telling us, it might reduce your burden”. Ankur agreed and started his tale…..

“You all know that today the warden enquired me about Rahul but trust me I did not know even when Rahul went out of the room and also I don’t even know why such an incident happened with him. I am tensed as this relates to the incident that happened in our school, you might be surprised by the story I am about to tell you.

You must have heard from the news about the fire in our school and how sadly one of the students died mysteriously, the student died was my best friend, Sonu. He was my roommate. Sonu and I were friends from class 5th we were always seen together. He was really good in studies, had a very intelligent mind, he was really kind and helpful, we all saw a prodigy in him, but he had one flaw, he was a bit weak physically making him a perfect target for bullying. He was often a target of extreme bullying but he never broke down he would tolerate each of them, he might be physically weak but was extremely strong mentally. This attitude made the bullies even more irritated. One night we were studying when suddenly some boys rushed into our room and forcefully took Sonu with them, I tried to stop them but my strength wasn’t enough they still took him. They also warned me not to get out of the room or I might worsen the situation. So I just kept quiet. That was the horrifying night of that fire! We all were evacuated safely from through the fire exit, I shouted a lot and tried to find Sonu but he was nowhere to be found. Next morning I got the news of my friend’s death. I was grief-stricken I was totally in shock. Next day Police came to our house to enquire me, I was feeling so depressed and insecure that I couldn’t utter a word, they tried a lot but all went in vain. After a few weeks the investigation stopped as neither they could find the any clue about the cause of fire nor about my friend’s death. After that my parents decided to put me in this school and that’s why I joined your school”

Ankur completed his tale, he was completely in tears, and we all consoled him. His story left us in total shock. We couldn’t believe that this thing can happen. But whatever might have happened, how was Rahul related to it? Why he saw such things, is it a type of secret message or something else, no one knew…. All of us were confused….

“Aaaaaahhh! My head!” suddenly my head started to pain immensely, I literally was tearing my hair! I started running here and there, no one was able to control me, and the pain was unbearable. Suddenly I was floating in the dark, I could see nothing I shouted, “Where am I? Is anyone there? HELP ME!!” all went in vain, I was starting to lose hope but I gathered it back and shouted again. This time a response did came it was a horrific demonic voice yelling, “THE DREAM! THE DREAM! ” The yelling was getting more and more intense as time passed the noise was unbearable, I couldn’t handle it. Suddenly the noise stopped, there was pin-drop silence. After about 15-20 seconds I saw a white point, on closer inspection, I saw that it was getting bigger in size, I was not able to guess what it was but as it got bigger and bigger I realized that it was me who was speeding towards a long tunnel of light. As I entered the tunnel, everything turned white. After a while, I could see a hazy image forming in front of my eyes and as it got clearer, I saw that it was the medical room. I got up and sat on the bed the doctor was going through some paperwork, he turned to me and said, “Oh you are awake, that is good”. I had no idea what I was doing there and how I got there. The doctor said, “You need a little bit more rest so please lie down”. I did as he told me to do. Vinay, Ankur, Rahul, Rohit and Aman rushed into the room. Their eyes were relieved on seeing me. I asked them what had happened, Rohit said, “Last night After Ankur finished his story you suddenly started behaving very strangely, no one could control you and after some time you fell unconscious, we immediately took you to the medical room after that incident”. I was shocked I don’t remember any such thing happening to me all I remember is that I was at some dark place and the only thing I remember is ……” THE DREAM?”.

“WHAT DREAM???” Vinay asked, “What are you talking about?”, “I don’t know, I only remember that someone was shouting the phrase ‘THE DREAM’ repeatedly and very loudly”. Everyone gave an awkward look at me, how can I explain what I had experienced I was out of words, so I decided to sleep.

By the evening I was completely OK. So I called everyone to my room so that we can discuss the matter. Soon everyone came there. Ankur apologized to me thinking that his tale has caused me to suffer, I said, “No it is not you it is someone else”. “What? Some-ONE?”, asked Rahul, “Who is he?”. “I don’t know I have only his voice in my head”, I said, “But he is trying to say something important but I am not getting to it”. Vinay asked, “You were talking about some dream, what is it?”, I said, “Yup that is the same thing the voice wanted me to find out but I am not getting any clue”. Suddenly Rohit spoke up, “It all started with the incident with Rahul at the staircase, so what I am thinking is that tonight we all must wait at those stairs and see what can happen, we might find something very helpful”, Everyone liked the idea and we decided the during night everyone will carefully sneak into Aman and Rohit’s room as it was just

adjacent to the staircase and from there we can take our lead further. So that night we all reached their room by 11:45 pm and did a bit of planning and went to the staircase around midnight. We had brought our blankets as we had estimated that it might take long time for the process. We just sat on the staircase and waited…

“What’s the time?” asked Aman; “It’s around 3:00 am” replied Vinay. “I don’t think anything is happening tonight, we should head back”. “But we have waited so long please don’t give up now”. “That’s what I am telling, after so long nothing has happened so I think tonight is not the night”. “Maybe he is telling the truth”, I broke the argument going on between Aman and Vinay “Maybe tonight we are not going to see anything”. “But… what about our plan…” asked Rahul, I said, “We will try again tomorrow”. So we decided to go back to our rooms. We got up and started to go up. As we placed our feet on the first step all of us tripped and fell at the same time, as we got up, to our horror we felt some heat on our back. We also heard sound of some people talking, we turned around and were astound! We could not believe our eyes what we were seeing….

There was a massive fire in the building we tried to run but couldn’t, we were paralyzed! We were not able to move! There was something I felt strange I was in the middle of a fire but still my body was getting colder. “Stay calm, this is not an actual fire it is some kind of hallucination that we are seeing, we are safe” I asked everyone and said that even though we there was fire but we were still feeling cold. Everyone realized that what I was telling was true. We just watched the fire. We saw silhouettes of a few boys of nearly our age. There were four of them three looked very healthy and fit but one of them was very thin. Suddenly one of them held the thin guy by the collar and threw him on the stairs started beating him and abusing him really bad. They were punching and kicking him all over his body without any pause. Suddenly one of them took out a candle and ignited it. He tried to hurt the boy with the hot wax. But the boy managed to escape by kicking one of them in the groin and running down the stairs while running he tripped and fell directly on his head. The bullies came down and again started to kick the boy but this time after a few kicks they realized that the boy was not responding, he was completely senseless. They got terrified and started running away leaving the boy like that while running they threw the candle and it fell directly on a curtain which caught fire. Soon the fire started to increase extensively and within a moment we saw the Amrita Ashram Boarding School building that suddenly started burning with fire. We all just stood there with our faces white and jaws dropped. Suddenly everything was back to normal, we were at our own hostel,

but still, it took us around 30-40 seconds to get back from there. We looked at each other but no one spoke, no one knew what to say. I was still stunned but then I realized something. “Someone is missing…. Wait… where was ANKUR!!! ”

“UP HERE……..” a loud whisper came slowly from the ceiling.

We looked up and to our horror we saw Ankur was hanging in the AIR! , he was possessed by some spirit, he eyes were glowing blue and a reddish-white aura surrounded him. Our jaws dropped on seeing such a scene, suddenly Ankur started to slowly lift his hand and he pointed straight at ME! .... “YOU!!!!!”, he started yelling at me constantly, I asked, “What do you want from me??? ”, “THE DREAM…..”, he replied in a much softer tone before everything in front of our eyes turned white. After a few seconds, everything was visible again, we all were fallen on the ground, Ankur was unconscious, so we all dashed at him but as soon as I got up…. “Aaaaaahhh, it hurts, it hurts!!” that same headache returned but this time I didn’t faint, rather I was behaving in a very hysterical manner, a constant series of images flashed through my eyesight, it was of a burnt face trying to say something but his voice was gibberish so I couldn’t understand anything. The situation stabilized I was now OK. I realized I was tightly held by Vinay and Rohit while Rahul and Aman were taking care of Ankur.

This time I was not scared, everything was crystal clear in front of me

“Vinay do you remember that day when you and I were talking about what we dreamt the previous night, I told you that I had seen a nightmare but I didn’t remember anything, and also I had seen it on the night of that fire incident”, I asked Vinay and he replied, “Yes, I do remember that but why are you asking me that now?”, “Well now I remember my dream and I feel this was THE DREAM that the spirit was talking about….. that night I dreamt that I was watching a vlog and in that vlog, a boy with a half-burnt face was saying something about his murder, there was fire everywhere, in that he said that this was his last vlog and said that he was unable to move as he was beaten by some bullies and this fire has ended any of his hope of surviving. He also told that anyone watching this vlog should avenge him for the injustice he faced. In the end, he said something in some coded language, he said, ‘NBYVHGRVZMPFI’ and then I woke up, also I think that the vlog was not done by any camera or mobile rather it was by a smartwatch, the video was very unstable”, I told them everything I remember, Vinay said, “A smartwatch?”. Suddenly Ankur woke up he was wet with sweat and started to shout, “He was here! Sonu was HERE!, I swear I felt his presence!”.

It was getting to me more and more clear as time was passing, I understood that the whole time Sonu’s spirit was trying to communicate with us. I asked Ankur, “Calm down are you sure he was here”, Ankur replied, “Yes I swear I felt him inside me”, “Then tell me did Sonu own any smartwatch?”, I asked, “Yes he had one but why are you asking me”, Ankur replied with a confused voice, I continued, “Because I now know what all this is about, its Sonu who is trying to convey a message to us about his murder, he did not die after he was beaten, he was still alive enough to make that final vlog and all of the proof required is stored in his last vlog, tell me where can we find it?”, “I don’t know, maybe he stored it in his Google Drive, he stored everything in it”. Ankur said, “Can you access it? ”, Aman asked to which Ankur replied, “I know the email Id but what about the password”, Vinay interrupted, “Let us first go to our rooms and then we will try to find the vlog”, we all agreed and ran to our rooms.

We reached my room, and sat with a mobile, we tried a lot but no one could guess the correct password. We were all thinking what to do now when suddenly Vinay said, “Prasun weren’t you talking about some coded message?”, I replied, “Oh yes, it was something like ‘NBYVHGRVZMPFI’ ”, I don’t even know how I remembered that but there were other things to worry then, “try the code itself and see what happens” so we entered the code and clicked enter but this time also the password tuned out wrong. We were enraged, disappointed, worried at the same time. We were now completely confused. Suddenly, Ankur said in a strong tone, “It’s a CIPHER!”…..

“A CIPHER?”, we all said at the same time, “Yes, it is it is an ATBASH cipher, Sonu and I used to share our secrets through this cipher, it maintained the secrecy, it looks difficult but decoding is very easy, we have to just map the positions of the letters to the same number when the alphabet is written in reverse order, in simple word while encrypting, ‘A’ become ‘Z’, ‘B’ becomes ‘Y’ and so on”. Ankur said, I said with joy, “Brilliant!! Let’s decrypt it”, so we sat with a piece of paper and started to decrypt it, “The code is ‘NBYVHGRVZMPFI’, so here ‘N’ decrypts to ‘M’, ‘B’ to ‘Y’, ‘Y’ to ‘B’ and….. the password is… ‘MYBESTIEANKUR’ oh yes we found it, you were the password all the time, Ankur”, I stood up with joy, but sat down as I saw tears had come in Ankur’s eyes. We all remained silent for a while……

“M-Y-B-E-S-T-I-E-A-N-K-U-R- and <ENTER>, it opened!, the password worked!”, we all jumped with joy and hugged each other, we quickly checked his Drive account and yes, a video was there, we opened it and yes it was the same vlog which I saw in the dream, we had solved the mystery!!!!! Now we can avenge Sonu’s death.

The next day the video was submitted to the police and the case file was reopened. Within a week the suspects were caught and were held for trial in the court. They pleaded for juvenile justice but the court did not accept that and they were sentenced 10 years for each member of the trio and 4 more years for the one who planned it.

...

The sentence was declared yesterday and today I am writing this. Yesterday night we all had the same dream. Well… you must be curious of what did we see? We dreamt that we were standing in a green field holding hands and were looking up in the sky. We were watching an immense bright white light coming from the sky and in that, we saw a silhouette of a boy waving his hand at us, he was making hand gestures as if he was thanking us, he also had such a powerful aura which seemed to have the power to purify one from all the negativity inside their mind and can make them divine, we all bid him farewell and soon he went far and far away into the sky. The view slowly faded and then I woke up in my room. I was feeling very happy and feeling very light but somewhere within that happiness, there was a tint of sorrow, Sonu was no more with us, I did not know why, I had never met him but still I and he were somehow bonded together, we seemed to have a very close relationship and that relationship is going to last forever…….

In the end, I just want to say a few lines from a very famous song by Linkin Park

“Who cares if one more light goes out…………

In the sky of a million stars...........

Well………..

I do………”