The Mysterious Ball

The evening stood dark and deep and companying the dreadfulness of the dark eve, dark clouds covered the sky as if it was about to rain any time, even the bright full moon could not be seen. The weather was cold. I had my house in the outskirts area where nothing but forests were seen all around. In the middle of the forest area, I had my house; we recently shifted to that house. Everything seemed gloomy and desolate as if the world will never be happy again.

Most of the time we were terrified by the noises created by cicadas and other animals. Grunting, screeching and roaring mostly made the atmosphere haunted every day. We were also told by the previous owners of the house we were living in, about some myths that the forest is full of dark things, they meant things like ghosts, zombies, creatures that are craving for human blood. I called it a ‘myth’, just because I never wanted it to be real.

As my daily routine, I was coming back home, after attending my coaching, from the same way I use to come daily, but something was different, totally different. On my way back home, I was walking on the narrow dirt track when at sudden I heard the voice of crying, at first I got scared and then I noticed the voice of crying coming near and near to me. What could it be? I thought.

The human eating zombies or skull crunching giants. I tried to make my heart believe that it’s not real, it’s just a ‘myth’ but then I stepped back and knowing that I couldn’t run from it, I stopped and waited for the inevitable, my legs shivered and mind thought of what a creature it can be, will it eat me? Or will it drink my blood? Bent backward I prayed to God for forgiving my sins that I have committed in my life tenure. It seemed to me, the last day of my life when I saw a cute little girl coming to me. I took a sigh of relief, thanking God, I stood normally. Mesmerized by the beauty and innocence of the girl, I kept on looking at her, she looked like a white rabbit, so cute and sweet. She was still crying, I asked her the reason, why she was crying.

In continuous sobs, she replied, “I live in nearby house” she just said this and then she again broke into sobbing cry. I had a chocolate which I bought for myself, the strawberry flavoured chocolate, the limited edition chocolate. With all my heart saying no, I had to give the chocolate to her. She stopped crying, ate ‘my’ chocolate and then she answered in a polite way that she lives in a house nearby, that day she came in the evening to play with her ball and she then lost her way to home and her ball too. I held her hand and tried to calm her down.

It was getting darker and darker, we could hear the voices of grunting and hissing and light rain showers also started. But then too I assured her of finding and taking her home. She replied, ‘help me find my ball, if we found it, it will not be difficult to find my home’. I didn’t know what the girl talked about but we started finding the ball. One and a half hour later, tired of roaming in the forest, I found myself more and more inside the deep and gloomy forest. I got scared in my heart, but I made sure that the girl doesn’t know about it, else she will also get worried. The girl said, it has been hours, finding home, as she completed his sentence, a heavy downpour with thunders started. I held the girl’s hand and ran to find a place to get rescued from the rain. 

We stood under a huge tree. We got wet and we were shivering with cold. There we waited for the rain to cease. I thought of my parents waiting for me at home, and even getting worried about me. But the thought of helping a little girl and getting her home safely will please them and they will forgive me. I was wondering about what my parents will be thinking, when the girl shouted, ‘MY BALL! Yes it’s my ball’. Then an attractive gold coloured, glowing ball drew my attention towards it. It was attractive, though I did feel something fishy about it. But I forgot about it and felt happy after seeing the girl happy.

Then something strange happened, as soon as the girl touched the ball, something magical happened, it didn’t take even a second when I blinked my eyes and found myself in a huge, really huge mansion. Spectre grey, dreary, ceiling covered with a mass of spider webs, so long and strong, that it seemed I can even swing on it. I stood in the middle of the mansion, with my face towards a large staircase, so dark it was that I couldn’t see whether the stairs lead somewhere or not. To my right was a great door, maybe leading to a hall or room. To my left was a large dining table, old but strong. Everything was huge but it looked scary like the mansion was not been visited by anyone for years. There was darkness and a strange smell, don’t know what. But what was I doing there? I asked myself, when I heard an echoing voice of a lady, saying, ‘oh my girl! You’ve come, we were scared’, accompanied by a male voice ‘don’t ever go far again, dear’.

I was finding where the voice was coming from when the girl ran and went into the dark. Then I saw a man and a woman, probably the parents of the girl. They looked as scarier as the mansion was looking. Wearing black old velvet dress covered with dust.

They smiled at me, a smile so wide that was necessary for any practical purpose. Their smile revealed their cunning nature inside. They thanked me for helping their daughter. I just wanted to get out of there. I asked them, as I was going to leave, but they insisted me to have dinner with them. In spite of my reluctance to stay, they somewhat forced me to have dinner. They convinced me; they asked me to sit on the dining table and ordered a waiter to bring food. They all sat with me. A few minutes later, a waiter served several serving bowls covered with a lid. They asked the waiter to remove the lid from the bowl.

As soon as the waiter removed the lid, I got numb in fear, so horrified that I screamed as loud as I could. In a serving bowl, was served a number of lizards, spiders, frog legs and eyes of some creatures. Reply to my scream, they laughed in a strange and horrifying manner. Suddenly their face changed in chalk white colour, canines became long and sharp, eyes red, as if they were vampires. I could feel the cold and desolate atmosphere, and when I tried to move, I found myself stuck in the chair.

The lady came close to me, took a lizard and brought it to my mouth, just going to put it in my mouth, I shouted in fear, screamed loud, when suddenly I jumped out of my bed, opened my eyes, and found myself in my comfortable room. It was 8 in the morning, the sun shone brightly and the day was beautiful. And then I realized, I had an atrociously bad dream. But then I laughed off my idiotic dream, decided to put dream catchers in my room and thanked God to help me escape from the lizard dinner party.