Bhayya, won’t you play with me?

He wouldn’t have discovered the cave but for the python. The python slithers down the rocky crevice of the mountain and disappears into the bushy vegetation, its skin winking against the moonlight. “Don’t go away, dinner,” he mumbles and climbs down the crevice. He finds the python trying to hide itself under a boulder. He grabs it by its neck and smashes the head on the boulder.  

That’s when he finds the cave—an inviting opening, a meter-wide at the widest. Wow! Nice place to stay hidden, for, say a week, until the heat subsides. He walks in. 

On the bush, a gecko raises itself on its hind legs and cries, keer...keerp...keer....keerp. He misses the sense of alarm. He doesn’t get the warning.  

He doesn’t speak gecko. 

He takes out an electric torch from his khaki haversack and throws the beam around. Nice. He lights a fire. The python tastes super. Burp! 

His watch shows 7 pm. It is dark in the hills. He kills the fire. No point in attracting attention. Not much chance of that, but still. 

Let me explore the interior of the cave, he mumbles and walks into darkness’ depths. The cave tunnels and then broadens gradually into a sort of an almost rectangular room. The torchlight shows a tiny rivulet, formed by water seeping out of the rocky walls and disappearing into the rocky floor at the other end. He is all smiles.  

What a place! Rest and recuperation at last, he thinks, rubbing the wound above his right knee, where the police bullet got him. The wound has healed quite a bit but needs more time. Damn! The entire police force is after me, he thinks. 

Pooooooffff....he blows into his inflatable bed, holding the torch in his armpit.  

Wasn’t it lovely? he smiles at the memory. The girl was a delight. How old was she? Six? Raping her and killing her in front of her pleading parents gave me such a kick, he thinks. And those curses, he smiles. Are there so many swearwords in Hindi, he muses. Only the mother of a raped and killed girl will know. 

The torch slips from his armpit and rolls down the floor. He hurriedly seals the half-inflated bed and goes after the torch. 

That’s when he sees it. He frowns. Was it there when I looked around a while ago, he thinks. He is not sure. In the nor-nor-east corner, is a slit in the wall, barely three feet wide. 

His frown deepens. How could I have missed it when I threw the beam around earlier, he thinks. He goes to the opening and beams the torchlight into it. 

Steps. Stone steps, crude and uneven, like you find in old forts. 

He is intrigued. Where would this strange pathway lead to? Some distant palace? A treasure vault? A catacomb? 

He picks up his haversack and walks right in. 

The steps go on straight down and then begin to curve like a spiral staircase. He feels adrenaline rush. The sense of danger, the thrill of the unknown, the hope of a discovery gives him an adrenaline storm. He walks down the steps, which become narrower and steeper. 

The tunnel-staircase curves again. The tunnel is wrapping around him.  

He wrinkles his nose. Now, what was that? Did I....yes...there it is again. The rotten smell. He sniffs again and makes a face. His spirits ebb. Claustrophobia is closing in on him like a net.  

He looks at his wristwatch. 7 pm. Damn, the watch has stopped. He turns and starts walking up, back to the cave. 

Three steps...around the curve....five steps.....eight.....ten. And then— 

He shrieks in horror. The cry reverberates all the way down the stairs and echoes back with vengeance, like a multitude of terrified people shrieking in horror at the same time.  

He shrieks because he is staring at a wall. Dead end. His mouth dries, feels like a desert in summer. His gut is a vat of bubbling acid. He is boxed in. Unless there is an exit at the other end. 

Fear wraps around him and begins to squeeze, like a python. He turns and walks down the steps hurriedly. Ten steps, fifteen.  

Then he hears it. Thud, thud.... 

The sounds are getting closer. Thud, thud. 

In his hand, the torchlight is dimming. He throws the dying light behind him, to see what is making the noise.  

It is the wall. The wall is walking down the steps, menacingly. He runs down the steps, misses a step, lands on his buttocks, slides, gathers himself up and starts limping down the steps.  

Thud, thud, thud....the thuds are quicker. The wall is following him.  

Now the wall is just four steps behind him.  

Three. Two. It stops. 

He stares at it in horror. Nooooo, he cries. This time there is no echo. In fact, he could barely hear his own voice. 

Creeek! There is a sound from the roof, like a sheet of glass crushed under the heel. He jumps, looks up.  

A crack has appeared on the wall and is widening. Up-down, stream engulfs him, carries him down. He feels yanked by a powerful current. He struggles, gets his nose just above the river of mud, gasps, coughs....bile surges to his mouth and comes out as vomit. 

And then, after what he feels like eternity, the flow slows. He begins to see faint light, like at the end of the tunnel. He is thrown out, as though somebody kicked him in the butt. He lands on a patch of lawn, in an opening.  

He struggles to his feet. The bullet wound on his thigh is bleeding profusely, but he doesn’t mind it. A sense of relief sweeps through him.  

He does not realize that this just the beginning. 

                                                                   ***************** 

It is a garden. The horizon is a row of brown hills, behind which the sun is setting. Only the top arc of it is visible, bathing the world in a ghoulish orange hue.  

He looks around him. There is no sign of any hill or a cave or a tunnel or the river of mud that spat him out here. The garden stretches as far as he could see, on all sides. Hedges and pathways cut across rows and rows of flower plants. There was something strange about them. Something wrong.  

Then it hits him. It is the stillness. Everything is absolutely still. The lawns, the leaves of the plants, shrubs—everything is frozen stillness. No bees hovering over flowers, no birds, no critters scampering around. It feels like he had walked into a painting.  

It was a beautiful bizarre garden. A nameless fear takes possession of him.  

He now realizes that he has been brought into a strange land. After all, earlier in the evening, when he entered the cave, it was already dark. But now there is the dull light of the setting sun, gloomy and eerie. 

He has no idea where to go. 

He feels thirsty, takes his hand to his back for the bottle in the haversack.  

His fingers touch his shoulder blade. There is no haversack—it is gone.  

He walks randomly, trying to think up a plan. 

That is when he hears a small, distant sound behind him. He turns. 

From behind a row of tall hibiscus, a pink ball rises, descends, rises again, descends again. It is the size of a football. The top of a head shows up. Presently, a little girl emerges from behind the hibiscus plants. 

She is small and pretty, wearing a red frock. She is about twenty meters from him. First, she does notice him, then she does.  

She smiles broadly. The smile sends shivers down his spine and makes his hair stand on end.  

“Bhayya,” she calls him, using the Hindi word for ‘brother’.  “Won’t you play with me,” she says, holding up the ball. 

He stands there petrified. A small girl in the middle of a vast expanse of a garden. No adult in sight. Calling him to play with her. 

“Bhayya, won’t you play with me?” She slowly starts walking towards him. 

He backsteps, but the girl is gaining on him. 

“Wait,” he says. The girl stops. “Where is your house?” 

She stretches out her arm, pointing behind him. 

He dares not to turn, but does, with an effort. There, at the very edge of the horizon, there is a suggestion of a small house on the slope of a hill. She’d have to walk miles before she got home, if it was her home.  

“Go home, it is getting late,” he tells her, his voice quivering.  

“Bhayya, won’t you play with me?” 

He realizes that the girl can say nothing else. 

A feeling of helplessness sweeps through him. He gets a tingling feeling that trying to run away won’t help. Not knowing what to do, he speaks to the girl in a shaking voice. 

“I will play with you tomorrow. Go home.” 

The girl drops her shoulders and begins to cry. The blood-curdling wail rises like a siren and fills the atmosphere. He stands there, not knowing what to say.  

Then something strange happens. The girl’s eyes begin to sink. They disappear into their sockets. Black holes appear where eyes were. Her nose becomes red. Her upper lip curls upwards, revealing an unnatural row of sharp teeth. 

The little ghoul starts walking towards him. 

He realizes that there is no point in trying to run away. The girl would chase him. He stands there transfixed. 

Suddenly, she stops. Her eyes snap back and look at something behind him. She lets out a wild shriek, turns and runs. She runs like a cheetah, at an impossible speed, jumping effortlessly over flower rows taller than herself. 

He nervously turns. There—about fifty meters from him—is a man on a very tall horse. He is in some sort of a uniform; his legs are booted and feet firmly in the stirrups. One hand is holding the saddle, the other on the pommel. He is wearing a hat. He appears to be looking sternly at the disappearing girl. 

A moment ago, when he turned to look at the girl’s house, the horseman was not there; now he is. Materialized out of nowhere. 

He looks at the horseman. He faints. 

                                                                           ************ 

He is lying on a couch. 

Awareness returns to him in tiny instalments. He feels his eyelids bearing down, as though with invisible weights; his breathing is heavy. 

With an effort he sits up. 

He is in a room. Violet. Everything around is unpleasant, depressing violet. The electric lamp overhead is violet. The couch is violet, the teapoy is violet, the curtains are violet, the incense sticks in the corner are violet, the tendrils of smoke emanating from them are violet.  

There, on the violet wall, is a painting of a man in a uniform, astride a tall horse.  

He hauls himself to his feet and staggers to the painting. His guess is right. The horseman in the painting is the one who scared the girl away.  

And saved him from her. 

At the bottom is a legend that reads: Major Jigmet Thakpa, 1821 – 1857.  

Next to the painting is a large wall clock. It shows 7. The second hand is scurrying across the dial. 

With a start, he looks at his wristwatch. It shows 7. It dawns on him that there is no problem with the watch. 

The room has French window. He totters towards it. There, in the distance, the sun is still there, setting behind the hills, only its top arc visible.  

He closes his eyes and counts up to 100 and looks at the clock. The second hand is still active. But the clock shows 7 pm. 

He stands there looking at the vast expanse of the garden beyond the compound wall.  

There she was, as he expected, on the other side of the compound wall, ball in her hand, looking straight at him. Their eyes me. 

“Bhayya, won’t you play with me?” 

He hurriedly backsteps. The girl doesn’t move.  

He realizes that she won’t come into the room. He is safe in late Major Jigmet Thakpa’s house. If he goes out, the phantom girl will play him to death. 

He is caught in a time-freeze. He is stuck at 7 pm – forever.