THE MYSTERY MAN

THE MYSTERY MAN

I Always wondered if strange things have hidden logics behind them, do they really have any meaning. Something like that has happened to me ten years ago.

I was working as an official at the American airport authority.

One morning as usual, while I was at the counter checking the passports of the people, a man who seemed to be in a hurry handed me his passport.

“Mr Charles, I am sorry your passport is not valid. Please provide the valid one.” I said.

 With a confused look he said, “WHAT? How’s it possible?”

"I'm telling you, my passport is valid, I renewed it TWO days ago!" He replied impatiently.

"I'm sorry, I can't help you we are not allowed to let people on flights without valid passports. I may be able to help you if you give me some identification."

He handed over his birth certificate and driving licence. Whilst his primary language is said to have been French, it has been purported that he spoke Japanese and many other languages as well.

 I looked it over and for a moment I stared at him in disbelief, “The country that you claim to be from does not exist. There is no such place as Afferaron sir!"

“There seems to be a misunderstanding, for five years, I am flying to this country every four months on business purposes, had never been into this trouble.”

While I was checking his old passport it has the stamps of almost all the countries on it including America. This shows that he visited here earlier!

He continued “Please look into it as soon as possible, I have an important business meeting to attend in an hour.”

“Sir I need to inform my higher officials in this case. Please give me some time.”

One hour later:

Higher Officials arrived and looked into the passport. With confusion spread across their faces, they searched for the country named Afferaron. There was no such place on the earth! In spite of the details and landmarks that person has mentioned nothing of it is proved to have existed physically.

He was interrogated and asked to point out where his country supposedly exists on a map. He immediately points his finger towards the Principality of some other place but becomes angry and confused about it. He’s never heard of the place which is there on the map where he was pointing to. He said, ‘I can’t understand why my homeland of Afferarun isn’t there’.

Meanwhile, the matter was leaked to the media.

That person claiming to be from a mysterious place which had no proof of existence caused chaos in the country. Various claims were coming up in media Some saying that he is from a terrorist group, some believed that he is a ghost. While others said he was lying to get public attention. Either one of these was true or none was! 

He seemed suspicious by the way he dressed and his accent, so it was decided by the authorities to keep him in a separate room on a mountain cliff outside the city, asking him to wait until this matter gets sorted. That’s where some of the High profile Criminals were kept for a while so that they don’t escape. It had no windows, no ventilators, no AC Vents or chambers, it had only one door made of heavy iron making is impossible for even the air to pass. Four guards were allotted to make sure he would not escape.

Meanwhile, serious discussions were happening between top detectives and criminal investigators to solve this strange case.

48 hours later:

After multiple attempts and numerous efforts in finding who this person is, and where he belongs to, it was a Dead End. Even the CCTV footage of the Airport had no signs showing that he visited the country earlier contrary to the stamps which were found on his passport. Nothing helpful came up and there was absolute silence among the frustrated officials.

Suddenly A beautiful woman in her late thirties enters into the cabin and hands me over a piece of paper which looked like a torn part of the atlas. That piece shows a place called "Afferarun" in the middle east of Canada.

She claims that Charles was her husband and hands over their wedding photos. There was something mysterious about that woman. The way she looked at others, the way she talks everything seemed a bit weird.

After looking at the wedding pictures and torn part of the map, they needed time to cross verify the details until then they decided to put her in a similar room alike where Charles was kept.

One thing was running in my head, ever since that woman walked in. One was – she could have given the entire map, why did she get a torn piece of the map instead?

While the food was served that night, next morning authorities were shocked to see the rooms empty. Both of them disappeared without any trace from their captive rooms and were never found. There was no clue of trials made to escape. Nothing in the room was messed up; it was as clean and neat as it was given to them earlier. The lock was not broken. All the guards claimed that there is not even a 0.001% chance of them escaping through that door. They were awake the whole night.

It was practically impossible to escape from there. When the detectives looked at the paper which that mysterious lady gave the earlier day, it was found to be a plain paper! Nothing was printed there, the same happened with the wedding photos, driving licence and passport!

On checking the CCTV footage, it was found missing! some people still claim that those people are from the Parallel universe; Which has no scientific explanation for it. There was no proof that the mysterious couple ever came to that airport. 

 Even today, thinking of that unsolved mysterious incident brings chills to me. If they were really from a parallel universe why didn’t that man realize as soon as I told him his passport was not valid and there was no such place called Afferarun. If that was a by mistake why did that lady had to come to rescue him?

Did she have any supernatural powers?

Well, It’s a mystery to everyone.

--- Meghana Cheekati

(Based on the real mystery case called Mysterious man from the Taured. Improvisation has been done to the story.)