Recently we moved into a new house. And that’s when we brought home our new pup, Duke. The retriever pup was so active and friskily naughty. As days passed by, I found a gradual decline in its activity. ‘Growing pups are normally very active,’ a friend of mine suggested me to consult a vet.
“Nothing’s wrong with Duke, at least physically. Don’t leave it alone all the time,” was the vet’s suggestion.
Plagued by the thoughts that the pup’s unwell and my final exams fast approaching, I couldn’t sleep a wink the following night. I was tossing and turning on the bed. Suddenly the lights blanked out. A thunderous lightening made me worry about Duke.
With the wind pitching, the curtains on the open window were blowing out of control. In pitch darkness, I managed to reach the window and close the glass shutters. It was raining heavily outside. I looked inside my room and tried to look out for my pup. It wasn’t in its dog bed near my own. I was worried. I looked around the room and was about to go out when something outside the window caught my eye.
In a lightning jolt, I saw a kind of projection out of the lawn in front of my house. In another jolt, I saw my pup trying to pull that thing. Perhaps a pipe or a piece of wood, I thought as I focused the torch and tried to get a better look. What I saw frightened me beyond all means.
It looked like a bone. Yes, it was a human hand with the palm wide open. Of a recently buried corpse? I wondered.
I rushed outdoors wanting to confirm the same before I disturb my parents. My hands were trembling as I pulled down the latch and opened the door. I wasn’t worried about me being drenched. My primary concern was the human hand, the image that I couldn’t take off my mind.
“Duke… Duke…” I hollered when the pup looked in my direction. In a flash of lightning I saw its sharp canines dripping some slimy liquid. I wasn’t sure if it was blood but before I could reach to any conclusion, I heard a growl which sent a chill down my spine. In the next instant, I saw Duke jump towards me at a gallop.
Shell shocked at the unexpected outcome of these events, I stood still when my pup whimpered as he dropped something at my feet. The bone? No, a book. The book was soaked completely; it looked a very old with a tattered hard bound leather cover.
I walked back to my bedroom, leashed the pup onto my bedpost and opened the book when out dropped a piece of paper. Under the dim light from the torch, I noticed that it was a article cut out from an old newspaper. As if in a trance, I unfolded the piece of paper and started to read the article. It was titled "The Murderous Ghoul".
‘Centuries ago, a diabolic ghoul robbed the graves and ate the corpses of human beings. A priest cast a spell on the ghoul thus making it lifeless and the ghoul was laid to rest once and for ever. Legend talks of a relic containing the spell that binds the ghoul.
In the early years of this millennium, on his quest for fossils, Palaeontologist Mark Haines finds the so called relic with a hand clutching onto it. The hand was in such a preserved condition that Mark based on the hairs on the hand, spoke of the race of the human to which it belonged.
Nobody knows what happened to the hand, but a few years later, Haines was found dead, hanging from the ceiling, and with one of his hands amputated. His severed hand was never recovered though.
Many are of the opinion that the ghoul’s back with a vengeance and it kills the one in possession of the relic. And the hand of whom will guard the relic forever. This is a vicious cycle’
I folded the article and then started to read the book itself. True, I didn't believe in ghosts - they are just a figment of human imagination, but reading the book scared me out of my wits. As I flipped page after page much to the discontentment of my palpitating heart, I began to hallucinate; visions of a goat inside an inverted pentagram called 'The Sigil of Baphomet'. An imaginary ring of fire almost engulfed me, so I pushed aside the relic in fright and covered in another corner of the room hugging my knees in horror.
I buried my face into my knees sensing impending doom when I looked out of the window. It was still raining incessantly. And in one strike of a lightning bolt, I saw the entire milieu, the sky and the clouds turning blood red. Dogs (or wolves?) started howling from a far off place. I approached the window and looked out to see a few bats cluttering at the place where my pup dug out the relic.
When hounds bay for blood, when the vampire bats squawk for life, when clouds engulf the crescent and when the stars align in an inverted pentagram, the creature of the dark will rise to life - I remembered a line from the relic.
And suddenly, I felt a drop in the temperature within the room. A cold wave sent a chill down my spine. I have heard that sometimes, you have this feeling that someone’s watching you. And tonight, I felt it.
I could feel the malice, the coldness of this diabolic being, it was more than just a normal human being. In a wink, I found myself lying on my bed. The chill that cuts through your skin, the icy state when you are frozen and paralyzed when you know you are not alone, that’s the most frightening part.
For a while, I wasn’t able to fathom what’s happening. When something warm and liquid touched my body, I regained my senses. I could feel wetness all over the bed.
I touched it with my hand. ‘Damn, its blood,’ I screamed and tried to push myself away from the bed. A stinging pain in the left part of my body prevented me from doing so. I looked beyond my shoulder and to my dismay found my hand amputated below my wrist. I pressurized my other palm on the open wound to arrest the flow of blood.
And I looked around. In the dim light, far in the corner lay the severed portion of my hand on the relic.... My hand now becomes the guardian of the relic? I thought and cried loudly in pain before I lost consciousness.
I don’t know for how long I lay in that position. But the next morning I woke up trembling. I looked around for the relic. It was lying on my bed with my hand still on it. But my hand wasn’t severed. Was it my imagination? I saw things so close to reality... And I pulled the relic close to my body. It indeed had the bite marks, probably inflicted by my pup when it was digging it up last night. And I saw the face of the relic. This was more frightening than all the things that happened over the course of the night.
It read, ‘Organic Chemistry'.
Related Posts
