Curse of the Unknown

                                  

                                 Episode 2

“Excuse me, may I help you?” the woman asked. For an instant I forgot my pain and was mesmerized by the sanity in her voice. I looked up to see her face- it was perfectly oval in shape with a broad forehead. Her long ravine hairs, jet black in colour with streaks of gold, ran down to her hips. However, it was her eyes which caught my attention- they were big, almond shaped and had the same mesmerizing effect as of her voice. "Are you alright?” asked the lady again, with her left brow twirled up in annoyance over my continual gaze. The mesmerizing look of her eyes was now replaced by a strident, sardonic look, compelling my head to lower down in embarrassment. “I am alright. Just a…. little..”
I tried to get up but my legs were too weary to bear the weight of my body. Moreover I had injured my left knee and it was bleeding profusely. I was completely exhausted and both my senses and will had gone hazy altogether. Seeing my condition, the woman took out a bottle from her bag and forwarded it to me. “Have it”, the woman said, “you’ll feel good.” The bottle was filled with some energy drink and got emptied within a minute. My senses returned and I looked around. The bus stand was still there but there was something else which I hadn’t noticed yet- the path ahead was completely shadowed by the cluster of old and dense banyan trees on both sides of the road, which were refraining the light from touching the ground. “We need to walk. I just can’t imagine myself stranded over this place after the sunset.”
“What’s wrong with this place?” I asked, standing up in the process with a little help from the lady.
“You are not from Pune, are you?”
"And how exactly do you know that?”
“Because had you been from Pune, you should have known about this place.”

I was getting a bad feeling about the place although she had not given the intricate description of the place.
The eerie silence of the road was creeping in my mind. The place was so dead silent! It seemed as if all traces of life (except trees) have been deliberately effaced from the place. I would have enjoyed this sort of environment on any other day but I was at my lowest that day.

I was trying hard to match her steps. She was walking steadily, her expressions austere amidst this haunting silence which was freaking me out. Her calm and composed demeanor was giving me the feel of confidence and jealousy at the same time. I used to rake my audacity in a very high esteem in those days so it was quite irksome for me that someone else, especially a woman, was showing more composed attitude than me at that time.
 I reached for my cellphone in my pocket and it was out in a flash. But it served me no good as there was no signal. Dejected, I looked up at the sky which was getting darker by every passing minute. Amidst of this hopeless situation( which was quite ironical because I was getting feared without any pragmatic reason), I heard a sound of horn coming from the way we were heading. Out of the gloominess emerged a scooty, ridden by another woman( I wouldn' t had figured it out if her hairs had been tied up), heading steadily towards us. The scooty stopped right in front of us. "Quick, Asmi.", the second woman asserted and the first one complied quickly by sitting on the scooty. I gave a desperate look to the second woman( helpless look; do not confuse it with the other meaning of the same word), hoping she would be as benevolent as the first woman. She was looking at me with suspicious eyes, probably thinking me as a thief( which was quite believable by the way I was looking at that time). The first woman murmured something into the second woman's ears which turned her suspicious look into that of pity. She signalled me to sit on the scooty and I complied happily.
We were about to reach the highway when suddenly I looked at the rear view mirror of the scooty. Though the skies were getting dark, I was very sure that what I had saw was a lady in white clothes waving at us.

To be continued....