Trembling Shadows
A romantic, psychological thriller
Kotra Siva Rama Krishna
“He has come here as a devil Rajesh. He asked me to come with him. I said I never can go with him. He said that he has the power to take me with him. He started coming near to me and then I have started yelling loudly” Tanuja said in one stretch.
“I see” Rajesh said thoughtfully. “You did a nice thing by yelling so. Otherwise he would have taken you with him”
“Rajesh…” Tanuja could not understand whether Rajesh was saying so seriously or sarcastically.
“What is this Tanuja? In what times we are living? Are you really believing in devils?” Rajesh said little angrily.
“Whatever you may think of me. I am not that much rational and intellectual as you are. I believe in devils. I believe in witch-cult. At the same time I believe in God too.” On very few occasions Tanuja would get angry with Rajesh and it was one such occasion.
“Oh, what ultimately you wanted to say to me?” trying to make himself cool Rajesh asked with a soft and soothing tone.
“Rajesh” she hugged and kissed him on the cheek. “Just now I had seen him in this very room before my eyes. It is not at all a dream. I can differentiate a dream with reality. It is hundred percent real. He has come here with an intention. If you have not come in time he would have taken me with him. What we should do now?”
Rajesh breathed to fill his lungs full and without delay hissed the air out. “Need to think of. But one thing. While you have been yelling so, he was just before you. Is it is not so? Then why I could not see him when I entered into this room?”
“The devils have a special ability to appear only to those whom they meant. They can manage to appear only to those by whom they wanted to be seen.”
“My God, I just cannot do anything then” closing his eyes tightly Rajesh said with an irritating tone.
Tanuja once again took his head into her hands and kissed on his forehead. “I am so sorry that I am troubling you in this way. But…” she stopped hesitating.
“Tell me whatever you want to say. You never hesitated to say anything to me in before.”
She nodded her head and said. “I agree that he was a good man. He may be good now too. But now I am loving you and my girl so much that I cannot leave and go anywhere.” Surprisingly tears started flowing down on the cheeks of Tanuja.
Rajesh at once burst into laughter. With difficulty he controlled himself and said. “Just try to be a little sensible and see how funnily you are talking! No one can take you from me. No danger would happen to you. That Sasank was dead more than twenty five years back. As per our scriptures he might have born somewhere else and be a young man by now.”
“He said if life desires not fulfilled even after death too there would be a separate entity to the human beings. They would not take rebirth”
“If it is so, then?” putting his hands around her and looking into her eyes Rajesh asked.
“His desire of marrying me and lead a marital life with me was not fulfilled. So he had got a devil entity after his death…”
“Quite absurd. Just stop” trying to minimize the irritation in his voice Rajesh said.
“He wanted to get his desire to be fillfilled now. That is why he is hell bent to take me with him. If you have not come in time, he would have succeeded in taking me with him” fear was quite evident in her voice again.
Rajesh kissed on her both cheeks and said “Nothing like that would happen. No one would dare to come here and take you with him as long as I am here. So unnecessarily don’t be got panicked.”
Tanuja nodded her head. She did so since she did not know what to say more. She did not take the situation as easily as Rajesh did. What happened before Rajesh coming here was so real and so lifelike. She had decided strongly not to be alone anymore from then on.
&&&
“It is rare but sometimes happens like this. People sometimes imagine dead people talking with them and do something with them. It is a psychological phenomenon. It has a term as well to call it but at present it is avoiding me.” After hearing carefully what Rajesh had told him Vinod said.
“She never has this type of a problem. Is it is a mental disorder? Would she become normal again?” with anxiety in his voice Rajesh asked.
“It is a sort of mental disorder of course, but it is curable.” Vinod said. “It happens especially in places like these. If we get angry or irritate with her, this problem will become even more intensified. So we need to deal with it quite carefully.”
“Alright, she never behaved in this way before. Even in the new days of our marriage too, she was not disturbed by that Sasank. She used to say that he was very good man. Only that much. But what is this? Why after more than twenty five years she imagined that Sasank in this way” there was distress in the voice of Rajesh.
“Do you know what is the best thing to find a solution to a problem?” Vinod and Rajesh were in upstairs middle room then. Vinod settled himself more comfortably in the nearby chair while Rajesh fidgeting himself with uneasiness on the bed.
“See so that the problem is not yours and of someone else. Think that someone else has got this problem and came to you for a solution. How peacefully and rationally you would think then” Vinod said with a sneer on his lips.
“I cannot do that type of exercise now.” He irritated on Vinod’s saying so. It seemed so to him that Vinod was not considering the situation enough seriously. “My heart is full of anguish. Why Tanuja has turned out like this I cannot understand. She never suffered with illusions like these before” Rajesh’s voice was with full of despair. His mind was not concentrated on what Vinod was saying.
“Oh, Rajesh. Why do you become like this? I am here a great psychologist. I shall see that your wife would become normal in no time. If you don’t mind I shall talk with her personally for ten minutes or so.” Taking Rajesh’s right hand into his hands Vinod said.
Rajesh nodded his head.
&&&
Vinod and Tanuja sat face to face in the chairs in the upstairs middle room. Tanuja’s body was full of sweat. There were deep wrinkles on her forehead showing that she was thinking deeply then too.
“Tanoo. What you are thinking?” in small and soothing voice Vinod asked her.
“I am thinking about that Sasank… His saying like that to me that I have to go with him is creating lot of fear in me”
“It is all just a ….”
“Don’t try to treat me as a child. I am sane enough to know what is true and what is not. I have seen that Sasank with my own eyes. He started coming towards me so I have shouted.”
“Alright…Alright…” Vinod held his eyes on her and said. “Alright I agree whatever you have experienced was true. But still we need to find a solution. But we should not be panicked since that would not be helpful at all.”
“I agree. But what we can do now? I cannot think anything myself at present. You, yourself tell me what I should do?” her sweetie voice came back to her
Vinod looked straight into her face for few moments. He could not understand why only few people were that much beautiful! Even at her above forty years age too, she was appearing quite glamorous.
“Don’t stay anywhere alone. Try to be with someone all the time. Then no one can take you away from here as you are fearing about.”
Tanuja nodded her head. Even she was not much convinced with what he had said she knew that there was no other way to her except to do in the way as she was recommended.
&&&
All of them had heard loud thumping sound on the front doors. It seemed so, if someone would not go fast and open them, they would be broken. That ferociously the front doors were banged. Vinod went fast to the doors and cleared the latch and opened them widely.
A seventy years or so aged person rushed into that house at once. There was fear and anxiety in his face then. “Where is he, where is he now? How he had forgotten what I have said so strongly to him.” He was shouting loudly.
“Whom do you want and who you are?” trying not to let the person to come fully into the house Vinod asked.
“He is Ratnakar. He was the person until some ten or so years back looked after the affairs of grandma. Let him come in, no problem.” Looking at him surprisingly Rajesh said. “Why he has come all of a sudden like this to here?”
Then Vinod gave him the way to come into the house and Ratnakar entered into it.
“Rajesh. Who is Rajesh here? I want to meet him immediately. Where he is now?” looking at the people there excitingly, he asked.
“I am Rajesh. You are Ratnakar, are not you? Have you forgotten me? Can’t you recognize me?” looking into the eyes of Ratnakar, Rajesh said.
“Rajesh, you” the old man’s face lit with a sort of pleasure. “Sorry, I have become old. I could not recognize you at all”
“No problem, I can understand. But tell me what do you want to talk with me?” observing the old man’s face carefully Rajesh said.
“Oh, Rajesh! What a big man you have become! What you are doing now?” looking into the eyes of Rajesh, he asked without bothering with what Rajesh said.
“I am a doctor now. You met me many a time while I was studying medicine. You on behalf of grandma looked after my necessities, welfare and education.” observing the face of Ratnakar, Rajesh said. Ratnakar’s face was wrinkled and his age was appearing in his bodily features. He was appearing as he was aged not less than eighty years but Rajesh knew that he was not more than seventy five.
“Oh, you are right. Now you are a doctor!” there was surprise and happiness in his face. “Grandma will feel very much happy if she hears about this” he said.
“Grandma doesn’t like me. Nothing of my achievements and good things will make her happy.” Rajesh said despairingly.
“It is not at all so Rajesh. She is very much fond of you and your father. But the circumstances compelled her to behave like that.” His voice was steady and it was difficult to believe him that he was mad.
“May I know what are those compelling circumstances that made her behave that callously towards me?” Rajesh sarcastically asked.
“I cannot explain them to you now. First thing tell me, why did you have come here? Grandma and I so strongly told you not to come here at all. Besides you have taken all these people as well here” there was a sort of fear crept into the face of Ratnakar.
“I want to see my grandma. So I have come. Why should not I have come here?” slumping himself into the nearby chair Rajesh asked. All the others who were around them were watching Ratnakar with thrill and interest. They forgot even to sit.
Ratnakar dragged a chair nearby to Rajesh and slumped himself into that without any invitation. Seeing them both sitting like that the other people there remembered that they could sit and hear to them. Then one after one all of them slumped into the chairs available there.
“Why cannot you understand us? Your father as well not understood us and took it on to his life. He got killed his wife too. It is dangerous to come and stay in this house” there was anguish in his voice.
(I hope that you enjoyed upto here. I shall publish the next chapter as soon as possible. Please don’t forget to rate and review.)
