The Dead Whispers.

The night kept getting darker and colder as I looked out the window , the clock showed 1:13 A.M in my dimly lit hostel room. I had my Clinical Medicine book opened in front of me but I couldn't study. The heavy rain banging against the Sloped Slate Roof created a constant thunderous sound which echoed in my top floor room. Although I had always been a winter person but there was something different today, the foggy nights that had always been a thing of ecstatic beauty seemed eerie and unsettling. Far away I could see a single red light flickering in the Administrative block of Ramjas Medical Institute. I was fixated on the red light for the way it blinked in a rhythm that kept pulling me in. Closer and closer and closer the red blinking dot grew bigger and bigger, it felt like I was right there standing next to the light and feel its warmth even though my hands felt the freezing cold of the January night. Soon the light grew bigger than me, engulfing me till all I could see was red. It wasn't that I was reaching for the light but more like the light was reaching for me. Soon I was standing in a room completely red with endless bounds. As far as your vision could expand, all you could see was bloody red. The blinking now turned into a loud thumping heartbeat, boom, boom it kept on beating as a slow unintelligible whisper crept behind my ear like a cold winter breeze. I turned around but there was no one and the walls started to warp around on me. I looked at my shivering hands, I had no idea what to do so I slapped myself hoping that this was just a nightmare when drops of blood fell from above on my palm. The whispers and the beating sound grew louder as I slowly turned my head upwards to see where the drops of blood were coming from. As I gazed upon the horror that hovered above me, I screamed but could not utter a single sound! My mouth immediately sewed shut by a thread like creature that pierced through my lips. A large dripping puddle of blood was floating above me through which several long and lanky hands were slowly reaching towards me. I made all the efforts I could, I struggled as my lungs were starting to give up on me, my heart completely failing me and my throat sore from the silent screams.The hands were coming for me and I couldn't run nor could I scream. They were reaching! They were getting close!

Soon the bloody hands started creeping all over my face drenching it in blood, some of it went down my throat through my nose. I could taste its metallic tang fill up inside. All I could do was gulp in fear but the hands suddenly reached my neck and started choking me. Several hands around my neck gripping it so tightly that it almost crushed my larynx. This must be a dream, has to be! This is not real! I kept telling myself in my head but it felt as real as the coat hanging behind my door or the books stacked on the shelf. I was lost in my thoughts trying to escape whatever this was when I realized that I was two feet above the ground,.The hands were pulling me towards the puddle, three feet, five feet, eight feet, higher and higher! Then all of a sudden with a single thrusting force the hands threw me, so fast that everything went blur and with a thud the chair inside my room flew towards the wall and I hit the floor with a bang. A severe pain went down my spine, my ribs hurting like I had been punched by several iron fists. I groaned but at least a voice came out of my mouth. Slowly, I dragged myself to the table to pick myself up, the clock still showed 1:13 AM. I ran outside my room, overwhelmed by the experience.

I did not want to stay alone, it was horrifying. The flashes kept coming back, the red room, the blood and the hands. I opened the door as I finally started to breathe normally again and went into our dark and dingy corridor. Even on a bright sunny day the scrapped off paint, leaky roof and cracks on the walls made our hostel look ghostly but on a night like this, when the lights kept flickering, the wind made whistling noise the hostel would become an entity of its own. MBBS was hard enough as it as. I thought about Sarika, a senior who had committed suicide last year. I remembered people pulling down her lifeless corpse hanging from the ceiling fan, the mark of the noose around her neck and her nails broken as if she had fought somebody . It was easy to tell even without an autopsy that she had choked on her own blood. Those images had crept up in my dreams several times over the last year, keeping me up at nights. The secrets you keep rot you from within. The drops of sweat on my forehead started condensing giving me a severe headache. I went to Pranvi's room and knocked, the door opened on its own and that's when I saw Pranvi on the ground lying in the puddle of her own blood. Her neck slit opened and blood spurting out like a fountain! I ran straight to the toilet and puked. The light above the wash basin started flickering intensely and then blasted. I raised my arms immediately to protect myself from small splinters of glass which made several cuts. I whimpered while I took out tiny pieces of glass out, my hands still shaking somewhat in pain and somewhat in fear. As i checked on my wounds I saw marks on both of my wrists as if someone had grabbed them tightly leaving deep black impressions. The marks however felt oddly familiar, like I had seen them somewhere before. But where? Again, I felt a chill running down my spine similar to the one I had felt inside the room, the hair on my neck started to rise up and the mirror was completely foggy now. As I went ahead to clear it with my palm, I saw a silhouette swiftly rushing by. I was taken aback. I turned around to find nobody there.

Was Pranvi really dead? Had I been drugged? But if I had been drugged then surely puking would have reduced its effect. Was I being pranked?  As I looked outside the toilet door, the lights in the corridor stopped flickering. I had lost the track of time at this point. I sheepishly looked in the corridor to see if anyone was there, there wasn't so I decided to knock on everybody's door to get everyone out. Isha, Shifa, Devika, Bhavya, I knocked on everyone's door and told them what I had seen. They all looked at my like I was demented.

"Calm down Mehr! How long has it been since you last slept?" Devika asked.
It had been a couple of days since I had slept, I was so busy preparing for final exams, reading every line, every word that I hadn't even blinked.

"It must have been a bad dream." Bhavya exclaimed.
Devika put her hand on my forehead to check if I was heating up.
Could it be? Was my mind playing tricks with me? In all fairness that was completely possible.
I was sure that it was no hallucination.

"Do you see these marks on my wrists?" I showed them my wrists, the marks were still there and they could see it too. I held Devika's hand and took her to Pranvi's room. "I'm not lying!" I said firmly to make them believe. Isha, Shifa and Bhavya followed behind cautiously. I tried to push through the door expecting it to open but I banged my head instead because it was locked.

"I swear it was open before!" I fell silent as I saw them looking at me like I was going crazy. Shifa went ahead and knocked on the door. "Pranvi." She called out her name.
"Wait a minute!" Pranvi's voice came inside the room. That wasn't possible. The room opened and there she stood, completely fine. No cuts, no blood nothing. Not even a scratch. The blood on the floor was gone, it was as clean as a floor could be.

"What's going on guys?" Pranvi asked. "Are you okay?" She asked me as her eyes gazed over my distressed face.

"See we told you she's fine." Added Shifa.
"I'm completely fine." Pranvi said. I was confused and a little disoriented. Perhaps they were right, perhaps I needed to sleep or something.  "Can you take care of her for a while? She's having a rough night." Devika said as she struggled to free her hand from my grip which I had held so tightly in fear that it probably had started to hurt her. I held my head and apologized to them still trying to make sense of anything that had happened. Pranvi obviously agreed to take care of me, she gestured me to come in and take a seat. She closed the door as everybody left and I took a deep breath as if I had held it in for a long time. Pranvi turned around and asked, " What's wrong Mehr?"

"I don't know, I've been seeing things all night. I'm not sure of anything anymore." I said in a low voice.

" What did you see?"
"A Red Room, Hands coming to get me, I saw you dead and I saw someone in the bathroom too."

"You saw me dead!" Pranvi was astonished. "What was that like?"
"You were on the floor, your neck slit open and blood everywhere." I answered her as I stuttered.

"Listen, does this have something to do with what happened last year?" She asked. "Because we agreed to never talk of it again.For both of our sake!"

"No,that's not what this is about. I think I might just be tired is all."
"I don't have any water in the room, let's go outside, get some water and some air. It'll be good." She said. I thought it was a good idea, I had been in isolation for far too long. I nodded my head and lifted myself off the chair as Pranvi opened the door. I looked at the clock, it was almost 2 A.M and I felt a great relief to see the passing of time. I realized that it had stopped raining, even the furious wind was now just a gentle breeze. We stepped out the room and saw puddles of water had collected on the stairs with just one cold LED bulb lit to guide our way. The bulb flickered as Pranvi passed it by. "Weird" She exclaimed but we carried on. I couldn't recall the last time I had drunk enough water. I followed Pranvi as she told me to be careful as the light was feeble as we went down the floor. I thought of turning the torch on my phone on but realized that I had left it in my room.
"Pranvi, do you have your phone on you?"
She said no, we held on tightly to the railing so we didn't slip. We took each step measurably and I still wondered if something would jump at me around the corner. Somehow we made it to the ground floor sheepishly, the water cooler was along the central courtyard. It seemed the sky was clearing out and the moon started to shine brightly on Pranvi's face as we stood next to the water cooler. I opened the tap and drank water really fast and wiped my mouth afterwards.
"Don't you want to drink?" I asked Pranvi who kept looking at the moon with a dead gaze. Her eyes seemed like a different colour together and her skin much more pale than it had been moments before.

"What happened Pranvi?" I asked as she stood there unresponsive.
She slowly turned to look at me but it felt like she was looking right through me. Her eyes peeking deep within my soul making me feel almost naked and that's when that unsettling feeling returned. It could have been the breeze coming from the courtyard but it started feeling cold again. I looked around desperately to see if anyone was around.

"When you said before..." Pranvi started speaking, "... that you saw me dead with my throat slit open like a fountain..." That's when I saw it, a scalpel in her hand.

"Did it look something like this?" Pranvi took the scalpel and cut her throat in a smooth and swift motion. The blood splattered all over my face as I screamed in extreme fear. I covered my face to avoid what was in front of me.

"LOOK AT ME!" A loud gravelly echoing voice yelled as my hands went down with a sudden unseen thrust and my eyes forcibly opened. In front of me, a disfigured female body floated about two feet above the ground. Her body completely rotten and skin barely holding on to her disfigured lanky bones. I realized that I wasn't with Pranvi at all. As she got closer and closer to me, slowly revealing herself in the moonlight I started noticing blood and  pus oozing out of several parts of her body, marks around her neck like she had been asphyxiated. She wore a ragged and torn white coat much similar to mine with blood stains and dirt all over which fluttered as got closer. It was her! The fleeting figure I had seen in the bathroom earlier. I was still unable to move my hands and feet, I was in her hold. In a swift movement she came up to me, my body felt severe cold like it was freezing up, my eyes hurt as tears welled up inside them and I could smell the foul odor of the pus from her body making this entity all too real. What was she? She clearly wasn't human but she was there as much as I was. This was no dream. It was as though the whole world had fell silent succumbing to this supernatural being. She drained all the joy from within me and filled me with fear and guilt. Soon the flashes of Sarika started coming, the time she told us about her abusive boyfriend hoping for help, what Pranvi and I did to her, her body hanging from the ceiling and the look of despair on her dead face. In that moment I was living through Sarika feeling everything as she had. I felt the pain of every bruise on her body, every punch in the gut, every slap on her face, the way her boyfriend used to pull her by the hair and drag her across the floor. I felt her helplessness and despondency. I had murdered Sarika over and over again. I was just as rotten as this entity was, perhaps even worse than her. "Stop it!" I screamed as it became unbearable.

The entity laid her hands on my neck and we were back in the red room again. All around me like a dense fog, nothing but red like blood. There was no up or down or sideways. She was strangling me as we floated in the center of a vast red dimension, I felt the pressure increase around my neck with every fleeting second. She looked within my soul with her deadpan face. Soon she would crush my neck with her bare disfigured hands and that would be the end of me, I thought as I looked at her arms and hands. Then I noticed her fingers, the broken nails, the white coat and all of a sudden I realized who she was.
"Sarika, I'm sorry." I said in a weak muffled voice as I struggled to breathe and started to lose consciousness slowly. I had thought this was the end for me but she stopped, she took her hands off me. I coughed but finally started to breathe again.

"Sarika is dead. You killed her! You know what you did, I can feel the guilt rising deep within you. It has been rotting your soul for a long time!" The entity said in a hoarse voice.

"Who are you?" I asked as I held my neck to ease the pain.
"I am a Karmic Curse!" She said. "Born out of the despondency of a pure soul in its final moments to take revenge upon the wretched." I listened carefully, the words coming out of her mouth felt unreal.

"Why did you stop? Finish it, take her revenge! I can't carry this weight anymore, it has killed me everyday for a year. Set me free!" I begged her.

"I was born the moment Sarika died but I was yet to take my final form, I fed upon your guilt and grew stronger. The guilt that kept eating at your souls. The longer you hid the truth, the stronger I got and when your friend's soul was completely rotten, when she could feel no remorse for what she had done, when she truly became a monster, I killed her to exact the revenge but that's all I can do. I can only take revenge, I cannot give justice." I realized the severity of my crime as I broke down.

"But for you it seems, there's still hope. I could kill you right now in a snap but that wouldn't be justice. It wouldn't bring Sarika to peace. Her soul will be stuck in purgatory forever and eventually it will be eaten by creatures you've only seen in your nightmares. You kept your mouth shut when she trusted you and she still pays the price."

"I know." I whimpered. "I know what I have to do, I can get her justice!." I continued as I looked in the entity's eyes.
"You don't have much time, I will be on your tail." She said.
Just like that I was out of the red room standing in the hostel corridor. The lights were back on. I was startled by a loud scream that came from my floor above. I ran to see what had happened, skipping stairs to reach faster. As I got to my floor, I saw a crowd collected outside Pranvi's room. They started to look at me with suspicious and disgust as I slowly walked up to the room. All of them seemingly repelled by me giving way to reveal Pranvi's cold dead body lying in her own blood just the way I had seen it before.

"What have you done?"asked Devika who squatted down next to her body.
"I didn't do it." I said but clearly none of them believed. They knew I was the last person with her or so they thought.

"You don't have much time!" I heard the entity's voice inside my head and so I ran.
"Catch her!" Someone yelled as I ran down the stairs. I didn't know if someone was behind me or trying to catch me, I ran harder than ever. I got out but still had to pass the guards at the main gate. There was no other way, I had to hop the wall over the barbed wire. I carefully looked for the spot that would be the easiest to hop, I took off my grey fluffy sweater to cover the wire and started to lift myself off the ground. Generally, I wouldn't be able to do this but adrenaline took over and I made it to the top of the wall. I pressed down the wire covered by my sweater and started to get down the other side. As I hung from the wall trying to slowly get down, the moisture on the wall from the rain made my hand slip and I fell down. My arm started to bleed from the fall but there was no slowing down, no way out tonight. I got back up. I had to get to the Director's residence since I knew I couldn't get out of the college's premises. I had to confront Pranav, Sarika's boyfriend.

As I ran, I played everything that had happened in a loop, over and over again. I remembered her sitting between me and Pranvi last year completely broken down trying to hide the bruises on her arm.

"It's not the first time, things haven't been right in a long long time." Sarika said clenching her left arm. I remembered not once could she look at our faces, overwhelmed by guilt and abuse. Pranav was the son of Dr. Rajveer Desai, our director. Pranav and Sarika started dating in the second year of college while Pranvi and I were freshers. Pranav hid it pretty well but it was clear that being the director's son and being a below average student was bothersome to say the least. Sarika told us that he would always lash out but over the next two years he stumbled into a drug addiction and things got worse." He would stay out of it for most of the time and if  I tried to help him, he would push me aside or even hit me." Sarika said as tears started rolling down her eyes. We all knew something was up between them and frankly nobody liked Pranav but nobody said anything, I didn't say anything either.
"Have you told Director sir about it?" Pranvi asked.
"Yes, he knows but he's not going to do anything about it. He told me to keep my mouth shut. I can't go against him, I have too much to lose." She exclaimed. " He knew about my family, where I come from so he made me get him drugs for extra money and I really needed the money. It was fun at first, exhilarating even, hanging out with him getting high and it was just me and him but he was addicted. You'd see him and he would barely be conscious and when he was conscious he was desperate. He would scream, lash out and hit me.  I was afraid of him, he wouldn't let me go. If I said no or tried to avoid him, he would reach my home and threaten me." She finally revealed the bruises on her arm, multiple marks of put out cigarette butts.
"He said if I didn't do it he would tell his father that I was a peddler and get me rusticated. I let it be and that was my mistake. One day Rajveer sir caught us in their home, it was pretty clear what was going on. Pranav was passed out on his bed, his eyes rolled up and I was wiping my lips to clean the blood gushing out of it. He called me to his study and told me that his son was a shame but his son nonetheless." She stopped, the fear in her eyes was visible. The Director told her that he wasn't going to let her destroy the empire he had built from scratch, he wouldn't let her tarnish his families name or his future. If she kept shut, she could keep studying in the college. She could get a degree and put this behind her otherwise he could end her career without hesitation and no other college would be willing to accept her. This was the deal they made and the power dynamics were pretty clear!

It was obvious the abuse went on, the harassment went on and she couldn't do anything about it. The entire time she looked at her feet but the only time she looked at us was when she asked us to help her. Desperation was eating away at her, the bags under her eyes gave her away. I told her that she should start documenting her bruises, take pictures as evidence which I had seen in a TV show. It was obvious that if she went public, she would lose a lot more but she just wanted the abuse to stop. She was putting all her faith in us. Over the next few days, she started documenting everything, collecting evidence and she gave it to us to keep it safe. We were going to take it to police who would hopefully launch an investigation but we didn't do that. Pranvi came to my room the next morning before the class.
"I don't think we should take the evidence to the police." She said.
"What are you talking about?" I was startled.

"Listen! If we take this to the police, Sarika loses everything and there's probable chance that she takes us down with her."
"Pranvi she has trusted us!"
"She's a junkie Mehr just like Pranav. She probably doesn't have a future anyway but we don't ruin our career for her." Pranvi said trying to convince me. I brushed her off and told her that I needed to get to class.

My mind spiraled, I kept thinking about what Pranvi said the entire course of the lecture. In deeply twisted way it made sense to me. Sarika came from a well reputed family of doctors, her mom and dad and other relatives were all doctors, her career was decided when she was born. Sure she had a lot to lose, her entire family's reputation for one but I never had anything to begin with. I was a below average student who worked hard and still struggled to get the passing marks and came from a lower middle class family who didn't have much money either. I sought Pranvi after the class and went over what we should do. We went to the director's office to confront him.

"You think you can blackmail me! I will make your life miserable!" He yelled but we weren't deterred.
"Listen everybody knows about Pranav, he's a lost cause but you still can lose your reputation, your status and your position." Pranvi said as I looked at her face. Rajveer sir looked at the photos on his table probably considering his options.

"I think we can make a deal that can benefit us mutually." He said.
"We most certainly can." I said with a straight face.

So we made a deal. In exchange for keeping our mouth shut he would ensure us a smooth sail through remaining years of the college and other perks such as scholarships and exam papers in advance. All we had to do was hand over the evidence and never mention of it again. We thought it to be the best option. What else could he possibly to do to Sarika other than rusticating her,  family money would buy her several other options. Thinking that, we receded back into our shells and slept comfortably looking forward to a comfortable future. The next day they were pulling Sarika's dead corpse from the ceiling fan with drugs scattered on her table. Pranvi and I looked at each other knowing what we had done and what had happened. There was no evidence against the director or Pranav and even if there was, nothing would become of it. Over the year that feeling of fear and guilt started to fade away, we no longer thought about what would happen to us not knowing what was coming our way!

I ran not knowing what to do, it didn't seem like anyone was following me but perhaps that entity was always beside me. This was the only chance I could get. It was either justice or that I get ripped to shreds. I decided to steal the evidence that the director must have hidden somewhere in his house, I just had to find it. I couldn't go through the main gate, the security would be much more there so I had to find another way around from the back. I broke open a window to the study room very carefully and got inside. The study was probably where the photographs most probably would be. Most of the lights in the house were off as they would be late at night but the living room and the study were still dimly lit, enough to snoop around but not to describe it. I took a look around trying to figure out where to start. I decided to start with the cupboard that was receiving the most light. I opened it and saw a bunch of documents and some books as I started rummaging through the files and the folders.

"Looking for this?" I heard a voice coming from behind me. I turned around to see a figure sitting in the middle of the room. It was the director holding the photographs, I could see as he clicked is lighter and lit the photographs on fire. There was no other way, I thought. The room started to fill with the smell of burning plastic.

"Your classmates called me as soon as you ran away. I thought if she can kill her friend, she will definitely come for me or these." He gestured at the burning photographs.

"I didn't kill her but you did kill Sarika." I said in a firm voice.

" There's no proof so it didn't happen. She committed suicide as everybody knows!"

"Pranav is the proof." I said. "He'll confess."

"Pranav is dead! His body is in the room, I slit his neck and he's currently lying in a pool of his own blood." He said it like it was no big deal. " What a poor excuse for a son! He was probably going to OD himself to death anyway, I did him a favour." He added.

"How could you? To your own son!" I exclaimed in fear and agony.

"I didn't! You did. You broke into my house after you had already killed your friend in her room and then you killed my son. MBBS drives students crazy all the time! That's what they'll see. I've already called the police, they'll be here any moment."

 I looked out the window from which I had sneaked in and wondered if I should run for it and just then the police sirens started ringing, they were close by. Even if I had run, I wouldn't get too far. I realized that I was facing a monster and that the only way out was through

"You have no idea what's coming for you. You should give yourself to the police and you might just save your soul." The sirens were really close now and there was no way to hide.

"What is coming for me?" He asked jokingly pretending to be scared.
"The thing that got me here, the thing that killed Pranvi. The Karmic Curse!" His eyes widened in disbelief as he looked at me. I could hear footsteps approaching the main door.

"Wow! You really have gone mad. Should have just focused on your studies beta!" He said mockingly as I sat down and crossed my legs in the middle of his study room waiting for the police to arrest me.

"In here!" Screamed the director as the police entered through the door. "Oh God! She's gone crazy. She's killed my son!" He said as the tears started rolling through his eyes. Was this all in vain? Would there be no justice after all? The police finally took hold of me and dragged me out of the house and into the jeep. The sirens started ringing again and soon we were out of the campus. In a way, I was a criminal too and maybe this was what I deserved. The entity had given me a chance and I failed, perhaps this is how things ended for me. I knew Sarika's soul would now get consumed in the purgatory. I had failed her again! Everything else was a blur, the jail, my parents, the court hearing, the media went into a frenzy labeling me a psychopath. I was sent to an institution for mentally ill for the rest of my life. I would sit in my room with white walls,  on a white bed sheet and in white clothes. I didn't know anything else. At night I would beg the entity to kill me but nobody would answer. I would've taken the red room if it meant saving Sarika's soul from eternal damnation. The director had gotten away unscathed. There will be justice, I kept telling myself. Then one day I realized that somebody's revenge could be another's justice! My revenge could be Sarika's justice! I slit my throat with the knife I stole from the kitchen. My blood started spurting out on the white sheets creating a beautifully deranged painting of death. That's the last thing I saw. RED!