The Last Mission

It is eight o’clock in the night. Mr. Gupta is looking at the city of Mussoorie in the Himalayas from a height of 500 ft. above the city. He is standing on a road encircling a small mountain. No house or building is visible now, but the faint beams of light from residences, shops, and street lights are flickering through the thick blanket of fog and mist, signaling the presence of humans in this remote part of the world. The Night has robbed Mussoorie of its scenic beauty. The night brings equality in the world and the day-inequality. There is no beautiful, ugly, or average looking thing in the night. The day is responsible for all the differences and inequalities in the world.

Mr. Gupta is a loner. He has no close friends or family besides his passion for ghosts. He stays at haunted places alone for a night and documents everything that he experiences there in a book. He has visited almost all the most haunted places in India but never encountered anything supernatural. Today, he is in Mussoorie to complete his last mission.

The sky is becoming cloudy now, with the moon playing hide and seek in the dark clouds. The rain comes unexpectedly in the mountainous areas. It starts raining in a few minutes. Mr. Gupta takes out his raincoat from his bag and starts walking down the road. His mission has got interrupted by an uninvited guest, so he decides to come back tomorrow. His hotel is some 3 hours’ drive from his mission area. It will take him more than 5 hours to reach his destination on foot. Anyways, he keeps on walking.

Seeing a lanky, stooping man, wrapped in a thick blanket at the road curve, Mr. Gupta came to a halt, chest heaving. “Halt!” he cried to the man going further away. The man stops for a while and then turns around. Mr. Gupta reaches the man, running.

 “Is there any place nearby where I can stay tonight?” inquires Mr. Gupta.

‘’Umm… there is no such place here, but you can stay at my place which is a few meters away from here,’’ answers the man in a low tone.

“Oh, sure! It will be very kind of you. I can’t thank you much,” replies Mr. Gupta with a sigh of relief.

“Don’t mention it. Let’s go now,” says the man, staring at Mr. Gupta. Both of them resume walking.

There stands a small hut wrapped in fog, with the occasional thump of the rain and the chirping of crickets. “I wonder how anyone can live in such a lonely place,” Mr. Gupta mused to himself while entering the hut.

“Put yourself at ease! Let me get you some tea. You must be feeling cold man,” says the man and goes to another walled section of the hut.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gupta gets seated himself on a dusty, small cot, swinging his legs mindlessly. Suddenly, one of his legs hits something very soft beneath the cot. He bends down and sees something that leaves him chilly and horrified. For a few seconds, his vision goes blurry.

With the scavengers lined up lies a corpse outright similar to the man who has just gone to make some tea. The corpse was one-hundred percent similar to the man. Also, the continuous flow of blood from the dusty mouth of the corpse was filling the appetite of heavy bats and other small creatures. How can blood flow from a dead body? How is it possible?

Many questions pop up in the mind of Mr. Gupta. He wants to run away from the hut, but it seems as if he has lost control of his legs. The night is getting darker. He strains his eyes peering into the gloom. He sees a point of light, from a faraway place, coming towards the hut. It comes closer and closer, enlarging itself. No, it was not a point of light but the same man holding an unusually big candle. The man enters the hut once again and disappears into the other section of the hut. There are not two persons in the hut. There is one more. Somebody is sitting in the darkest corner of the hut, left to Mr. Gupta. It is an old lady, with hair covering the whole of her face. She cannot be seen properly, but occasional lightning in the sky makes her visible for a fraction of a second. No, there are not three persons in the hut. Somebody is lying on the cot as well, just behind Mr. Gupta. Mr. Gupta is losing his consciousness now, and finally, he falls down on the floor. Everything has gone black in front of his eyes.

It is morning now. A crowd has thronged the place from where Mr. Gupta was looking at the city the last night. The dead body of a tourist is lying there. Police officers are trying to know the identity of the tourist. They find an identity card in the pocket of the dead body, and it reads “Mr. Shyam Kumar Gupta (Paranologist)”. There is a man who has been staring at the throng for a long time. He is lanky and stooping and wrapped in a thick blanket. He smiles and starts walking down the road.

Image courtesy- gettyimages.in