Chapter 6

“Son, are you ok? Son! Son!”

“What?! Who?! Dad?!” Anshul woke up in alarm and then asked, “Where’s the forest?”

Anshul looked around and instead of lush green trees or cliff-faces or the smell of nature, there was only a dark alley, five white sheets spread covering something further away from where he lay, a few kids who seemed to be looking at him, though he couldn’t be sure of it and the smell of dampness and rot smothering him.

He looked up sideways at the voice that had called him “son” earlier.

It was a middle-aged man with a bushy moustache and an indulgent smile but with a little crease between his brows showed worry. “I’m not your father, son. Your parents have been called, your father will be here shortly. But what is this forest you are talking about? Also, I’m sorry to be asking this at such a sensitive time, but can you tell me if there were more of them?”

Sensitive time? More of them? What does he mean? What is he even talking about? Anshul just stared in a bewildered manner up at him.

“Are you disturbing the patient already? I told you not to!” A voice came from behind the boy.

“But-” Bushy moustache tried to say but was cut off as Anshul felt himself being wrapped up in a blanket.

“He was knocked out. He must have been dreaming, leave it.”

A lean man wearing glasses and in a white coat became visible as he strode from Anshul’s side to stand beside the man with the bushy moustache.

He smiled softly and said, “Don’t worry about it, kid. I’m sure that you are surprised but it’s okay. You are in shock. By the way, this is Inspector Garjan and I’m Dr. Arpachshad. You are safe now.”

Police? Safe? What happened to me?

That’s when he noticed the sheets again...five long rectangular sheets which covered something with many ups and downs and then his gaze caught sight of the kids at the edge of the alley again. As his eyes had become used to the dim light, he spotted a kid wearing bandana gazing curiously at him with concerned etched onto his face.

Varun…he remembered. The kid who was acting like a pirate and warned everyone about the tiger. Then suddenly various images flooded in…Varun standing in a dank alley acting exactly as Anshul had seen him do in the forest, Varun napping with his head Anshul’s lap, Varun making faces at Nia...

Suddenly something hit with a lot of force and he was gripped in a tight embrace while a young voice shouted in his ears at the top of her lungs, “Bhaiyya!!!”

Looking downwards at his side he saw the young girl called Nagisa clinging tightly to him and he stroked her head softly with his left hand. “It’s okay,” Anshul murmured, “I’m okay. The tiger didn’t get me.”

“The tiger?” Nia asked looking up at him.

But Anshul wasn’t listening to her. The images that had started flowing in when he had seen bandana guy rushed in even more quickly as he saw Nia. But as he remembered those green human-like eyes of the tiger, a primal fear suffused him as even more bits and pieces flowed in.

“No…no...no…n-no…this can’t be true,”

He murmured to himself as he remembered a boy around the same age as him wearing crooked, rimless glasses- Matthew, standing in front him, smiling and suddenly, a fountain of blood bursting from the side of his head. Then the girl with dyed hair, Avni walking up to where he had been standing and the same happened to her. After that, Dae who had a heart tattoo and whose eyes bulged out in pain. Finally. Aroon whose buck teeth seemed to sink into the skin below his lip as he rocked violently when the blood erupted.

Struggling to stand up and sensing a flaring pain in his left leg which he ignored, Anshul stumbled towards those white sheets while he heard voices telling him to stop from behind.

Reaching those sheets, he fell down onto his knees on the hard concrete and with a shaking hand, pulled back the covering...and saw the still face of Matthew, he wasn’t wearing his glasses, his eyes closed but it was clear that he was dead.

Trembling, Anshul crawled to the next sheet and pulled back the cover to see the unmistakable face of Avni, her brightly dyed hair neatly spread around her pale face.

The next uncovered sheet yielded the face of Dae with her exotic heart-shaped tattoo; she seemed at peace.

The fourth sheet, when pulled back, allowed Anshul to gaze at Aroon’s face whose buck-teeth had really punctured his skin and a very thin line of blood flowed down towards his chin from the miniature wound.

With trembling fingers, Anshul wiped the blood from his friend’s face, because Aroon had been his friend. As had been all of the others. He realized it because finally, his memories had come back.

Raising his eyes, he looked at the final sheet. He knew who was under there but he had to see for himself. Pushing himself through the ground, he got within reach of the final sheet and grabbing an edge pulled it away...revealing the face a man with a close-cropped beard, a scar running from under his left eye to his chin. As Anshul pulled back his eyelid with shaking fingers, he saw a bright green eye without the light of life shining in them staring at...no, through him.