Time was 10.50PM. “..aaaaah….cheeeew..Ahhh..aa..!” Pema whimpered in agony for the third time. It was a chain reaction which had begun couples of minutes ago. An hour ago,he had gulped down two tablets of aspirin to relieve himself from his rising body temperature. The viral intrusion of cough and cold had been tormenting him for a month then. He saw his two roommates fast asleep. The cypress trees outside his windows were moaning as if in distress because of the wind and rain that was lashing relentlessly in the night. “..aaaaah….cheeeew..aaaaah..ooofff..!’ He cried out in pain as he swallowed what little saliva drained on his parched tongue. Beads of sweat drenched his brow and neck. His cheekbones seemed to protrude out and the eyes were sunken into the sockets. His face was a shadow of the yellow wall.
It was Pema’s first year at Sherubtse College. In the beginning he attended classes regularly but lately he had been missing most of his science classes as his illness worsened with escalating fever. Outside, the lightening flared and thundered reverberated across the murky sky. The lights went off all of a sudden shrouding the mid-May night in total darkness. Almost instantly the college dogs began to howl as if reminding the college electrician for immediate attention. Pema’s childhood aversion to darkness made him cringe into the blankets. He felt that a sinister being was coming towards him and even heard the door creak open. He felt an eerie coldness sweep over his feverish muscles. He called out to his snoring roommate Dorji, ‘ Dorji, dorji; is that you?’ There was no answer. The pitch dark room weighed heavily on him. Pema had become so weak that it was difficult to think logically about any matter.
A minute later, nature call beckoned him at the unexpected hour. Though scared, he did not want to wake his friends and make a fool of himself. He sat up, mumbling an incomplete prayer, ‘Om ah hung benzar guru… Om ah hung benzar guru…” With a blanket shrouding over him he searched for the match box on his disorganized table. He wished he had been more scrupulous in maintaining the decorum of the study table. The search was taking years! He felt that something was desperately clawing at him from the rear. He reassured his manly presence as he ran his hands on through the table. When his fingers caught the match box it was a relief of a century. As he fiddled for the match sticks he realized there were only few in it. Lighting the first match stick he quickly walked to the door and opened it ajar. A blast of cold wind welcomed him instantly. The stick burnt into his finger tips. Its last cinders fell on the soggy door-mat. He looked across the corridor just as the lightning flashed to dispel the darkness momentarily.
From the far end of the corridor a phantom figure was gliding towards him noiselessly. He became stiff and held on the door very hard. He could neither bring himself to pull another match stick nor return into the room. His fingers trembled as he managed to light the second match stick for a second. The figure was still gliding towards him! His heart froze. Million goose bumps rose, wave after wave numbing his sinews. “ The night watch man-” An instinct told him. It was another healing relief.
Another bolt of lightning flared. The figure was no more in the corridor. A nameless fear gripped him again. The sky rumbled like an old dying lioness. “May be the watchman went out of the entrance to his lodge..” he mused, assuring and convincing himself before he collapsed. Striking alight another match stick, mustering his masculine bravery, he staggered briskly towards the latrine at the far end of the corridor. It burnt out just as he reached the latrine door. As he relieved himself from the door he lit the last match stick hoping the blizzard would not put it off for god’s sake. A minute later he was running towards the room with the tiny glow at his finger tips. Closing the door behind him he closed his eyes and prayed again his incomplete mantra. The fluorescent wall clock was the only light in the room. He wished that those green lights could flourish throughout the room. It was just quarter past eleven.
The rain began to stop just as the crescent moon appeared from behind the nimbus clouds. A cool luminescence pervaded Pema’s room as well. He was about to get into bed when he heard a distinctive ‘tak,tak ,tik, tak’ from the corridor outside. “Dogs” he thought. Then there was a irregular disturbance on the door itself, “tap,tap,tap.” He was beginning to believe what he heard. He tried to wake his friends but both words and voice failed him. “What if it is something stupid?” he said to himself. It was a tussle between ingrained conventional superstition and his academic science logic for place of truth and reputation.
Though weak and perspiring he approached the door and slowly pulled at the door knob. He peeped through the door. There was nothing. This time ‘nothingness’ brought him to his wildest senses! His heart pounded in his chest, hair stood on its end as he felt himself swooning into blackness. His legs stiffened and it would not budge or so he prognosticated. With the last of his strength he turned and ran to the refuge of his bed. It was a battle with death itself as he floated on to his bed in a dazed state. Then silence prevailed thereafter.
“Aaaa…chooow.” Pema coughed incessantly before he opened his sleepy eyes. It was morning. The bulbs were glaring orange. His two friends rose up wishing him ‘good morning.’ Dorji asked him if he was better. He nodded lazily. He sat up and looked around wondering if it was a dream. A reminiscent premonition gripped him when he saw drops of blood on the floor leading towards the door. His friends were equally bewildered. “Where did the blood come from?’ Rabten, his other friend, asked. Pema checked his hands guiltily. There was no injury. Pema wondered if he actually saw and heard the nightly visitor, the enigmatic spirit. Even as he brooded on it he stood up to go outside. An excruciating pain exploded from his left knee. “Aaaaooooouuuuuch,” he whimpered, grimacing grotesquely as the nerves fired the pain throughout the body. Lethargic Rabten sprang towards Pema for help assuming Pema had collapsed. On Pema’s knee was a deep slash wound, swollen purple and coagulated with brown curd-like blood. Then he realized where the injury came from. While fleeing from the spirit of the night,almost swooning, he had hit the sharp edge of the steel wardrobe by the door. Rabten and Dorji assisted him to bed once again.
When Dorji opened the door out to let the cool morning air in, just outside the door, a sick dog lay on the soggy foot mat fast asleep and near it was a piece of fleshless thigh bone the dog had nibbled on earlier that night much to the curiosity of them all.
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