Scream

The Scream…

Preface:

He sat up on the bed with a gasp, eyes wide open. Drenched in sweat, his breath came in quick, short spasms. The flimsy bed sheet became crumpled between his tightly clenched fingers and allowed itself to be pulled around the figure that now sat still in the middle of the single bed shivering in terror at what he had just heard. He tried to speak, to reassure himself with his own voice, but nothing would come out. As he tried to slow down the frantic beating of his heart, he thought about what he had just heard. He shivered and closed his eyes.


The scream always came to him in the middle of the night from the depths of lumber like a shining silver arrow from the darkness, looming up and piercing the heart in that one blinding moment. Kiron had faced mortal terror many times at ragging sessions and gang fights during his engineering days, but the scream was different. It always left him frightened, tortured and numb. As far as Kiron remembered, it had come to him since childhood and kept coming at him occasionally after every 3 years or so. Earliest memories of such experiences ended with Kiron howling and crying and his mother taking him to her bosom and calming him down. Through the years, the intensity of the scream increased and haunted Kiron more. Numerous visits to neurologists and psychiatrists had not helped him in the least. The blood-curdling scream had come back to him last night.


“Was it a girl screaming or a boy?” asked Laila twisting Kiron’s curls around her finger. A beautiful girl in her twenties, Laila was born and brought up in a slum. She had realized at a very early age that her body is going to buy her all those beautiful things in the world that her education or most importantly, circumstances never would. Kiron had met her six months back through a friend and kept visiting her as an occasional customer. It was her question that took Kiron completely off guard. “You know, now when I come to think of it, I have never really thought about it.” Kiron said thoughtfully. It was strange how important and meaningful thoughts come out and get discussed in the dark corners of some dimly lit room in some dark alley. “It’s tough to understand really, I don’t know, may be a woman or a child.” Kiron added, recalling the voice that he hears every time. “But I don’t think it has got anything to do with, ghosts or my previous birth, or any such stupid stuff.” Kiron stated matter of factly and with a slight smile thinking about his childhood best friend Rana’s reaction when he had told him. “Oh god, Kiron, I think you had been murdered in your previous birth by a tall, evil looking man and it was you, who had screamed just before you died!” he had exclaimed with rounded eyes adding that the evil man in the current birth is their school headmaster and Kiron ought to murder him and take revenge! “Don’t try to know the cause of the scream, Kiron” Laila said jerking Kiron off from his memories. “I have grown up hearing such screams in reality in these dark alleys all around me, screams of torture, terror and of a shattered dream or hope that one may have had. People like you can do something to stop these screams, you know. Maybe then you would find peace.” Laila said getting up from the bed with a sigh and arranging the room for her next customer.

Another rainy day three years later….

28 year old Kiron Sharma walked beside Ron Starns in quick strides, following the police team on the lane that led to Gulma Parvat - The site of yet another probable child sacrifice on the outskirts of Rashanpur village in Uttar Pradesh. During the forty minutes trek upward to the other side of the plateau, the memory of Laila saying ‘you can stop the screams’ flashed in front of his eyes. The scream had come to him once again two days back and this time with an intensity so high that Kiron had felt a sudden urgency, as if he had come closer to the screaming victim, as if he had to do something, something quickly or he’s going to lose something precious, as if its his last chance.

Three years back, Laila had been murdered by a drunk and angry client. Out of sheer grief Kiron had tried to act according to Laila’s last wish and had joined an NGO named Woman and child Rescue Action Group, involved in rescuing operations from household torture, slums, red light areas, natural disaster and the like. He had started by teaching these rescued children in his spare time but slowly when he started knowing about their field rescue operations in different parts of India, it surprised him to realize that these operations interested him way too much and he decided to join the NGO full time.

The team of twenty led by Kiron and Ron consisted of WCRAG volunteers and reporters, which now followed the police team. It was a part of the country where child abductions were on the rise, which were mainly for occult rituals rather than for money. For a former software engineer, it was shocking to realize that in remote, poverty-stricken villages of his country, children are tortured and killed in the name of sacrifice.

He was jerked out of his thoughts by Inspector Raghavan. “We have to be quick, he doesn’t yet know we are here and I’ll need all the men that we have, right now!” he hissed in a deep an urgent voice. “What do you want us to do?” Kiron asked giving a swift glance to their positions and the entrance to the cave. “Something is going on inside, we don’t have much time, we go in together. We’ll do our part, I want you to follow but make sure the reporters don’t come in our way. Rush to the child as soon as possible, ok?” Raghavan started moving forward as soon as these words were out.

The gruesome scene which met their eyes as they went in would forever be imprinted in their minds. On one side, two bamboo sticks rooted to the earth floor had the 8 year old boy tied a foot above the ground. Just beneath him, a fire had been lit. All around there were objects of the ritual strewn across the floor, flowers, incense, human bones, etc. The ‘Tantrik’ had his back to the cave entrance and was stooping down to pick up something when the entire team ran inside. For the first few moments there was a pause… then the Tantrik reeled around, clutching whatever he had stooped to pick up. Kiron had halted when he saw the child. He assumed that the unconscious boy was drugged but feared that it may also be from torture. He couldn’t be sure from this distance. He still had his limbs and his eyes or nose did not seem to be gorged out as was common before such black magic rituals. In that fraction of a second the tantrik hurled the powdered substance from his hand into the fire and lurched diagonally across towards another cave opening in a frantic attempt to escape. In a split second Raghavan and his squad were after him, there was a chaos as they had to jump and run over the ritual objects and the reporters backtracked to give them way. In all this, Kiron was the only one who realized that the powder had converted the fire to giant leaping flames. With horror he looked at the flesh burning on the boy’s legs. He tried to run forward but was halted by the running pillar of troops going to his right. He scrambled to get past them and the myriad objects on the floor, but couldn’t. On and off through the figures and the tears of helplessness in his eyes he saw the burnt flesh coming off from the child’s lower part of the legs. He was completely conscious now writhing in unbearable pain and Kiron realized that if he didn’t reach him in the next few seconds he would not survive. With a voice screaming ‘you can stop their screams’ in his head, Kiron hurled himself in a frantic lurch forward to reach the half burnt child. His foot got caught and he tripped and fell inches to the fire, knee first on the floor and heard it snap. With one last scream of effort, he got up, flames licking his shirt sleeves; he reached the bamboo stick and fell on it putting his entire weight. The last thing he remembered before becoming unconscious was that the boy was underneath him, safe, and Ron’s helping hand and a lot of voices all around.

Afterword:

The screams never came back