I woke up mumbling a foreign language... the sudden panic attacks, anxiety, and pain from the drips.
Being in an asylum for 3 months had an extra toll on my mind than my mysterious encounters...
But no other way as life would accept it... living in my own house was a nightmare... Things shattering, visions of shadows, mumbling voices, and the last straw was the foreign language scribblings I saw floating in the air...
Psychologists, group therapists, friend circle... everyone had declared me a lunatic....to them, there were no such things as ghosts or spirits, only hallucinations of the mind...
Even I was half convinced... My uneasiness, and increasingly sudden wake-ups at midnight had petrified me to the extent that I had even tried to cut my eyelashes so sleep wouldn't engulf me anymore...
I knew I was going to extremes, but trying to comprehend the scribblings in the air, that floated around me, I had searched Google for more than half my days trying to comprehend the language or understand the meaning...
I had started jotting them down on the walls of the house... journal, newspaper, anyplace I found... any word I remembered for they floated way too fast for my mind to capture an image of that foreign language....
I wished I had never been to that graveyard, as I pondered about it, the nurse came in, giving me the familiar sympathetic look, she added more morphine to my drip and submissively lay down closing my eyes, trying to co-operate and fall asleep...
Two weeks later, as I was discharged, I lay in bed again, the thought of any more adventure in this house was enough horror in itself...
I looked at the pile of newspapers, thrown every day while I was away and attempted to pick them up, my back pained from the effort of lying too long on the bed, which had given me bed soars and more muscular pain than relief.
As I shifted through the pile, and browsed casually, a picture of soldiers in Tehran, involved in an army mission, holding gums and bleeding, caught my attention... I decisively looked away... but, Tehran was the place Dad had visited last... How could I not have searched for the local language...
Drawn and pulled between the anxiety of not immersing myself in the haunted story world and having no other option to get rid of the floating scribblings, I opened my laptop, tried to install the board, and typed varied words in unknown language, just as I saw...
Locket, wish, letter, ring...
These four were the words I comprehended...
More than any excitement of being able to decide, I was happy at the thought that I wasn't that delusional...
Maybe there was a missing link, something I wasn't able to make sense of... there was a message for me, maybe from Dad...
Weeks of torture, made me resonate with the plight of soldiers in the war picture I saw...I broke down...
As I thought about it, the words had to be connected, as for the letter, no one had found Dad's last note ...
Wish, maybe it was his wish that I understood the message, as for the locket and ring, I was clueless...
I wiped my tears down and resolved to visit the graveyard that evening once again...
Everything had begun from there, there had to be a clue... I couldn't suffer all my life...
I took out the camouflage bag from the trunk and looked inside, The pocket watch pouch was still there, I put a candle, a matchstick to pay homage to the deceased, a torch, and the old photo album in it...
Praying to the scribblings now even...
The fateful evening as I stepped out with the backup, I realised it was a moonless night, just as the previous one....
As I hastily reached the graveyard, I tried to switch on the torch button, but it wouldn't work...
Thankfully candle was my rescue, religiously I prayed for things to fall into place and lit it.... I checked around the graveyard for any inscriptions or writings and then tried to sift through the dusty place with my bare hands, I found a flower blooming nearby, it wasn't there the lady time, I hopeful... A good omen, I swept my hands all across the grave, maybe I would find the pocket watch at least, but something sharp cut my right thumb...
As blood dropped, I quickly put the candle on one side. I tried examining my wound, but the sign the blood drops had made, caught my attention more...
Forgetting my pain momentarily I looked closer...it was the symbol I had often seen floating around me...why didn't I search for this one!!!
I clicked a picture of the blood-made mark and prayed to the graveyard, I picked up my backpack, left the candle lit there, and headed back home ...
Forgetting about dressing the wound, I opened my laptop on reaching home, staining it with blood and dirt, I searched for the meaning of that symbol...
It meant something akin to coming closer...
Not comprehending what I had to get closer to, my first reaction was to go and visit my dad's place of death... I had to go Tehran...how else was I to get any more closer...
As panic attacks seized me again, I realised I was overworking my body and mind again...
I took out my pill box, took my medication, washed my hands, and dressed my wound...the drippings of blood on the floor all made a flower-like image...
I was being called, I knew.... what had I missed, I couldn't return to the graveyard that night I knew that the flowers, and marks would get erased like everything the next morning...
I searched for the symbol of the picture by scanning it on Google... Thanking the technology it was of a rare flower, that grew exclusively in the hills of Kashmir...
Mom's birthplace... there was nothing that could console me now...
Torn between where to visit first, I re-looked at the blood flowers on the floor, they pointed towards outside...
I re-looked at the newspaper article, I had seen in the morning, the war was on, they wouldn't allow me a visit to Tehran yet, I supposed....
Maybe mom would guide me...I hoped for it... All the signals were pointing towards Kashmir...
I decided to visit the place, marked the hillside map, where those flowers grew, and took a long breath...
Something inside me told me that I had to rush... My whole family, my dad, my mom, all were signaling.
Resolving that howsoever maniac this might appear I wouldn't land in the asylum again, but rather try to get closer to the messages of the spirit world...
Kashmir, I was coming, mum is calling... I said to myself and peacefully slept off that night.
Continued in the next chapter...