Chasing Death

Chapter 31

"Villains and heroes are created by the one who narrates the story. Who knows what the real truth is?"

🖤🖤🖤

"Password please," a feminine voice answered the big brass door on which Mrithun had knocked.

That place was a real maze, with rows and rows of corridors lined with such brass doors. It was like an entire colony of people living in their own quarters. However, the passages were stashed against each other with little space in between, and I suspected those doors were some kind of gateway to rooms below the ground level.

"Matarisvan," Mrithun said smoothly.

"Oh, I know that voice!" The lady's cheerful voice sounded before I heard the groan of machinery and the door suddenly vanished, leaving behind a flimsy curtain, on the other side of which was a curvaceous silhouette of a woman. A pair of chestnut hands parted the white curtains slowly.

I almost screamed.

Half of her face was gone, gone behind swathes of skin folds, charred and blackened beyond recognition. Her eyelid on one side was drooping over her half-opened eye, and a crisscross of scars ran over each other as if competing for space on her face. The burn mark, however, wasn't only on her face. The skin on her neck and both her hands were wrinkled, too. But the smile on those lips was unmistakably sweet.

When she smiled, I noticed pointed canines that slipped harmlessly in and out of her thick brown lips. Realizing that I was gawking, I lowered my eyes to not appear rude.

"Long time no see," she beamed at Mrithun, her eyes flicking over to me once before resting on Mrithun again, visibly confused. She crinkled her nose and sniffed the air.

"You brought a snack for the Pishachas?" She blinked at me again. I stiffened my back, balling up my hands into fists.

"She's a human born Yakshini," Mrithun said quickly.

"Oh!" The lady still stared at me.

"Come in you both. It's not safe for her to stay out here chitchatting. It's the fourteenth day of the waning moon. They're out prowling." There was a warning in her doe-like kohl-lined eyes. Dark circles and purplish marks now adorned the sides of her eyes, but it seemed like once she could have been really pretty.

"Who are they outside?" I asked suddenly.

The woman turned to me, studying me with interest.

"Your doom," she replied finally.

"What?" I asked Mrithun.

"The Pisachas, Danavas, Chedikes and all the creatures of the darkness are out tonight. It's Bhoot Chaturdashi, the fourteenth day of Krishna Paksha," Mrithun explained, before taking my hand and dragging me over the threshold.

We were in a tiny room, lit by a single burning torch on a metal holder. The door we came by had already vanished and there was only a blank wall.

"This place is such a contrast to the offices and everything," I wondered out loud.

"It's because in this place we still prefer the old ways and won't let it get modernised," the woman informed, moving to an old wooden door, with wood chipping off in layers at places. It was slightly ajar and I could see only darkness on the other side. She opened the panes wider and clicked her fingers. Immediately torches lit up in the dark, showing a set of steep stairs melting into the dark. "Welcome to my humble home."

Her beaded necklace and chunky earrings jingled as she shuffled down the steps. Mrithun beckoned for me to follow as he came last, closing and locking the wooden door after him.