Chapter 7

Garv was freaked out. He started having nightmares, and after such an encounter, who wouldn’t? He didn’t know what to do and where to seek peace. That Samantha woman was a witch! She had pricked blood out of him and created a Voodoo doll with her freakish mojo and now he was helpless. No matter in which corner of the world he migrates, she would possess the power to kill him.

He thought to talk about it to the college dean so he could peek into the matter but then that would involve talking with Samantha, and if she would be irritated, she could end his life. Her mysterious house was already all upon his nerves. He couldn’t get the thoughts of that rotating lobby and twelve changing paintings out from his head. His life had become a mess since the day he entered Kolkata.

Garv decided to be as normal as possible and started his daily routine at the college without any special acts. He didn’t talk to others much. He had started suspecting everybody to be involved in black magic and occult practises. Of course, it’s very difficult to believe anybody once you’ve been ditched and so was the case with Garv. He had never imagined Samantha to be involved in such dark practises.

It was a regular day in college and Samantha was taking a lecture in her department that her purse vibrated. She thought it to be her phone, so she ignored it and concentrated on the class, but the vibration continued to disturb her and she opened her purse. It was her phone. The call was from Home Science department. A female teacher had called her as Dean was not present in the college. Two men were horribly fighting in the corridor and somebody needed to control them.

Garv had picked a fight with one of the lab assistants of his department. The guy was smoking cigarettes in the corridor and Garv asked him to smoke elsewhere to which he outraged. Garv politely requested him, but the guy wasn’t in a mood to listen. He was on drugs too. Garv warned the guy that he would complain to the principle but the lab assistant was immovable. He openly challenged Garv to go and complain against him, and Garv’s students were surrounding him at that moment. The fragile girls requested him to walk out as the guy was a chain-smoker and listened to nobody. At the request of his students and his failed attempts at moving the guy elsewhere, Garv decided to retaliate and hit the guy. He couldn’t take his insult up his sleeve, so he slapped the lab-assistant to which the lab assistant also reacted equally angrily. The girls ran around screaming and calling for help, but Garv was adamant.

In a moment, Samantha reached there and saw Garv fighting with the guy. She smiled at a distance and made no attempt to help them out, rather like a mute spectator, enjoyed the scenario. Some girls requested Samantha to help them stop the fight, but she nodded saying that she had some reputation and she couldn’t destroy it by stepping into cheap tactics like this. Carefully observing the fight, Samantha decided to add some fun elements into it. She opened her bag and picked up the voodoo doll. Then she noticed the areas in Garv’s body that the lab-assistant was hitting in, and she pricked a needle on those very areas at that very instant to enhance his pain. Garv screamed in pain and fell down, his anger increasing manifolds.

It wasn’t long that Samantha noticed a dark black shadow, which had grown on the wall behind Garv. She was getting hold of it. She pricked the doll again at several other places and the shadow grew although the sun was steady. She started chanting some verses, trying to capture the dark energy, but she was failing. She needed more power and for that she needed to make Garv angrier. She pricked the doll again and Garv fell down on his knees with the shadow growing more behind him. Samantha was hoping for success, but meanwhile a teacher from commerce department stepped in and stopped the fight.

Garv calmed down, but he felt immense insult at being thrashed by a lab assistant and that too in front of girls. He couldn’t take it. The principle asked him to go home and take leave for the day, but Garv wasn’t ready to rest. He wanted to avenge his insult. He felt like killing the lab assistant, the same old rage growing upon him that grew at the time of Srijeet’s death. His head felt like bursting into shreds and he punched into the wall as hard as he could. His fist was paining and his anger rose at a greater height. It was the time that he looked into the mirror. His eyes were filled with blood. He turned around and saw a big shadow on the wall opposite to him. In front of his eyes, the shadow grew and within seconds, it surrounded the entire room. The tube-light burst into pieces and it was dark all around. He felt pain in his entire body for a fraction of second, and after that, it was gone. He felt at peace instantly. He felt as if some magic healed him and calmed him down. There was no anger, no rage and no hard feelings for anyone.

He asked his land-lord for an electricity shop, so he could buy a new tube-light for his bedroom. He returned in a few minutes and replaced the tube-light by holding the torch of his phone steady. As he switched on the tube, he saw a giant black mark at the opposite wall. The shadow which was growing on him, had left this strange smudge and for the first time in his life, he was terrified to death. He immediately called the college campus. His worst fear came true – the lab assistant had committed suicide by jumping off the third floor.