Elora Pt. 3: A Split Soul

Note:

If you have just now found this story, be informed that this is the third chapter in my ongoing story Elora. I strongly suggest reading chapters 1 &2 before reading this one, as it is a sequence. For all the rest of you, Enjoy Chapter 3 😊

Mumbai

Manish double checked everything he would be needing on the trip with his friends. He had completely unpacked his travel backpack in the morning and packed it all over again to make sure all the stuff was there and in its proper place. Once all the clothing and other necessities were taken care of, he moved to electronics. He took his phone charger, the earphones, and the beard trimmer. Then on a second thought he put the trimmer aside. He wasn’t going to need it out there. He put the rest of the electronics in the outside pocket. He looked around to see if there was anything else he might be forgetting, his eyes paused at the desk in consideration. He contemplated taking along the book he was currently reading. He facepalmed at the intrusive thought. I’m going to be traveling with my closest buddies. If they catch me with a book, I would never see the end of it. The old tradition of pulling his leg for being a bookworm might not be followed this time, but it was unnecessary luggage anyway, he’d definitely not find the chance to flip even a single page in it. He moved on to his wallet, checking the few cards, his identities and the little cash already there. He put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. Though the jacket was light enough, he hoped the weather won’t be too warm for him to leave his jacket behind somewhere and forget all about the important stuff inside.

He stood up from the couch he had been sitting on and did a careful inspection of the house, taking his time. He made sure all the switches were turned off, and nothing was in an improper place. Once satisfied with everything, he went out the front door, locking it behind himself. In the elevator, he opened the main pocket of the backpack one more time and put the keys at the bottom of everything. He won’t be needing it for the next eight days, so he thought it better to let it take care of itself in the darkest corner possible.

When he came out of the elevator and the building, his phone buzzed in his pocket twice. He opened it to find one message in the group and one from Ishana.

‘Have you left already?’ Ishana’s text said, Manish smiled. He had told her a few days ago about the plan when they were returning from work. Things between them had moved a little faster than Manish had expected. Within two weeks of their first date on the new year’s eve, they had made it an unsaid pact to leave work together. On the way, they would usually stop at some fruit juice vendor or a snack truck. And since they both lived rather close to the office campus, walking home was a given. Nothing intimate had happened in those walks ever, and Ishana wouldn’t let him any closer to her home than the first time, though it was all perfectly fine with him. He still didn’t see anything serious happening between them in the near future, and he was happy letting things take their natural course.

‘Almost, I’m just outside the apartment, waiting for my cab to the station.’ He replied.

‘Where are you going to meet your friends?’

‘They told me to get a ticket to Calicut, so that’s where the train would take me. I hope they will be there.’

A great deal of chimes flowed from his phone speaker as Ishana sent a few short messages in quick succession, ‘okay then’, ‘Happy Journey’, ‘Send me pictures’, ‘A lot of them’.

‘Sure will.’ Manish replied as the Uber that he had booked arrived at the main entrance to the apartment building. The driver asked if he needed to open the trunk but Manish declined politely with a wave as he only had that one backpack with him. He settled in the back seat, and sent an update to his friends on the WhatsApp group. Soon enough, Tanay replied with a simple ‘happy journey’. The others were also going to be starting from their respective places in the next few hours and if everything went well, they would all reach their designated meeting point within a few hours of each other tomorrow.

Manish took out his earphones, turned on the music and put the phone in his pocket. Unlike many of his acquaintances, he didn’t think it was rude to not engage in conversation with the driver on a forty minute car ride to the railway station.

At the station, he found out that the train was delayed by twenty-five minutes. Typical. He found an empty chair in the waiting room and placed the backpack on the floor between his feet. With nothing better to do in order to pass the time, his mind went back to the book he had decided not to bring along. Then he mentally kicked himself again, remembering he also had a kindle subscription. He wasn’t a big fan of reading from a screen, but he couldn’t refuse the fact that it was really helpful at times like this. He installed the kindle application on his phone and logged into his account. He wasn’t really in the mood to buy a new eBook right now, so he opened one of his all time favorites, And then there were none, by Agatha Christie.

Time passed quickly enough as he engrossed himself into the book, and soon enough, the arrival announcement of his train number caught his attention, pulling him back from the amazing world of Agatha Christie. He went out to the platform, and watched as the little dot in the distance slowly grew into the shape of a locomotive. There weren’t too many people yet on the platform, and the crowd wasn’t growing as rapidly either. Maybe this route usually isn’t too busy. He thought. As the train came to a stop on the platform, he walked up to the compartment he was booked into.

Just as he was climbing into the train, a movement to his right caught his eye. He leaned out a little, trying to catch whatever had grabbed his peripheral vision. There was a woman getting into the train in the next compartment. She had on a bright red shirt with sleeves reaching to her elbows and maroon jeans. Her shoes were bright white, an odd combination, but it did suit her. There was a rather sparkly golden hairpin in her jet black hair, which itself was tied in a rather large bob, most probably the thing that had caught his attention. Manish wondered why someone would choose an outfit as flashy as that for traveling in a train. He shrugged, realizing he had no business trying to figure that out. To each their own, whatever floats your boat, or whatever the saying was.

The compartment was relatively empty, with his cabin only occupied by another man who appeared to be in his mid thirties. For over an hour and half, Manish sat in his upper berth, not paying much attention to anything going on around him. He spent the time with his phone reading further into the book. As the scene outside changed a bit and the train moved out of the city area, he climbed down. Finding nobody claiming the window seat, he took it, lifted the window pane, and enjoyed the view outside.

The noon rolled into the afternoon as he finished a few chapters and had a late lunch of a sandwich. The afternoon gave way to a pink sunset and finally it was evening. A few new passengers had joined him by now. A middle-aged couple with two kids around the age of seven or eight had taken the lower berths, making him leave the window seat. The kids made it rather difficult for him to focus on the book, so he switched over to music again. Of course, in the train he only had the option to listen to the songs saved in the phone, which weren’t too many and he soon lost interest.

Around eight-thirty, he gave up and decided to call it a night. He had a light dinner of a sandwich that he had brought along with his lunch. Seeing that the family wasn’t going to turn the lights off soon, he took out his light jacket, wrapped it loosely around his head, and went to sleep.

The cabin seemed oddly different this time. Manish could tell that he was dreaming of the same place as the last time, the frozen lake, the fireplace, the thick walls built of logs seemingly pine, and the old leather chair gave it away pretty easily. Looking at all these things, he could tell that he was having a similar dream again, of the log cabin. Although, strangely enough, the instinct that wakes you up immediately after realizing that you are dreaming didn’t work for him this time. He continued to dream of his strange surroundings which felt oddly and unnervingly familiar for some reason while being completely alien at the same time.

Everything there was the same, except for the strange noise coming from outside. It was like cracking ice, but when he looked out of the small window towards the lake he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Although, given that it was night, and the only source of light was the moon, it wasn’t very easy to tell things apart. He decided to not pay too much attention to what was going on outside and try to get a better understanding of the place. If he had tried, he would have spotted the strangely shaped little thing taking shape just a few meters away from the cabin on the edge of the frozen lake.

He walked up to the wall opposite to the fireplace where there was a shelf full of rustic looking hard-bound books. Most of them looked like they were right out of some archaic museum. Hard leather binding, metal clamps on the corners to protect from falls, vintage looking designs on the front, no text, thread ribs on the spine. The whole deal, so to speak. He remembered taking one out the last time he had been here, but he didn’t recall which. He picked one of them again at random, the heft noticeable immediately. The front cover had some text, but it was hard to read in the low light. He took it back to the chair he was sitting on, the light from the fireplace illuminating it just enough.

The characters on the cover were completely unrecognizable. It looked a bit like Russian, but he couldn’t be sure. He had come across written Russian only once in his life, when he was on an anonymous web chat application, which was only for a few minutes. So, he had no luck understanding any of it. He opened the book nonetheless. A strange smell enveloped him almost immediately, the very recognizable smell of old paper, and moldy bread. This place was old, there was no doubt about it.

He tried reading what he could see, but obviously, the text was in the same foreign script, completely beyond his comprehension. He turned a few pages, careful not to tear them out, hoping to find some pages with images or illustrations that could shed some light on what his subconscious was conjuring up. He came across one, an illustration made in the same ink. The book was surely handwritten.

The illustration had three concentric circles, each with some writing on the right or left side of it. The text was small, as if written with a rather fine pen. He squintent, and much to his amazement, he could actually recognize the characters. Hindi! Impossible, or surely possible, if you consider the consciousness dynamics of a dreaming mind. He lifted the book a little, to turn it towards the fire and get a better look. As he did so, he noticed it for the first time. The text on the other circles seemed to be changing. At first he thought that the flickering light from the fireplace was playing tricks on his eyes, but as he looked more carefully at one circle at a time, he could tell that the text was definitely changing. They were literally transforming from a language he had no idea how to read, to plain Hindi, his mother tongue, right in front of his eyes.

‘Namaste!’ The first word on the outermost circle read, ‘Hello!’ Manish perused it as more words morphed. The human mind is hard-wired to recognize patterns, words. You can’t help but read if there’s written text before you in a language that you understand. Manish was experiencing the notion in the most explicit way possible, in his dream. ‘Hello, reader! I am Grahidu, your guide on this journey through the true knowledge of the Nushta.’ Manish slammed the book shut, and dropped it on the table. He was sure that his mind was playing a terrible trick on him. And yet, he just couldn’t seem to wake up from this convoluted dream.

There was a knock on the front door of the cabin, just like the last time. Manish knew who it might be. His doppelgänger from the previous dream. This dream just gets weirder and weirder. He thought. He ignored the knock and went to put the book back in its place. He didn’t know why he did it, maybe just the habit of putting things in their place. The person outside knocked again. And again, insistently. They paused for a few seconds and knocked again. Manish thought he would wake up eventually. But the dream continued, and so did the knocking on the cabin door. Finally, it was too much for him. He went to the door and yanked it open.

“What do you want?” He blurted, realizing too late that it wasn’t the man he had met the last time. It was the woman. The woman with the red dress and the golden hairpin he had seen for about a second before getting onto the train. Only this time, he was seeing her face as well. Although unclear because of the lack of light, he could make out most of her facial features. High cheekbones, rather large and — he felt weird admitting it — attractive eyes, and of course, the jet black hair that framed her face so well. “What the hell!” He muttered, blinking a few times. She too seemed a little surprised to find him there.

The awkward moment didn’t last long though. “Get out!” She shouted at him. And just like that, the world around him seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke, leaving him in complete darkness.

Manish thought the dream had ended, and he was awake. He felt his eyes open, but the dark void around him didn’t go away. He brought his hand up to his face, but could see nothing. There wasn’t a single point of light in the place he was in. He felt disoriented, with no sense of direction and no visual cue to point his face towards. He tried turning around but couldn’t tell if he had actually turned. Complete emptiness surrounded him in all directions.

He spotted it at last. A miniscule point of white in front of him. It was like seeing a single very faint star on a moonless night in the middle of the ocean. Only here, he still couldn’t tell up from down. The brightness increased slowly, and soon, it was blindingly bright. He wondered if this is what the big bang would have looked like to someone if they were there to witness it. The light seemed to encompass everything around him, as if the entire blackness had turned into pure white. And yet, it didn’t remain like that for long. Other colors appeared, followed by shapes, and then sounds. The faint buzzing sound of an air conditioner mixed in with the slow rumbling of a moving train. He was back at his berth, lying down, finally awake, though not fully.

He laid there quietly, taking in his surroundings, making sure he really was awake and in the train that was taking him to his friends. He felt under his head, the backpack was still there. He unzipped the outside pocket, and took his phone out. Seven thirty two am. He tried to remember what the arrival time at Calicut was but failed. He unlocked his phone, and fortunately there was a good enough signal. He checked what he needed, relieved that he still had about an hour. The train was delayed a bit more. He took out his water bottle and took a big gulp.

He was still reeling from the strange and weird lucid dream. Nothing made sense, but of course they were not supposed to, it was a dream after all. And yet he couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling he had of having dreamt of the same place twice in a row, albeit two weeks apart. He kicked himself a little too for having included the woman in red in the dream. He had seen her only for a couple seconds at best and yet she had obviously made an impression on him. He felt embarrassed because he felt he was already building something nice with Ishana, and yet, here he was, dreaming of some random girl he didn’t even know the name of.

He sat up, deciding to not think about any of it any more. A dream is just that, a dream, anything could have influenced it. He concluded. He looked to the lower berths. The middle aged couple were sitting together on one of the window side seats, their children sleeping soundly.

He climbed down and went to the sink to splash his face with water that he hoped would be cold, which it was. His phone chimed with a new message. Manish took out the handkerchief first and wiped his hands and face. Then he took out his phone and opened WhatsApp. It was a text from Darshan. There was a picture attached. The typical view of a mundane looking train station, with a bored looking face of him at the corner. He was already there. Below it the caption read, ‘guys, it’d be lit if y’all could hurry up! I’mma bored beyond my wits. Istg, I can’t take this mind numbin’ buzz anymore.’ Typical Darshan and his GenZ way of texting. At least he put the apostrophes in the right places. Manish smiled and thought, This would be a fun week, indeed! There was a reply from Soham. ‘Manish should be about forty minutes out, provided he doesn’t decide to balk without telling us.’ Manish decided not to reply, and play along with the joke.

London

Kavya woke up from her sleep feeling thirsty. She looked at her bedside alarm clock. It read a quarter past three am. She took a deep breath, feeling the quilt slide on her body a little. It was definitely cold outside, but the quilt and the central heating made for a comfortable sleep. Although, proper nightwear went a long way in that regard, which she had grown to appreciate more in the time she had spent with the Returners. Her parents would have fainted at the level of undress she was getting used to sleeping in these days. At the same time, the memory of home made her a bit sad. It wasn’t even a whole year that she had left home to come and live here with the rest of the elder sorcerers. Her family had tried to keep her safe from other people — knowing she was different from kids her age, not fully understanding, and relating the strange things that happened all around them to her — but the things that she could do couldn’t stay hidden. It didn’t help that she had no control over what was happening to her or what she was making happen all around her. She was cast out of their society and her parents could do nothing. The memory of being picked up from the streets on her way to the market, blindfolded and taken to a place she didn’t know sent a chill down her spine even with the cozy warmth. She faintly recalled having escaped without being killed, but didn’t remember how she had done it. It was David who had come to her rescue, the mansion having discovered her just a few days after she had started living on the streets.

At first she was scared beyond her senses, not understanding anything of what the others tried to tell her. Her mostly sheltered upbringing made it even more difficult. She wanted to go back, she felt broken, she cried a lot. But gradually, she realized that none of the others who lived in this large house meant any harm to her, it was the opposite entirely. She became closer to them. And gradually, she started talking again, accepting that the people who practiced mystic arts were just as real as the mathematical or musical geniuses out there. After all, she thought, maybe we don't get to choose the family we want, yet, life has a way of leading you to the families we deserve.

Arsoz had shown her the library, which she turned into her favorite spot in the house, choosing to learn as much as she could about the situation she found herself in. David had taught her to use and control her abilities as both of them had the same. Natasha pranked her by floating random objects near her head, which she was still getting used to not being spooked from. And Sofia, well, she taught her sign language, with a little help from Natasha too. But out of all of them, she felt closest to Damion. She couldn’t tell if it was because they were closest in age, she being twenty-two and he being three years older, or because she could easily tell that he was attracted to her as more than fellow sorcerers. Or maybe it was simply the observant protectiveness he displayed towards her at times. In any case, she felt drawn to him. Although she would never dare voice her feelings to him, not so easily at least.

The water jug beside the glowing desk clock was empty. She got off the bed, wrapped the robe around herself and went into the kitchen downstairs. She turned on the accent light only, not daring to turn on the bright ceiling lamps, as they would definitely burn off whatever sleep she had left. She went to the cupboard, took a glass and went to the tap to fill it. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, making her shiver. She could tell that it wasn’t because of the cold — the kitchen was part of the central heating, and she had the furry robe on. She felt uneasy, as if someone was behind her. She turned around quickly, hoping it was another of Natasha’s pranks, although she couldn’t figure out why or how she would be doing something like that in the middle of the night.

The glass dropped from her hands and shattered on the floor in front of her feet. Kavya let out an involuntary scream that could have sent shivers down a deaf person’s spine. There beside the counter at the center of the kitchen, lay Elora, on the floor, motionless. Her hair was splayed across her face, her right hand was at an awkward angle behind her back, her legs were crossed. She was wearing her usual white nightgown, the hem of which had ridden up, exposing most of her bare legs up to her mid thighs. As if someone had struck her unconscious. And if the scene wasn’t terrifying in itself, adding to it were her eyes, fully open, looking straight up at the ceiling, the pupils like little islands surrounded by white. A disquieting sense of dread surrounded Kavya, and she dropped to her knees.

Damion dashed out of his room, estimating where the scream had come from. He didn't have to guess long. All the lights on the ground floor were turned on, and Natasha was coming out of the kitchen clutching Kavya to her side as if she didn’t have legs of her own. Natasha must have turned on all the lights on instinct immediately upon hearing her scream.

“What happened?” Damion gasped.

“Something has happened to Elora, I don’t know what. She’s in the kitchen on the floor. Where are the others?” She said, her voice heavy with her own Russian accent, she too was terrified. Kavya looked way worse though, her face looked frozen in shock. “I’m taking her to my room, check up on Elora and come get me if you need me.”

David came down next with Sofia with him. He had woken her up by transporting his hand into her room and shaking her shoulder. Arsoz was just getting out of his room as well. Damion went into the kitchen, and froze for a couple of seconds when he saw Elora. No doubt poor Kavya was shell shocked. He neared her, and sat beside her on the floor.

“What happened to her?” David asked from the door.

“I don’t know.” Damion said, his voice a mix of panic and confusion. “Where’s Arsoz?”

“He’s just behind us.”

“Ask Sofia to check her, will you?” Damion said in a hurry. David mimed to her, although he didn’t need to. Sofia was already past him and was beside Damion, her one hand on her wrist, and another on her forehead. Elora continued to lay unmoving, her unfocused eyes pointed to the ceiling.

“She’s fine,” she signed with her free hand to David who spoke the words in real time for Damion. “Just unconscious, but I don't know how she has her eyes open. Although I cannot feel anything else wrong with her.” Sofia proceeded to sprinkle some water from the air onto her face. A few seconds of this gentle shower later, Elora’s eyelids moved. She blinked a few times then looked around. All three surrounding her breathed a sigh of relief.

“What — What’s happening?” Elora asked, her voice trembling.

“You fainted, we think.” David said.

Arsoz came into the kitchen then, his face grim. David explained to him what had happened so far. Sofia and Damion helped her sit up as Arsoz came closer to her.

“How are you feeling?” Arsoz asked, gently.

“Weird,” she said. “I remember coming here to drink water. Then I felt this rocking motion, as if the room was swaying, then I remember feeling scared, I don’t exactly know what happened. It was all very dark. I put the glass down over there.” She pointed to the sink beside the window. There was no glass there. “And then — and then I don’t remember anything till just now.”

Arsoz extended his hand to her, and she placed hers in it. Arsoz frowned a little. He then turned to Damion. “Where is your staff?”

“I’ll get it from my room, I forgot it in the hurry to get here.”

“Please do.”

A minute later when he returned to the ground floor, everyone had moved to the hall. Elora was sitting on the couch, slightly slumped, but looking mostly okay. He came to Arsoz and raised his shaft thinking he would take it.

“No, you hold it. I just want you to count the number of spirits in this room. Only this room, not the whole building.”

“But why? What are you thinking?”

“Just do as I say, please.”

Damion lifted the bronze shaft up to his face, and held it horizontal. A low metallic hum emanated from it, gradually rising in loudness, and then fading away just as gradually. What everyone else couldn’t see were the thin rings of blue light starting from the right edge of the metal staff. Damion started counting them, matching one to each one present around him. He matched the first one to himself, then Arsoz. It amazed him everytime he looked at Arsoz's soul. It wasn’t a single ring like the rest of them, there were thirteen concentric rings in total, all his forefathers accompanying him everywhere, residing in the jade ring on his finger. Then he saw David’s, slightly jittery, Sofia’s was wavy as always. And then he frowned. There was another set of two rings. He had seen Elora’s soul ring on his talisman before, but it had always been a single ring. Now, he didn’t see any of that. In its place there were two rings. But unlike Arsoz’s, whose forefathers had separate rings of their own, the two souls within her were entwined with each other.

Arsoz put his hand on Damion’s shoulder, seeing him frown. With his ability to borrow anyone’s ability, he could see the rings as well now. “Is she possessed?” Damion asked softly, unable to voice the possibility loud enough.

“You tell me, you’ve seen spirits possess people before, haven’t you?” He had indeed. When a spirit possesses a person’s body, it competes with their own soul. It tries to reside as the outermost ring, suppressing the victim’s within. Arsoz’s soul took the outermost ring, all his forefathers falling inwards in the arrangement, demonstrating that he was the one who was in control. But Elora’s was different. There were two souls in her body, but they were not competing with each other. They were bound together, as if they were parts of each other, like two faces of a coin.

“What does this mean?”

“It means her soul has split in two.” Arsoz said out loud, letting go of Damion. Everyone looked at him, confused, surprised, and in Elora’s case, mortified.

“Each one of those new parts is trying to decide how to survive on its own, but failing.” He explained, “I’ve known about this thing from the books of old, but have never seen it happen before. What I think happened with her is that one of the parts left her for some time, going to some other place, leaving her alive, but mostly non-functional. That might be why she felt all those things. Then realizing that it can’t live outside her, the other part of her soul returned when Sofia tried to wake her up. Although, I think that it was just a coincidence.”

“What should we do now?” David asked.

“I don’t know, I have to seek guidance. But I think it is safe to say that she will be fine for the rest of the night at least. Go to bed, all of you. And Damion, I might need a bit of your help to gather an assembly tomorrow.”

To Be Continued ...