The Flash and the Leeches

It was the third day that he had noticed those strange flashes of light across the lake. Yashwant lived in a small cabin, a metres away from the lake in the outskirts of the forest. He was intimidated by the light. The damn lights didn't let him sleep. He had heard that tourists came to the lake but all this had been noticed by him in the dead of the night. Yashwant, an old man and a woodcutter for quite some time, was not generally curious. But he hadn't seen anything like this before. At the third night of the same incident he couldn't help wondering. First day, he was intrigued by the brilliant flashes of light. Second day, he wondered about it and went off to a disturbed incomplete sleep. The third day he couldn't sleep at all. He was very disturbed. Yashwant now decided to investigate. He grabbed his lantern and a container of salt. 

The area outside his house was infested with leeches. The weather was wet and rainy there was a slight drizzle now and then. The soil was muddy and it was very dark. The lake was very large, about quarter of a kilometre in length and was surrounded by all kinds of flora and fauna. He turned on his torch and wandered in the dark. The flashes of light were not regular. On an average, there was one flash for every five minutes. He groped in the dark for his reason of annoyance and disturbance. While all this was happening, he suddenly felt a sudden strange sensation in his feet. It was a familiar one. Bloody leeches, he thought. He rolled up his pyjamas to see a couple of leeches sucking on his skin. Blood was trickling down his feet. He was a little shocked to see the sight that he almost became unconscious-an outcome attributed to the blood loss. He lost control and balance, tripped and fell. He let out a shriek of pain and disgust. He immediately poured the salt into the damned creatures which let go of him. He remained seated in the mud for some time. That is, until he realised that the flashes had stopped. He could however feel that something was wrong, that there was a movement in among the tress around him and the lake. Was it the wind? It wasn't. It was a hurried movement possibly caused by something or someone. Yashwant grew a little cautious. He got up from the mud, alerted and started moving slowly towards his cabin. As if all this was not enough, he found he had lost one of his slippers in the dark. He did not care. He would come again in the morning to look for it for he felt the movement coming close to him and that he was being watched. 

It was Meera's third night of night photography in the panoramic lakeside forest. She took photographs with her latest camera. She took all kinds of photos in the forest but the lake was her main attraction. The camera was strong and one flash could light up the entire lakeside for half a minute. And it was very dark.

She was especially interested in the moon and lake together and taking shots of it continuously. She would continue roaming and taking photographs till around dawn to take the sunrise. Then she would leave and subside to her tent a little away from the lake to complete her night's sleep.

This night however something different happened. She could hear someone treading on the muddy floor quite close to her. Whoever that was, was coming close. Initially she did not pay much attention but kept her senses alerted and continued to do her job. A feeling of uneasiness had already crept in. She could not help pay more attention when she heard a shriek-of a man. She groped for her torch in her bag and ran towards the direction the scream came from. 

She projected her torchlight throughout the area from she heard or she thought she heard the scream come from. She noticed after sometime something alarming. The torch was flickering. The battery was probably exhausted. She had used the same torch for the past few days. Suddenly she experienced a weird sensation in her feet. As she looked at it with the weak light of her torch, four leeches were catching on to her skin. Damn those bloodsucking parasites. She had forgotten to bring the salt. As soon as she shifted the light of her torch towards the ground.

Footprints.

She noticed a fresh trail of footprints of someone, leading to some place she couldn't or wasn't in a position to locate. They were not in pairs was another thing she noticed. 

The torch was dimming away. She felt more uneasy than ever. She walked away from there hurriedly and hastily back to her tent. 

The next morning, Meera left the place and reported to the officers. She learnt that other than the fact that the spot was infested with leeches, the area was neither haunted nor was anybody lost there. But what she had seen was not possibly an hallucination. She left that day for her home with a nice and chilling experience to tell and boast of to her friends and family. On the way, she thought about how she would garnish the story with toppings.

As for Yashwant, he too had an intriguing story to tell his comrades and most importantly he slept soundly from the next day for a long time.

Redi,

13.06.2021

Picture Courtesy: Google Images, The Aleyah Ghost Lights.