Boomerang

It was a calm, cold night. The stars were out in all their splendour, endowing the night with a glow, which lit up the camp. The camp fire was warm and welcoming, more so  because the forest beyond was eerie. A dark thick impenetrable denseness of trees, forbidding in itself. What had seemed a welcoming green haven, during the day time, had at night, transformed into a sinister  cavernous depth.

The children huddled around the camp fire. As much for the warmth, as to avoid being alone in the Guide huts. This was a regular feature of their training in the guides, this annual visit to Bordi, on the outskirts of Maharashtra. The veterans, seniors were used to this nightly transformation of the forests, but were none the less, uncomfortable, waiting to retire to their own huts.

It was then that an intrepid soul,suggested that they have a story telling competition. The scariest story would win a prize. What is it about the human mind that fascinates and magnetically draws it towards the very thing that it fears ? Each child stayed glued to his, her seat, as the stories became scarier, impossibly bizarre.

Of all the children assembled there, he was the biggest. The biggest and the one scared to death. He sat their shivering, his arms wrapt around himself, trying hard to contain both his bladder and his fears. The butt of jokes, even otherwise because of his weight, his friends now sensed, almost saw him shivering.

The next storyteller drew himself up to his full height to relate his story. "A family of four were travelling to a remote village in Gujrat. The little boy, about six years of age, seated at the back, was very irritable. "I have to go to a bathroom, NOW. or else.." he threatened. Dusk was close. they were near a vast field, in the middle of which was a tree. The father parked at the side of the road, let the child out, and waved a hand towards the tree. "Go do your thing, and hurry. We are waiting here for you." The child hurried towards the tree, and looking at his sniggering sister, went behind it, so that he couldn't be seen from the road.

Five minutes passed, then two more. "Come on, hurry up !" the father called, looking at his watch, then the swiftly gathering night. After a minute or so more, he hurried over. To his astonishment, there was no one there. His boy had seemingly disappeared ! Stunned, and scared out of their wits, they hunted. The mother and daughter fanned out in one direction, the father in another. The perplexing thing was that apart from the one tree, there was no foliage, nothing except a bare vista stretching as far as the eye could see. Had the boy left the tree, he would immediatly have been seen by them. No one was around for miles either. Frantically calling and searching, the mother almost fainting  and supported by her daughter, they wandered for almost two hours. Finally they got into the car, and after driving for ten minutes, reached a small nearby village. The head man listened somberly to their tale, then took them to a nearby dargah, which had been there destination anyway. 

The man sitting over there was the presiding priest. Listening to their story, he took them quickly inside, locked the door and asked them to sit there the night and pray, while he stood guard outside. It was midnight, by the time they fell into an exhausted stupor. The mad, maniacal shriek resounded all over the dargah. Clutching at each other, they huddled in a corner. From outside came the strong voice of the priest intoning prayers. The screeches kept coming from different directions, each one more shrill than the last. Until finally, there was silence once again. After a while the crickets resumed their chirruping. At dawn the priest entered. Helping the traumatised family up, he bid them go with him. Beneath the tree lay a few bones. That was all that was left of their son. The priest told them that had they not sought refuge at the dargah, they would have been killed too, by the angry vampires whose home they had desecrated, when the boy urinated beneath the tree."

As the boys' story tailed off, the children got shakily to their feet and in a group returned to their huts. The boy's friends however had different plans. One of them had caught a frog, from the lake that morning, which they decided to put under his bed sheets. The poor boy, too shaken to do anything but, was soon fast asleep, curling up under his sheets. His friends too followed suit.

The screams of the boy, startled them at first, but realising that the frog had finally emerged, they sat back in their beds doubling up in laughter, as he fought the bedsheets, trying to emerge from within them. He did fight them off, and rushed towards them. The trail of blood following him, froze their blood. For it wasn't him. But another boy. The one who had thought up the prank. As one their screams rang out, as the boys raced out the door, falling over each other in their hurry to get out of the room. Petrified, they stood outside the scout masters' door, as he dressed, then strode out. After making sense of their incoherent explanations, he went to their room. Over turning the bedsheets, he shook them out. From the recesses of the sheet,. fell the culprit. A huge spider, which had bit the poor victim, drawing blood. It was a relief that it was not venomenous.

But for the shaken boys, the prank had boomeranged. Much to their discomfiture,the hunters had become the hunted.