The Chime Of The Bell- Chapter 10

(Debaleena's narration)

Hello. My name is Debaleena Talukdar. I am a tech expert. My aim is to observe how technology can help people live a better life, make our daily routine easier. But in the current case, we are doing something out of the ordinary. We are here on an inhabited island which is said to be haunted. I am on my mission to see if technology can help us sustain on this island.

There is a crisis as one of our companions has been missing since yesterday night. I and my friend Vaishali are going to the hospital building to see if we get any trace of her. It's sad that I forgot to put a tracker on her when we pulled up on this island. Things would have been much easier. It would have saved all this manual work- walking, visually analyzing, and cutting through the bushes. Well, who couldn't anticipate such a crisis?

***end of blog***

The hospital building is right next to the shore, overseeing the hexagon where the chopper had landed. There is a fence around the building with warning signs all over it. This is to prevent the daring and curious visitors from entering. But the fencing being old and warnings being faded, people don't have much difficulty in slipping in, neither did we.

"This place is perfect for shooting the entry!", exclaimed Vaishali as she stood startled in front of the enormous construction. "In a cloudy full moon night, a boy and a girl enters this building exactly the way we did.", she went on, "There will be camera no. 1", said she pointing to a distant point along the fence. "Oh, and there will be a camera taking close-ups". Then, suddenly running towards the building she stood near a broken window. Turning towards me with her eyes sparkling in enthusiasm, she said, "and this…here would be camera no. 3".

I looked at her and then the window; an ordinary boring broken one. The tarnished wooden framework still retained a few shattered pieces of the pane. But something else caught my observant eyes. It felt like somebody was inside the house; like somebody just peeped out through the window. It was just for a fraction of second, it was so fast that I could not make out any details of the person. Any ordinary person would have missed it but nothing escapes my eyes. But again who could be inside this building? That practically seemed impossible but I could bet I saw something. I immediately ran towards the window. The darkness inside and the high power of my lenses restrained me from seeing anything. Was it just an illusion then or was there really someone inside? The only way to find out is to enter the building.

By the time Vaishali had walked a long way past. She was now beckoning me to come along. I hurried. Great, she had found the entrance! A huge rusty lock hung on the rickety wooden doors. One little kick was what it needed to break open. "Wow I never knew I had a Daya inside me", I said. Alas! My companion was too excited to get the joke. She ran around expressing the ultimate level of ecstasy on her face.

"Good heavens, this is better than I expected! This is what really scary is like!", she exclaimed making a frame with her fingers and seeing through it with one eye. I couldn't blame her much. I am not a horror film type of person but I couldn't agree more. This place could arouse sudden anxiety in a person on any slight flickering movement of an object. In other words, this place was scary. If I were a director planning to shoot a horror movie, I would have had an orgasm here.

The sudden appearance and disappearance of the figure were still bothering me a lot. Being a science person I didn't want to relate it to some paranormal activity but I currently had no other explanation. I better find the room and fast. My magnetic field detector was detecting very high concentrations of electromagnetic fields. I had read it somewhere that ghosts are basically made up of these electromagnetic waves. This was a hilarious coincidence I assumed. I could not even tell this to Vaishali because she was not in a state of hearing me out. She was running to and fro across the hall murmuring something to herself. I couldn't hear her; neither did I want to.

Anyway, the first thing I had to do was to search for the room where I saw a strange figure. Evidently, it was supposed to be somewhere to the left of me. But there was no direct passage to the left. The lobby had two passages- one to the right and the other straight. Taking the straight one I ended up in a long corridor with approximately ten rooms on either side. And much to my annoyance all the rooms looked almost the same: broken, full of junk. And more annoyingly one corridor leads to another. The next couple of hours were spent loitering around the corridors, trying to figure out which room it really was. By that time even Vaishali had lost her enthusiasm about this building. "You really don't give up do you?", said she finally.

"Why don't they have a map for this place? This is like a maze", I complained, slamming the last door to the left in a corridor.

"This building really has a very complicated architecture", Vaishali said wearily.

"I am halfway through making my island tracker. Once it is done, we no longer would need GPS to find our way in an unknown place. I wish I had completed it by now"

A yawn came in reply followed by a "yea…of course". This was exactly what I disliked the most; people yawning when I am talking about my inventions. "Ok look I don't know how much you understand about audio technology but once I am done making the island tracker people will never lose their way again. People will use it everywhere. I will be famous. I may even get a noble prize for that."

Vaishali gave me a look from the corner of her eyes. Clearly, she was not pleased. But I was not ready to give up yet. I slipped out a sleek device from my pocket.

"Have a look at this", I said holding the object with my fingertips. "This, my friend, is my latest invention. It may look like an ordinary flashlight but once you see all the amazing things it can do you will be more than pleased"

"But---"

"BUT you must wait until I finish the demonstration", said I cutting her short. "I call it the Solar Beam. This device totally works on solar power". I switched it on in flashlight mode and kept flashing the light around the corridor. "Not only can it function as a flashlight but also emits fire. Guess what is more. It can even act as a laser sword". I switched to the laser mode as I spoke. A thick beam of laser emerged out of my flashlight. I looked at Vaishali.

"Wow", she exclaimed. I beamed as I my beam was finally able to impress her. And very soon I would be able to impress the world with this, I thought. "This is just like star wars. Can it slash any object on its way?", she asked with the same twinkle in her eyes.

Her words struck me like a thunderbolt. I had spent years designing this laser sword but I never thought it could be used as a knife to slice things. I just realized: without the slicing power, my sword is just a kid's toy. I tried to hide the expression of shock and disappointment from my face. I had just managed to convince Vaishali how cool my inventions are and surely I didn't want to ruin it.

"Well…this…", I tailed off thinking about what I should say next.

"Can I hold it?", she asked completely ignoring my words.

Usually, I don't allow ordinary people to touch my inventions but that time I was distracted thinking about a suitable explanation. Preoccupied in my thoughts I nodded. I had totally forgotten to warn her about the faults in the machine. One should never switch from the laser mode to the flame thrower mode.

The next thing I knew was the room was on fire. The smoke from my solar beam had filled the room along with all the carbon dioxide the fire was producing. Vaishali quickly dragged me towards the window and pushed me out of it. I fell on the ground. My spectacles fell off my eyes. Without my spectacles, I am totally blind. I helplessly fumbling on the ground when suddenly there was a loud defining noise like the firing of a gun. The sound kept vibrating in my ears as I wondered if Vaishali was alright.

Thank you for reading. Here is the shortcut to the next chapter: Coming soon