sas chp 9

CHAPTER 9 - monster in me
I missed him by a few inches. The knife didn’t plunge the boy in the heart, instead the boy’s shoulder was bruised. Damn. This guy was getting to my nerves. When I realized what had happened, my anger only ascended. Armaan had punched me away. Armaan, Kumar’s son. He was so unlike his father. Kumar was helping me but Armaan? Always in my way. That boy was going to die soon. Painfully. The other two girls were now in my way. “Stop it Sana! No! Are you crazy!” they kept saying. Silly girls.  Hardly aware that I wasn’t Sana anymore.  I looked at one of them and went for her throat. I looked straight in her eyes, to scare her more. But her eyes were familiar. She was someone I knew. Someone close to me.
 “Sana, listen to your heart. Believe in yourself. You’re Sana. Wake up” the chief kept saying. He repeated it again. And again. And again. I was feeling… distributed. Who was I? It was exhausting. I was sweating. Excruciating pain was taking over me. I managed to open my eyes somehow, I crippled on the ground. John was hurt. His arm was bleeding. Aksha and Martika stood far away from me. Clark and Armaan were by my side. Armaan had pinned me on the ground by one arm. I was so tired that I gave in. Once again I could feel unconsciousness circling me. Once again, things started fading. I was longing to give up all the consciousness I had. I was longing to be numb.
This time when I woke up, I was tied in handcuffs and on a chair like I was a criminal. Completely tied. All of them had circled me. Clark, Armaan urghhh, Aksha, John and Martika. “What’s your name?” Clark asked all worked up. I’d never heard him so angry before. “You know me Clark” I said, confused. “Just needed to check”. He assured me everything was fine. “Why am I a Mummy, all tied up like this?” I managed to ask with whatever strength I had left.
For the first time in my life, Armaan spoke to me with no bitterness and only concern. I knew for sure the concern was for Tiara, but I was surprised at the no-bitterness part. It was so quiet that his voice had a little echo effect. “We’ve been thinking a lot about what’s happening. Before you go all hyped up again, just keep this in mind- it is afraid of the knowledge you might gain. Now let’s begin. Clark, please take over.” Huh? What did that mean? Clark got up from his chair and paced around. “Okay” he started. “Just listen to it like it’s a story okay. A long time ago, there were a bunch of people who were talented. Very talented. They could separate their body and souls. Don’t be surprised, it’s true” I think he added the last sentence looking at my expression. “I’m not surprised Clark. Just tell me this. Is this the story where some souls turned evil, used human bodies for their selfish purposes, and soul destroyers got rid of them until they mysteriously died?”
All eyes were on me now, taken aback. “How do you know this?” Aksha was the most curious of them all. I told her of my little trip with Dravya. “Dravya’s the one who met you at the forest that night right?” yes, I said and I turned to Armaan and Clark telling them like they didn’t already know. “He’s a guardian too right. He helped me twice out of that forest.” They gave me a blank look. “Chief, are there any undocumented guardians? I’ve never heard of that one before.” Clark shook his head. “Did he say anything else to you?” “Uhm no apart from the story he only told me that the best way to resist a soul from entering you is to keep your mind free and relaxed all the time.”
“It’s him. I knew it was him” Armaan was all worked up now. “First Tia’s mom and now this stupid girl.” “How dare you call me stupid Armaan? You’ve been judging me since the day you met me. You’re moronic!” I wished I could get up from that chair and just snap him like a twig. The anger was ascending again. John sat far away from me and he hadn’t spoken a word since. His arm was covered in bandages. Reality came dawning on me and I remembered what I’d done earlier today. I’d attacked him… and my best friend too. I didn’t want to but I had. I started apologizing. I think it was out of the blue for them ‘cuz they looked really surprised.
“We must finish what we started” Clark said and everyone settled down. “Sana remember this every time you feel angry. Calm down and resist foreign forces in your body, mentally. Focus on yourself. On who you are. On whom you love. And on those who love you and care for you. Never ever ever, ever ever resist resisting. Now, you already know about souls and soul hosts. We need to tell you that your soul is impure." He said with a stern look on his face. I spoke before he continued with his next sentence. “I had an idea about that. Although at first I thought Armaan was the soul” He rolled his eyes and for the first time I saw him smiling genuinely, only a little though. Clark stifled a laugh and continued anyway, “First you need to understand the concept. Uptil now, it worked this way. A soul completely enters a body, all at once, so that the body has two souls. Then they gain complete control over their brain, act as they want and then leave their body. But your case is different. The soul in you is only partial. It’s not completely in you. Maybe its experimenting something. Even we don’t understand this.”
“Stop it Clark, you dare not speak another word or I’ll kill you” the heat within me was increasing every minute. “Don’t tell me anything, I don’t need to know” What was I saying? I wanted to know. Unable to stop the pain in my head, I recalledwhat Clark had told me. Instead of relaxing my mind, I tried resisting the foreign forces. I tried to calm down and think about my family, friends and Tiara. It took a lot of concentration and patience and strength. Something weird happened within me. I felt like I was overpowering someone else. Someone I couldn’t see. Someone already within me. When I managed to peek through my eyes, I was myself again. It was tough, I was very much alert, my will-power strong and my inner guard was up. I had to concentrate but I didn’t lose myself this time. I found myself grinning over my little win. "Please continue” I said to Clark. When I glanced up, everyone was staring at me. “It’s a good thing we tied her up” Martika said in her high pitched noise. “For a second I thought you were going to break those ropes and the cuffs” she said with her eyes enlarged. “Really?” I couldn’t believe that. I was concentrating on my inner fight so much that I was unaware how I was acting physically.
“You actually tried what I asked you to” Clark said amused. Armaan’s expression was even more tougher and full of disapproval. He wanted me dead. “Yes” I said to Clark and thanked him. “okay then let’s continue. That little soul within you is responsible for your monstrous acts. It’s not you, it’s the soul. Remember that. The only reason it makes you angry is that we think it is afraid to let you know anything about itself. Until now, the soul peeked in yours and knows stuff about you. We think that…” Clark looked doubtful, like he shouldn’t have said that. I was getting angry again but I suppressed it like last time. “We think that you can know stuff about it too. That’s the only way we’ll know what the soul is experimenting. If you don’t do it within time, it might… I mean, we’re not sure but that’s what usually happens. A soul host doesn’t live long.”
“So that means I’m gonna die soon?” I asked in a low broken voice. I could see Aksha holding back her tears. She came nearer to me but maintained a safe distance. Thank god. “We can only guess” Clark said in his deep sad voice. “We should kill her right now, if it’s the same soul, it’ll go for Tiara again” Armaan was so dead once I left this chair. And this wasn’t my inner monster, it was me. Why was he so keen on killing me? “The soul will take over her and she’ll be the one responsible for Tiara’s death” Armaan gritted through his teeth. “I’ll never hurt her” I screamt but it was like he was deaf towards me.
“Stop that Armaan. Only a part of the soul is within her. If we kill her, the soul will still remain. It makes no sense. You’re only acting like that because Tiara’s life is at stake here. I know you’re very attached to her. And it’s not your fault you couldn’t save her mother. Really, you tried, but souls are powerful Armaan. Please, think rationally”. “What?!” I squealed, “her mother died because of a soul?” I hated that. Poor Tiara. I remembered the look on her face when I asked her about her mother the first time I met her. And she talked to me only because I looked like her mom. Tiara…
"I'm ready to do anything to keep tiara safe" I said, absolutely sure. "But first tell me what happened to her mom? And why is the soul after her? She's just a baby"  "I was coming to that part" was Clark's calm reply. Armaan looked like tougher than before. His eyes burnt.  "Tiara's mother was a guardian too. And an extremely talented one mind you. She could take down double the souls compared to the others. She was almost as good as our high chief Kshar. That's the reason she was second in line there. Initially we didn't know that souls could interact with others of their kind. It Was Shera, Tiaras mother who discovered it, she had her own ways to negotiate and deal with them. And, when we call ourselves guardians, it’s not only humans that we protect. There's something else we guard. It’s a secret. Even guardians don’t know what it contains. But we know that if it is not protected, it might destroy lives. It has the power to abolish the entire human race off the face of earth.  The worst part is that some souls know about it. That’s what they are trying to reach. We believe, child, that you can tell us what exactly it contains. Shera died protecting it. It was the same soul who met you in the woods. The one you call Dravya, is a soul we suspect.” How did my day end up like this? I actually believed it. How did I believe that the one who saved me from the forest, was in fact an evil spirit?
I reconsidered the blame I had previously put on Armaan. Aksha broke the silence “Yes Sana, every time you returned from the forest, you looked miserable and angry. That first night we reached here you were not yourself. Next time you were mad at John when he met you after our hiking. This Dravya even lied to you about resisting souls.” She was in fact, right. It was hard to believe. Actually speaking, it wasn't hard to believe, but I didn't want to. “We can't be sure” I said. "Well Let's make you sure then. Peek into his soul."