As those cars busted, hell broke loose across the airport, the military went alert and ran across engaging discipline.
"Evacuate the premises, living arrangements have been made. Keep moving in lines." All the speakers across airport announced as the military directed the ways. It was utter chaos.
Hundreds of people were managed and were shifted to a nearby worker quarters. The airport was sealed; anti-terrorism squad took over soon. The public was given meals from the airport, they were given room based on availability. Arjun was given a single bedroom, room no. 6012. His mother and others stayed in room no. 6015, three rooms away. It was nearly 1 am, everyone was settled, Arjun was still trying to sleep when someone knocked his door. He stood up and walked up the door, it had no peephole, he just opened the door. In front of him was a lady doctor, mid-twenties, she had a doctor's apron on her, with a register and a pen.
"Myself Dr. Shreya and I am here for your medical check-up." She was very soft spoken.
"Yeah, please come in." Arjun said she walked in behind him. The doctor dragged a chair and placed it beside the bed, sitting on it, Arjun sat on the bed.
"The thing is, in situations like today, people are at risk of panic attack or even asthma attacks. And I am just checking up for your health condition right now." She explained.
"Sure." Arjun replied.
"So, tell me Arjun, were you travelling from Delhi to Pune?"
"Yeah, it was scheduled for 10 pm."
"And what about you? Have you been feeling different lately?"
"Yes."
"Do you have a constant feeling that something might be wrong or that someone is watching you?"
"Yeah." He said nodding his head.
"Have you been hallucinating?"
"Yeah." Arjun started to zone out of the conversation.
"Do you see fire or blood?"
"It had happened just once. And yes." He wondered how did she know what was happening with him. "And how do you…" he looked up at the doctor. She wasn't there, and CLICK!, the door closed. He looked at the door in reflex and sprinted to it, he bashed open the door, looked to his left, nothing there and turned to his right to find his mother's room's door on fire.
He was stunned, he walked a few steps and stood in the middle of the hallway staring at the burning door, he was frozen. He couldn't move, all of a sudden with a THUD! The burning door fell off, and his mother walked out burning and limping, dragging the burnt corpse of his sister.
"You did this to us!" she said furiously letting go of Mihika's leg. "You let us die!"
Arjun started sweating and felt strangely weak. Soon enough his mother fell down, burning as the floor caught fire, the flames spread across the hallway, and grabbed the walls, the entire floor was burning.
Arjun just stood there, in the middle of the fire, in a blink the flames went for his pants, it then slowly crawled up, it felt warm for Arjun.
He understood it all, but couldn't react.
WHACK! Someone pushed him from behind. All the fire disappeared and Arjun came back to his senses with a sudden jerk. He turned back to see a guy standing, in black shrug, joggers and a wooden mask.
"It isn't real!" the guy exclaimed, he was in hurry. Arjun looked at him confused, not understanding what was happening.
He felt another sudden jerk as a hole opened right below Arjun and fell inside it. He kept dropping, falling, no idea where he will land. Soon enough it was all dark, he was still falling and loud knocks echoed across the open space.
The knocks got louder and louder, the dark faded away and Arjun found himself sitting in his room, and someone was knocking the door. He quickly stood up and opened the door, it was the guy from earlier, in black shrug, and the wooden mask.
"Listen! Do not get on your flight tomorrow! Do not leave Delhi! I will be in touch! I need to go now!" he ran away.
Arjun kept thinking as he closed the door, thought to himself and WHAM! Punched the wall.
"AAAH!" he groaned a bit, he took some long breathes, shook his hand and laid on the bed, to fall asleep this time.
The next morning, they were still in their room, when they announced that the airport has been checked multiple times and is safe for flights to begun. The airport staff jumped to their work, all the flights were resumed at 6 pm. Arjun's flight was rescheduled at 11 pm.
The day just went by in checking-in the luggage again and filling out some form and some survey.
One thing Arjun knew was that Shreya was no doctor, and she knew what was happening with him, and the guy who showed up the previous night could or could not be a friend.
He tried to think hard, he tried joining the dots to make something out of it, but no luck, then he remembered the guy in wooden mask asked him to not board the flight. But he wasn't sure if it actually happened.
Two guys walked into a room of some hotel and two girls join them, one of them puts down the wooden mask on the bed, the second one asked, "Will he take the flight?"
"He will." The guy who kept down the wooden mask said.
"You were right about his hallucinations." It was Shreya, she took a seat on the bed. "When I talked with him, he was confused and acted weird."
"I know; we stick with the plan now." The guy said taking a seat on the couch across the bed. "He is still probably confused if I was even there or it was some hallucination the way he is having."
Arjun was too disturbed, he kept thinking to himself that he was already in a bunch of problems and what was this new problem.
He punched the wall couple times in frustration, unable to come to any conclusion, he decided to take the flight.
He boarded the flight as scheduled. To his surprise the entire flight was empty, just these four people, with Arjun having an aisle seat on the left hand side, in the front, and the remaining three having seats on the right side, far behind.
"So strange, this flight was entirely booked! I hardly managed to get these four tickets, and now there is no one on the flight!" he wondered to himself.
The flight took off, after a few minutes, the guy wearing wooden mask came out of the cockpit.
"Hello there!" he greeted. Seeing him coming out of the cockpit didn't only surprise Arjun it also startled his mother.
"I gave instructions to you to not board this flight, a 24-years-old man died on this flight due to heart attack, four years back. This flight has some negative energy, making it a hotspot of them to strike you, they won't kill you, but they can put you in mental agony. Now, I don't blame you for not listening to me. You don't know what is happening anymore!"
"Excuse me! What is happening?" Arjun's mother exclaimed.
"Oh, hi ma'am!" the guy replied walking towards Arjun. "There is a threat above your head, and I may have the answer."
Arjun glanced outside the window casually as the engine caught his attention, it was burning and the airplane started descending. Arjun kept starring at the engine as the entire plane bashed into the ocean.
Arjun found himself stranded, floating in the ocean with the plane burning and damaged on one side and various parts floating around.
He panted and gasped for oxygen as he moved around and got onto one of the metal parts near him.
He sat on it and looked around, nothing but water and sun, he was trapped, he couldn't see anything till the horizon.
He took some deep breathes as with a WHIP something grabbed his right ankle and dragged him inside the water. Arjun resisted but it kept dragging him deep inside, he wasn't able to hold his breath anymore and opened his mouth, water gushed inside him and he kept drowning deeper and deeper as the light was now going faint and soon enough he was in the middle of darkness, pitch black all around.
"Wake up! Wake up!" voice echoed as Arjun gasped and opened his eyes to find himself sitting in the flight and the guy beside him took a sigh of relief. Arjun's mother was visibly scared, all of them were.
"Now listen to me, on reaching Pune, there will be two cars waiting for you. The first one will take granny, siso and mother to a place where, Arjun's father Keshav is, not their home. And the second one will bring Arjun to me. And you need to listen to me. This is for your safety."
The plane went through some turbulence as the lights flickered, and some entity appeared between Arjun's and his mother's seats. He walked a couple steps and made some noise of metal clinging and heavy footsteps, Arjun froze.
"Back off kid!" the entity said in rugged voice.
"You know I won't!" the guy said confidently.
"I remember, you are weak, you cannot stand us!" the entity said louder.
"But I am!"
The entity chuckled and said, "You'll see!" and with a WHOOSH, he disappeared.
Sunita and Mihika and grandmother had a good look at the entity, they couldn't digest wat just happened.
"What was that?" Mihika said as her voice was breaking, Arjun turned to her in reflex.
"A blood demon, you'll understand all of it soon. Just do as I say." The guy returned to the cockpit. The air-hostesses were just sitting, like nothing happened.
The flight being 2-hour-long, landed at nearly 1.15 am. The Pune airport was busy was normal, all the four of them grabbed their luggage and walked out the arrivals.
Four men in black suit were waiting for them, on their arrival they took over their luggage and said, "Ma'am please follow us."
"What do we do? Should we seriously follow these men?" grandmother was concerned.
"After seeing that thing in the flight! Do you think we should just do our things?" Sunita replied.
All of them walked over to the parking where two black sedans were parked alongside two bikes.
There was girl standing over one of the cars and a guy sitting in front seat of the second car.
"Myself Leela!" she introduced herself as soon as they reached the cars. She was in her early twenties, short hairs and wore a skirt with a red top.
The guy from the second car came out and said, "I am Nikhil. We do not have time, so let's just get moving! Arjun, in my car." Nikhil was the same age as Leela, he was probably as heighted as Arjun and was lean.
The ladies sat in one car and drove away as Arjun hopped into the second car.
"Where are we going?" Arjun asked Nikhil.
"The Mansion, on the outskirts of Pune, probably the safest place for you right now." He replied as they drove.
After driving for nearly 30 minutes, the car changed he coarse and drove off the highway into some secondary road that led into the woods.
The car kept moving as the blood demons kept an eye on them from Hell.
7 shadows stood and 1 sat on some kind of throne beside a moving hologram, watching the car drive to the Mansion.
"Should we intervene?" one of them asked.
"Nah-nah-nah-nah." The blood demon sitting said, moving his index finger like a pendulum, denying.
"But general, once they get inside the Mansion, we would have no power to look over Arjun. It is a Moksha site!" another one exclaimed.
"Let them play! They are insects! We are superior to them, no matter how much they dance, we can always crumble them like some cockroach!" the general said in rugged, deep voice, confidently.