Slay the Ghost

The hills were haunted.

At the summit of the highest hill, she stood shivering in her thin white cotton dress that was flapping around her legs, teased by the winds. Scared and cold, she questioned her very sanity in ascending the hill. There was no human sound on the hill - all she could hear were the winds and the flap-flap of her dress. Strangely, the leaves of the trees did not rustle or if they did, they did it quietly so as not to disturb the ghosts.

Ever since she was a little girl, she'd believed in two things absolutely - one, that ghosts were the restless souls of evil people who wanted to torment the living out of spite and jealousy and two, ghosts preferred the nighttime. Now, when she was older, she wasn't so sure.

It was day yet - 6 in the evening - or so her cell phone clock told her. The sky was so laden with dense clouds that even the harsh winds could not make them scurry away. A trickle of the sunlight somehow seeped through the dense clouds and lent visibility to her world.

She rubbed her arms with her hands and continued to shiver. Yes, she was now older but she wasn't sure about ghosts being souls of dead people. The living made more terrible ghosts and the memories of the living were infinitely more terrifying than the memories of the dead. The dead made her feel sad and bereft, the living filled her with outright terror and hate.

There was a distant rumble of thunder and where she expected a torrent of rain, a light drizzle ensued. She still stood where she was before, now wet, shivering and scared.

This was the place where she had once come with her two kids for a nice family picnic. This was the place where they had all laughed, raced each other over the slopes and squabbled over food in the picnic basket. This was the place where they had all napped under the shade of the trees after a very heavy picnic brunch. And this was the place where they were thus asleep when a runaway convict from the nearby prison had stumbled upon them.

It was only two months ago but so much had changed in her life since then that it seemed like a vision from some other age. To say that the convict was surprised to see them there would be a gross understatement. He hadn't expected anyone to be picnicking on the hills along whose paths he'd planned his escape route. His running feet had woken them up and before she could put two and two together from the clothes on him and the mere expression on his face, he snatched up her older son and held his neck with his muscular arm. Fear of capture made him needlessly violent and he'd warned them not to budge an inch as he tightened his grip on her son.

Through her own haze of fear and the whimpers of her younger son, she remembered her own voice - it was meant to be soothing but she could herself detect a definite note of fear in it. She was trying to persuade the convict to leave her son alone and was offering her husband's services as a lawyer to help him get free. She remembered the impatience and scorn on the convict's face. She remembered how he'd pushed her son aside hard while running away. And the most terrible of all, she remembered the sickening thud she heard as her son's head collided against the big stone.

She'd lost her son and the convict was caught again. What purpose did her son's death serve? What was the point in living at all, if life could be snatched away so pointlessly and easily? Would her living ghost ever be exorcised, as he deserved? His trial would begin the next day and he would be pleading insanity and hence, innocence. Would justice ever be served?

From a little afar, a man stood in the rain, watching her. He noticed the way she rubbed her arms, he noticed her shivers, he knew there were tears mingled with rain on her cheeks. Love and a need to comfort, both her and to himself, made him walk up to her.

He said, "His trials' tomorrow. I promise you, I will see to it that our ghost is slayed. I will slay our ghost. I promise you that."

Her husband's voice carried a note of determination that she hadn't heard before. Sorrow had made him stronger. As she looked at him, she saw that he could make it possible. He would ensure that justice be served. She held his hand and they turned to walk away, ready to exorcise their ghost.

When she looked up at the sky again, the winds had managed to dispel the dense clouds. Now, a rainbow was smiling and she felt hope rise in her heart.