A Long Drive on The Lost Road

A Long Drive on The Lost Road

It was Friday and after a long work week, the couple decided to go on a long drive as an extended weekend was approaching and they wanted to start it early.

The Corona Virus pandemic had forced the country to go on lock-down. The IT employees were asked to work from home. Like other employees, this couple was also working from home managing all the office meetings and work, preparing food, sanitizing the home regularly, video calling their friends and families who were also locked down in their respective cities, and other household works. At night or on weekends they would watch some movies or TV series just to flush down all their exhaustion. On top of everything, the residential area in which they were living, consisted of 400+ apartments, was completely silent. Kids didn’t come out to play, the adults chose to stay indoors because of the Covid19 norms and since elders were more vulnerable, they locked themselves in. The silence, all around, gave way to more frustration.

Both of them worked in different MNCs but the pressure of working from home and that too in a lockdown with nowhere to go sometimes tested their patience and frustration. All the city malls, shops, cinema halls remained closed till everything became normal. Only the shops selling necessary items were allowed to stay open and that too for a particular period of time. During this time period only, people were allowed to come out to buy necessary items and again return to home. So, after that time period, the roads again became deserted and silent as if they never belonged to a metropolitan city. Since the couple stayed far from their hometown in a different state, when the lockdown was getting lifted phase by phase but domestic travel was still not open to the public, the couple decided to go on a long city drive. That day they had decided to wrap up the office work early and prepare the dinner simultaneously so that they didn’t have to return hurriedly to cook and neither they had to order from outside considering the current situation.

Raj took out his car that had been sitting idle for more than seven months now. He affectionately dusted it as he considered it to be one of his precious items and loved to take a drive whenever possible. He connected his phone’s Bluetooth to his car and while listening to old Bollywood songs, he patiently waited for his wife, Jyoti. While Jyoti, on the other hand, was taking all her time to apply make-up and wearing one of her best dresses. Though they were going for a long drive only, with no one to meet to, still they didn’t want to make this drive anything less than a party. They considered this as their own celebration and a reason to take selfies and photos as they had been in the same 2-BHK apartment for more than seven months now and occasionally came out only to buy the necessary household or food items.

It was almost past seven in the evening, the sun was already below the horizon but the sky was still giving out a blue and golden hue. They started with the road which seven months ago was their usual road to work. They were still trying to accept the roads with no traffics, closed malls, their workplace which used to teem with thousands of employees is now empty, when suddenly they realized that it took them less than 20-minutes to reach their workplace whereas during normal times it would have taken them more than 2-hours due to the unbearable traffic. This realization made them happy as now they can travel more distance within the same time they expected to return.

Raj was fond of Bollywood retro songs whereas Jyoti, though shared the same taste, was more fond of the latest songs. But on this road trip, it was Jyoti who decided to put on some retro music to make this long drive more soothing. Since it was the month of October, it had rained heavily that afternoon, washing the road and making the air fresh and pure. Both of them opened their window pane to experience the cool soothing air and silence of the road. The well-lit, well-maintained and the empty road was tempting Raj to put some load on the pedal and take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive fast around the city and on top of that no traffic police to check. But Raj being experienced enough knew long drive was not meant to drive fast, rather it’s for the pleasure of driving. So, he just cruised around exploring the city and chose the unknown roads which in normal days they would have never got a chance to visit. In the meantime, Jyoti took selfies and tried to capture the moments, empty roads of the city on her mobile.

While singing along and cruising around, they came across a lot of beautiful bungalows with fashionable gates, lush gardens, and parked stylish cars. Police were doing their duties of maintaining the Covid19 protocols. Street dogs were roaming around and occasionally a car or bike would pass by who might be going for a long drive like Raj and Jyoti. At some point, the road would come to a dead-end and Raj would re-route to continue their drive. They didn’t want to use any maps so wherever the road took them they just followed since there was no destination.

It was past eight. The night was dark and cloudy, the crescent moon playing hide and seek through the clouds giving a faint silvery sheen everywhere. While going around those beautiful colonies and taking the unknown turns, Raj saw a newly constructed road, with newly added street lights, polished as ever. It seemed to them as if a new carpet had been rolled out for them to make the first walk. For a city with nightlife, friday 8 PM on a normal day meant the evening had just started. So Raj, in an instant, took the road without a second thought and said, “Let’s see where this would take us.”

After going some distance, the couple saw a group of dogs feasting on something near roadside. Though Jyoti couldn’t get a clear view, still it gave her a shiver down the spine. Feeling a bit cold due to that shiver, she quickly rolled up the window pane and asked Raj to return as she felt uneasy about the road. Raj tried to calm her down and said, “Maybe after a couple of months, when the lockdown is lifted and normal life begins it won’t be possible for us to come to this part of the city let alone enjoying the free roads.” He asked for another 15-minutes on the road and then return. Jyoti then asked Raj to roll up his window pane also and stop the music, to which he agreed. As soon as he did, Raj saw the same group of dogs, who were feasting earlier, were now running after the car and in no time caught up on either side of the car. Raj could see he was driving at 50-kmph but the dogs managed to keep up. One of them even tried to hit the car. Jyoti started to panic as she did not like the things going on. Raj tried to crack a joke about the behaviour of the dogs but Jyoti was in no mood to laugh. On seeing her fearful face, Raj consoled her, “We will take the next U-turn and return home.”

As he was looking for the next gap to make the turn, he realised the dogs had stopped following them. He was about to share this with his wife when suddenly out of nowhere, from the dark, a calf jumped from the left part of the road to the right and covered the distance in just two jumps whose width was around 40-feet. On seeing this Jyoti gave a loud cry and Raj also panicked. He applied all his force to the brakes to stop the car thinking he might hit it. Raj tried to act normal as if nothing had happened and tried to pacify Jyoti by holding her hand as she was trembling out of fear. He promised that the next U-turn will be somewhere nearby and will return. Jyoti silently said with a bit of shiver in her voice, “Raj something is wrong. Can’t you see? We have been traveling head-on straight for more than 30-minutes on this road without a single gap or turn. The road doesn’t even bend. There is no one except these animals who are behaving abnormally. We are not even sure what lies on both sides of the road because of this darkness and we can’t see anything except the road and the lights on it. ” Raj had realised this long back but didn’t want to panic her.

Realising they were standing in the middle of a desolate place, Raj tried to put the car on gear and leave the place but then he felt as if somebody was looking at him through the window. As he looked right, the same calf was standing next to the car and was directly looking at him through the glass pane. He noticed that the calf had unnatural white eyes and also noticed that the lights on the road were starting to shut down one by one from distance and it was getting darker. The calf gave two powerful head-on blows to the car which displaced it a bit. Considering its size, it was shocking and not at all expected. On seeing all this, Jyoti started to pray and sing Hanuman Chalisa. She offered this prayer daily and was so well-versed that it was right on the tip of her tongue but due to fear she was fumbling and forgetting.

Raj asked her to take a deep breath, close her eyes and start again. She did that and prayed louder than before. In the meantime, Raj tried to escape by reversing the car to take the U-turn on the wrong side of the road itself. But the calf somehow blocked the road in whatever direction he tried to turn. Deciding to hit the calf if it blocked him again, he took a sharp turn and reversed the car with all the speed that he could generate and tried to outrun the calf. But the calf tried to match up with their speed and overtook them. It ran in front of them trying to block and stop the car. But Raj was not slowing down. From the rearview mirror, he could still see that the street lights were shutting down one by one.

As the chase continued for some time, in the distance, Raj saw that the same group of dogs were now roaming around on the road. The dogs became alert of the approaching car and as soon as they saw the car coming, they ran towards it. The couple looked at each other, puzzled, questioning what was going to happen next. As the dogs came closer, rather than blocking the car which the couple was expecting, they ran after the calf. On seeing the dogs barking and approaching, the calf stopped and started to run in the opposite direction, leaving the couple alone.

On seeing this, Jyoti gave a nervous smile expecting this long fearful drama to be over but Raj was not slowing down till he made sure that they were out of the visible zone of the calf and the dogs. The shutting down of street lights stopped when they reached the place where Raj had taken the turn to drive on this dreadful road. At the same speed, Raj continued towards the main part of the city occasionally slowing down only to take the hard turns. The silent city roads which they were enjoying earlier, was now haunting them and they wanted to reach home as soon as possible. Jyoti could see many street dogs sitting roadside. But as she was still in fear, she tried her best to not look at them. Raj was silent and concentrated on his driving while looking through the mirror making sure they were not followed.

As they reached the central part of the city, a policeman signalled them to stop by waving from far. Raj was in double minds whether to stop or not but Jyoti asked him to stop and not take any risk out of fear. As he stopped, Jyoti started to pray again thinking this could be a nightmare also. The policeman approached and asked Raj to lower the window pane. He did it cautiously while holding the emergency safety hammer on another hand, which he normally kept in the car. The policeman, who was in his early 50s, asked for their IDs and went on to ask some general questions. “Son, what’s your name? Why are you roaming outside in the middle of the night? Where are you returning from? Where are you going?”. Raj, though nervous, answered all of it diligently without showing any kind of reaction to the nightmare they had just managed to escape. On being asked the reason for driving so fast, he mentioned that they had taken a wrong turn and it took them forever to find the main road that made his wife a bit nervous and that is the reason why she is still praying. Raj avoided narrating the situation which they faced earlier as it would make them look like idiots who were cooking up stories. Seeing their panic-stricken condition, the policeman let them go advising, “Its not wise to roam around at 2 AM in this situation.” The couple thanked him and left but Raj kept an eye on the rearview mirror to make sure the policeman was at least a human. To his relief, he was.

They drove directly to their apartment and Raj double-checked whether they were being followed. They bolted their apartment door and went straight to their worship area to thank God for giving them the necessary strength to return safely. After praying, they got some morale boost and then went on to freshen up.

While having dinner, they were discussing about the situation which they had faced and suddenly remembered that the police had pointed that it was 2 AM. They double-checked their watch to verify and it really was 2:30 AM. To their dismay, they had somewhat lost more than 6-hours in that dreadful road. They couldn’t believe it because as per them everything happened within 1-hour. In all that running and escaping, they forgot to keep a track of time but they couldn’t understand how a 6-hours journey could be that short. Raj even argued that a 2-hour drive in any direction from the main part of the city could have taken them to another nearby town or city considering the speed they were traveling. Jyoti didn’t want to have any further conversation about the incident but Raj insisted to verify on Google Maps where the road was headed and exactly on which part of the city it was located. To their surprise, they couldn’t locate the road. They even tracked all the roads and turns they took during their long drive but couldn’t find that dreadful road. Somehow Raj managed to locate the spot from where he took the turn for the road but again to their bewilderment there was no road, just a dead-end. The map showed that it was a deserted place with no man-made structures. They didn’t discuss any more and went straight to bed hoping for a sweet dream to forget this long drive as just another nightmare.

But some things kept bugging Raj which he did not share with Jyoti. While locking the car in the parking, he didn’t notice any dent on the car because of the two mighty blows from the calf which were really powerful. And also regarding the dogs, he could not understand who they were feasting on in a deserted place. More importantly, were the dogs initially trying to warn them about the presence of the danger ahead in that road. By running and hitting the car, were they desperately trying to stop them from going deep into the road as they were aware of the presence of an unnatural being because later they tried to scare the calf and ran after it. And, it seemed that the calf was also afraid of them. Trying not to think about it anymore he went to sleep after planting a good night kiss on his wife’s forehead, who was now asleep.

To this day, they never shared this story with anyone nor they ever discussed it between themselves but whenever there are any calves or dogs around, they maintained their distance. And they had promised that they would never venture into unknown roads or places without proper knowledge beforehand and would never explore new places late in the night.

!~^*^~!

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horror (1) love (1) short story (3) thriller (1)