A visitor at Tea Hill B&B

She had woken up before the crack of dawn that day. The rain that had been bashing since midnight was no longer water, instead it had transformed itself into a demon, a beast that didn’t care about mankind. The mighty Brahmaputra had flooded once again, plaguing the quaint little town of Rongmola in Assam’s Dibrugarh district. Megha looked out from the bedroom balcony of her dilapidated B&B – ‘Tea Hill Inn’ which she managed entirely on her own, breathing in the scent of the fresh, green Earth. A mist had curled up the eastern Himalayan mountains and a fierce wind was battering at the doors and windows, determined to get in. But Megha felt unusually calm and composed, oblivious to the ongoing wrath of the rains, for she was in love.

It had only been a fortnight ago that Antoine Eméliér, a young, pleasant looking French architect from Marseille who had come to the countryside for some research had arrived at her doorstep looking for shelter. Being the off season it had been almost four months since a visitor had dropped by the lodging. Attending to foreign travelers was not uncommon for the vibrant, nimble and cheeky 28-year-old Megha, an orphan who had inherited the vintage abode recently from her paternal aunt who died battling cancer. Although she never really had a roaring business because of the remote location of the inn, she would still turn away the occasionally rare Indian visitors simply because they were not foreigners and also because she had no interest in running the business, however badly. But it were the latter class of people she would always be keen on hosting as she believed they had exciting stories to narrate.

The villagers who had come to greatly respect and admire her aunt claimed that Megha was not fit to cater to the inn and had even resented her for having this kind of a bias attitude, that too towards her own people. But Megha couldn’t have cared less. She had found abundance of joy in teaching computer skills to kids in the neighbourhood besides of course looking after her tea garden. The village dwellers she knew were jealous of her natural beauty and her immense knowledge about a million other things.

Now that she thought about it, the more afternoons she had spent with Antoine lying beside him in the tea estate that surrounded the periphery of the inn, listening to the stories crafted by his wild imagination, the more she had begun warming up to him. Even though he was considerably older than her, at 35, he still had a boyish charm about his large face that she had come to adore. Megha knew he felt the same way because of the way he looked at her longingly with a mischievous glint, his button shaped bright Sapphire eyes piercing into her beautiful jet black ones. And now suddenly she couldn’t stand to be even a minute away from him. Every fiber of her being shuddered with pleasure and the resulting satiation of some sort of an inner desire at the very thought of being touched by him.

The wooden planks beneath creaked loudly as she rushed downstairs towards his room on the first floor. She found his door ajar and shamelessly peaked inside. There was no one in sight.

‘Perhaps he couldn’t sleep and had gone for a stroll in her tea estate?’ She wondered, pouting slightly.

Megha, still dressed in her pajamas dashed out of the B&B, her unkempt shoulder-length straight hair flying about her translucent face, the pitter- patter of rain drops blurring her vision momentarily.

Mystified that Antoine wasn’t there, she repeatedly shouted for him as though her life hence worth depended on him, which in a way it did. But nobody responded. Just then across a stretch of half a kilometer something sparkly appeared in her eyeline. She thought she saw a silvery figure standing with hands reaching out to her.

‘Are those really a pair of hands? What is this? Maybe I am still groggy from my sleep,’ she rubbed her eyes, convincing herself it was nothing.

Megha turned toward the inn, finally deciding it be wise to wait for Antoine inside, if at all he had ventured down the hill to the village. Through the light coming from the veranda she realised she had almost tripped upon a silver Cartier wrist watch with a large dark grey dial.

‘Antoine’s watch! What is it doing here?’

With the help of a flash light, she also noticed his handkerchief and a locket fallen on the ground nearby. A few steps further she caught sight of the clothes he had been wearing the previous night when he had cooked a romantic dinner for her in the rains.

‘What is going on? Where on Earth is Antoine?’ She said to herself, frowning while plodding through the tea garden, her heart beat increasing faster.

As though the oddly shaped creature ahead could read her mind, the figure immediately got down on its haunches. It appeared to be eating something but Megha couldn’t exactly figure out what it was and she was also suddenly tremendously frightened to crane her neck up for a better view. She knew she couldn’t even yell out for help for hers was the only place on this side of the hill. No one was in close proximity for at least about four kilometers.

Although her nerves were drawn taut like a rope, she forced herself to take a closer look at the figure. Megha moved about quickly yet silently like a deer in the forest. It was then that a sense of inevitable horror gripped her. Suddenly a flash of lightning roared through the starless sky, illuminating a huge other-worldly life form who was busy feasting on the dead body of Antoine!

Megha shrieked with all her might and started running as fast as she could. Halfway through the estate, she realised she had faltered and had stopped mid-stride. It seemed to her there was some kind of a force pulling her back. The creature who was chasing her now stood in front of her, shadowing her at a height of more than seven feet. Even in the darkness, she could make out its silver coloured face, on it there were two human-like almond-shaped eyes, a sharp nose and four hands floating independently from its weirdly formed body.

‘I have come from the former cold dwarf planet, Pluto. I am the last one to survive before my home was destroyed,’ barked Magio robotically.

Just then the rain drops stopped and the sky which was boiling in anger all this while finally gave way to a few rays of the dazzling sun. The faint light of dawn slipping over the mountains made Magio glance upwards and Megha took this fraction of distraction as a means to escape. She hurried inside the B&B and locked the door and all the windows. Even though she had a cell phone, there was almost always no network, this high up on the hill. Moreover she never really thought of keeping a telephone and now she so desperately wished she had. Whom could she have called anyway? Who would listen to this insane story of hers?

Megha risked a peak through the curtains of the ground floor window which had once served as a resting room for the guests. She could no longer see Magio but the rain had commenced again, picking up its momentum, putting an end to any hope of a balmy day. She was about to breathe a a broken sigh of relief when she heard a loud bang on the door. Her chest heaved up and down and her heart fluttered with pounding anxiety as Magio yelled out to open the door.

‘I won’t do you any harm. Just don’t tell anyone about my existence.’

Megha stayed still, merely pressing her ear against the door frame and then after some time Magio disappeared.

Megha was growing restless by the minute. She couldn’t not do anything about her situation.

‘Had Magio really killed Antoine? If not, who else had come at night?’ she said to herself, scrunching her face in terror and mourning for the loss of yet another dear one.

She could feel a sting of tears coming to her eyes but she was determined to not give up. She needed to confide in someone. And who better than her best friend Anamika who stayed at the next village. Cautious of her surroundings, she tiptoed out of the inn carefully and cycled her way towards Anamika’s house. Megha rested there for a long time, narrating her ordeal, before deciding to come back to the B&B in the evening much to Anamika’s chagrin who insisted that Megha should stay back.

As she parked the wheels besides the main gate, she quickly rooted inside her pockets for the keys, constantly glancing back as trotted towards the inn. The door creaked wide open and Magio stepped into view.

‘I told you not to tell anyone about me. And yet you did. Now you will be punished for your sins,’ he said menacingly.

The downpour had drawn out Magio’s voice and Megha stood still, her right hand still gripping the door, fear quite vivid in her eyes. Before she could even react, Magio brought his four hands around Megha’s neck and strangled her to death. Then of course he began feasting on her.

The tale of how Megha and Antoine went missing and of their possibly tragic deaths was like a classic example of a spin the yarn story and it soon spread like wildfire among every nook and corner of even the neighbouring villages. But by then the population of Rongmola had itself begun diminishing by the day. After all there was a hungry alien life form who had been strayed away from home perched on the mountain top resting at the Tea Hill B&B while the Brahmaputra flowed sensually and its worshipers remaining till date blissfully unaware of the reality.