The Ritual

' The usual choice is not between the good and the bad but between the bad and the worse.'

The facade we put up in our day to day lives often forces us to question who we truly are. The strongest of resistances begin when thoughts turn into beliefs and beliefs into ideals. Beliefs are important. After all, good or bad, plenty of people are willing to die for those.

Thoughts like these swirl through Broto's mind all day long. What people believe in , how it came to be, and whether there really is a power to the abstract thoughts and beliefs people have. His mind wanders off into the realm of the unknown, veering into thoughts of life after death, what really happens after one dies, of whether death really is the all ending truth we are heading towards.

Death. Death seems to be the central pivot to all thoughts Broto has nowadays. He doesn't necessarily think about ending his own life, but there has been a recent surge in his thoughts about death, Broto realized. Expected. After all...

'My chest, sir. It has been hurting since this evening. At first, I didn't pay much attention to it, but it kept increasing so I had to come here.'

Broto's ominous thoughts about death were punctuated by the complaints of a patient. The General Emergency of a District Government Medical College was more than an apt place to have thoughts of death about but here thoughts were seldom paid attention to. Action was sought for. One had to, regardless of efficiency, give the impression that efforts were being made to improve the patient's condition. Run around, take their vitals, put an oxygen mask on, ask the nurse to inject the patient with drugs which may or may not have anything to do with what the patient's complaints were. And in the meanwhile fill up a treatment sheet with names of medicines and admit the patient into the hospital if the condition of the patient or the looks on the patient party was serious enough. Everybody knew about the history of violence against doctors in Indian hospitals. Doing right by the patient and doing right by oneself as a doctor walked along a thin line here. Couldn't ignore either.

'Put an oxygen mask on him ' Broto asked one of the emergency staff, 'and get an ECG done right now ', Broto said to the middle aged man who was the patient and to the three stout men behind him, who he could safely assume were related to the patient. Their tense faces relaxed, perhaps seeing something of substance being done for their patient while Broto in his own mind , breathed a sigh of relief. It's like a game, a dangerous game, and each patient was it's own challenge. He seemed to have navigated this one safely.

'Back to sulking I guess ', Broto thought, as he put his head down on the table, his hands wrapped around the sides preventing any light from entering into his brooding corner. Dark spaces for dark thoughts, Broto reasoned. Additionally , it was 30 minutes past 2 AM. Humans seek the dark this late at night.

He had a severe headache. And why wouldn't he ? He had been on duty continuously for the last 18 hours, and still counting. He was currently posted in the Surgery and Anesthesia department and the long hours were taking a real toll on him. Just a few hours ago, in the ward, he was almost about to start a blood transfusion for a patient when he realized at the last moment that he had the wrong blood bag. His carelessness could have been fatal for the patient. In the last few days, there have been several such instances of carelessness. Not properly disposing a syringe needle and causing one of the nursing staff a nasty needle prick, prescribing medication that was potentially harmful for a patient , handing over the wrong drug to his seniors during his anesthesia posting in the operation theatre. All these were clear signs of the stress he was under, given the long and burdensome working hours he was being rammed under. There are no laborers in a medical college, but if there were, they would be titled 'Interns'. Medical interns were overworked to their bones and paid almost nothing for the same. Their real payment was the 'knowledge and experience you gain from all this' , the seniors would say. Broto had learned to live with this. He now auto piloted his way through the motions everyday. What he did pay attention to was his thoughts. His thoughts on death.

'Excuse me doctor. Can I speak to you ?'

If scraping a chalk on a chalkboard had a voice, this would be it. Broto's drowsiness vaporizing in an instant, he looked up from his cocoon of darkness.

A middle aged man. Or was he older ? Completely bald. Or did he have some small hair growing on his head ? He wore a half sleeved shirt, dark blue with white stripes. Or was it light green with pink stripes ? Untucked, with grey colored trousers, or was it...

'Can I speak to you ?' , the man had spoken again, and had again halted Broto's mental marathon. For the better this time, Broto had been staring at the man for some time now, and the man repeating his question seemed to have broken the trance.

'Yes, what problem do you have ?', Broto feeling a little embarrassed about his action a few moments ago, asked the man. 'A new challenge', he thought, his mind racing through all the common chief complaints patients usually had.

'Can I sit ? I have a rather big problem', the man asked.

'Yes , of course', Broto would rather this man left that instant after realizing he had mistaken the hospital to be the bank, and the doctor to be the manager, but banks probably did not remain open this late at night , and even if a bank did, it was probably not for handing out loans. Additionally , miracles were a rare phenomenon, and Broto knowing his luck concluded that this man was indeed in need of medical help instead of financial.

'So, tell me , what is your problem ?' Broto asked. The man had seated himself in front of Broto on a chair designated for patients.

'Before I start, can I have some water ? I am terribly thirsty. I have come a long way, you see ' the man's eyes fixed on the water bottle in front of him on the table. Broto's water bottle.

'Ok', Broto would not have entertained this request , had the man come during the rush hours of the hospital. It would have taken more time for the man to pick up and drink water from the bottle than the time Broto would have allotted himself for one patient. And, handing over your personal water bottle to a patient in a hospital no matter how thirsty they may be, may rake up some brownie points, but can be detrimental to one's own precious health and hygiene. That fine line between doing good by the patient versus looking out for yourself.

'Thank you ', the man drank some of the water from the half filled bottle. 'Thank you very much'.

'Now...', Broto was getting a little irritated now.

'Oh, yes yes . My problem. Let me tell you about my problem now.'

A pause. Silence. Absolute silence. It was dead of the night, and the dead were here, all around, howling, wandering through the corridors of the hospital, carrying on them the weight of all the dead hopes and dreams their loved ones had once conjured up for them in their lifetimes.

' Broto, I think your problem is bigger than mine right now. What you are going through cannot be easy.'

Taken aback, Broto stared at the man with an intense gaze. Eyes are the mirror to the soul, it is said, and at that moment Broto's eyes communicated with excellent precision a mixture of genuine confusion and shock. The man's eyes on the other hand revealed nothing. A dead stare, and yet so intent. A hollowed out shell he looked like, with no soul, and yet strangely expressive, as if his eyes instead of being a window to his soul, was a window into a vast abyss of nothingness, like a steep cliff overlooking a huge sea, with the horizon far away in the dark...

At least the man knowing his name he could reason out. Broto was wearing his surgical scrubs which had his name sewn over his left pocket. "Dr. Broto Banerjee " it read, a fact his batchmates had regularly made fun of. 'Anything ever goes wrong and the patient party start looking for a doctor to thrash, you will be sitting ducks. Can't back out wearing something like that', his friend Archisman had said laughing.

But what Broto was going through ? How would this man know anything about that ? Or was this some high level play by someone out to play a prank ? Broto definitely did not know this man. He was sure. He would remember a man who looked like this.

'You look surprised. As you should, naturally. You have never seen me before, nor have you heard of me. And for me to drop in at such an inconvenient time, this must be quite the shock to you.'

Chalk scraping on the board stopped. The man looked intently at Broto. A wry smile had curled up at the corner of his lips.

'Sorry , do I know you ?', Broto finally coming back to his senses, asked the man.

'Like I said, you don't. Yet, in some way, you do. You always have. At least since that incident...'

'Who are you and what are you talking about ?', Broto cut short the man's intentionally vague and puzzling speech.

The man leaned back, resting on the chair, eyes still on Broto. His lips still wore that strange smile.

'It hasn't been easy for you. A death in the family is devastating. And a premature death at that...'

The man stopped. Broto looked at that man. The man looked back.

Again a prolonged silence ensued. The clock ticking in the background, or was it his heart ? Broto hadn't noticed anything in the background until then, but now realized he was all alone with the man in the room. He was the only doctor on duty at the time, but usually there are nurses in the room as well. Where had they gone?

'How do you know about me and my family ?', Broto was getting a bad feeling about this man. He didn't look like a family friend, or a well wisher for that matter.

The man stared at Broto. 'How is your family ? Your parents, I cannot imagine what they must be going through right now. No parent should have to see their own child's demise. What an unfortunate situation...'

'How do you know about my brother's death ? Who are...'

'I know a lot of things, Rick. I know for instance that you haven't spoken to your parents since your brother's accident. Or the fact that you consider yourself responsible for your brother's death. You suffer every day, every moment for it. You wish you had...'

'Enough !' , Broto's voice cut through the silence like a pointed knife. Broto was surprised by the volume of his own voice. He hadn't realized when he had stood up , when his body had started shaking, his fists clenched.

'I don't know how you know about my brother's death, or about my family, but stop talking nonsense . Just stop. Stop talking about my family and my brother '.

Broto stopped. He was still shaking, tears welled up in his eyes. He sat down.

This was no ordinary person, Broto realized. How did he know so much about his family ? About his brother's accident ? And 'Rick' ? Only the people close to him and his family knew and called him by that name. Not even all his friends knew about his nickname.

And his brother. A painful memory. Broto flinched.

' It has been exactly three months Rick. You cannot keep hiding behind the pain all your life, can you now ? ' , the man's sinister smile widened.

'How do you know about that ? How do you know so much ?' Broto asked, clearly shaken to the core. He was dealing with his brother's untimely death and everyday felt like a chore, a dreadful and heavy pain to do even the simplest of tasks. Broto had hoped his routine would take his mind off the pain. It had, but the pain did not go away. It never does, Broto had concluded. He had to live with the pain, the gaping hole in his chest for the rest of his life. He would just have to get used to the pain.

But for a stranger to just barge in suddenly and peel off the little scab of healing his mind had secured over the last month, it was all too much for him. He felt the hole completely ripped open again, gaping, bleeding. His mind was bleeding. His eyes welled up with water, tears rolling down his cheeks.

'That accident wasn't your fault Rick. You had only just began teaching your brother how to drive. It wasn't your fault that he snuck out in the night with the car. A highway at night can be a challenging place to drive, even for experienced drivers. With so many trucks and heavy cars on the road at that time...'

The man stopped. The smile still intact. His empty eyes still very much on Broto. The words he offered were kind, and yet Broto could feel that his intention wasn't. It felt like the empty words of consolation from a loan shark after hearing the losses the man he had lent money to had to face, before inevitably threatening the man to return said money with the interest amount. Something ominous was coming.

There was an eerie silence all around. Sure the time of night warranted that. Even a busy hospital emergency found spells of complete silence at this time. Humans rested and horrors roamed around. Broto seemed to have found company with one of those horrors.

' It was my fault ! I was the one who got him into that whole driving thing. He was not even into cars. I just wanted him to be self sufficient, to enjoy cars as much as I did. He did not want to. I forced him into it. I forced him to do it all. It was my fault. It was all my fault...'

'It wasn't your fault Broto,' the man paused; 'It was me who caused your brother's death.'

The silence was getting overbearing. Every breath felt like it weighed a ton. Broto struggled to breath. His eyes widened in shock. Is this how every patient with shortness of breath felt like ? It was so painful, so scary. Every breath felt like his last, he truly had no idea whether the next breath would come.

'What ? What did you say ?'

The man leaned in, the smile had vanished, his bald head shining in the brightly lit room. Was he really this bald ? Broto hadn't noticed.

'Rick, I killed your brother. Or at least I got him killed.'

Broto had seen many prank videos on the internet. People making funny videos, sometimes crossing the ethical limit only to popularize their videos. Any attention is good attention is the motto they lived by, Broto had thought when watching these videos. Was this somehow a plot for such a video ? Was he in the middle of an elaborate practical joke where a personal tragedy was being exploited by someone desperate enough for attention ?

No. This was different. Broto felt a chill run down his spine. His hands trembling. His eyes, again excellently reflecting the fear within him.

'I don't know who you are, but get out of here. Get out !' Broto screamed. 'Security ! Get this man out of here !'

Surely the security personnel were still here. The nurses might have gone to rest in their staff room, but surely the security staff was still there, just outside the room. Drowsy, perhaps. But Broto's scream was sure to break through that. Broto knew. Broto hoped...

No one came. Complete silence . Broto could hear his heart thumping. And thumping it was. Like a prisoner trapped in a room, beating against the wall, demanding they be released.

'No one is coming Broto. You ensured that. '

'What are you taking about ? What do you mean ?'

The smile retuned. It was even wider now.

'You killed them, Broto. You killed them.'

His eyes were no longer lifeless. They teemed with life. Or something sinister: death.

'You have been nothing short of excellent Broto. Such efficiency . You truly are my greatest creation.'

Broto was growing numb now. His thoughts were distorted. Or he wasn't thinking at all. In fact he did not know what was happening.

'You are still not completely out of your shell. So, you must be confused. Very confused even. Scared. In a haze.'

Snippets of memory. Something was peeking around, in his mind. He could remember something. Like frames from a horror movie.

He had done something. Broto could feel it. He had done something evil. Very evil. But what was it ? And why ?

'You mixed a drug in the water of the humidifiers of the oxygen tanks. A harmful drug. Extremely harmful in large concentration. And fatal in the concentration that you mixed the drug.'

Broto stared. Blankly. Now he was the one who looked lifeless.

'That last man that came to you. Remember what you had asked the nurses to do ?'

Broto ran towards the door. He slid the door open.

'I can't live like this ! I just can't. It hurts so much Amal, it hurts so much !'

Every night Broto could hear the helpless wails of his mother, his father's unsuccessful attempts at consoling her, and his own guilt weighing down on him. Every day, every night, every moment, since Ricky's death. Broto remembers every moment of that night and the transpiring morning. He clearly remembers the ticking sound of the clock that night. For some reason, he could not sleep that night. Perhaps in some vast interconnected hive minds of subconsciousness, Broto had already somehow come to know of what was to come, or what had already happened to his brother.

The phone rang. His father's phone. He hated that tune. He had asked his father to change the ringtone many times. To no success.

A blank. Next thing Broto remembered is rushing down to their car with his parents frantically. His mother's screams, crying , asking his father what was really going on, where Ricky was, whether he was okay or not.

Everything after that was a blur. A dull blur. The hospital, crying, phone calls, more crying, sleepless nights, and then one day, the ominous news of his brother being no more.

Nobody blamed Broto for his brother's death. His father, his mother, his relatives. Perhaps everyone was too busy grieving. Or maybe the accusations were hushed enough to not reach Broto's ears. In the end it didn't matter. He blamed himself. And no amount of grief could hush his inner voice screaming every moment. Accusing of killing his brother. Accusing of causing so much grief to his parents, to his family.

Locking himself up in his room, all Broto could do was grieve. Laying on his bed, he remembered his brother. Ricky was going to get into college that summer. He had performed outstandingly in his higher secondary examinations. Broto remembered how they had celebrated Ricky's results and him subsequently getting into a prestigious college in Delhi . His parents wanted him to follow in his brother's footsteps. Ricky had been adamant on studying literature. And Broto had wholeheartedly supported that. He knew of the horrors of the medical profession, and did not want his brother subjected to the same .

Broto laid on his bed all day. He felt numb. He grieved and grieved hoping time would soothe the pain . It didn't. Every day was worse than the last one. His parents' helplessness, the lingering memories of his brother everywhere, it was hell.

He began looking. For something. Anything. Anything that could help him with the pain. He spent all day on the internet. Death, spirits, the occult, he searched up everything. He kept looking for days. He had stopped bathing, he barely ate. His aunts ,uncles and other relatives were there. Their constant push was the only reason he ate anything at all. All his mind was now into looking up ways to soothe the pain. He had diverted his pain and kept himself busy by looking up all manners of stuff from the internet until one day, he found something.

A ritual. Some kind of a reanimation ritual. This was in a corner of the internet that Broto had spent days to discover. It wasn't easy to get it. Broto was a man of science. He may have been somewhat forced into medical studies by his parents, but science overall had always been something he rigorously followed. He had been it's disciple for more than a decade. As such, something found on the internet was scrutinous enough for someone like Broto, let alone some ritual to bring back the dead.

But grief finds a way to melt even the strongest of convictions, bend the will of the strongest of currents. And out of this pain and sorrow is born desperation. The desperation to do anything, anything to curb the very pain which birthed the helplessness.

Goddess Kali. The Goddess of death and rebirth. The Goddess of destruction and reformation. An ancient ritual dedicated to her apparently created by highly powerful tantriks , could help communicate with the dead. It was fake, Broto knew it. But what was the harm in trying ?

Broto spent days gathering the ingredients and materials needed for the ritual. At that point he was doing it less as a means of communicating with his brother and more as a means of keeping busy to dull the grief and pain.

The instructions were surprisingly detailed. And very clear. No ambiguousness in the steps. Simple language, each step broken down, and whenever Broto had any confusion, he found the answer to that exact problem in the manual. It was as if the manual had been written for him. Just for him. An eerie thought, but Broto was too far down the rabbit hole to turn back by then.

A dark and silent night. The garden outside their house. A light drizzle had started. Broto had arranged for a plastic cover. He set up the materials for the ritual. Wood, candles, coal. A sign made on the ground. Incense sticks, and a dead goat. He had to spend a long time convincing the mutton shop owner that he needed a dead goat with its decapitated head and blood in a container. The alternative was buying a goat and arranging all that himself, but he well knew that he could not bring himself to kill an animal like that, let alone decapitate it, and drain its blood.

Arrangements done, the manual followed, the ritual started. The drizzle changed into a downpour. What an apt weather for something like this, Broto had thought. Although he was doing it for Goddess Kali, Broto felt as if this was something more sinister. Although he had full confidence in all of it being fake but he just wanted to stay away from his brother's memories for the time. Anything but that. And if a ritual with a dead goat and its head in the middle of a rainy night was the price he had to pay for a few hours of a diverted mind, he was more than happy to comply.

As Broto began the last verse in the ritual, the winds suddenly picked up in speed. The plastic covers were swinging in the wind, doing their best in protecting what little dryness remained inside. It was too much for the candles however, as the little flames of light blew off with the wind. And with that came darkness. Complete darkness. As if an indication for the last bit of Broto's sanity and old life vanishing and him descending into the darkness of something ominous, something monstrous, his life never to be about the same from then onwards.

Broto could see something. A light, and... a person ? Lying down on the ground. Or was it a floor of a room ? Or was it multiple people on the floor ? Multiple lights, the brightness increased, a stretcher in the distance. Or was it...

Broto felt dizzy. His head spinning. His legs felt like jelly . Wobbly, weak, his legs gave away, as Broto collapsed on the floor with his hands still on the handle of the glass sliding door of the Emergency room.

A strange smell. A stretcher. A man on it. His eyes wide open, the horror on his eyes perfectly evident. He lay completely still, his mouth wide open. The blood coming out of his eyes and his mouth had dried off leaving behind a dry dull red trail of death. His hands dangled by his sides lifeless Broto was sure about it.

A similar fate seemed to have followed a dozen other people around the man, who all lay on the floor around the stretcher, lifeless Broto was sure about it.

Broto recognized the man on the stretcher. The same man he had asked to get an ECG done. The nurses and the security personnel all lay on the floor, along with the other staff on the ground floor of the hospital. It was a corridor of death.

'When he started gasping after the oxygen mask was put on him, the nurses came out to deal with it. Along with the other staff. What they did not know was that they were breathing in that same poisonous gas leaking from the oxygen tube coming from the humidifier. How could they ? They were too busy to notice. Which was exactly why you chose a patient like him to start the ruckus. Amazing ! Such creativity ! You killed all of them at the same time. As for the people who tried to escape, well...'

The three stout men Broto had seen accompanying the first patient emerged from the corner. Their faces bloody. Not their blood, Broto could sense, and not their patient either.

'They are my disciples, Broto. They did a great job of holding down the ones who tried to escape. As for you not hearing anything , that's all me. What a fabulous way for everything to be coming together !'

The man began to laugh. A resounding laughter, echoing through the empty hospital corridor, bouncing off the blood and the lifeless corpses of all the innocent people Broto had killed. His laughter shaking the entire hospital, the man's overflowing hair swinging from one side to another. Wasn't he bald ? Or maybe he wasn't. Broto wasn't sure.

Broto remembered now. Of visions. Of seeing something around him, of hearing voices in his head, days after the ritual. He had unleashed something evil onto the world through the ritual. Something truly evil.

'It was one of my disciples who was driving the truck that night. Poor man, he had lost his son a month before. You know he had performed the same ritual . The same one.'

That's how it spreads. This entity latches onto grieving and desperate people and the ritual solidifies the bond. In turn it makes the person do heinous things, spreading grief and horror and thus the entity thrives on.

'You know, not everybody processes grief the same way. Some get overtaken, some push through it , and some are never able to move on. A rare few...,' the man's eyes now glistening, pointed at Broto, ' a rare few will get so desperate, that they would do anything to bring back the dead. I sense that. And for those select few, the ritual appears. The ritual to propagate my horrors, to spread my influence. And in time...', the man's hand now on Broto's shoulder, 'in time, they give in, becoming one with me. No soul, no body, intangible spirits of horror', the man's eyes sparkled, a huge grin on his face.

'Now Broto, ' the man's voice almost a rasping whisper now, 'now for the rest of the hospital'.

Dawn was coming. Broto could hear the small birds outside. The tea shop outside had opened. It was a clear sky, and yet it was still dark. Had it rained outside ? Broto could no longer tell. Broto had a job to do. He headed towards the hospital wards.

A smile curled at the corner of his lips.