Angel:- The Second Encounter

Anyone can fall in love, it’s not all that difficult to do, however you have to keep it going, and to keep it going for a lifetime, does take some effort. Fortunately, with us there was very little effort required, and things just fell in place. Everything that we did was more or less in togetherness, to the extent that the roles would sometimes get reversed. I remember when we went to watch ghost, we went for the evening show, and prior to watching the movie I was told, that it was a romantic comedy that might make me cry but I was skeptical, and I was dead-certain that my partner would breakdown while I remained unmoved, she was the type to cry at the movies, and I had my shoulder all ready for her to lean on. I vividly remember what happened when the movie was over and the lights came on. She looked normal, while I was all teary eyed. From what I was told later, the stains of the tears that had streamed down my cheeks were plainly visible. It was a relationship where she’d be in charge at certain times, and at other times, I’d have the say. It was in short nice, it was always nice to be with her, and that was more than what anyone could ever ask for, and we’d made up our minds to get married, when the time was right, and she was as far as I was concerned my wife, and I’ve never looked at it any other way.

It was about this time, some three or four months into our relationship that I noticed that my partner suffered from nosebleeds. I asked her about it, and she dismissed it as a normal occurrence and insisted that she’d had it checked, and I believed her, she was not the type of person to make light of these sorts of things. I also had faith in her parents, like mine, they took their children’s welfare very seriously, and so I was somewhat content to let things be, and hope that it didn’t get any worse.

It was also at about this time that she started having nightmares, one particular nightmare more than others, and that was that of a man hanging from the bough of a banyan tree that stood on blood-soaked ground. Initially I dismissed it but the dreams started reoccurring, and I started to get concerned. However, at that age, neither of us had any experience in these matters, and there was little that we could do about it, we certainly didn’t know who to consult or talk to, and the only thing that we could do was to pray that the nightmares would go away. I would take an interest in paranormal activity much later in life, but at that stage, I knew as much about it as the next guy.

Regardless, we continued as we normally did, and apart from the odd hiccups that I’ve mentioned earlier, life progressed smoothly or as smoothly as it could at that stage, and we had no complaints. We’d managed to keep our relationship a secret, so no one really knew about it. Towards the end of the year, during the holidays, she went up north with her family for Christmas, I saw her a couple of days prior to that and that was the last time I saw her, because she met with an accident, and from what I learnt much later, she passed away at the scene.

I remember the day that I’d received the news, I was to put it mildly, shaken, and from then on I did my best to cope. I couldn’t tell anyone, no one knew about us, and even if I wanted to talk to someone after the accident, I didn’t know what to say. So I just continued as I did, I’m not sure if I have ever come to terms with her passing, but it is much too late for that now.

Months later, while I was in my room one night, I’d managed to get my hands on the time and place of death by then, I realized that something strange had happened on the night of her death. I was in my room, with the windows open, I usually left the windows open because I liked the cool breeze that blew in at that time of the night, and suddenly my room was engulfed in thick fog. It blew in from nowhere, and sent the temperatures plummeting, and I could swear that I heard voices but the fog disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared, and I’d set it aside as some freak occurrence, when it occurred to me that maybe this was not something that was random, and there was someone or something else behind the scenes, that I couldn’t put my hands on, I hadn’t ruled out the possibility that she could have been killed with the use of black magic out of jealousy.

In time I realized that life wasn’t going as planned, and that I had diverted from the path that we’d set ourselves on, and I did my best to steer myself back in the direction that we’d decided to take, and I made up my mind to continue with the rest of the journey alone. I plodded on and tried to complete what at that time seemed like an uphill task with only the final destination in mind.