As he walked towards his car, a gnawing feeling tugged at Arun's mind as if something crucial was amiss.
Scanning the surroundings, he asked the kids, "Did any of you happen to see a piece of paper or a painting around here?"
To his dismay, the kids denied seeing anything of the sort.
Arun frantically searched the area, while the kids' gaze remained fixated on him. Seething with impatience, he barked, "Why don't you all lend me a hand? I happen to be a police officer, you know!"
The children huddled together, whispering among themselves. Arun's ears picked up a few words of contempt. "Is he really a police officer?" scoffed one of them. "What a freak!"
Fuming with rage, Arun gritted his teeth and bellowed, "I can hear every damn word, you little fools"
"Now if you can't help me then leave, I don't like noise around me"
The girl laughed at him and replied amusingly "Suit yourself, officer!"
For a few minutes, he scanned the surroundings with fervor, hoping to find it, but eventually, he came to the realization that it was all just a dream, and nothing more. With a heavy sigh, he decided to let it go and proceeded to head toward the department.
A sudden jolt of disbelief coursed through Arun's veins as he hit the brakes hard, bringing his car to an abrupt stop.
"Holy f*ck!" he exclaimed, his eyes bulging out of their sockets as he stared at the scene in front of him in utter disbelief.
He leaped out of his car and hurried towards it, where he spotted the painting lying on the road. As he drew closer, he noticed a rock resting on it.
He strongly laughed for a while and pick it up,
"Motherf*ker!" he shouts very loudly.
He took it and finally headed straight for the department, on his way he found those kids going somewhere, so he decided to inquire about it, he thought it could be possible that one of them would have spotted the person who placed that painting in the middle of the road for him.
"Hey, kids!"
The girl came forward and asked, "What do you want?"
"Look, I just want to ask you all, Is any of you seen a person, holding this painting, somewhere around"
A sudden silence befell the group, and the girl stepped forward. "Officer," she spoke, "if you're really that curious, you gotta give something in return."
Arun hesitated for a moment, and said, "All I have this 100 rupees right now so take it"
The girl went angry and replied "100! just because we are kids, does not mean we are a fool"
500, she demands abruptly
"500, huh… Here's your 500 and now tell me, do any of you had seen anyone"
The girl paused for a while and with deep patience, she replied "NO"
The frustration had taken over him and obviously, he went angry after such a disheartening reply that he got
"You guys are playing with me, aren't you? Give my money back right now or I'll arrest and put you all in jail"
As Arun and the girl exchanged heated words, the boy nodded his head and spoke up. "I saw a man," he said.
Arun's interest was piqued. "What man?" he asked. "A man in a black coat," the boy replied.
"Did you see his face?"
"No," the boy responded, "I only saw him from the back."
Arun pressed on, "Where did you see him?" The boy thought for a moment before answering, "In the forest, while we were playing hide and seek. He went deep into the woods." Arun leaned in, "Is there anything else you can tell me about him?"
"That's all I know"
"Is that it?"
"Yes, he vanished into the forest"
The sudden realization washed over him like a wave, causing him to recall the nagging suspicion that he had been following for the past several days.
"Ok, now all of you go back to your home right now, understood!"
The girl replied "Don't give us a lecture"
Arun's frustration reached its boiling point and he was about to jump out of his car in anger, but before he could do so, the kids quickly vanished into the way and sprinted toward their homes.
"You little…"
The surrounding was enveloped in an eerie silence as if the dense forest was beckoning him to explore its hidden darkness.
For a moment, Arun was tempted to venture in, but he quickly dismissed the thought and decided to head back to the department instead.
As he walked into the office, the usual hustle and bustle of the workplace faded into the background. Arun's mind was preoccupied with thousands of thoughts: to return the paintings he had taken earlier to the evidence room.
He made his way to the evidence room, avoiding eye contact with his colleagues, and carefully placed the paintings back where they belonged.
"Hello sir" someone called him from back as he stopped
"Hey, Amit how are you doing?"
"I was calling you several times and your phone was unreachable"
"Yeah, I was busy somewhere"
"Anyway, I was trying to tell you that we found another body"
"Another? Where?"
Amit took him to the forensic lab where he was introduced to the dead body.
The body was crucified and went through deep torture, every part of the body was completely burned.
As Arun approached the body and caught sight of it, his stomach churned with such intensity that he nearly retched on the spot.
His body shook uncontrollably, and he stumbled away, racing for the nearest bathroom in a desperate attempt to regain his composure.
For more than ten minutes he vomited, he was getting sick, not because he saw the dead body but because in his deep conscious he might already know it, he brought his phone out of his pocket as he had taken the picture of that painting before placing it.
He zoomed in on the picture to take a closer look. There, he saw a man engulfed in flames, sitting on a wooden chair. Another man stood in front of him, watching on helplessly.
To verify what he had just seen, Arun made the decision to visit the crime scene.
If his intuition was accurate, then it has a high chance that the details depicted in the painting would match the location in real life.
Amit provided Arun with information regarding the house where the body was discovered last night at 3 AM. The house had been deserted for over 40 years, and no one had set foot in it since the owner's departure.
The property's owner resides abroad and had never bothered to visit their property, which had been abandoned for over four decades. Despite this, they had not put the property up for sale.
As he prepared to head to the crime scene, he felt compelled to visit Adarsh and introduce the subject of the paintings discovered in his room. Despite his uncertainty about whether to bring it up, his curiosity remained insistent.
Adarsh was kept confined to a detention cell, where he would remain until the judge delivered his verdict. The uncertainty of his fate hung heavy in the air.
Arun entered and greet him but Adarsh was still unspoken, Arun look at him for a moment, thinking about what in the world would turn him like this, he felt helpless toward him.
He dropped the idea of discussing it and head for the crime scene. During the whole journey, he stumbled upon the thought of getting wrong with this current assumption that he had.
When they finally arrived at the place, the first glimpse of the place breaks his wish to get fulfilled.
The place was exactly the same replica of the composition of that painting.
Amidst the wreckage of the broken walls and the totally torn-apart roof, it was only the section surrounding the chair where the body had been found, engulfed in flames, that showed any signs of the inferno's wrath.
Everywhere else appeared eerily untouched, as if time had stood still in that corner of the room.
As the raindrops began to fall, the scene took on a soothing and pleasant quality, yet the memory of the earlier atrocity lingered and threatened to dampen the mood.
Arun strode through the entrance and knelt down before the pile of ashes, examining them with a discerning eye.
As he extended his arm, a sudden shadow materialized in the distance, deep within the forest. Arun turned his head to catch a glimpse of it, but the apparition vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Convinced that he had spotted someone lurking among the trees, Arun advanced in that direction, keeping a watchful eye for any further signs of movement.
It seemed likely that whoever it was had been watching him, and he was determined to uncover the identity.
He blindly ran after it without taking a single pause, he ran for it.
In the blink of an eye, he collided with a branch from the canopy and plummeted to the ground, his consciousness rapidly slipping away.
As he lay there, after a couple of seconds he could hear the sound of footsteps drawing nearer, and he knew that someone was approaching him.
--- "Hello, officer!"