SHE sat there for a long moment, her mind searching for answers, remembering vividly the cemetery, the cold feeling of death and the little girl.
“What did she say?” Priya questioned herself quietly, “That her uncle hurt her real bad?”
A bird landed on the window sill, fluttering its wings and as Priya looked at the beautiful avian specie, realization dawned on her, that not only was her life in imminent danger but the child also.
She had to save herself and the child.

She took a long, warm bath to calm her mind, for she had to act normal to uncover the deceptive acts as the plan unfolded but most important in her mind, was finding the child.
“I hope I’m not too late,” was an earnest prayer in her mind, “For, in the nightmare, she had died before me.”
Priya dressed hurriedly and exiting the room she almost collided with her mother in law who was about to knock. She stepped back, a little startled, the colour ebbing from her cheeks.
“I was just about to call on you,” the woman said, “so you won’t be late for work.”
“Oh,” Priya exclaimed quietly, steeling her mind to stay calm.
“Has Dev left already?” she asked casually.
“A while ago.”
She forced a smile and said as she walked to the kitchen, “He could have woken me.”
“Apparently you were in deep sleep.” The mother in law said, looking closely at Priya, “You look pale, are you okay?”
“Yep,” she answered in a casual tone, drinking a glass of juice, poured from a sealed bottle, “I must have been tired.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?” her in-law offered kindly, trying to show her concern.
“Such evil deception,” Priya thought and smiling wryly, she said, “No, but thank you anyway.”
She felt a tinge of satisfaction as she drove away, for answering so nonchalantly.
She now had to sketch a foolproof plan to unmask her perpetrators. She could have just moved away from her matrimonial home, quietly, but she wasn’t going to let them get away with a planned murder so easily.
“A woman needs to be strong and stand up for her rights against such heartless abuse,” was her thought, with a renewed sense of determination.

She did not go to work but called on a friend, who was an official at the child care agency. She did not tell her about the nightmare but told her, she had a strong suspicion, the child’s life was in danger. The friend, unfortunately, had an important meeting to attend but promised to meet with Priya for lunch to deal with the matter.
Every minute that ticked by could be a minute too late so Priya drove alone to the little village near to the cemetery.
It was a depressed area and as she drove through the pot-holed streets, it touched her heart to see the impoverished living conditions of the residents. There were several, small, unpainted houses, but only one had a birdbath in the yard, that was actually a big old bowl on a stand. No one seemed to be at home so she spoke to a neighbour, an old lady who was tending to her creole chickens.
“Does a little girl named, Anne, live here?”
The woman answered in broken English that the child lived there but she had gone to school and the mother was at work.
“I guess I’ll have to come back in the afternoon,” Priya mused and as she drove away, slowly, she saw a young man riding up the street on a bicycle. Her eyes met with his as she passed him and she felt a sudden chill as though recognising something evil. From her rearview mirror, she saw him enter Anne’s home and she wondered if he was the one the child spoke of.
“I have to come back this afternoon, can’t delay another day,” she said to herself and drove to her parents home.

It was now time for the shocking revelation!

Her mother noticed her pale look and the distress in her eyes and she asked with genuine concern.
“What’s wrong, Priya?”
Priya sighed deeply, not answering for a short moment, then she said quietly, a slight tremor in her voice.
“I died last night and you were crying for me.”
Her mother’s hand froze on the food she was preparing and her father put down his newspaper, both of them looking at her, somewhat shocked by such a statement.
“What are you saying, my child?” her mother asked, a disturbed look on her face.
“I heard your voice telling me it’s time to sleep, to rest in peace but I couldn’t find you, it was so dark. Then I saw a light and my eyes opened but I was in a cemetery, alone, in the world of the departed.”
A hushed silence fell in the room and the mother and father exchanged worried looks then the father said to his daughter, to calm her mind and the mother’s rising fears at the same time,
“It was just a nightmare.”
“Yes father,” Priya accepted, “But what I couldn’t understand was how I could go to sleep in perfect health and never wake up.”
“Dreams can be complex,” He explained, “and sometimes they mean nothing.”
“That dream,” she told him with firm conviction, “was a warning to me, for what is to come.”
“What is that?” her mother questioned.
“That I will die, murdered by my husband and his mother.”

To be continued…