Twelve o'clock at night! All around now there is the whirlwind of the storm - it seems as if the shadow of an evil has descended on the chest of the dark earth. From time to time I am startled by lightning. I have no fear of lightning, I am thrilled to think of my destiny. There is very little time on hand, so I want to say everything before I go.
Palash and I were best friends - the soul of Harihar. It would be wrong to just say friend, the two of us were partners in each other's sins. Both of them were orphans, both of them were unmarried, both of them were professors of the same college. Besides, the two had a strange hobby - collecting all the precious and rare items (curio). From beautiful female figures made of octahedron to apple-sized dried mummy heads, what was not in our indescribable and unimaginable collection? In search of rare items, we wandered through curios shops, auction houses, and blind alleys of the flea market. For convenience, we also had two brothers named Sudhakanta and Ratikanta. In exchange for good wages, they brought news of many rare objects.
Collecting rare items was like drug addiction to us. Honestly and dishonestly, we collected our desired objects in various ways - not even for the heinous misdeeds of digging graves for him. For centuries, the practice of burying corpses has been practiced in various societies. In some cases, their loved ones are moved to the grave. We had regular anagona in ancient tombs, abandoned cemeteries, unprotected mausoleums. When we found that, we would break the tomb and collect the desired object. Collection? It is better to say theft than collection. We stole from the dead, who had no power to do anything. Our secret truth, the burning pattern of our crime, was a private archive, most of which was the material we collected in a dishonest way. Some of the objects in this collection were beautiful, some were strange and some were terrifying! The two of us bought an old three-story house in Niribili, on the outskirts of the city. I chose a two-story house as a museum.
The incident that I am going to tell about started a couple of months ago today. One Sunday morning Ratikanta brought a new news. Nabpur is a small suburb on the Orissa-Bihar border. A descendant of the royal family emigrated to Europe in the 18th century. The descendant returned to the country in the afternoon of his life after traveling around the country, bringing with him many items collected from abroad. Ten years after returning home, he died for an unknown reason. According to his last wish, his body was buried in a room in the north-west of the palace. His most beloved object is also buried with his corpse.
According to Ratikantar news, the palace is currently abandoned. The present descendants all live outside. People do not even travel there as the palace is two kilometers away from Nabpur locality, so the thing can be seized by digging graves without any hindrance. I decided that Palash and I would go to Nabpur soon.
The college was closed for two days on one occasion of the service. At seven in the morning, two friends left for Nabpur. When I reached Nabpur, it was half past one. I rented a hotel near the station, left my belongings, and had lunch in the dining hall. Our expedition will be in the dark of night, so it is good to see everything in advance. With that in mind, I rented a rickshaw and left for Rajbari.
The rickshaw puller dropped us off a little before Rajbari. I don't know why, the rickshaw puller did not agree to go any further. I paid the rent and walked the rest of the way.
The palace is dilapidated. The huge building stands like a skeleton of bricks and stones, and the kingdom of bot-ashvattha is all over the wall. The huge walled garden is like a forest of weeds. In the middle of the garden is a fountain with a white stone statue of a woman - its condition is also very sad. It is obvious that no one has lived in this palace for decades.
Ratikanta made an important point - the house where the descendant was buried was locked with a strange lock. After searching for a while, I came across such a house. By then the daylight had fallen, so we headed back to the hotel.
Arrived at the hotel around six in the evening. We needed a good night's sleep before the night's expedition, so we took a good night's sleep. I woke up at half past nine. It was half past ten when I packed up and checked out of the hotel dining room.
It took about an hour to reach Rajbari on foot. What a creepy feeling in the stillness of the still night, as if the wind had stopped for fear of something terrible happening. In the darkness of the night, the palace looked like a horrible haunted house. It was as if an unknown horror had taken shape in the pitch darkness. Suddenly an owl called from afar. I don't know why, my heart trembled with an unknown fear. The mind was saying something terrible would happen. I walked towards the specific room with a lot of discomfort in my chest.
We did not have much difficulty in entering the house. The long-rusted lock was broken by a few blows of the gauntlet. As a result, we got inside in a short while. Dust about two-inches thick on the floor, spider webs all over the room. On one side of the room is a huge old-fashioned couch - so big that seven or eight people can easily sleep on it. An old-fashioned wooden cupboard with a broken door right next to the couch. Lots of broken glass bottles inside the cupboard. On the opposite wall of the couch are two oil paintings - one of a middle-aged man and the other of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old teenager. Surprisingly, a brass pot was placed right in the middle of the room. The face of the pot is covered with a faded red cloth.
We removed the pot and started digging the floor. The hardwood floors of yesteryear, so in a short time the breath caught. After a while I started digging again. The digging did not last for a while. After digging for about half an hour in this way, when I did not find any trace of the grave, I feel frustrated. I was thinking of going back in despair, when there was a metallic sound of thumping. As soon as we regained our morale, the excavation work continued with double enthusiasm. Slowly the ground shifted and the door of an underground cell appeared. I quickly removed the soil with my hand and slowly opened the door.
Step by step, under the door, the stairs went down in complete darkness. With the electric lantern and the strong torch we brought with us, we started descending in satisfaction. In the bright light, the inside of the room slowly became visible.
What we thought was an underground cave is the equivalent of an underground cave. The rocky walls are not only uneven, but also damp. The ancient staircase adjoining the wall descended step by step. Along the side of the stairs, there are all the foreign idols carved on the wall! Every idol is unearthly, disgusting and horrible - nothing but extreme disgust is aroused when you see them.
At one point the stairs ended. The bottom of the cell is wide and the floor is relatively smooth. Looking around and trying to find the tomb, I suddenly noticed a wide tunnel in the left wall. After entering the tunnel and going a little further, I discovered a small house. At one end of the room is a black stone altar. The discomfort that had been lingering in his chest for so long seemed to increase a hundredfold after entering this room.
A strange thing came to my mind when I saw the altar - isn't this the grave? Thinking of something, Palash hit the altar a little. I understood from the sound that the inside was hollow. It seems that the slab on the top of the altar is actually the cover of the tomb. After searching for a while, a fine groove was noticed on the four walls of the altar. The two of them hit the groove repeatedly with a mallet. The death-chilling atmosphere began to erode with the collision of rocks and iron - it was as if the sleeping inhabitant of the dark world, whose heinous crime we were committing the crime of breaking his eternal sleep, was protesting.
As a result of continuous injuries, the groove became wider. When the slab on the top of the altar was a little loose, the two of them pushed together and removed the lid a little. Inside the hollow altar I saw a skeleton more than three hundred years old. Ignoring the outbreak of time, even after so many years, that bone marrow has survived completely, not a single bone has moved from its place. No, I was wrong. The skeleton is not intact, though not the outbreak of time. Signs of injuries are evident on the skeleton in various places, as if a ferocious animal had launched a furious attack. White teeth and nail spots are visible on the white bones!
"Do you recognize the thing?", Palash asked in a surprised voice.
Teaching a pendant made of green jade stone around the neck of the skeleton. The rock-cut locket is shaped like a winged dog. Rows of sharp teeth in a huge yawning mouth, with a bloodshot tongue sticking out of the gap. The sharp nails of the four feet are as arrogant as the blade of a knife. Infinite jealousy in the crooked look of two eyes. The locket is mounted on a necklace made of unknown metal. But the fact is that although we have never seen the locket before, we are familiar with it.
In addition to rare items, we also collected rare books, manuscripts and manuscripts. This locket is mentioned in several ancient manuscripts. The first book to describe this locket was called Aktugrantham. The next time many small manuscripts were written with fragmentary information from this manuscript which is about three thousand years old. Although almost all the copies of the Aktugrantham have been destroyed due to various incidents, the belief of some scholars is that only one copy of the Aktugrantham still survives in the eyes of the people. Although we did not read the original text, we did read a manuscript based on it, which made us familiar with the locket. The three thousand year old rare locket was found in an unknown suburb called Nabpur.
