Page:Anandamath, The Abbey of Bliss - Chatterjee.djvu/31

 

Mahendra went out. Left alone with her daughter in that lonely place and in that gloomy room, Kalyani was anxiously looking about on all sides. She was struck with fear. There was nobody there, no trace of a human being; the howling of dogs and jackals at intervals were the only sounds that reached her ears. "Why did I let him go?" she thought, "we might as well have borne the hunger and thirst for some time longer." She thought of shutting all the doors, but alas, the doors had none of them a latch. Thus looking about, her eyes fell on something like a shadow at the door before her. It seemed like the figure of a man, yet did not exactly look like one. Something very lank, shorn, and very dark, naked and horrid—something like such a man stood at the door. Presently the shadow seemed to raise a hand. It seemed to beckon to somebody with the long choppy fingers of a very long skin-and-bone hand. Kalyani's heart-blood dried up with fear. Then another shadow like it—skinny, dark, tall and naked, stood beside the first. Then came another and another and yet another—oh so many they were! Slowly and silently they began to enter the room. The dim room became on their entrance as dreadful as a mortuary at midnight. The ghost-like beings then surrounded Kalyani and her daughter. Kalyani all but fainted away for fright. The dark and skinny men then took her up