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The Search: A Story by Aaradhana Agarwal

Since his birth, Suraj had nightmares. He always dreamed of a young man strangulating a little girl in a tiny room of a village house. The girl was groaning in pain while trying hard to get released from his grip but was unable to do so. He couldn’t sleep many nights because of the nightmare. It continued and grew in him an interest in dream interpretation.

He once read the ‘Pseudoscience and the Paranormal’, written by Terrence Hines, and wished to know more about the world of spirits. He had never encountered any spirit but believed that the people who died unnaturally were present in the world in an invisible way. He had bought devices to record paranormal activities. Everything he used to do secretly because his parents were unaware that he was serious about his hobby of finding ghosts in his life.

He knew that the spirits had some unfinished desires and so they didn’t get salvation. He gained popularity in his field. He used to visit the houses where unsatisfied spirits resided and troubled the family members. But still, he could not find the mystery of his own nightmare. One night, before sleeping he prayed the god to show him the way to solve that mystery. That night, he viewed something much clear. He recognized the house. It was his ancestral house. He saw a picture in which the young boy was present.

He flew to his native land the next day. None used to live in the ancestral house as his father had no interest in that house. He went inside it and was stunned to see a family photograph of his father’s childhood. He couldn’t believe that the young boy of his dream was his father. Did his father kill the little girl? He decided to contact the girl’s spirit. The spirit appeared and told the truth. When his father was a teenager, he raped and killed the girl, who was his neighbor’s daughter, and buried the body in the garden. She showed him a bushy area in the garden where her body was buried.

Suraj informed the police and got his father arrested. His father was in utter disbelief that after so many years his crime would be proven by his son. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The girl’s family members thanked Suraj for solving the mystery of their missing daughter. He accepted their thanks.

While touching the feet of the family’s eldest female member, he bent and his back was revealed to her. She cried in joy seeing his birthmark because the dead girl had the same mark. She once fell from the bed and was stitched at the same spot.

The family rechecked his birthmark and confirmed that he was the reincarnation of that girl. He was shocked because the reason for his nightmare was clear to him. God served justice to the girl by giving her birth to her accuser’s home and taking revenge upon him.