NOTUM: Study Of A Nightwalker ✔️

Drip

"Another dead end."

Neil knew that he wasn't getting out anytime soon. After all, he had been running through the corridors for the past few hours. He stopped to catch his breath and leaned forward, sweat dripping from his forehead. Collapsing against a wall nearby, he stared at the single bulb hanging from the ceiling.

It was midnight, his wristwatch had said, and the walls were cold as ice. Water trickled down them, forming huge frozen puddles.

Neil had woken up to find himself in a corridor a few hours far from the place he was in now.

He remembered chasing the garwalf into the woods. And then, something slammed into him out of the blue, knocking him out cold.

He had realised that he had been kidnapped. Looking around in the darkness, his eyes were fixed on the bulbs that dotted the walls above. He was sure to have run a marathon by now.

Neil retraced his footsteps back into the T shaped junction. His gut instructed him to go down the path to his right this time.

He walked, looking at his cellphone, trying to contact either Firenze or Helga. Neither of them answered the phone and with no wonder, the battery lasted only for a few more minutes.

His steps slowed down as he noticed something far away, glowing red. Inching closer, he saw that it was an exit sign, dimming slowly.

Climbing up the stairs beside the exit sign, Neil thanked his forefathers for giving him gut instincts. On reaching a door at the end, he wiped his face with his handkerchief and yanked the knob.

It opened into a hall with multiple rooms, one of them had its door wide open. A gentle orange light indicated a fire, probably from a candle or a lamp.

Peeping into the room, he called,

"Hello?"

The huge room was pretty well decorated and well maintained. A roaring fireplace warmed him as he entered it. In front of it was a chair, in which sat a person busy tending the flames. The man turned around, and greeted him,

"Oh, hey there. Come on in!"

Neil grinned as he silently thanked God and strode towards the fireplace. He extended his palms towards the burning embers and said,

"Thank you, friend, you just saved me from hypothermia. Er. . . where exactly are we now?"

Surprise pervaded the stranger's face, and he turned the single log feeding the fire. A well trimmed beard and the mellow light masked his age, but he didn't look older than thirty. He ran his free hand through his tousled black hair as he said,

"You're in my house, the basement actually. You look starved, mate."

Neil sat down on the floor, tired and nodded, unable to say anything. His throat had been dry since last evening and his now roaring stomach did no good either. The man bent over to his right and began hunting for something kept on a stool nearby. He returned, with a fruit clutched in one hand and a pitcher in the other.

Cool water soothed his throat as poured the contents of the pitcher into his mouth. The man was rubbing the object in his hand with a piece of cloth. When he was done, he handed it over, his electric blue eyes shining.

It was a pomegranate, one of the local varieties. He examined it, with the man grinning at him as if he were expecting something marvelous to happen. The fruit looked ripe, but for some reason, it was huge, even for a local pomegranate. It was roughly the size of a coconut, with skin almost the same color as the exit sign. He looked at the man once, and tore open the fruit. Each seed looked like a polished ruby, blood red and with a maddening scent. Neil gaped at the fruit, wondering whether this was a costly hybrid variety and whether he could grow a fertile tree from the seeds.