A Face In The Dark Summary

A Face In The Dark Summary

In this article, you will be reading a face in the dark summary, one of the famous works of the author, Ruskin Bond. As soon as you hear the title of the story i.e A face in the dark, you get an idea because it’s a very intriguing title. The backdrop of this story is the capital city of Himachal Pradesh which is Shimla. Here, the author uses the geography of Shimla, to create a very thrilling kind of an episode in the day of a teacher who teaches at a school in Shimla. The story very beautifully depicts the horror situation faced by Mr Oliver in the forest of Shimla. Let us study A Face In The Dark Summary in detail.

A Face In The Dark Summary in English

A Face In The Dark Summary begins with Mr Oliver, a teacher whose parents were from both India and Britain, was returning to his school one late night on the outskirts of the hill station Shimla. The school in which Mr Oliver was teaching was following the British Education System. That day, when it was already dark in the evening, Mr Oliver, decided to make a deviation in his path and thought of taking a shortcut through the pine forest. The unusual and horrifying sounds of the pine trees during rainy and windy weathers used to keep the people away from it but Mr Oliver was a bold person and he decided to go through it to save time. At the same time, he was also familiar with the place and always carried a torch with him.

While returning through that pine forest, he saw a figure of a boy at a certain distance. He saw that it was sitting on a rock all alone. He could not identify the boy as he was located at a certain distance from Mr Oliver. Also, he was puzzled as well as tensed at the same time as the boy was out of the premises of the school at such an unusual time of the day. On approaching the boy, Mr Oliver found that the boy was continuously weeping and kept his face down. Mr Oliver sensed that something might be wrong. He tried to ask the boy, but he kept on weeping and didn’t stop while hiding his face continuously. Mr Oliver kept on asking the boy as he was worried for him.

Finally, the boy turned up his face and seeing that the torch in the hands of Mr Oliver fell. He saw a face that had no eyes, ears, or mouth. It was a complete ghostly figure. It only had the head with the school cap on it.

Seeing this horrifying scene, Mr Oliver screamed out for help in the dark. In the need of help, he ran towards the school where he noticed a lantern hanging. The lantern he noticed was in the middle of the path.  He also saw a watchman standing near the entry gate of the school. Mr Oliver ran up to him and explained to him what he saw in the dark. He said that he witnessed a horrifying scene where he saw a boy who had no face. In a reply, the watchman turned towards the teacher and said: “ Do you mean it was like this?” To his surprise, Mr Oliver saw that the watchman too had no face, not even eyebrows. This made him even more terrified and the winds blowing put out the lamp.

Conclusion of A Face In The Dark

We can say from the summary above that suspense still exists because the readers are yet to figure out what happened with Mr Oliver.