9th August, 2010

                                               9^th August, 2010

Hiya was staring at the screen with a blank mind awaiting a reply from Rit who was lurking in the small chat window. It was 2am but Hiya seemed reeling under a spell as she immersed herself in talking to this unheard, unseen stranger whom she had bumped into a few hours back in Yahoo Messenger.

Night grew deeper and the eerie darkness was complete by the time she logged off. A strange fondness had developed for this perfect stranger. He seemed bewitching. She smiled to the darkness as she hit the pillows....there was a strange tug at her heart which seemed agonising yet sweet.

Over the next couple of days, Hiya found herself getting drawn to her laptop...forlorn in his thoughts as she yearned to chat with him. He was hypnotic; endowed with some mystical charm. Blinded by his mysterious charisma, she even exchanged numbers.

She found herself calling him next evening. His voice seemed hollow and strangely long drawn as if he were millions of miles away (yet she knew he lived in Calcutta only).... Tentative yet bewitched, Hiya sighed, ‘Can we meet?’

He paused, then asked, ‘When?’

‘On 9^th August,’ Hiya was firm ‘But where?’

‘Okay, 9^th August, 2010....outside the Park Street cemetery at 8 pm. I hope you shall keep your promise.’

He hung up! He had said he lived near that graveyard. It felt a tad strange. Hiya kept thinking about it for a long time....apparently lost in her thoughts.

The impending day arrived. He looked sweet as Hiya approached him. With luscious red lips, jet black hair and a warm flickering smile, he seemed a womanizer as Hiya found herself succumbing to his murderous charms.

Before she knew it, she found herself walking into the cemetery alongside him as if a stroll inside a graveyard is a very normal thing to do. As they went deeper, a chill ran through her spine....the eeriness seemed complete as...moon was flirting with the clouds.

Like a bewitching Dracula, Rit was casting his spell over her....she kept swooning as if in a trance. ‘Do you believe in ghosts,’ he broke the silence with a playful chuckle.

Suddenly, Hiya felt she saw an apparition nearby....as if a pale, smoky ghost floating in the misty air.....but it must be a sliver of moon ray- she convinced herself.

Rits went on to some thread of conversation but Hiya’s mind was preoccupied. ‘Do you believe in ghosts’ (his voice was still ringing in her ears).

‘Yes, I do,’ she threw him a powerful look...her eyes lit up in a fiery determination.

The next moment Rit found himself falling on the ground....a violent storm brewing in his head. He looked up and found himself staring vacantly at the empty air where Hiya was standing only a moment ago. Something glistening on the ground caught his gaze. Paralysed and petrified, with a sense of utmost horror, he read the inscribed words shimmering on the tomb......

                             Hiya Ganguly

               (17^th July, 1985- 9^th August, 2010)

She had kept her promise..........

A Visitor from the World beyond (A horror story)

It was past midnight when the train screeched to a halt at some unknown station. Shruti woke up. Surprisingly, the compartment was empty. She peered outside the window...she could hear a strong hustle from a crowd nearby.

She alighted from the train and walked towards the gathering as she caught a few words like ‘Poor child’ and ‘Must be a love affair.’ As Shruti pierced through the crowd, a mutilated body came into sight. Her battered face seemed faintly familiar even as the wheels had brutally crushed the young body. A girl, possibly, in her early twenties, had plunged into the deathly tracks as the train approached roaring. The mob was busy speculating the reason behind her committing suicide but, for some strangely uncanny reason, Shruti felt she knew the plausible cause.

Jerking herself out of the curious onlookers, Shruti began to walk back to her silent compartment. As she crawled forwards, she felt she heard another footstep just behind her. She whirled round but saw no one. A tad perturbed, she shook herself and recommenced her journey back to her coach. She could see from outside that the train was virtually empty. Pensive and brooding, she found the silence as deep as the eeriness of the moon-lit night.

Then she heard it again- the crackling of the leaves.....this time far more distinctly. Panicking and perspiring, she quickened her pace but whatever ‘it’ was, was now breathing down her neck. And then she heard a murmur as someone called out her name softly. She turned around......she saw ‘it’. She mustered courage and asked ‘Who are you’ knowing pretty well it was a pale shadow she was talking to. Then the shadow turned paler, thinner and began to fade away into emptiness.

Shruti threw a glance heavenwards. Moon was being enveloped by a spread of thick, black clouds. Only the last ray was peeping out keeping the shadow barely alive. Shruti looked back at the shadow. It was melting away along with the flickering light.....and then finally..... it spoke its final words which continued to ring in her ears for hours- “Didn’t you recognise me? I am your soul. You just got run over by the train.........”

(By Ritesh Agarwal)