The Footsteps

Each night for last one week, I heard faint sound of footsteps coming from the hall, downstairs. In the beginning, I ignored it, thinking that it was my imagination. But that night, while trying to sleep, I heard it with my full attention and realised that it was a human, walking.

'Can be a burglar,' I thought. I mustered-up all my courage and with a baseball bat in my hands, I tiptoed to the hall, downstairs.I avoided turning on the lights, I didn't want to freak away the anonymous intruder. The room was dimly lit with silver moonlight coming from the opened window. I held the bat tighter and followed the sound of footsteps to find a crooked old man was walking in my hall.

"Who are you?" I shouted.

"Can't you see I am a crooked old man." He chuckled.

"What have you stolen?" I asked, and raised my bat higher.

"I am not a thief."

"Get lost from my house or else I will call the police." I screamed.

"Where would I go? I am homeless, and the night is cold outside. What harm a crooked old man can do to you?" He sighed.

For the first time in the conversation my heart struck a chord of sympathy for the old man.

And, I looked closely at him, he was crooked, feeble and could barely walk. I wondered how he entered from the window. I told him that he could stay for the night, but first I would check him for any possible weapons that he could be hiding. I checked the house too, for that he might have brought a companion with him. I found nothing.

I let the old man sleep on the sofa and brought a blanket for him.

"So, are you homeless all your life?"

"No. I had my home near road 13. Lately, my neighbour's home and mine were destroyed. My neighbours and I became homeless since then, and wander here and there."

"Why did..." Before I could finish my question, I heard old man snoring.

In the morning, I went downstairs to find that old man was not on the sofa. I searched for him in the house, but couldn't find him. He had already left.

Later, I searched on internet for the houses destroyed near road 13. Strangely, I found that there were no houses near road 13; no one had ever lived there. But, what I read next sent shivers down my spine. Lately, government had destroyed an obsolete cemetery near road 13, and removed all the dead bodies from their graves.

In the night, my sleep broke, and I again heard the sound of footsteps

coming from the hall, but this time there were multiple footsteps . The crooked old man had brought his companions with him. That night, I couldn't muster-up the courage to go downstairs.