The Man

With all this quarantine madness going on because of covid 19, I have fled Kolkata to my own house from Amsterdam to avoid contact with new people. My house is near a lake, which I won’t name for safety reasons has a bunch of houses surrounding it, and in summer months it’s full with people roaming around and local boys swimming in it. But right now in late April when I’m writing this it’s kind of a ghost town here and it’s weird seeing it like this here. Anyway, I won’t be here writing this if something didn’t go wrong, right? 

One day, my friends will call Tithi and Mriganka (they live nearby) were out near the lake, overlooking the lake with me. We were setting up some chairs for some storytelling, which I invited my mom to be there because she is a great storyteller.

The sky had reached that point after sunset. The sky was losing its light, and soon it turned dark. The lake was calm and quiet, not a single person was up there, and all the neighbouring houses seemed to be vacant. We were truly the only one’s around there. Still, we got an emergency light with us so that if it gets dark we can light it up, and so we did. We were all laughing and sharing our hilarious yet special moments with each other. Everything was going great.

Suddenly Tithi dropped her phone on the ground, and Mriganka went to pick it up. Then he just told us to stay quiet for a moment, and he turned around to look over the lake in the grass below. I went over to see what he was looking at. Tithi followed me. As I asked Mriganka what’s going on he said that he heard something below us. He could see someone walk onto the deck. So the three of us went near the deck, there was nobody there. My mom kept telling us to come inside the house, because moms get scared easily, and in India, they believe in numerous superstitions. 

Anyway, I called out a bunch of times to confirm this, and we went back to our last checkpoint. The thing is Tithi swore by it as well that she also heard someone speaking under the deck. Regardless we decided to go back into the house and made sure to lock the door. My mom was in the kitchen, making tea for us. My dad was upstairs, in the bedroom. He said earlier that he had some office works to do. While all of us were in the living room, sitting on sofas and talking about what just happened out there.

THAT’S WHEN IT STARTED.

Loud aggressive bangs on the main door, accompanied with the bangs there was a man screaming, sounded like he was screaming for help. Tithi and Mriganka got scared, and to be honest I was too. I was so afraid that I didn’t even try to look through the peephole to see who it was. And apparently, everyone in the house heard it, my mom and dad came rushing into the living room. My dad tried to calm us down, but even he couldn’t do anything. Mriganka told me to call the police, but I got to know first if it was a prank or what. So I and my dad tried to look from the peephole, and we saw some red in face man banging his hands on the door, begging to be let in. He was claiming he was hurt and needed help. My dad asked where are you hurt, he didn’t answer it though, he just kept repeating let me in I’m hurt. My d

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ad yelled at him to get out of here before we’d call the police. These days Kolkata police are so responsive that we felt some unknown courage inside us. Anyway, my dad yelled at him again and told us to shut and lock our windows if they were open. We all stayed in the living room for a couple of hours, just to be safe. Later on, I said Tithi and Mriganka to stay a night here, and they were so scared that they agreed with it in the first place. Eventually, with no other uninvited visitors outside, we all went to sleep. Tithi slept with mom, while, my dad and Mriganka stayed in my room.

I was checking my Whatsapp when it happened. The crash of shattering glass was so loud that it made me jump out of my bed. My heart instantly started racing, because I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who heard it. Because I didn’t see my mom or Tithi or anyone in my room giving a reaction to it. I tried to wake up my dad, and I saw he’s whispering he heard it too. He said me to tell mom and Tithi to stay in their room and lock their door. But I reminded him that their door didn’t have a lock. Because a few days back, I unknowingly broke the doorknob. At this moment Mriganka woke up and he was so scared that he started to call the police.

Then we all heard footsteps outside my room in the living room area. I picked up my cricket bat lying in the closet, my dad told everyone to stay calm and Mriganka was all scared that he had joined me too. It was the tensest moment of my life. I called mom, and she said that she had also heard the noise and they were all scared. My mom told me that the footsteps are reaching them, and someone’s about to open the door. I and Mriganka thought to do something, and we opened the door a little so that we could get a glance at him. We saw he’s stopped. We couldn’t see his face, as he was all covered in the night’s darkness. But from the best we could see, we saw he took off one of his shoes and started shaking it as if to get something out of his shoe. He then put his shoe back on, he turned his head to the door we were peeking from. And then there was silence for the longest time until he finally spoke saying, “ I know you’re in there. I’m sure your family has already called the police, and I’m not sure what my next action should be.”. At that moment I had to decide whether to stay in there or grab him. And I chose the second option, we all rushed through the door and were about to catch him. But the thing that surprised me was he didn’t even move one inch, he didn’t get scared of us rushing towards him altogether. And then we rushed into my mom’s room. We could have easily got him but in that dark, we didn’t know if he had a gun or anything. So we all waited in that room until the police entered, and then we all left the room to meet them. The man of the matter, the police came to catch was no longer in the house. We checked every closet, under every bed and every little corner in the house. A police officer recommended we shut the door and lock every window, and stay awake. They said as soon as we see any disturbance, we call them.

So all of us stayed awake for the rest of the night. The next day Mriganka and Tithi went back to their places. My dad went to the market and bought a glass pane to fix the window that was broken the other night. We were all quarantined in that house after that. But never saw the man come in again…….