What Now?

It was the same routine every single night or at least for the last 78 nights. Drink warm milk with a teaspoon of sugar. Brush my teeth. Make sure the curtains are closed all the way to the very end. (No gaps, thank you!) Moisturize. My pillow fluffed just the right amount. Set a redundant alarm for 6am. Close my eyes. Go to sleep. All for what? I open my eyes to see it's 3:13am. EVERY SINGLE NIGHT! Every night in that moment, all I hear is silence. The silence is so loud, I barely hear my pounding heart.

An eerie feeling creeps over me as I see through the (now open) curtains. The ice glazes over the windows from the sudden cold. A smell wafts through. One that is so familiar. I know what it is, I have definitely smelt it before, yet I can not name it. All these days, I have never been able to remember it. I have tried day after day, night after night, still zilch. What now..? I went and drank a glass of water and tried to sleep. Soon I fell asleep and I don't know what happened but I remember waking up in the morning and crying. I didn't want to worry my parents so I didn't tell them a thing but they noticed me behaving abnormally. They tried talking to me but I was hesitant to speak.

That day, our neighbour told my mom to tie a red cloth near the main entrance as our house was apparently haunted by some old lady who hung herself here years back. We didn't pay heed to her but a few days later we experienced something very paranormal. My dad was sleeping and suddenly he heard a loud thud from the kitchen and hence when to check it. A knife fell down from the drawer. He wasn't spooked but he was uncomfortable. Then he felt a very heavy weight on him. As if someone was sitting on him. He struggled a lot and then finally some how he felt relieved.

He was alright the next morning. We also had guests who had us complaining that they hear birds chirping at midnight and they could hear someone wailing really bad, which was coming from my room. We didn’t believe them because we couldn’t hear the same. Later that morning, my mom was working in the kitchen and suddenly she could hear someone breathing on her neck. She thought it was the breeze and continued to do her work. But then she heard someone whispering her name into her ears. It was as if someone was calling her. She was afraid. This went on for a week. I was so exhausted by then, it was a Sunday and I had taken a long nap in the afternoon because obviously I couldn't sleep at night. I opened my eyes for a second to see a black figure standing at the foot of the bed. It was a woman who looked like me. I thought I was hallucinating and immediately shut my eyes. I was terrified. I closed my eyes tight and hoped it would go away, but I could hear her angry and loud voice yelling my name. The next day I woke up with high fever.

And as soon as I woke up the ceiling collapsed on me, I almost fractured my hand. This was insane so we decided to move to a different place soon. Three weeks later we shifted to a different city but that evil spirit didn't stop following us. I lost my elder sister to an accident within a month. But she was in a different state than ours. And since then whenever I tried to sleep I always felt as if someone was choking me to death. I couldn’t even mourn properly because whenever I cried, blood rolled down my cheeks instead of tears. We thought it was the evil spirit and hence approached to a black magician. He asked us to put a half sliced lemon under the pillow while sleeping and surprisingly it worked. I didn't get choked anymore. It was all fine until two months. Then I had to go to a trip organized by my school. I mentioned the strange ability of smell I have earlier. That ability has helped me as well as scared me so much. Our school had organized a rural camp to a remote village near the border of Haryana. So the place we were staying was a guest house and was only for the tourists.

The moment I entered, I smelt something very ghostly. In fact when we entered the rooms, I sensed something very unfamiliar and strange and it made me so uncomfortable. We stayed for 3 days and I couldn't sleep for a single night. One the last day, two of my batchmates had seizers and the other fainted at the exact same time. The next day, when we were ready to leave, the guards were glad that nothing worse had happened and this led me to affirm my concerns. That place smelt like a graveyard. I came back home and I got high fever and my parents said that I was behaving as if I had spilt personality, so they took me to the doctor but the doctor said that I was completely fine. This got all of us worried. My parents took me to another black magician and he kept staring at me and suddenly said that I was possessed. This shook us all. We were unable to process it.

When asked that how could we cure it, he said, he would have to perform his rituals in order to bring out the evil spirit of a woman who committed suicide from my body. This terrified my parents and me but everything made sense. Like, the neighbor warning us, me seeing shadows, having split personality, guests hearing wails, blood rolling from my eyes and a lot more. Then we arranged the necessary materials required for the ritual and after five hours of sitting ideal, I felt so relieved. I felt as if some weight had been taken off my chest. I felt good after a long time. Phew! Quite a lot of drama. Isn’t it? So what now?