18-09-2025, 08:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 18-09-2025, 09:05 AM by Expert. Edited 1 time in total. Edited 1 time in total.)
In Search of a Horror Story - Warning:Do not read after dark
The director wanted me to write a horror story for his forthcoming film. Till today I dealt with writing script of cheesy family drama, and it got him box office success too. Suddenly he wanted to step in to a domain which was new for entire production house!!! He wanted to become the Indian edition of Alfred Hitchcock, and he chose me to write his script.
I rented almost all horror movies CDs from the video library, watched every Korean, Taiwanese and Iranian short movies on YouTube, and downloaded all known-unknown e-books from internet in search of a horror story. I tried my luck with roaming around the haunted houses across the city and suburbs, but could not find what I was looking for. The producer wanted to create a history in Indian horror movie world, so I started contacting my readers through mail, letters and phone if they had anything worthwhile. My efforts got the result: a distant reader and one of my ardent fans contacted me and invited me to spend time in his resort, which he recently purchased at a very cheap price due to a few events of unnatural death of its residents.
I got disappointed at first when I reached the house he mentioned. It was nothing like I imagined. It was neither old, nor scary looking. A simple single storied building which surrounded by large garden, which almost turned in to a thick jungle of bush and unknown trees due to poor maintenance. I slept in the afternoon as I was very tired due to the long journey, and from evening onwards my nightmare started.
It was not that bloodthirsty ghosts came to disturbed my evening in this horrid place, but it was local villagers. I could not even imagine that how popular we are in this part. Each and every local human are well aware about our every movie, every actor and actress, every dialog and some of them bought our movie posters for autograph.
I felt flattered, but what became intolerable, was each of every individual of them had a real life scary experience to share. Everybody shared their real life experience with me, which turned out to be exactly same with my childhood story books. I cursed the person who not only arranged my staying here, but also told about my intention for being here to everybody.
For continuous three hours, I was under tremendous torture of listening to hundreds of horror stories. My brain got jumbled up with various types of ghost and its possible cruel nature, just then I was literally saved by the bell when the clock struck seven.
Suddenly all my advisors got anxious to leave this place. They wished me luck for the night and promised to return next morning with a few other real life experiences.
I took a sigh of relief as they closed the outside gate before leaving. The Caretakers of the house followed them soon after. They looked scared as if somebody chased them. I tried to stop them, but they told that they had my dinner in the hot pot, and they will be back in the early morning. They did not want to linger their stay in this cursed house anymore. That was the clue that got me more interested. I needed to know the story of the house itself. I acted innocent and asked them the reason, but they left in a hurry leaving me and my apprehension sky high.
The rooms were neat and clean, but the toilet was shabby and covered with algae and the marble floor was rough due to lack of maintenance. It was dark and slippery. The mirror was so distorted that I felt someone else is staring me through the reflection.
I washed my face in the washbasin, and looked in the mirror. I leaned over the mirror to have a closer look, and just then the doorbell rang.
Only a psychopath could install such a doorbell. The howling of a hundred bloodthirsty wolves is like a sweet melody if compared with the sound generated from this unearthly device. No wonder many resident of this house were dead. It’s not the fault of the house; it is this cursed doorbell that causes their death. I was so startled by the sudden sound; I stepped backwards and slipped on the floor.
Everything went dark for a while; I regained and got up slowly. I watched my face again in the mirror, but there was no sign of anything. The wavy pattern and the black spot in the mirror must have created the illusion. As I was watching my face closely, the horrid bell ranged again.
I rushed to the main door. Opened the door to found three new visitors were standing in front of the house. I never noticed when it started raining. A lady was accompanied by one young and one middle aged man. They introduced themselves as my diehard fan. I was getting bored and invited them cordially.
Within half an hour we became good friends. They are town folks who had to choose this village due to their job posting. Soon we started enjoying and chatting over a bottle of whisky. The lady asked for soft drinks instead.
They were aware about my intention of coming here in this place; sadly they got no horror story to share. I got a bit disappointed, but suddenly I had an idea. I asked them about the deaths in this house. They looked at each other.
The young man first broke the silence:
“We are here for hardly two years, we do not know about the history of the house, but in the last two years, we witnessed three unnatural deaths of the residents of this house. Not always they died inside the house, in fact a lady occupant died in other city, but local villagers love to co-relate them with this house. We can’t blame them either, as they were indeed resident of this house at the time of their death.”
“Please tell me about the incidence.” I said.
“How can we possibly? Like the first death, the new owner of the house was found dead in the morning within a week of his arrival. When we saw his dead body, he was lying in the floor lifeless, and looking in the ceiling. His eyes were almost coming out of their socket. Only a man is scared beyond limit could make this face. Post-mortem report told that he died of massive cardiac arrest. How can we tell you more than this?”
“But you are a story writer; you can make something out of it, can’t you?” The lady looked at me.
I was thinking and then the middle aged man spoke
“I have an idea. You can make story like that:”
“Ramesh babu got this house at a very cheap rate. He was an unmarried lonesome man. He rather liked to stay alone than the crowded city. So he moved here to spend rest of his days.
He was very particular about hygiene of the surrounding. He spends a lot of time to make this house spotlessly clean. The night after his cleaning operation completed, he fell asleep in a very tired condition.
Suddenly he got up in the middle of the night and his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
A large shadow crawled swiftly from one corner to another.
Ramesh Babu got scared and sat straight in his bed. He looked closely, but could not find anything. He left his bed to switch on the lights and search for the cause of this hallucination.
When Ramesh Babu almost gave up, he noticed a deep crack in the corner of the ceiling. A conical shaped very thin tail-like object came out of the crack.
Ramesh Babu took his cane and knocked the empty space near it. The object waved itself to show that it is not a lifeless piece of wire.
Caution took place of fear. What if it’s a snake? Ramesh Babu very carefully hit the object with all his force and quickly moved away.
With a ‘thud’ sound it fell from the ceiling.
Ramesh Babu never saw a house lizard that big in his life. A bit bigger and it could have been easily mistaken as iguana.
The creature lied there motionlessly. Only its eyes were watching Ramesh Babu without blinking. The opaque pupil less dilated eyes were enough to create an eerie feeling inside anybody. The sight was not very pleasant. Ramesh Babu used his stick again to hit it hard. Then put its lifeless body away in to the corner of his room with a stroke.
The next day Ramesh Babu called five labours to clean his house and surroundings with a deadly mixture of insecticides. In the evening the tired labours left the house with a big bag full of dead reptiles of various size and shape. Ramesh Babu never saw that many varieties of lizard in his entire life what he saw in one day.
That night Ramesh Babu was very happy while sleeping. At last the house is free of vermin!! He took a big glass of milk and entered into deep slumber of peace.
What exactly made him wake up 3 AM in the morning was not clear, it could have been the constant sound of thunder exactly like tonight, or the hot and humid climate which got worsened as the fan stopped due to power cut but what really made him disturbed was the scratching sound which was coming from the floor. Ramesh Babu tried to understand the source of the sound. In a flashing thunder what he saw made him paralyzed with surprise and fear.
What it looked like at first was a toddler is crawling in the floor, but as he watched closely in the next flash, it was no child; in fact no human can have that kind of eyes. Opaque dilated eyes were looking straight at Ramesh Babu, perhaps straight into his soul.
What made him wonder that how did it entered into his room through the closed door? Ramesh Babu looked at the door to find it wide open; perhaps the wind forced it open. A female shaped silhouette figure stood at the entrance of the door.
Perhaps the mother is looking for her child. Another thunder made his vision clear. The woman got the same eyes as the creature crawling in his room. She was looking upwards with her round peculiar eyes. She called the creature with a hissing sound. While speaking the unearthly language, Ramesh Babu could see her tongue. It was a split tongue like a snake or lizard.
Following the line of her vision, the poor guy look upwards to the ceiling and witnessed the last sight of his life. The child-like creature is now toddling through his ceiling. Once it put his bifurcated tongue to and fro like a snake and jumped straight at him.”
The middle aged man stopped his story and took a long sip in the glass of whisky. My goose bumps made me uncomfortable. My throat was all dried up and my glass was also empty. I quickly looked at the ceiling and poured some more to my glass.
“It was a good story indeed, but you know, it has lack of characters. Even though, I may consider it to be a potential screenplay.”
The middle aged man told nothing and smiled. Again it was the young person who interrupted the awkward silence in the room.
“You might then consider the story of the nurse who lived in this house next.”
The lady instantly objected,
“How can he possibly? The nurse did not even die in this house, not even in this village.”
I looked at the young man who spoke about the incidence with curiosity.
“Yes, it is true. The nurse died in the city, but she was a resident of this house during her death. In fact, her body was found in the Calcutta Metro station, she could be hardly recognized as at least five trains passed through her body by that time.”
“It is not very hard to build up a story from here, what do you think?”
I looked at the lady who was sipping in her soft drinks thoughtfully.
“You can do that? How would you start the story then? It must be something like that:
“Indira felt sleepy while waiting endlessly at the metro station waiting for the last tube. Almost all fellow passengers left the platform as they were getting anxious by this delay due to some technical fault.
Indira got no hurry. She was left alone after her marriage ends in a divorce last month. She got possession of her husband’s flat as alumni, but it was a living hell for her to spend every day in that flat. Each and every furniture even the air in that flat reminds her of the torment and torture she endured for last five years of her married life. So she was really happy when she passed her nursing course and posted in a remote village. She even got a very good solid brick house at a floor cheap rent. She did not even bother about the ill reputation her neighbors told her about the gruesome death of Ramesh Babu.
She needed to arrange a few things before she could finally get rid of every tie with that cursed flat of her ex-husband. So she was not in a real hurry to get back there. She waited and waited in the corner bench of the platform, and ultimately falls asleep.
Her trance got severed as the Train opened its door for the passengers. She quickly arranged her bag and boarded the train. God knows, for how long she was asleep on that platform.
The train was empty as it can be. Hardly four or five passengers in a compartment arranged themselves in a scattered way. The train started moving.
Indira was not very sure that how long it took before she could notice that something was not right. The train was running at its full speed for at least half an hour now, but it never stopped at any stations yet!!! She left her seat and walked towards the front of the train.
“Excuse me Dada, can you please tell me what station is next?”
She gently asked the first passenger she came across. The man looked at her with a pale face; a blood soaked bandage over his head still was oozing blood. His eyes were like made from stone without any expression. Indira could identify the man instantly. She saw that man few hours ago in the emergency ward of the medical college she was collecting her nursing diploma from.
She was startled and stepped back in a shock. She quickly started moving towards the driver’s cabin. As she crossed every seat on her way, every passengers of that train looked towards her. Everybody got the same pale face, same dead eyes. Now she started running towards the cabin and knocked it. The door opened unexpectedly and she entered the driver’s cabin.
The driver’s cabin was empty. The train is moving through the dark corridor of fate with a great speed without any pilot to guide it. The dark emptiness of the endless passage was engulfing the train to its black belly.
Scared Indira turned back. She was trying to get out of this lonely cabin to the safely of human presence. She opened the cabin just to find that the very existence of the whole train was evaporated. She was standing alone in the endless railway track, waiting for the cruel fate that awaited her.
She cried with all her power left in her body. She wanted badly to get out of this nightmare as fast as possible. Suddenly a blinding light of oncoming train bedazzled her. Before she could do anything, the big metal wheels of the moving train passed over her body tearing it apart.”
I was not prepared for a story of that intensity.
I finished my glass to pour a new one.
“It was a nice story, scary too, but it requires some mystery and action. In movie, it needs to show some of the both to make the viewers engrossed.”
The lady smiled and told,
“Then do not look any further. Settle for the 3rd death in this house. He was a college teacher who was its victim. They found him in the next room. Post-mortem report was more surprising. The man died from starvation. The doors were closed from inside and no signs of anybody else’s presence could be seen. The man just sat there and waited for his death without any food or drink in front of a broken mirror. Is not it mysterious enough?”
I sat straight in my sofa.
“It is indeed. It requires some serene mind to untie the knots in this puzzle.”
“Or you can frame it in this way”
The younger man of the lot started speaking.
“The house was vacant for many months after the death of Indira. Nobody was ready to lease or purchase this jinxed house. Even when the owner lost all hopes regarding this house, just then Samir showed up. He was rather eager to rent this house. He settled in this in spite of repeated warnings of the villagers. Samir was telling that he is studying for higher education, so he could become a high college teacher from his current primary college teacher position. He needs a secluded place to complete his study un-disturbed. The villagers did not believe him; they thought him as a terrorist who was hiding from security officer. So they avoided him as best as they could.
Samir wanted just that. He was deeply in to something that needs complete concentration and away from prying eyes of the general population.
Few people are addicted to narcotics, few are onto other things, but Samir was deeply rooted into black magic.
He bought all types of books and contacted all types of religious gurus who claimed themselves as ‘Tantriks’, performer of black rituals.
Samir got a voodoo book where it was written that mirrors are like photographs, it can hold memories it saw. It captures the reflections and stores them in to it. And with particular ritual; one can enter in to its memory and could view glimpse of those.
It seemed harmless enough and very interesting. Samir bought a very old mirror from an auction house and prepared for the ritual.
Samir placed the mirror in the next room and performed the ritual. The golden frames curved in the border of the mirror starts glowing like fire as he was performing it. Soon the Belgian glass seemed like made of water and it became fluid and somewhat semi-transparent. Samir could see the shadow of men and women sitting, standing, dancing in it as if he was looking through a performance through a dirty smoked glass.
As Samir put the wax doll in the fire, as described by the book, he suddenly felt a force is pulling him inside the mirror.
It was expected that Samir will replace his reflection to decode the reading in the mirror. It should happen like this, but when the moment ultimately came, Samir lost his nerve. Samir was trying to perform this kind of activity for almost three years now, but it is the first time he was experiencing something real.
Samir struggled as he was sucked inside the mirror, he tried to leave this place and put an end to this, but it was too late for him. As he was completely inside the mirror, his struggle caused the glass of the mirror to break into pieces.
At first Samir could feel nothing, he could see his reflection sitting idle in the mirror, but later he realised that it is his actual self that is inside the mirror, and his soulless reflection is outside. Samir could feel the presence of endless phantom figures in his back, the memories of joy, lust, sadness and death is waiting to turn Samir into a memory itself. Oh god, we are doing a lot of things in front of a mirror, and never suspect that it’s getting imprinted!!
Samir tried to get out of the shadow world, to the safety of the real world. To breathe, to touch the ground of this cursed house, which never felt so precious, so distant previously.
His all efforts turned futile as the glass was broken. His reflection sat ideally motionlessly as memories in the past. The real self of Samir struggled inside the mirror to be faded and lost in the past.”
As the young man finished his story they all looked at me with curiosity.
“Well sir, please tell me which of the stories you liked most? Which one of these is going to be in your next movie?”
I leaned forward to fill my drink. I was scared like shit inside, but I was never going to show that.
“Well I liked them all. In fact, I am thinking to show them all in my coming movie. It will be like a bunch of stories inside a single movie, tied with a common factor; this house.”
I relaxed a bit and looked straight into their eyes,
“It requires a good twist in the end. I can even think to represent you all as ghosts who came back in this house to tell me their stories, and in the climax, you will reveal yourself as Ramesh Babu, Indira and Samir. What do you think? Is it going to be a great twist in the end or not?”
Great idea sir, it would be like big Hollywood movies, you can even name it like ‘The Horror Quadrant’ or ‘The Four Faces of Fear’
“You mean horror triangle, since it got three stories, don’t you?” I corrected them.
“No Sir, we were suggesting that you should add your story too in the end.”
Now, that made me irritated. I should thank them for providing me the plot, they also spared their time to come and help me, but in the effort of scaring me, they crossed their limit.
I quickly took a long sip to my drink before I tell them that they should leave for now, and just then I realised that I forgot to mix water in my drink.
My whole body got shivered in nausea as I drank my raw whisky. I felt like I am about to vomit. I left my seat quickly and rushed towards the toilet. The trio followed me with worried faces seeing my sudden change.
As I stepped inside the washroom, I was almost toppled from something in the ground. The light was so dim that I could not notice it at first. I leaned forward to have a closer look.
My lifeless body was lying on the wet, shabby bathroom floor. From back of its head, already clotted blood flow painted half of the floor in black. My wide open eyes are without any sign of pain though, and why it should not be? Ultimately I could find the horror story I was searching for. I closed my eyes with a hope that it was all a bad dream all along and I will wake up from it when I will open my eyes.
______________________________
Xossip Queen of Art-Ria
"Dew Drops" A collection of short stories .The Seventh Chapter-A psychothriller
In Search of a Horror Story
psychoknight
The director wanted me to write a horror story for his forthcoming film. Till today I dealt with writing script of cheesy family drama, and it got him box office success too. Suddenly he wanted to step in to a domain which was new for entire production house!!! He wanted to become the Indian edition of Alfred Hitchcock, and he chose me to write his script.
I rented almost all horror movies CDs from the video library, watched every Korean, Taiwanese and Iranian short movies on YouTube, and downloaded all known-unknown e-books from internet in search of a horror story. I tried my luck with roaming around the haunted houses across the city and suburbs, but could not find what I was looking for. The producer wanted to create a history in Indian horror movie world, so I started contacting my readers through mail, letters and phone if they had anything worthwhile. My efforts got the result: a distant reader and one of my ardent fans contacted me and invited me to spend time in his resort, which he recently purchased at a very cheap price due to a few events of unnatural death of its residents.
I got disappointed at first when I reached the house he mentioned. It was nothing like I imagined. It was neither old, nor scary looking. A simple single storied building which surrounded by large garden, which almost turned in to a thick jungle of bush and unknown trees due to poor maintenance. I slept in the afternoon as I was very tired due to the long journey, and from evening onwards my nightmare started.
It was not that bloodthirsty ghosts came to disturbed my evening in this horrid place, but it was local villagers. I could not even imagine that how popular we are in this part. Each and every local human are well aware about our every movie, every actor and actress, every dialog and some of them bought our movie posters for autograph.
I felt flattered, but what became intolerable, was each of every individual of them had a real life scary experience to share. Everybody shared their real life experience with me, which turned out to be exactly same with my childhood story books. I cursed the person who not only arranged my staying here, but also told about my intention for being here to everybody.
For continuous three hours, I was under tremendous torture of listening to hundreds of horror stories. My brain got jumbled up with various types of ghost and its possible cruel nature, just then I was literally saved by the bell when the clock struck seven.
Suddenly all my advisors got anxious to leave this place. They wished me luck for the night and promised to return next morning with a few other real life experiences.
I took a sigh of relief as they closed the outside gate before leaving. The Caretakers of the house followed them soon after. They looked scared as if somebody chased them. I tried to stop them, but they told that they had my dinner in the hot pot, and they will be back in the early morning. They did not want to linger their stay in this cursed house anymore. That was the clue that got me more interested. I needed to know the story of the house itself. I acted innocent and asked them the reason, but they left in a hurry leaving me and my apprehension sky high.
The rooms were neat and clean, but the toilet was shabby and covered with algae and the marble floor was rough due to lack of maintenance. It was dark and slippery. The mirror was so distorted that I felt someone else is staring me through the reflection.
I washed my face in the washbasin, and looked in the mirror. I leaned over the mirror to have a closer look, and just then the doorbell rang.
Only a psychopath could install such a doorbell. The howling of a hundred bloodthirsty wolves is like a sweet melody if compared with the sound generated from this unearthly device. No wonder many resident of this house were dead. It’s not the fault of the house; it is this cursed doorbell that causes their death. I was so startled by the sudden sound; I stepped backwards and slipped on the floor.
Everything went dark for a while; I regained and got up slowly. I watched my face again in the mirror, but there was no sign of anything. The wavy pattern and the black spot in the mirror must have created the illusion. As I was watching my face closely, the horrid bell ranged again.
I rushed to the main door. Opened the door to found three new visitors were standing in front of the house. I never noticed when it started raining. A lady was accompanied by one young and one middle aged man. They introduced themselves as my diehard fan. I was getting bored and invited them cordially.
Within half an hour we became good friends. They are town folks who had to choose this village due to their job posting. Soon we started enjoying and chatting over a bottle of whisky. The lady asked for soft drinks instead.
They were aware about my intention of coming here in this place; sadly they got no horror story to share. I got a bit disappointed, but suddenly I had an idea. I asked them about the deaths in this house. They looked at each other.
The young man first broke the silence:
“We are here for hardly two years, we do not know about the history of the house, but in the last two years, we witnessed three unnatural deaths of the residents of this house. Not always they died inside the house, in fact a lady occupant died in other city, but local villagers love to co-relate them with this house. We can’t blame them either, as they were indeed resident of this house at the time of their death.”
“Please tell me about the incidence.” I said.
“How can we possibly? Like the first death, the new owner of the house was found dead in the morning within a week of his arrival. When we saw his dead body, he was lying in the floor lifeless, and looking in the ceiling. His eyes were almost coming out of their socket. Only a man is scared beyond limit could make this face. Post-mortem report told that he died of massive cardiac arrest. How can we tell you more than this?”
“But you are a story writer; you can make something out of it, can’t you?” The lady looked at me.
I was thinking and then the middle aged man spoke
“I have an idea. You can make story like that:”
“Ramesh babu got this house at a very cheap rate. He was an unmarried lonesome man. He rather liked to stay alone than the crowded city. So he moved here to spend rest of his days.
He was very particular about hygiene of the surrounding. He spends a lot of time to make this house spotlessly clean. The night after his cleaning operation completed, he fell asleep in a very tired condition.
Suddenly he got up in the middle of the night and his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
A large shadow crawled swiftly from one corner to another.
Ramesh Babu got scared and sat straight in his bed. He looked closely, but could not find anything. He left his bed to switch on the lights and search for the cause of this hallucination.
When Ramesh Babu almost gave up, he noticed a deep crack in the corner of the ceiling. A conical shaped very thin tail-like object came out of the crack.
Ramesh Babu took his cane and knocked the empty space near it. The object waved itself to show that it is not a lifeless piece of wire.
Caution took place of fear. What if it’s a snake? Ramesh Babu very carefully hit the object with all his force and quickly moved away.
With a ‘thud’ sound it fell from the ceiling.
Ramesh Babu never saw a house lizard that big in his life. A bit bigger and it could have been easily mistaken as iguana.
The creature lied there motionlessly. Only its eyes were watching Ramesh Babu without blinking. The opaque pupil less dilated eyes were enough to create an eerie feeling inside anybody. The sight was not very pleasant. Ramesh Babu used his stick again to hit it hard. Then put its lifeless body away in to the corner of his room with a stroke.
The next day Ramesh Babu called five labours to clean his house and surroundings with a deadly mixture of insecticides. In the evening the tired labours left the house with a big bag full of dead reptiles of various size and shape. Ramesh Babu never saw that many varieties of lizard in his entire life what he saw in one day.
That night Ramesh Babu was very happy while sleeping. At last the house is free of vermin!! He took a big glass of milk and entered into deep slumber of peace.
What exactly made him wake up 3 AM in the morning was not clear, it could have been the constant sound of thunder exactly like tonight, or the hot and humid climate which got worsened as the fan stopped due to power cut but what really made him disturbed was the scratching sound which was coming from the floor. Ramesh Babu tried to understand the source of the sound. In a flashing thunder what he saw made him paralyzed with surprise and fear.
What it looked like at first was a toddler is crawling in the floor, but as he watched closely in the next flash, it was no child; in fact no human can have that kind of eyes. Opaque dilated eyes were looking straight at Ramesh Babu, perhaps straight into his soul.
What made him wonder that how did it entered into his room through the closed door? Ramesh Babu looked at the door to find it wide open; perhaps the wind forced it open. A female shaped silhouette figure stood at the entrance of the door.
Perhaps the mother is looking for her child. Another thunder made his vision clear. The woman got the same eyes as the creature crawling in his room. She was looking upwards with her round peculiar eyes. She called the creature with a hissing sound. While speaking the unearthly language, Ramesh Babu could see her tongue. It was a split tongue like a snake or lizard.
Following the line of her vision, the poor guy look upwards to the ceiling and witnessed the last sight of his life. The child-like creature is now toddling through his ceiling. Once it put his bifurcated tongue to and fro like a snake and jumped straight at him.”
The middle aged man stopped his story and took a long sip in the glass of whisky. My goose bumps made me uncomfortable. My throat was all dried up and my glass was also empty. I quickly looked at the ceiling and poured some more to my glass.
“It was a good story indeed, but you know, it has lack of characters. Even though, I may consider it to be a potential screenplay.”
The middle aged man told nothing and smiled. Again it was the young person who interrupted the awkward silence in the room.
“You might then consider the story of the nurse who lived in this house next.”
The lady instantly objected,
“How can he possibly? The nurse did not even die in this house, not even in this village.”
I looked at the young man who spoke about the incidence with curiosity.
“Yes, it is true. The nurse died in the city, but she was a resident of this house during her death. In fact, her body was found in the Calcutta Metro station, she could be hardly recognized as at least five trains passed through her body by that time.”
“It is not very hard to build up a story from here, what do you think?”
I looked at the lady who was sipping in her soft drinks thoughtfully.
“You can do that? How would you start the story then? It must be something like that:
“Indira felt sleepy while waiting endlessly at the metro station waiting for the last tube. Almost all fellow passengers left the platform as they were getting anxious by this delay due to some technical fault.
Indira got no hurry. She was left alone after her marriage ends in a divorce last month. She got possession of her husband’s flat as alumni, but it was a living hell for her to spend every day in that flat. Each and every furniture even the air in that flat reminds her of the torment and torture she endured for last five years of her married life. So she was really happy when she passed her nursing course and posted in a remote village. She even got a very good solid brick house at a floor cheap rent. She did not even bother about the ill reputation her neighbors told her about the gruesome death of Ramesh Babu.
She needed to arrange a few things before she could finally get rid of every tie with that cursed flat of her ex-husband. So she was not in a real hurry to get back there. She waited and waited in the corner bench of the platform, and ultimately falls asleep.
Her trance got severed as the Train opened its door for the passengers. She quickly arranged her bag and boarded the train. God knows, for how long she was asleep on that platform.
The train was empty as it can be. Hardly four or five passengers in a compartment arranged themselves in a scattered way. The train started moving.
Indira was not very sure that how long it took before she could notice that something was not right. The train was running at its full speed for at least half an hour now, but it never stopped at any stations yet!!! She left her seat and walked towards the front of the train.
“Excuse me Dada, can you please tell me what station is next?”
She gently asked the first passenger she came across. The man looked at her with a pale face; a blood soaked bandage over his head still was oozing blood. His eyes were like made from stone without any expression. Indira could identify the man instantly. She saw that man few hours ago in the emergency ward of the medical college she was collecting her nursing diploma from.
She was startled and stepped back in a shock. She quickly started moving towards the driver’s cabin. As she crossed every seat on her way, every passengers of that train looked towards her. Everybody got the same pale face, same dead eyes. Now she started running towards the cabin and knocked it. The door opened unexpectedly and she entered the driver’s cabin.
The driver’s cabin was empty. The train is moving through the dark corridor of fate with a great speed without any pilot to guide it. The dark emptiness of the endless passage was engulfing the train to its black belly.
Scared Indira turned back. She was trying to get out of this lonely cabin to the safely of human presence. She opened the cabin just to find that the very existence of the whole train was evaporated. She was standing alone in the endless railway track, waiting for the cruel fate that awaited her.
She cried with all her power left in her body. She wanted badly to get out of this nightmare as fast as possible. Suddenly a blinding light of oncoming train bedazzled her. Before she could do anything, the big metal wheels of the moving train passed over her body tearing it apart.”
I was not prepared for a story of that intensity.
I finished my glass to pour a new one.
“It was a nice story, scary too, but it requires some mystery and action. In movie, it needs to show some of the both to make the viewers engrossed.”
The lady smiled and told,
“Then do not look any further. Settle for the 3rd death in this house. He was a college teacher who was its victim. They found him in the next room. Post-mortem report was more surprising. The man died from starvation. The doors were closed from inside and no signs of anybody else’s presence could be seen. The man just sat there and waited for his death without any food or drink in front of a broken mirror. Is not it mysterious enough?”
I sat straight in my sofa.
“It is indeed. It requires some serene mind to untie the knots in this puzzle.”
“Or you can frame it in this way”
The younger man of the lot started speaking.
“The house was vacant for many months after the death of Indira. Nobody was ready to lease or purchase this jinxed house. Even when the owner lost all hopes regarding this house, just then Samir showed up. He was rather eager to rent this house. He settled in this in spite of repeated warnings of the villagers. Samir was telling that he is studying for higher education, so he could become a high college teacher from his current primary college teacher position. He needs a secluded place to complete his study un-disturbed. The villagers did not believe him; they thought him as a terrorist who was hiding from security officer. So they avoided him as best as they could.
Samir wanted just that. He was deeply in to something that needs complete concentration and away from prying eyes of the general population.
Few people are addicted to narcotics, few are onto other things, but Samir was deeply rooted into black magic.
He bought all types of books and contacted all types of religious gurus who claimed themselves as ‘Tantriks’, performer of black rituals.
Samir got a voodoo book where it was written that mirrors are like photographs, it can hold memories it saw. It captures the reflections and stores them in to it. And with particular ritual; one can enter in to its memory and could view glimpse of those.
It seemed harmless enough and very interesting. Samir bought a very old mirror from an auction house and prepared for the ritual.
Samir placed the mirror in the next room and performed the ritual. The golden frames curved in the border of the mirror starts glowing like fire as he was performing it. Soon the Belgian glass seemed like made of water and it became fluid and somewhat semi-transparent. Samir could see the shadow of men and women sitting, standing, dancing in it as if he was looking through a performance through a dirty smoked glass.
As Samir put the wax doll in the fire, as described by the book, he suddenly felt a force is pulling him inside the mirror.
It was expected that Samir will replace his reflection to decode the reading in the mirror. It should happen like this, but when the moment ultimately came, Samir lost his nerve. Samir was trying to perform this kind of activity for almost three years now, but it is the first time he was experiencing something real.
Samir struggled as he was sucked inside the mirror, he tried to leave this place and put an end to this, but it was too late for him. As he was completely inside the mirror, his struggle caused the glass of the mirror to break into pieces.
At first Samir could feel nothing, he could see his reflection sitting idle in the mirror, but later he realised that it is his actual self that is inside the mirror, and his soulless reflection is outside. Samir could feel the presence of endless phantom figures in his back, the memories of joy, lust, sadness and death is waiting to turn Samir into a memory itself. Oh god, we are doing a lot of things in front of a mirror, and never suspect that it’s getting imprinted!!
Samir tried to get out of the shadow world, to the safety of the real world. To breathe, to touch the ground of this cursed house, which never felt so precious, so distant previously.
His all efforts turned futile as the glass was broken. His reflection sat ideally motionlessly as memories in the past. The real self of Samir struggled inside the mirror to be faded and lost in the past.”
As the young man finished his story they all looked at me with curiosity.
“Well sir, please tell me which of the stories you liked most? Which one of these is going to be in your next movie?”
I leaned forward to fill my drink. I was scared like shit inside, but I was never going to show that.
“Well I liked them all. In fact, I am thinking to show them all in my coming movie. It will be like a bunch of stories inside a single movie, tied with a common factor; this house.”
I relaxed a bit and looked straight into their eyes,
“It requires a good twist in the end. I can even think to represent you all as ghosts who came back in this house to tell me their stories, and in the climax, you will reveal yourself as Ramesh Babu, Indira and Samir. What do you think? Is it going to be a great twist in the end or not?”
Great idea sir, it would be like big Hollywood movies, you can even name it like ‘The Horror Quadrant’ or ‘The Four Faces of Fear’
“You mean horror triangle, since it got three stories, don’t you?” I corrected them.
“No Sir, we were suggesting that you should add your story too in the end.”
Now, that made me irritated. I should thank them for providing me the plot, they also spared their time to come and help me, but in the effort of scaring me, they crossed their limit.
I quickly took a long sip to my drink before I tell them that they should leave for now, and just then I realised that I forgot to mix water in my drink.
My whole body got shivered in nausea as I drank my raw whisky. I felt like I am about to vomit. I left my seat quickly and rushed towards the toilet. The trio followed me with worried faces seeing my sudden change.
As I stepped inside the washroom, I was almost toppled from something in the ground. The light was so dim that I could not notice it at first. I leaned forward to have a closer look.
My lifeless body was lying on the wet, shabby bathroom floor. From back of its head, already clotted blood flow painted half of the floor in black. My wide open eyes are without any sign of pain though, and why it should not be? Ultimately I could find the horror story I was searching for. I closed my eyes with a hope that it was all a bad dream all along and I will wake up from it when I will open my eyes.
-----------------End---------------
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Xossip Queen of Art-Ria
"Dew Drops" A collection of short stories .The Seventh Chapter-A psychothriller
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