THE RING- PART 1 - Story Brunch

Image by Diamantino Santos from Pixabay

It was the winter holidays and I had gone to my hometown in Purvanchal for vacation. Grandparents of my neighbor friend had died in the village and both his parents had left the next morning itself. As he had to stay all alone for a few days, he requested me and one more guy from the colony to stay in his house at the night. We readily agreed.

After dinner, I went to sleep at his house. The two of them slept in the bedroom and I moved to a room adjacent to the main gate of the house.

I had been talking to one college friend those days, a girl from my engineering branch.I dialed her number and didn’t realize when did I fall asleep talking to her. It was around 1 AM when both of them rushed to my room and said in a panic voice that some woman was knocking on the door and taking my name-

‘Arjun, open the door .’

I told them that I didn’t hear any such voice. Still, they insisted me to move to the bedroom, both were carrying terrified looks on their faces. I obliged and moved to the bedroom and slept on the sofa, while the two slept on the bed.

It was around 1 hour later, at around 2 AM that my eyes opened all of a sudden and I could feel the changed environment of the room. It seemed as if silence had engulfed the whole house, wind had stopped. I was lying motionless on my sofa, not uttering a word as i couldn’t understand the scenario unfolding in front of me. It was pitch dark. A few moments later I felt as if someone was trying to move my legs to make space on the sofa. I slid my legs slightly and I could feel someone sitting on the sofa. A few moments later, when I felt the room atmosphere had returned to normalcy, I shouted the name of one of the guys, and surprisingly, both of them were awake. I told them what I had felt, and they said that they had not been able to sleep and were awake as they could hear terrifying sounds since 10 PM.

Anyway,I was not terrified much assuming it to be some delusion while sleeping, and I slept again. For the next 2 days, I slept at his home and didn’t feel anything. While they would hear different kinds of sounds, including knocks on the door after midnight.

Sooner my holidays ended and I returned to Delhi. A group of friends made plans to visit Begumpur Qila in South Delhi, as an adventure trip next weekend. I was informed of the plan and I moved from my hostel to the PG of one of my friends on Friday night. We were a group of 10 guys, equipped with matchboxes and torchlights to ward off ghosts.

We entered the Begumpur Qila at around 11 PM and roamed around the empty corridors of the old abandoned Masjid for an hour, went to the terrace and a few of us shouted from its domes. After an hour or two, we returned to our respective homes/PGs at around 1 am. I too returned to my friend’s PG.

After having dinner, we both went to sleep. Hardly 5 minutes after we both slid under our blankets my friend woke me up-

‘Arjun, did you hear the knock, someone just called your name, some girl is there at the door’.

I thought he was playing a prank and I ignored him and covered myself with the blanket, but this time I was terrified as this was the second instance in the last 10 days when someone had been saying the same thing. 5 minutes later, someone banged on the door with full force, and a loud noise like a burst of a cracker was heard.

I and Mohak stared at each other with terrified eyes, he whispered- ‘I told u ‘.

I didn’t utter a word. Nor did he. We were just as silent and immobile as we could be.

Then I whispered- ‘Maybe a cat hit the door in dark’.

He didn’t believe my words. Even I didn’t.

We were lying awake but motionless till dawn. The next day he asked me to stay at his PG till Sunday, but I was not ready to give him company in his haunted PG. I made tens of excuses to leave the house and returned to my hostel.

On weekends my hostel used to be vacant as most of the students would visit their local guardians’ homes. I was all alone in my room on Saturday. It was around 2 AM that I heard the knock knock sound on my door.

I didn’t respond. Next were the words-

‘ Arjun, open the door’.

A female voice at 3 o clock in the morning,that too in a boys’ hostel!

I realized that the problem was not at my neighbor’s house back in Purvanchal, nor at the PG of my friend in Sarvapriya Vihar. The problem had something to do with me. It was personal.

I didn’t open the door, and kept lying on my bed.I rushed to the mess in the morning to enquire if they had kept a female staff. They laughed. Obviously.

I made a plan to solve this mystery. I decided not to enter my room that day, and watch the girl who knocked on the door of my room and used to call my name, from outside my room.

I moved to my friend’s room, which was empty as he had not returned after vacation. I turned off the light in his room, opened the door to get a straight view of my room, and sat on a chair at around 11 pm. Had been waiting for the girl to knock on my door for around 3 hours, fear engulfing more and more as time was to strike 2 am.

Nothing happened that night, and I felt relieved. No one came to my room, no one knocked on the door.

So I decided to get back to sleep.

As soon as I got up, the corridor lights went off, and someone whispered from behind-

‘Arjun’.

A female voice, once again, it was more clear as there was no barrier between us, sounded like someone very familiar. Numb and terrified, but determined to solve the mystery, I turned back in the dark, and a gale of shadow moved in my direction from the opposite distant side of the corridor. I couldn’t understand and I ran outside the hostel at a speed which my legs could allow me to, to the sports complex. I kept running till I landed amidst the lights of the football ground.

Turned back to find no one. Not as fearful anymore, as the ground was surrounded by residential colonies, and a loud shout could wake up thousands. I sat on the ground, bewildered at the familiarity of the voice. Trying to recall where had I heard her, who She could be, I slept on the ground at 4 am, in the winter.

The sports complex staff woke me up at around 7 am. I called my PG friend Mohak and asked him if he had heard the voice again after I returned to the hostel. He replied in negative and added –

‘Anyway, someone was looking for you, not me’.

I narrated the whole ordeal to him. He asked me to visit with him a local astrologer named Shakuntala Devi, a poor lady whose main occupation was that of a cook and who ran a mess for PG guys. We reached her hut in the ridge area of Delhi, surrounded by some vegetation and narrow lanes in all directions. She heard the full story, and then arranged some wheat, ‘Sindur’, some sea shells, and grains on a plate, asked me to keep my palm in the thali and read some mantra.

I didn’t use to believe in all such stuff, I knew she had no solution. But then I had no other option. As soon as I placed my palm in the thali, she said – ‘ It’s some evil figure after you’.

She told me some mantras to recite, which I did for a few days and the voice didn’t disturb me again. The hostel was full by then, the college had opened, and things were back to normal. A month had passed, and I had not heard the voice.

Though relieved, the familiarity of the voice had still been haunting me.

It was a consistent quest to identify ‘her’.

I felt that I needed to hear the voice once more and I would identify her. But I didn’t want her to return.

One fine day, my roommate was cleaning the cupboard and he pulled a sketch out of an old notebook. He showed it to me and asked if I had made that sketch. Nonchalantly, I looked at the sketch and told him that the sketch was drawn by me only, and got back to my assignment.

All of sudden something hit me and I took the sketch from his hand, and whispered –