Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective

As a response to Colin McQueen‘s comment on my recent post, The Poltergeist, I am hereby recounting my own experiences that were beyond explanation. I don’t call it ‘Paranormal’ because with all that I have experienced, who am I to say what’s normal.

It was regular middle-class apartment in Delhi in a 10-year old building. Only the hall received sunlight. The washroom led to two combined rooms at the back that had windows opening in an air shaft. No sunlight entered these rooms ever. Two other rooms at the back were locked by the owner for some reason.

The day I entered it, I got goosebumps. Since the earlier tenant had just moved out without a complaint, I ignored it, assuming that the setting was spooky enough to set off my hyperactive imagination. I was between jobs and spent the days alone at home feeling cold eyes on me and frequent touches on my back. A few days were enough to rattle my nerves.

The day I opened the airshaft window was when it all amplified. That night, we heard noises in the room that was supposed to be empty. We decided to invest in a good rat poison. Next night, I felt that I was being strangled. I was able to throw it away with the name of Almighty, but it continued into a hallucination about my roomy being undead.

That got me talking. For the first time, I was taken seriously and my roommate admitted feeling ‘something’ too. We huddled in the hall (the only room that felt safe) and stayed awake till wee hours of morning. Only the sound of morning Azaan (prayers in a mosque) quietened our fear.

We decided that dangerous as it may be, we couldn’t run away and accept defeat. So, we have to atleast try to face ‘it’ first, whatever ‘it’ was. So we started praying religiously (literally) every day and casting ‘prayers of protection’ every morning, evening and night.

After that, ‘it’ stopped touching me and featuring in my dreams (apparently, I was the only one ‘it’ touched). The prayers were also supposed to remove anything evil from the place. But ‘it’ remained. We assumed ‘it’ wasn’t evil, just angry because of the disturbance. So, we reduced the use of the inner rooms and moved our beds in the hall.

The Kitchen was unavoidable though and that was when I could feel the eyes on me and, from the corner of my eyes, I could see someone standing or passing by. But ‘it’ didn’t scare me anymore. I had the power that comes from an unshakable faith in Almighty and his power on all beings that existed. I would just ignore it as a silent co-tenant.

That’s when ‘it’ started moving things around. At nights, we could hear stuff falling and fridge door rattling in inner rooms. Our dustbin would often travel several feet to block the door to the inner rooms while we were in the hall or kitchen. This pattern continued for several months until our last day. That day, I prayed for forgiveness and peace of whoever was stuck in the house.

When my roommate went to remove the last of the lights, ‘it’ rattled the locks of the locked rooms for something to remember ‘it’ by.