Tap. Tap. Tap. I swear I could hear it. All night long. Tap. Tap. Tap.
I had a frugal dinner last night. Had some garbage soup. Then I tried to go to sleep. I switched off the lights and was lying in bed, eyes closed, when I began to have the horrible sensation that someone was watching me. I tried to ignore it but it would not go away. Suddenly I had this feeling that someone was standing next to the bed, looking at me. I opened my eyes, very afraid. There was no one there. I quickly scanned the room in the pale light filtering through the window but could not see anything or anyone. Maybe it is clinging to the ceiling, I thought. Wildly my eyes scanned the ceiling but found nothing. What if it is hiding under the bed? I asked myself. I thought of bending down and looking but then a voice in my head stopped me. What if you actually find something or rather someone there? I cringed at the thought. What happens when you wake up from a nightmare and scan the room to see if someone is there…and you actually find the thing from your nightmare with you? What if you open the closet one day and find a corpse? Or a skeleton? Or a severed head? Or maybe something alive?
All sorts of dark and ugly thoughts came to me. I tried to push them away but they would not. I was feeling very scared. It was as if something invisible was inches away from my skin, ready to carve symbols and shapes on it with its long clawy-ey hand, its talons ready to dig into me, etching out symbols in my blood before ripping me open. Or worse….perhaps when you have to see the thing. To allow its presence overwhelm all your senses. When you can smell its unearthly smell, when you are scared out of every bit of sanity in yourself and yet death shall not come.
After a while my mind began to calm a little and I felt the coming of the tired hands of sleep. Hardly a few moments after I must have slept off, I jolted awake to the sensation of falling from a height. As I was lying down waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal, I swear I heard someone knocking at the bedroom door! It was not a knock knock but a tap. As if someone was tapping at the door with their nail. I practically jumped in fear. I sat up in bed but the sound would not go away. It was persistent. Tap. Tap. Tap. Continuous. I thought of jumping out of bed and switching on the lights but was too scared to move. I don’t know how long I sat in the bed, trying to pray but too senseless with fear to even do that. After a while the sound abated. Still it would not bring me any relief for it was replaced by the sound of someone moving away from the door. Tap. Tap. Tap, of a walking stick perhaps. Then for one glorious moment, there was silence.
Suddenly there was a tapping at the window. The same. Tap. Tap. Tap. I was practically senseless with fear. Just as I was about to turn my face to the window and face the infernal being that was plaguing me, I recollected having read about a “being” that kept knocking on the doors or windows. After a while the knocking would cease but the being would remain there, hoping that the person being haunted would get tricked into looking. The only key to survival was not to look. No matter what. I tried to shut my ears and close my eyes while holding my head between my knees but nothing blocked out the sound. After a while it did cease but I was not to be tricked.
Gradually the night wore off but I sat in the bed, the blanket around me, shivering in fright. Of course I could not sleep a wink. The light from the window at some point indicated that morning was coming. It was then that I dared to look outside the window. However, it was that very early morning hour when even the simplest of everyday things acquire an outline and colour quite unlike their natural one. I saw a tree or rather a ghost of a tree, its ghastly outline…
It was only when the sun was high that I managed to go to sleep. It was around 3 that I started to write this and now it is closing on to 4:30. The light is beginning to dim and I find my fears returning. I haven’t stepped outside the room all day long. Haven’t even opened the closet. I am scared again. I doubt I will sleep tonight. Later.
- U.E
03:01 AM, Bangalore
February 9, 2014
