Alone

I had been lost in my own world when the loud screaming of a woman brought me back to earth. The screams were so full of terror and panic that I unconsciously jumped out of the chair I had been sitting on. The result was that my knee hit the study table in front of me hard. I cried out in pain and limped towards the window of my room. My mind had already ascertained that the screams of the unknown woman were emanating from the direction that my window faced.

I reached the window and heart beating erratically, wrenched it open.

Silence.

Just as I had opened the window, the woman had stopped screaming. I poked my head out between the iron grills of the window and scanned the neighborhood keenly.

Nothing.

There was nothing unusual out there. Still my heart was beating too fast for its normal speed. I moved my head carefully inside and closed the window.

Strange, really strange. You don’t usually hear women screaming blue murder after midnight in my neighborhood.

The key word was ‘usually’.

I massaged my knee as I made my way towards my chair. I plopped down on it and my imaginative brain started supplying various scenarios for the screaming of the woman. None of them were pleasant.

She may be being chased…

She may be being tortured…

She may be being murdered…

Many gruesome images out of horror movies and novels fled through my mind. I shook my head to clear them.

My heart was still beating too fast.

If it had been any ordinary day, I would just have informed my parents. No doubt they would have known what to do. But the problem was, this was no ordinary day. My parents had gone to visit my sick aunt and they had said that they may stay there overnight.

So here I was, all alone in my home with a woman screaming outside. Except that she was no longer screaming. And the reason for that was…

That she may have been silenced for good.

Another gruesome image, a woman wearing white clothes stained with blood lying sprawled in the sidewalk. Her hair covering half of her face and blood dripping from her lips, her fingers…

I shook my head again. This was not helping. I needed to do something. Probably call the police…

My line of thought was interrupted by some loud knocks on the window. Knocks on the window? You don’t knock on windows. At least not on windows which are on the fourth floor!

I slowly turned around and stared at the window from where the sound of knocking had come from. ‘Maybe it was just the wind,’ a voice inside my head said reasonably. ‘There’s no need to be scared. It was just the wind.’

‘And the screaming?’ I asked myself. ‘Was that the wind too?’

My mind chose to stay quite this time.

Just as I was about to turn away from the window, someone or something knocked again. This time louder.

My eyes widened as fear started to creep into my skin pores. It was not the wind. Someone or something was definitely knocking on the window. And that someone or something must be sticking to the wall near the window like an insect in order to do so, because there was no support near the window of my room to hold on to.

I sat frozen in my chair, my mind producing very unpleasant and unwelcome images of vampires and other scary monsters.

After a moment or two, I regained some energy in my body and managed to stand up on wobbly legs. Just then there was more knocking, this time so hard that the whole windowpane rattled.

My mouth went completely dry and Goosebumps erupted all over my body.

First those screams and now that mysterious knocking.

‘What do you do when someone knocks on a window?’ My mind asked me politely.

“You answer it.” I replied out loud.

‘Yes,’ my mind continued, ‘you answer it and find out who’s knocking.’

I decided that I didn’t want to stand in my room still like a statue for the rest of my life (or until my parents returned anyway). On some shaky steps, I reached the window. Slowly my right hand went towards the window handle and my fingers folded around it.

I was just about to wrench it open when suddenly my hand became paralyzed.

‘Don’t open it!’ My instincts screamed at me. ‘Don’t you open that window, Jack!’

I moved my hand away from the handle as if it had been burned. And just then someone or something actually hit the window three-four times, as if beating it with their wrists.

I took some steps back from the window. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I couldn’t just ignore the knocking, or rather thumping. I also knew that I wasn’t going to open that window. Something dreadful and dangerous was waiting behind it. In some deep place in my mind, I just knew it.

But there was one another thing. Whatever was outside might just break the windowpane apart. I knew I had to do something; I couldn’t just stand here doing nothing!

Before I could do anything however, the doorbell started ringing persistently.

‘Who could it be? Surely my parents wouldn’t return after barely one hour?’

Heart racing, still hopeful, I gave the window one last look and ran to open the door. As I reached the door, I realized that along with the bell, someone was hammering on the door. Then I heard clearly as a boy shouted behind the door.

“Open up Jack! Open up!”

My eyes widened as I realized that it was my best friend Andy living next door who was shouting.

“Wait! I am opening!” I bellowed as I unlocked our main door and thrust the door open.

No sooner had I taken a view of my best friend, when the said best friend had leaped upon me, throwing us both inside my house. He then whirled around and slammed the door shut, locking it safely.

He then leaned against the door, panting loudly.

I stared at him open-mouthed.

“Andy! What happened? Are you okay?”

There was a deep scratch on his right cheek where blood was slowly oozing out. His hair was all messed up and he looked pale as a ghost. Andy’s shirt was ripped from the collar and his pants had a great tear down the knees of his left leg.

He didn’t answer me right then but took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. Then to my increasing surprise he crumpled to the floor right there and taking his head between his hands, started sobbing loudly.

I stared at him dumb struck for a moment. ‘Something is not right,’ I thought, ‘Wait, scratch that. Everything is not right!’

“Andy! What-what happened?” I bend to my knees in front of my best friend and looked at him concerned.

Andy coughed a little and then somehow stopped his sobbing. He ran both of his hands through his hair and head bent, said in a broken voice.

“My parents…they-they…are dead! My parents are dead!” He broke down again and started sobbing uncontrollably.

I couldn’t process the information my friend had given me at first. ‘His parents are dead? But how can that have happened?’

“Andy, are you sure?” I said in a hushed voice. Just as I said that, someone hammered on the door behind us.

Andy suddenly turned completely still. He looked up at me now, his face tear stained and red with crying. “They are worse than dead.”

“Worse than dead? But wha-” I couldn’t even complete the sentence as someone hammered on the door again and Andy jumped up, pulling me up with him. He stared at the door with horror.

“They are here! Jack! Where are your parents?”

“My parents have gone to visit my aunt.” I answered him, staring at the door myself.

“Oh no” Andy groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Now what are we going to do?”

I took one last glance at the door and turned to Andy. “That door’s going to hold. But first you have to tell me what’s going on in here.”

Andy too took a last glance at the door, and then said, “Let’s go to the living room. I am feeling very weak. I need to sit down. Also, I need some water.”

I nodded, “Okay, come on.”

We headed to the living room where Andy fell tiredly on one of the sofas.

“I will get the water,” I said and headed to the kitchen. I took a glass and filled if with cold water from the refrigerator. As I came out of the kitchen, my eyes fell on the window in my bedroom which was just opposite from where I was standing.

The window pane had a large crack in the middle.