The Hostel

__THE HOSTEL__              

“Evil spirits don't exist!" My gran's words echoed around my head as the horrific visage turned towards my bedroom window.

It was a lonely night and the trees around my hostel were making eerie sounds . I was a fresher then , it was my third night at the hostel in Room No-104.My room was in the third floor. Since we were new we had to face some ragging every now and then. It was almost like a trend , and that night was our final night , the last day of our ragging period. But who knew that on the last day I would be facing the most Dangerous and angry Senior “Meera Bhatia”, everyone knew that name around the campus and she was well known for her special ways to deal with juniors.

It was almost seven in the evening when I was called in her room. I stood still in front of her. She was tall and had angry eyes as that of a prison warden. I was tensed and afraid because I knew if I disappoint her, I would have to face her wrath.It was the tradition of almost every engineering hostel in India that the junior had to perform a specific task the senior appoints, and to my bad luck I was appointed the most horrifying task that one could be asked to do in our college. She asked me to -‘Fill a bottle from the water cooler on the far end of the campus’. This was when a huge terror covered my face. That part of the campus was not in use anymore, and no one wandered there, and the reason was pretty good. That part once housed the old civil department building and a tragic incident happened there ten years ago. There was a fire which started from a faulty electrical wiring and an old college professor met his demise there. A painful way to go. It was rumored that one can still sometimes hear the professor giving his lecture, hence no one dares to go there even during the day and us first years were strictly forbidden to go there.

 Everyone knew that a visit to the water cooler beside the abandoned building at night meant that your life would change for ever. But I couldn’t deny the task given to me by my senior, and at that moment I was more afraid of the senior than of a ghost story.

So , I took the empty water bottle , gathered my courage and started heading towards the other end of the campus. At first I had to cross the huge football ground , the walk past the mechanical dept. building and then cross a road which went through the borders of our college campus. It was rainy season and there were puddles here and there in the field.

As I walked slowly across the field every now and then I stepped on little puddles and the sound of the water splash and made me feel like something was pulling my leg inside the puddle. But somehow I carried on grasping the bottle tightly. There was an unusual silence in the air that night and the sky was cloudy so it was a bit hard to see, and the only source of light was the small lamps lit on the borders of our college grounds and the street lights along side the narrow road. After a while I finally crossed the college grounds and finally reached the mechanical building. I turned around and in a distance I could see the light from the hostel rooms. The sound of people talking had faded away and there was nothing to be heard other than the occasional sound of water dripping from the leaves into the small puddles. I slowly walked past the mechanical building and reached the road. I could see cars and sound of horns in a distant. The sight of human presence gave me huge relief and I once again went towards the cooler. I reached the cooler finally and started filling the bottle. The cooler was really close to the abandoned building which no one dared to come close to. I took a look at the building and in the faint light from the streets I could see the broken window glass and the marks of burns in the building.

I had somehow reached here and accomplished my task , but the only thing that was bothering me was I had to walk the same distance yet again, and that was the spooky part. As the bottle was almost filled I closed the bottle cap and as I was about to start walking towards the hostel what I saw almost made my heart skip a beat. I froze for a moment , it was as if I was paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t scream or shout and somehow I managed to gather my strength and started running towards the hostel.

 I did not dare to look back and ran for my life towards the mechanical building and crossed the football ground and finally reached the hostel and to the room where the seniors were waiting for me. I handed her the bottle and Sat down on the ground trying to catch a breath. 

The seniors looked at me with amusement and laughed. Then Meera asked me to stand up and tell my name, my fathers name and where I was from, with a shaky voice I said “I…..I am Sameera Singh and my fathers name .. is Santosh Kumar Singh”.

Meera looked at me with a smile and asked, “Are you from Patna?”.

I nodded. She stood up gave a pat on my shoulder and said ,” Ah, why didn’t you tell me you were Santosh uncle’s daughter …I have known him for years , come you will stay in my room tonight.” Saying this she took me with him. I was kind of pleased as being friends with the most respected and feared senior in college had its own advantages.

It was almost eleven at night now and we both were lying in our beds , I was still shaking from what had happened earlier. Silence had once again reigned the night, when suddenly there was loud knock on the door. I got up frightened, Meera rose up from his bed and said, “don’t worry little sister I am here , I will check..”, saying this he went towards the door and opened it and looked outside.

There was no one in the corridor. She got back inside and went back to bed claiming that it might be someone who was just trying to frighten me . After about ten minutes, as I was about to close my eyes there was the loud knock again. We both got up, Meera looked a little angry this time. I got up and said ,” wait let me check.”. I went and opened the door , but there was no one there. We didn’t hear anybody run away after the knocking so the person who was knocking must have been around here. I was looking around the corridor when I suddenly heard Meera screaming inside the room , as I went in what I saw took my breath away. There in my bed across the room was sitting another me. She was smiling at us, Meera Jumped from her bed and came towards me. The person on the bed then said, “hello Meera , don’t worry , I was just knocking to frighten you”.

Meera was really freaked out , he grabbed a hold of my hand started running towards the stairs. As we were running further away from I turned back and saw the door slowly close behind us and in between the gap of the door I could figure out the pale deadly face of myself smiling at me. Just we were near the stairs a gust of air came from no where and pushed Meera away and she fell. Then a door on the side burst open and Meera saw me being dragged inside. Before he could see anything the door closed. Meera was shaking with fear,

She came close to the door and started banging on the door and shouted , ” Sameera , open the door ! Sameera.”.

That room belonged to Meera Classmates Nitya and Shreya With the constant banging disturbing their sleep, Nitya opened the door. Meera rushed inside and started looking around the room speaking in a trembling voice, “Where is Sameera? where is she?”.

Nitya and Shreya were both really annoyed and they thought that Meera was just drunk, So they grab hold of her and started taking her towards her room. They laid her in her bed and as they left the room the door automatically shut behind them. Nitya and Shreya were spooked , and they ran to their rooms. Meera lay in her bed shaking with fear and then somehow decided to call my cell phone. She dialed my number and the phone rang, and then suddenly someone picked up the phone and a coarse voice came from the other side saying, “Do not try to contact the Dead..” and this was followed by an evil laughter.

Meera freaked out and ran out of her room, it was almost dawn, she ran out of the hostel and towards the other end of the campus she reached the end of the football field and there she sat down on a bench and tried to gather her thoughts. Meanwhile she didn’t realize when she had fallen asleep. After a few hours Meera woke up to the sound of sirens and people talking, she got up and saw a huge crowd gathered beside the water cooler. She went there and pushed her way into the crowd , and as she reached the middle what she saw made her scream.

 Beside the cooler lay the body of her junior Sameera with a filled water bottle in her hand and her eyes and mouth wide opened as if she had died from shock. Meera did not know what to do , she turned around and started running towards her hostel room. Her heart was beating faster and faster and everything was slowly fading in front of her eyes.She was almost at the foot of her door and she fainted.

Now you must be wandering that since saying I am narrating the story I must have survived, well when the postmortem report came it showed that Meera died from a heart attack and the time of death was seven am and which was 10 hours later after the water cooler incident. I still visit the cooler every now and then , but its really lonely around there. No one comes here after that day. It’s just me and the old professor.

–END–