Fear (by Kohana)

I often mentor groups of children about the basics of creative writing. It is fun to read and hear to the the creative thoughts of these budding story writers. And often they surprise me with their imagination.

Kohana was usually the quiet kid in class, but she did come up with some delightful poetry and interesting write-ups. ‘Fear‘ is the final story she submitted on completion of the class. The maturity of her writing left me pleasantly surprised and the ending was a cherry on top.

Hi! I am Tina. I am almost a teenager. My life revolves around two types of people- family and friends. Friends are close because at my age you need someone who listens to you, a person that you find approachable given my “situation” I need it more than anyone else. I have two people who come under this type, Sunaina and Vani.

Sunaina is a cute and brave girl. I think she gets her inspiration from all those Nancy Drew stories she keeps reading. She is a bookworm too.  She can fight for her friends with her words.

I feel think that she will become a fine lawyer in future.

Vani is a clown. She is crazy and can make anyone laugh in a moment.  Our group meetings are incomplete without her. One gets worried if she is quiet. You see, she is a chatterbox and does not stop or listen to anyone once she starts talking.

Sorry, I got lost in my own world and forgot to tell you about my “situation”. My parents are divorced. I grew up watching them fight. Arguments seemed like a hobby for them.  Actually, it’s not their fault when you have an extreme feeling of something and that too of hatred it is difficult for you to avoid such fights.

Somewhere deep inside me I have a feeling that these fights have resulted in an increase in my fear of unknown. You can even say I feel there are ghosts around me. I get scared in the middle of the night and often spend hours awake in the dark.  The fights between my parents have also made me a nervous wreck. If you have parents who love each other then you won’t realize my situation.

Tomorrow is another boring day of my life. It is the last day of school before summer holidays. The last day of school went normal until I got a headache. Students in my class were screaming and running around as it was break time. But this noise led me getting flashbacks of my parents’ fights. I head towards the top of the staircase in my school hoping for peace and solitude.

Our school has three floors and the staircase leads to a closed door. The door was always locked so we thought it led to the terrace.

While I was sitting there with eyes wet in tears, I felt something hard lying beside me. When I looked at it, it was a lock. The door there was open ajar. I observed it and I realized that it was broken. Someone had broken into the ROOM! I stood up and opened the door a bit more to have a clear view of the other side, the door creaked open giving me a terrifying feeling. To my surprise, it was darkness all around and it felt as if the room never saw the light of the day. I felt someone walking down at the other end of the room but I wasn’t sure since I wasn’t able to see anyone. My thoughts were going in all directions as if I was living my worst nightmare. My blood ran cold. I could not even feel my limbs at that point.

Just then, I felt something warm on my shoulder. When I turned around to see what it was, I saw a hand. I screamed like anything but my voice got lost in the noise the people playing and laughing. After all, it was break time. To make it worse I felt a hand closing my mouth and a voice telling me, “Be Quiet!” After struggling a bit, I realized that the voice sounded familiar. I calmed myself down and opened my eyes which I had shut in fear.

Sunaina and Vani stood before me – grinning. I was relieved. But the weird feeling of all that I just saw through the door had drained the colour of my face. I told my friends about everything that had happened in their absence. I could sense fear on their faces yet they tried to calm me down. They told me nothing was wrong and it was all a figment of my imagination but I was not ready to believe them. After a while I acted calm in front of them. They must have sensed that I was lying. The school bell rang and we went to class.

Later, we decided to have a sleepover at Vani’s place after what had happened that day. Vani lived near school. It was walking distance from our school.

When I reached there, I saw Sunaina and Vani all dressed up to go somewhere. When I asked them where we were going, they told me that they had planned to sneak into the school at night and visit the room that we had seen earlier that day. I was scared but they made me understand that they wanted to do it for me. They thought that this would help me overcome my fear of ghosts. They said that we would be there till the sun rises and sneak back home so that nobody finds out about our little adventure. I reluctantly agreed because I myself wanted to overcome my worst fear. We prepared ourselves with torches, candles, lighters, an alarm clock and thin blankets.

We reached school and entered the room with our torches on. There were cobwebs everywhere. Old broken furniture like chairs, table and surprisingly even a bed was dumped in the room. It was like an attic but had no window. I could sense someone else in the room besides the three of us. We lit a candle and sat around it. Suddenly there was a gush of wind and the candle blew out. There were footsteps. I switched-on my torch and saw the look on my friend’s faces. They too had heard someone walking. Sunaina immediately lit the candle again. We searched the whole room to check that it was safe. While our eyes were searching for something unusual in the room, we noticed a trunk in the corner. It was covered with dust. We were curious. .  We could not resist and opened the box. But what we saw in it gave me chills. We saw a human skull, two long bones and rags covered with blood. We shut the box and rushed to the corner where we had spread our blankets. I was shivering. My friends tried to put me to sleep. I got the feeling that they knew that something was wrong and they too were afraid but they still wanted to stay there for the night, just for me. Eventually, I slept.

The next morning, when the alarm went off, I woke up. My peripheral vision could see someone standing right behind me but his/her height was more than that of Vani’s or Sunaina’s. I turned and saw a person in white clothes with hair covering the face and a knife in hand. The knife had blood on it. I was terrified. I looked down and saw Vani and Sunaina lying dead and there was blood trickling down their bodies. I got up and ran as fast as I could. Suddenly my eyes opened and I found my self on my bed in my own bedroom. I was relieved that it was just a mere dream but deep inside me, my subconscious brain questioned me, “Was it?”

– Kohana