It was winter. Although winters in their beginning bring along some colourful festivities, they also take a deep dive into their cold depths making getting out of bed a more challenging task in the morning.
The days can be pleasant though, everyone who doesn’t have to go out for any purpose comes out to enjoy the Sun. The children have a very joyful experience on their way back from school. They have their lunch and rush out to play, till the sun shone and threw its light, making it warm and comfortable.
The children of a particular apartment society had found something of an unwelcoming nature, a presence where imagination met the reality and made it more, the presence felt like the colours were fading away, the air carrying a peculiar heaviness.
The children always knew that the presence was around, moving in the shadows during the day, out in the open during the night. Always observing, lurking around, waiting for that moment for finding a soul alone, drinking away the life that breathed.
If the cricket ball would roll over in the shadows behind the bush, only the bravest among the children went to find it. A few incidents of screams had occurred, with various descriptions, long hands, hollow eyes, black smoke with flying embers, a man who suddenly began to increase in size.
The fear was real, the presence as the children claimed was real as well, they had seen him pass, they had seen him look at them, his presence was truly felt during the winters. No one knew how it began but it stayed and grew over the time.
But when one removed that filter made by the children. It was seventy-one years old, Mr Lakhia, wearing his favourite monkey cap and walking around, trying to smile at the children who for some reason had stopped responding with smiles as they once used to.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
