A Ghost Story

While on a holiday hike in the Aravalli hills in Rajasthan, I stopped by a palatial house shining in the summer sun, curious, through the half-closed door I entered silently the dark front room where old furniture pile I could see. In the eerie stillness before I could call out, “anybody in”, behind me the heavy door suddenly closed sharply creakin’, I pressed the panic button within the alarmed mind, with all the doors closed the way out I couldn’t find. As the feeling of being trapped flowed in cold sweat creepy, I saw a faint figure walk in the hallway ominously misty, he came in the sinister room as if floating in air all the way, his scarred deformed face I saw before he turned it away. As he came near I wailed scared, “I entered, I’m sorry”, “I should go out, please help, open the door for me”. Icy eyes looked at me, but a single word he didn’t say, toward the door in a slow gliding stride I found him stray. How he opened so softly the huge door I didn’t know, I rushed outside in a heartbeat in the flood of sunglow, I got my breath back and looked back to say “thank you”, but the door was closed and the man was out of my view. On my query in the nearby village about that man I was told, I met a ghost living there, the house of the dead it was called, for in the accidental fire that gutted the outhouse in a breath some two years ago, the lone caretaker was burnt to death. December 28, 2021 Edited : January 10, 2022 Contest : A Ghost Story Sponsor : Angela Tune