A Call in The Midnight

The telephone rang in the middle of the night. It was probably a man dialling the wrong number because no one could have known the number of that telephone. It was a very recent connection and it didn't even have a directory entry. She picked up the call, nevertheless. There was nothing but silence on the other end of the line. Not a single word, not even the slightest of sounds. She hung up. But it rang again. This time, she decided not to pick it up. But then it rang again for the third time. Before picking up the receiver, she looked at the table clock on her nightstand. 12:54 am. Who could be calling? Picking up the receiver and pressing it against her ear, she met with the same silence. But she didn't hang up, and neither did she say anything. She just waited... and waited... and waited. 

"Hello," a monotonous voice replied from the other end.

"Hello?" she said.

"Miss Shaloni?" the voice that uttered those words was cold and monotonous, almost as if it was computerized. The mention of her name, from such an eerie voice in the middle of the night, chilled her spine. She remained frozen for a second or two, her heart thumping in her chest.

"Miss Shaloni?" the cold voice asked again.

"Ye-Yes?" she stammered. She clasped onto her bedsheet as if she was holding herself to something so that she can't drift away. Her heart was still pounding at the same rate. She gulped and tried to take long breaths. Why was she so scared? She didn't know. Ever since she had been in that city, which was since the last three days, she couldn't quite put herself at ease. Moreover, the unnatural silence around her house, which was situated in a rather quiet place (which was her request to the broker), had put her into unease more than once over the last two nights. Though there was a watchman at the gates of her apartment, he seemed much of a scary character himself. His face was permanently pale as if he had seen somebody committing a murder; his eyes were big, so big that they almost seemed as if they'd pop out; and his voice, so deep and coarse, like the sound of a door with an old rusty hinge. What frightened Shaloni more was the sudden silence that the watchman sometimes fell into. One moment he is talking about his family in the county, the next moment his as silent as a corpse. 

The old and damp houses around her apartment did no good to ease her mind. They were uninhabited. Dry leaves, fallen from the trees near the road, covered their yards. The windows of most of the houses were broken, and the paints from the walls were peeling, baring the cement underneath. Moss covered those exposed concrete patches on the walls. One of the windows in one of those houses was open, and they sometimes created rhythmic crashing sounds in the middle of the night, when the wind hits them strong. Shaloni could surely not live in that apartment for more than a month. She had decided the day before that she would call the broker the next week, and tell him to find her a home in a little busier place, where she wouldn't have to be scared about everything. 

The apartment in which she lived, was situated in a six-storeyed building. But, excluding her, only three other families lived in the whole building. Two of them were on the ground floor, and one was on the same storey as hers, on the first floor. The rest of the five floors above remained empty. The elevator doors were blocked off on those floors by the building authority and the door to the stairs, leading to the floors above, were locked off. It was not because something wrong had taken place in the building. It was because, people never bought apartments in that building, probably because of its eerie surroundings. The families that lived in that building also seemed a little bit queer, according to Shaloni. The Barmans and the Duttas, who lived on the ground floor had kids in their family; all of them younger than ten years. But Shaloni had never seen those kids play on the lawn or anywhere outside the building. The Pathaks, who lived on the same storey as hers, had moved in just one day after her. They were a couple without any children. Shaloni had found them quite normal, relating them to everything else. The day they moved in, they had coffee at Shaloni's in the evening and talked with her about their jobs and many other things that Shaloni didn't care about. But she supposed that it was more like an interview than just a casual meeting, as before leaving they handed a pair of duplicate keys to their apartment to Shaloni. "In case, there's an emergency," Mr Pathak had said. Shaloni found it quite surprising that they had established trust in her so easily. She felt that they were the only good thing in that whole place which felt like the setting of some cliched horror story written by some newbie writer.

The voice on the other end of the line was perfectly silenced. Even after Shaloni affirmed her identity, the caller was not talking to her. But Shaloni could hear some rattling sound in the background. As if the man to whom the voice belonged, was busy doing something and had completely forgotten about the phone call. Shaloni was about to hang up once again when the voice suddenly blurted out from the receiver 

It said, "Miss Shaloni, I am Pathak, your neighbour... I think..." his voice began trembling, "... I think... I might've accidentally killed my wife..." She could now sense that the coldness was not a deliberate one, it was the fear in his voice. Her face contorted in horror... as if she could see the husband and the wife in front of her eyes.

But then she heard something utterly unexpected. It was a laugh. Someone was laughing. Not the man to whom the voice belonged, but someone who was probably a little bit away from him. 

The distant voice seemed to say, "Poor child," cracking up laughing again, "tell her, tell her or she'll die of fear." 

And then the voice broke out laughing too.

***