If I were given a chance to do things over, I would have done them differently. I would have covered
my ears with my hands, closed my eyes, and looked away. I would have listened to that inner voice
that kept telling me to mind my own damn business. Nothing good ever comes from not heeding your
gut feeling and I am learning that in spades. If only I had paid heed to my own advice. If only…
Life had been wonderful for me. Born and brought up in Jamshedpur, I longed to get out of the place
as soon as I could. Don’t get me wrong; I love Jamshedpur. Its heat, its idyllic life, the friend-circle,
the panipuris , and the chats—I love it all. But life tends to stagnate there. I wanted to touch the skies
and that wasn’t possible when my feet were chained to the ground. As a girl from a middleclass
family, I had only two ways of getting out of there, and I wasn’t ready to get married. Hence, I studied
hard and found myself the other way out—I landed a job in Bangalore (now Bengaluru).
Next few months were a whirl of excitement as I moved to a whole new city. It felt as though I was
soaring through the skies. I found a house where I could be a paying guest for a not-so-nominal rent.
The quarters weren’t anything to write home about. Stuffed into the tiny confines were two single
beds and two wooden chests-of-drawers. The cherry on top of that claustrophobic sundae was that I
was told that I would be sharing with a roommate. Abysmal as my living conditions were, they did
nothing to dampen my spirits for I was tasting freedom for the first time in my life. Little did I know
that things were about to change soon.
One day, almost two months after I had moved into the PG, I came in to find Amina aapi (the woman
who ran the PG) waiting for me. A girl of about my age sat next to her, dressed in a yellow and green
salwar-suit.
“Kajal, come sit,” aapi told me, pointing to a chair. I did as told. “Beta, this is Anushya. She will be
your roommate from today.”
“Oh. Okay,” I looked at the girl sitting across from me. She looked up and gave me a tentative smile. I
was at once struck by how exhausted she looked. Pale and waif-thin, there were dark circles under
her eyes. Her hair hung to the sides in lifeless braids, while her lips were dried and cracked. I
smiled, “Hi.”
She nodded slightly. “Hi.”
An awkward silence settled between us as the three of us looked at each other, perhaps waiting for
someone to break it. Then, finally, Amina aapi stood up abruptly. “Kajal, why don’t you take Anushya
to your room. I’ll make tea.”
Glad to find a direction, I walked to the room. “That would be your bed, Anushya.”
“Thank you,” she muttered. Her voice was a tad raspy.
I dropped my office bag on the floor and settled on my bed. “I’m from Jamshedpur and I work at
Wipro. What about you?”
“I… I’m here for my treatment,” she said haltingly.
“Treatment?”
“Yes,” She sat down on the bed, hardly making an indent. “Don’t worry, it’s not contagious. I suffer
from a sleep disorder. There is a famous sleep therapist here. I’m getting my treatments from him.”
For some reason, it never occurred to me to ask why she was apparently alone in the city. Instead, I
felt a sense of distress for her. “Oh! That must be terrible.”
She gave a shrug. “It’s tiring, yes. But it is what it is. Listen na, I need to say something important.”
She licked her lips before continuing, “I may make some strange noises in my sleep at night. Buy
some earplugs, okay?”
“Strange noises?”
“Just ignore them, okay? It is what it is. Buy some earplugs, okay? ”
“Okay.”
***
For the next few days, things went on as it were, and I began to wonder why Anushya had asked me to
get earplugs. The answer showed itself on the next Thursday. It had been a particularly trying day and
I had returned from office at almost nine at night. I collapsed on the bed, overcome with exhaustion.
Anushya looked up from her book and gave me a tiny smile of acknowledgment before resuming her
reading. I wasn’t even aware when I fell asleep.
I was woken up by a strange noise; a kind of keening, as though something metallic was being dragged
across the floor. I struggled to open my eyes but my eyelids felt as though they weighed a ton each.
Blearily, I looked at the time on my phone. It was one-thirty. What a godforsaken time to be woken up!
I was just about to fall back to sleep when I heard it again, that godawful keeeee sound that raised the
hairs on the back of my neck.
I sat upright in my bed, sleep forgotten. It took me a few seconds to locate the source of the
disturbance and, much to my surprise, it was coming from Anushya. In the faint glow of the streetlamp
outside, I saw a sight that chilled me to my bones. The girl lay on her bed, her back arched in a bow.
Her head was rocking side to side in a frenzied rhythm while her trembling hands were drumming the
bed repeatedly. From her mouth came that unholy sound, which was unlike anything I had ever heard.
“Anushya,” I breathed, acutely aware of how tremulous my voice sounded.
“Keeeeee.”
It was a single note, unwavering and steady, grating on my nerves, as though a key was stuck on a
keyboard. I rubbed my hands on my arms, trembling as I stood up. The short distance between the two
beds seemed insurmountable on my heavy legs. I reached closer to her. She was flailing. As if
someone or something invisible was pinning her down on the bed. An icy chill ran through me.
“Keeeeeee. ”
“Anushya!” I touched her shoulder, only to pull my hand back. Her muscles were taut as if she was
being wrung from within. Taking a deep breath, I tapped her shoulders again. “Anushya, you’re having
a bad dream.”
“Keeeeeee.”
“Anushya!” I screamed.
“Keeeeee.”
My heart threatened to leap out of my chest. It took me a while to realize that the puffing and panting I
was hearing was coming from my own mouth.
“It’s okay, Kajal. You can do it!” I told myself. Muttering the Hanuman Chalisa under my breath, I
shook Anushya with all my might. Before I could realize, she caught my wrist in a pincer-grasp. Her
head turned slowly, as though she were a character in a stop-motion animation film. Wide eyes stared
murderously at me and then someone screamed.
***
The next thing I remember, I was lying on my bed and it was morning. Anushya was sitting next to me,
her face a mask of agony.
“I’m so sorry,” she began as soon as I opened my eyes. “I’m so very sorry you had to see that. I
honestly thought that I was getting better, what with all the medicines… I never thought I… I’m so
sorry.”
I felt a mixture of annoyance and sympathy run through me. “You should’ve told me,” I said crossly.
“But I did! I told you to ignore any strange noises at night!”
She had a point. I tamped my frustration down and looked at her. “What was it? Has this happened to
you before?”
She nodded wearily. “Yes. This is what I have come here for. The doctor says I have something
called sleep paralysis.”
“Sleep paralysis?”
“Apparently, it happens when I’m neither awake nor asleep but somewhere in between. I can see,
hear, and feel everything but my body doesn’t move.”
“I see,” I nodded. Not knowing what else to say, I got off the bed and walked to my closet. I was
selecting my clothes for the day when something clicked. “Wait. You said you can’t move.”
“Yes?”
“But… you were moving. Your head was moving side to side, and your hand was flapping on the
bed.”
A shadow passed across her face and was gone before I could talk about it. Then, she smiled,
although I couldn’t help but think that it was forced. “Oh, it happens... The…the paralysis is not
always for the entire body, okay? Sometimes, it’s just… part of it… like yesterday? Yes. Part of the
body. Just like yesterday…” her voice petered off and there was a faraway look on her face. I
wondered why she was behaving so strangely but then my eyes fell on the clock.
Shit! I’m so late!
Ignoring my odd roommate, I grabbed whatever came to my hands and shot to the door. Having
freshened up in record speed, I came back into the room to do my hair and grab my bag. I was about
to step out when Anushya called out.
“Please get earplugs, okay? And remember to ignore any strange noises.”
***
Days went by without another incident and I chalked it up to one unfortunate event when Anushya was
having a bad day. Everyone did. It would be unfair of me to hold that against her. I no longer took her
warning for earplugs lightly, though. Every night, without fail, I tucked them in before I went to bed.
Since things had been quiet, I foolishly convinced myself that the terrifying experience was behind
me.
But on a hot, humid night, I was rudely shaken from my complacence. Exhausted from a long day at
the office and irritated at the mugginess, I took a long shower and retired for the night. Anushya
wasn’t much of a talker and the pall of silence lay rather heavy within the four walls of our coop. I
struggled through a few pages of the thriller I had been unsuccessfully trying to read for the past few
days but my lids grew heavy. I put the book down, shoved the earplugs, and bid my roommate a good
night. If she replied, I didn’t hear it.
I was jolted from my sleep, my entire body trembling with cold. Cold is an understatement; it was
frigid. I sat up, shivering and, to my surprise, I found my breath fogging.
Odd. It had been unbearably hot earlier today.
In the three months that I had lived in Bangalore, I had never once experienced such drastic shift in
temperature. Yes, the city had a tendency to get cooler at nights and I had seen my fair share of cold
days in Jamshedpur as well, but this chill was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I pulled my
legs up to my body and hugged myself in a futile effort to get warm. I was weighing my options when I
heard something that made a slither of fear snake along my spine.
It was a low croaking kind of sound that, much to my distress, reminded me of the ghost from a movie
that had given me many sleepless nights. That was one image I did not need in my mind at that point. I
shook my head, telling myself that I was being unnecessarily scared. I checked on the earplugs and to
my chagrin, one of them had slipped out in my sleep.
Yet again, Hanuman Chalisa came to the rescue as I walked to my cabinet to grab a blanket. I had
almost made it back to my bed when that low, rattling croak sounded again. Fearing the worst, I
turned around to find Anushya’s bed empty.
What?
I blinked a couple of times to make sense of what I was seeing. From what I remembered, she had
fallen asleep before me. So, when did she leave? Confused and still groggy from sleep, I had just
about begun contemplating to call her when the ghastly sound rang in the room again. Something,
perhaps an instinct, told me to ignore the sound and go to sleep. But curiosity got the better of me and
despite my misgivings, I followed the sound with my eyes to see a grotesque scene.
There she was, on the floor, twisted in a paroxysm of agony. Her body was contorted at an unnatural
angle. Her pupils had rolled up showing the whites of her eyes. Her hands had gnarled into claws and
a gargling croak bubbled from her throat.
A terrified whimper escaped my lips and my toes curled. I walked over to her, quivering like a piece
of paper buffeting in the air. Slowly I lowered myself on the ground next to her and touched her hand.
It felt as though I had plunged my hand into the freezer, so cold were her fingers. Maybe the rest of my
body was sympathizing with my hands, but I suddenly felt a chill run through me.
I licked my lips. A tiny part of me registered how chapped they were but largely, I was concerned
about Anushya. Ever since she had told me about her condition, I had done some rudimentary research
on sleep paralysis (which is to say, I had spent twenty minutes scanning Wikipedia and WebMD).
Nothing I had read talked about a situation like this. What was I supposed to do? I had no idea. Mindnumbing
panic was rising through me, slowly obliterating rationality. That hair-raising croak coming
out of her mouth wasn’t helping any.
Somewhere, perhaps an instinct born from centuries of living in a community, I realized that I needed
to wake her up. My body took a few precious seconds to shake off its inertia and latch on to the idea.
Finally, I stood up and drew in lungs full of air. The deep breath abated the anxious pit in my stomach
for a bit, allowing me to focus on what I needed to do. I marched over to my bed, the five paces
seeming like miles, grabbed my water bottle and made it back to her. Without pausing to think further,
should some thought dissuade me from doing so, I upturned the contents on Anushya’s face.
Big mistake. A tremor ran through her body, seizing it up and warping it further. A pained moan
escaped her lips and for one agonizing second, I thought I saw naked terror in her eyes. Suddenly, she
flipped over, her knees hitting the floor hard. She heaved and panted, lowered on the ground on her
fours, water dripping from her unkempt hair.
“Anushya?” I asked, my voice sounding squeaky to my own ears .
She looked up and I screamed. Then, blackness.
***
Anushya left the next morning, before I could wake up. From what I heard over breakfast she had paid
off the entire month’s rent to aapi. I took the day off from office and decided to stay in bed all day
long. Given my horrifying experience the night before, my exhaustion was to be expected.
A part of me was worried and sad for what the poor girl was going through, but not an insignificant
part of me was relieved. With Anushya gone, I would no longer be woken up in the middle of the
night, and bear witness to scenes that were fit to grace horror movies. I lay down on my bed and
retrieved the book I had been reading, determined to spend my day lazing and put everything behind
me. However, as I opened the book, a folded piece of paper fell out of it. Surprised and curious, I
opened it to find a letter written in neat, but hurried script.
Dear Kajal,
I’m so sorry to be telling you everything like this, but I don’t have the courage to face you. Not
after all that happened. You see, I wasn’t here for any treatment. I was here to find peace. And I
think I have found it, thanks to you. I know you will hate me for it, but as you will come to
understand soon, I had no choice.
It all began a couple of months ago when I was living in a different hostel. I had a new roommate.
She had been an exchange student in Germany for a while and had just returned. Little did I know
that besides souvenirs, she had brought something else with her.
She would make strange noises at night, the kind you heard me make. Like you, I too was overcome
with the desire to help. I did exactly what you did. I woke her up one day. Since then, I have been
the one experiencing her terror.
You see, it’s a curse. She told me that it’s the curse of a sleep-demon that the locals call Mara. The
demon slowly feeds off the host’s vitality till they die, unless the host is somehow able to transfer
the demon’s curse to someone else. I didn’t believe her at first, but now I do.
I was dying, Kajal. Slowly, but surely. It was a torture and I couldn’t bear it any more. I’m so
sorry, but I hope you understand. I didn’t want to die. I hope you will have a better time of it and
someday, you will learn to forgive me.
I’ll pray for you,
Anushya
***
To be honest, I didn’t lay much stock by the letter. Yes, I had seen Anushya suffer and it was terrible,
but the entire idea that it was a demon causing it, and that now she had somehow switched it to me
was absurd to say the least. Even if I entertained this nonsensical notion for a moment, this would be
a despicable act, surely something that a gentle, soft-spoken girl like Anushya would be incapable of
doing. I surmised that her torment and lack of sleep had taken their toll on her mind. I kept the letter
in a box and decided to put the entire chapter behind me and continue with my life.
For the next four days, my life was as it had been before Anushya came in. I was alone in my room,
shuttling between office and PG. Truth be told, I was enjoying myself. My happy days didn’t last long,
though. On the fourth night, it happened.
That night, I woke up gasping for breath. It felt as though something, or someone, was on my chest. It
took me a few precious moments to gather my bearings, which was harder than normal, given my
inability to breathe. As my eyes adjusted to the yellow light from the lamppost, I found myself staring
at a terrible, gruesome face.
Looking back at me were a pair of luminous red eyes housed in a face that was covered in coarse
brown hair. Sharp horns adorned his head, encircled by a pair of pointy ears. The rest of the face
ended in a long snout, with a black nose at the end and a pair of tusks jutting out from the lower jaw.
The hideous face sat atop a disproportionately small body that ended in a tail.
Fear unlike anything I’ve ever experienced engulfed me and I screamed. Only, it wasn’t a screech that
left my mouth. Instead I heard an eerily familiar sound.
“Keeeeee.”
I distinctly remember thinking, ‘No, no, no, no, no, this isn’t happening.’
I had to get that thing off my chest. I tried to swat at it, but my hands wouldn’t move. Panic and
desperation were fast consuming me, and I was running out of options. I tried to buck my body, trying
to throw it off me but it wouldn’t move.
The beast’s body shook, as though it were laughing. It drew back its lips, revealing a set of sharp,
jagged dentition. The thing lowered its head near my ears while its foul breath nauseated me. In a
low, guttural and animalistic whisper it said, “Mine!”
***
If I were given a chance to do things over, I would have done them differently. Maybe then I wouldn’t
have suffered as I am now. Maybe then, I wouldn’t have seen the demon at irregular intervals, and
have it feast on me. That cruel, capricious monster that drains me and then waits for me to recuperate
before visiting me again.
Since I don’t have a roommate, I’m alone in my nightmare. I’m watching myself wither away but
there’s nothing I can do. I refuse to pass the curse on to another unsuspecting person, like it was
passed on to me, but I cannot withstand it much longer either. I don’t know what to do.
If only I had paid heed to my own advice. If only…
my ears with my hands, closed my eyes, and looked away. I would have listened to that inner voice
that kept telling me to mind my own damn business. Nothing good ever comes from not heeding your
gut feeling and I am learning that in spades. If only I had paid heed to my own advice. If only…
Life had been wonderful for me. Born and brought up in Jamshedpur, I longed to get out of the place
as soon as I could. Don’t get me wrong; I love Jamshedpur. Its heat, its idyllic life, the friend-circle,
the panipuris , and the chats—I love it all. But life tends to stagnate there. I wanted to touch the skies
and that wasn’t possible when my feet were chained to the ground. As a girl from a middleclass
family, I had only two ways of getting out of there, and I wasn’t ready to get married. Hence, I studied
hard and found myself the other way out—I landed a job in Bangalore (now Bengaluru).
Next few months were a whirl of excitement as I moved to a whole new city. It felt as though I was
soaring through the skies. I found a house where I could be a paying guest for a not-so-nominal rent.
The quarters weren’t anything to write home about. Stuffed into the tiny confines were two single
beds and two wooden chests-of-drawers. The cherry on top of that claustrophobic sundae was that I
was told that I would be sharing with a roommate. Abysmal as my living conditions were, they did
nothing to dampen my spirits for I was tasting freedom for the first time in my life. Little did I know
that things were about to change soon.
One day, almost two months after I had moved into the PG, I came in to find Amina aapi (the woman
who ran the PG) waiting for me. A girl of about my age sat next to her, dressed in a yellow and green
salwar-suit.
“Kajal, come sit,” aapi told me, pointing to a chair. I did as told. “Beta, this is Anushya. She will be
your roommate from today.”
“Oh. Okay,” I looked at the girl sitting across from me. She looked up and gave me a tentative smile. I
was at once struck by how exhausted she looked. Pale and waif-thin, there were dark circles under
her eyes. Her hair hung to the sides in lifeless braids, while her lips were dried and cracked. I
smiled, “Hi.”
She nodded slightly. “Hi.”
An awkward silence settled between us as the three of us looked at each other, perhaps waiting for
someone to break it. Then, finally, Amina aapi stood up abruptly. “Kajal, why don’t you take Anushya
to your room. I’ll make tea.”
Glad to find a direction, I walked to the room. “That would be your bed, Anushya.”
“Thank you,” she muttered. Her voice was a tad raspy.
I dropped my office bag on the floor and settled on my bed. “I’m from Jamshedpur and I work at
Wipro. What about you?”
“I… I’m here for my treatment,” she said haltingly.
“Treatment?”
“Yes,” She sat down on the bed, hardly making an indent. “Don’t worry, it’s not contagious. I suffer
from a sleep disorder. There is a famous sleep therapist here. I’m getting my treatments from him.”
For some reason, it never occurred to me to ask why she was apparently alone in the city. Instead, I
felt a sense of distress for her. “Oh! That must be terrible.”
She gave a shrug. “It’s tiring, yes. But it is what it is. Listen na, I need to say something important.”
She licked her lips before continuing, “I may make some strange noises in my sleep at night. Buy
some earplugs, okay?”
“Strange noises?”
“Just ignore them, okay? It is what it is. Buy some earplugs, okay? ”
“Okay.”
***
For the next few days, things went on as it were, and I began to wonder why Anushya had asked me to
get earplugs. The answer showed itself on the next Thursday. It had been a particularly trying day and
I had returned from office at almost nine at night. I collapsed on the bed, overcome with exhaustion.
Anushya looked up from her book and gave me a tiny smile of acknowledgment before resuming her
reading. I wasn’t even aware when I fell asleep.
I was woken up by a strange noise; a kind of keening, as though something metallic was being dragged
across the floor. I struggled to open my eyes but my eyelids felt as though they weighed a ton each.
Blearily, I looked at the time on my phone. It was one-thirty. What a godforsaken time to be woken up!
I was just about to fall back to sleep when I heard it again, that godawful keeeee sound that raised the
hairs on the back of my neck.
I sat upright in my bed, sleep forgotten. It took me a few seconds to locate the source of the
disturbance and, much to my surprise, it was coming from Anushya. In the faint glow of the streetlamp
outside, I saw a sight that chilled me to my bones. The girl lay on her bed, her back arched in a bow.
Her head was rocking side to side in a frenzied rhythm while her trembling hands were drumming the
bed repeatedly. From her mouth came that unholy sound, which was unlike anything I had ever heard.
“Anushya,” I breathed, acutely aware of how tremulous my voice sounded.
“Keeeeee.”
It was a single note, unwavering and steady, grating on my nerves, as though a key was stuck on a
keyboard. I rubbed my hands on my arms, trembling as I stood up. The short distance between the two
beds seemed insurmountable on my heavy legs. I reached closer to her. She was flailing. As if
someone or something invisible was pinning her down on the bed. An icy chill ran through me.
“Keeeeeee. ”
“Anushya!” I touched her shoulder, only to pull my hand back. Her muscles were taut as if she was
being wrung from within. Taking a deep breath, I tapped her shoulders again. “Anushya, you’re having
a bad dream.”
“Keeeeeee.”
“Anushya!” I screamed.
“Keeeeee.”
My heart threatened to leap out of my chest. It took me a while to realize that the puffing and panting I
was hearing was coming from my own mouth.
“It’s okay, Kajal. You can do it!” I told myself. Muttering the Hanuman Chalisa under my breath, I
shook Anushya with all my might. Before I could realize, she caught my wrist in a pincer-grasp. Her
head turned slowly, as though she were a character in a stop-motion animation film. Wide eyes stared
murderously at me and then someone screamed.
***
The next thing I remember, I was lying on my bed and it was morning. Anushya was sitting next to me,
her face a mask of agony.
“I’m so sorry,” she began as soon as I opened my eyes. “I’m so very sorry you had to see that. I
honestly thought that I was getting better, what with all the medicines… I never thought I… I’m so
sorry.”
I felt a mixture of annoyance and sympathy run through me. “You should’ve told me,” I said crossly.
“But I did! I told you to ignore any strange noises at night!”
She had a point. I tamped my frustration down and looked at her. “What was it? Has this happened to
you before?”
She nodded wearily. “Yes. This is what I have come here for. The doctor says I have something
called sleep paralysis.”
“Sleep paralysis?”
“Apparently, it happens when I’m neither awake nor asleep but somewhere in between. I can see,
hear, and feel everything but my body doesn’t move.”
“I see,” I nodded. Not knowing what else to say, I got off the bed and walked to my closet. I was
selecting my clothes for the day when something clicked. “Wait. You said you can’t move.”
“Yes?”
“But… you were moving. Your head was moving side to side, and your hand was flapping on the
bed.”
A shadow passed across her face and was gone before I could talk about it. Then, she smiled,
although I couldn’t help but think that it was forced. “Oh, it happens... The…the paralysis is not
always for the entire body, okay? Sometimes, it’s just… part of it… like yesterday? Yes. Part of the
body. Just like yesterday…” her voice petered off and there was a faraway look on her face. I
wondered why she was behaving so strangely but then my eyes fell on the clock.
Shit! I’m so late!
Ignoring my odd roommate, I grabbed whatever came to my hands and shot to the door. Having
freshened up in record speed, I came back into the room to do my hair and grab my bag. I was about
to step out when Anushya called out.
“Please get earplugs, okay? And remember to ignore any strange noises.”
***
Days went by without another incident and I chalked it up to one unfortunate event when Anushya was
having a bad day. Everyone did. It would be unfair of me to hold that against her. I no longer took her
warning for earplugs lightly, though. Every night, without fail, I tucked them in before I went to bed.
Since things had been quiet, I foolishly convinced myself that the terrifying experience was behind
me.
But on a hot, humid night, I was rudely shaken from my complacence. Exhausted from a long day at
the office and irritated at the mugginess, I took a long shower and retired for the night. Anushya
wasn’t much of a talker and the pall of silence lay rather heavy within the four walls of our coop. I
struggled through a few pages of the thriller I had been unsuccessfully trying to read for the past few
days but my lids grew heavy. I put the book down, shoved the earplugs, and bid my roommate a good
night. If she replied, I didn’t hear it.
I was jolted from my sleep, my entire body trembling with cold. Cold is an understatement; it was
frigid. I sat up, shivering and, to my surprise, I found my breath fogging.
Odd. It had been unbearably hot earlier today.
In the three months that I had lived in Bangalore, I had never once experienced such drastic shift in
temperature. Yes, the city had a tendency to get cooler at nights and I had seen my fair share of cold
days in Jamshedpur as well, but this chill was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I pulled my
legs up to my body and hugged myself in a futile effort to get warm. I was weighing my options when I
heard something that made a slither of fear snake along my spine.
It was a low croaking kind of sound that, much to my distress, reminded me of the ghost from a movie
that had given me many sleepless nights. That was one image I did not need in my mind at that point. I
shook my head, telling myself that I was being unnecessarily scared. I checked on the earplugs and to
my chagrin, one of them had slipped out in my sleep.
Yet again, Hanuman Chalisa came to the rescue as I walked to my cabinet to grab a blanket. I had
almost made it back to my bed when that low, rattling croak sounded again. Fearing the worst, I
turned around to find Anushya’s bed empty.
What?
I blinked a couple of times to make sense of what I was seeing. From what I remembered, she had
fallen asleep before me. So, when did she leave? Confused and still groggy from sleep, I had just
about begun contemplating to call her when the ghastly sound rang in the room again. Something,
perhaps an instinct, told me to ignore the sound and go to sleep. But curiosity got the better of me and
despite my misgivings, I followed the sound with my eyes to see a grotesque scene.
There she was, on the floor, twisted in a paroxysm of agony. Her body was contorted at an unnatural
angle. Her pupils had rolled up showing the whites of her eyes. Her hands had gnarled into claws and
a gargling croak bubbled from her throat.
A terrified whimper escaped my lips and my toes curled. I walked over to her, quivering like a piece
of paper buffeting in the air. Slowly I lowered myself on the ground next to her and touched her hand.
It felt as though I had plunged my hand into the freezer, so cold were her fingers. Maybe the rest of my
body was sympathizing with my hands, but I suddenly felt a chill run through me.
I licked my lips. A tiny part of me registered how chapped they were but largely, I was concerned
about Anushya. Ever since she had told me about her condition, I had done some rudimentary research
on sleep paralysis (which is to say, I had spent twenty minutes scanning Wikipedia and WebMD).
Nothing I had read talked about a situation like this. What was I supposed to do? I had no idea. Mindnumbing
panic was rising through me, slowly obliterating rationality. That hair-raising croak coming
out of her mouth wasn’t helping any.
Somewhere, perhaps an instinct born from centuries of living in a community, I realized that I needed
to wake her up. My body took a few precious seconds to shake off its inertia and latch on to the idea.
Finally, I stood up and drew in lungs full of air. The deep breath abated the anxious pit in my stomach
for a bit, allowing me to focus on what I needed to do. I marched over to my bed, the five paces
seeming like miles, grabbed my water bottle and made it back to her. Without pausing to think further,
should some thought dissuade me from doing so, I upturned the contents on Anushya’s face.
Big mistake. A tremor ran through her body, seizing it up and warping it further. A pained moan
escaped her lips and for one agonizing second, I thought I saw naked terror in her eyes. Suddenly, she
flipped over, her knees hitting the floor hard. She heaved and panted, lowered on the ground on her
fours, water dripping from her unkempt hair.
“Anushya?” I asked, my voice sounding squeaky to my own ears .
She looked up and I screamed. Then, blackness.
***
Anushya left the next morning, before I could wake up. From what I heard over breakfast she had paid
off the entire month’s rent to aapi. I took the day off from office and decided to stay in bed all day
long. Given my horrifying experience the night before, my exhaustion was to be expected.
A part of me was worried and sad for what the poor girl was going through, but not an insignificant
part of me was relieved. With Anushya gone, I would no longer be woken up in the middle of the
night, and bear witness to scenes that were fit to grace horror movies. I lay down on my bed and
retrieved the book I had been reading, determined to spend my day lazing and put everything behind
me. However, as I opened the book, a folded piece of paper fell out of it. Surprised and curious, I
opened it to find a letter written in neat, but hurried script.
Dear Kajal,
I’m so sorry to be telling you everything like this, but I don’t have the courage to face you. Not
after all that happened. You see, I wasn’t here for any treatment. I was here to find peace. And I
think I have found it, thanks to you. I know you will hate me for it, but as you will come to
understand soon, I had no choice.
It all began a couple of months ago when I was living in a different hostel. I had a new roommate.
She had been an exchange student in Germany for a while and had just returned. Little did I know
that besides souvenirs, she had brought something else with her.
She would make strange noises at night, the kind you heard me make. Like you, I too was overcome
with the desire to help. I did exactly what you did. I woke her up one day. Since then, I have been
the one experiencing her terror.
You see, it’s a curse. She told me that it’s the curse of a sleep-demon that the locals call Mara. The
demon slowly feeds off the host’s vitality till they die, unless the host is somehow able to transfer
the demon’s curse to someone else. I didn’t believe her at first, but now I do.
I was dying, Kajal. Slowly, but surely. It was a torture and I couldn’t bear it any more. I’m so
sorry, but I hope you understand. I didn’t want to die. I hope you will have a better time of it and
someday, you will learn to forgive me.
I’ll pray for you,
Anushya
***
To be honest, I didn’t lay much stock by the letter. Yes, I had seen Anushya suffer and it was terrible,
but the entire idea that it was a demon causing it, and that now she had somehow switched it to me
was absurd to say the least. Even if I entertained this nonsensical notion for a moment, this would be
a despicable act, surely something that a gentle, soft-spoken girl like Anushya would be incapable of
doing. I surmised that her torment and lack of sleep had taken their toll on her mind. I kept the letter
in a box and decided to put the entire chapter behind me and continue with my life.
For the next four days, my life was as it had been before Anushya came in. I was alone in my room,
shuttling between office and PG. Truth be told, I was enjoying myself. My happy days didn’t last long,
though. On the fourth night, it happened.
That night, I woke up gasping for breath. It felt as though something, or someone, was on my chest. It
took me a few precious moments to gather my bearings, which was harder than normal, given my
inability to breathe. As my eyes adjusted to the yellow light from the lamppost, I found myself staring
at a terrible, gruesome face.
Looking back at me were a pair of luminous red eyes housed in a face that was covered in coarse
brown hair. Sharp horns adorned his head, encircled by a pair of pointy ears. The rest of the face
ended in a long snout, with a black nose at the end and a pair of tusks jutting out from the lower jaw.
The hideous face sat atop a disproportionately small body that ended in a tail.
Fear unlike anything I’ve ever experienced engulfed me and I screamed. Only, it wasn’t a screech that
left my mouth. Instead I heard an eerily familiar sound.
“Keeeeee.”
I distinctly remember thinking, ‘No, no, no, no, no, this isn’t happening.’
I had to get that thing off my chest. I tried to swat at it, but my hands wouldn’t move. Panic and
desperation were fast consuming me, and I was running out of options. I tried to buck my body, trying
to throw it off me but it wouldn’t move.
The beast’s body shook, as though it were laughing. It drew back its lips, revealing a set of sharp,
jagged dentition. The thing lowered its head near my ears while its foul breath nauseated me. In a
low, guttural and animalistic whisper it said, “Mine!”
***
If I were given a chance to do things over, I would have done them differently. Maybe then I wouldn’t
have suffered as I am now. Maybe then, I wouldn’t have seen the demon at irregular intervals, and
have it feast on me. That cruel, capricious monster that drains me and then waits for me to recuperate
before visiting me again.
Since I don’t have a roommate, I’m alone in my nightmare. I’m watching myself wither away but
there’s nothing I can do. I refuse to pass the curse on to another unsuspecting person, like it was
passed on to me, but I cannot withstand it much longer either. I don’t know what to do.
If only I had paid heed to my own advice. If only…
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