There was something about that day. It came like a new world for me before the dawn. I didn’t know
what I was thinking. Curious, maybe or even fascinated by doing something unthinkable. A thought
could be a fiction but that same thought carried a guilt and panic in my mind. A friend of mine
suggested we check out the Dark Web. I succumbed to his plot and did the unthinkable. I logged into
my computer and inserted the URL. Click! Some French website popped up. The concept was simple
— you could earn by placing bets. I know what you are thinking, and I thought the same. This plan
was definitely kickass.
A French gambling website? Sure! Sounds trustworthy!
However, Vinay swore to me that the site was legitimate; it used Zigpay as its only payment method.
That put my mind somewhat at ease.
So, on a Sunday, when I was bored out of my skull, I finally decided to give it a shot. The
grammatically inaccurate English on the home page itself put me off initially, but by then I was too
curious to withdraw. Registration was painless and it took me only a few minutes before I was in the
roulette lobby.
I had around INR 100 in my Zigpay account which I had earned online, so I bought INR 100 worth of
virtual chips.
The site offered three rooms where I could play, but they were all full. I kept on refreshing the page
but in vain. I was on the verge of giving up, when I decided I’d refresh one more time and if it did not
work, I would call it a night. Fine if they don’t want my money, someone else would gladly take it.
I hit the refresh button and something changed.
The whole layout of the page was suddenly completely different. The original, unappealing brownish
page was now all black, but more notably, there was only one website link on it.
A link to a virtual room named Erreur .
I found this really strange. I thought I might have clicked on one of those annoying ads, so I clicked the
Back button, but nothing changed. I had already said goodbye to the INR 100, so I went ahead with the
process. I got inside the damn thing finally.
I am not sure if you’ve ever played online roulette, but this is how it has always worked in my case.
You are connected through a live webcam to some shady looking casino. You choose your numbers
and place your bets and then watch the dealer spin the wheel in real time and see what you won (or
lost, more likely). It’s almost like being there.
So, the webcam loads and the first thing I notice is this girl, who couldn’t have been older than 16.
She was short, skinny, and blonde.
I immediately noticed that she looked tired. She looked overworked. It seemed like her table was on
some sort of a platform because I could see the rest of the room behind her. There were five card
tables, all of which were full. The place seemed awfully quiet. Then, my desire to lose money kicked
in and I decided to place my first bet.
“INR 5 on odd numbers.”
“All bets are in!” the girl said quietly as she spun the wheel. Usually, dealers yell out that line as a
part of the show. I guess these guys were all business.
16.
Shit! INR 95 left.
I wrote down the number in my notebook because that was part of my system. Writing all the numbers
down so that I could predict an upcoming number.
“INR 10 on odd numbers.”
“All bets are in!”
The little ball stopped at 12. Well, I still had INR 85 left.
“INR 20 on odd numbers.”
As she spun the wheel, I started noticing something strange about the room. It almost seemed like
nobody—
5.
Hell yeah! I won 40 and had 125 in total. Maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all. I bet 10 on odd
numbers again.
“All bets are in!”
As the ball was slowing down, I looked at the back of the room. I was right a minute ago when I felt
strange. Nobody in the room was moving.
While I was excited about my winnings going up, I couldn’t help but feel weird about this situation.
Nobody even as much as moved a finger. 5 tables, 6 people, and a dealer sitting at each of the tables.
Even the waitress in the back, who apparently held a tray with glasses on it, was not moving at all.
They all stood or sat still. I tried to rationalize it by assuming that the website had added a still
picture background behind the dealer in order to get the effect of a real casino, but this place seemed
way too realistic to only be a picture. My timer started beeping and I had to make another bet.
“20 on odd.”
As the girl spun the wheel, I studied the background. I became intrigued by the strange situation that I
was in. I mean, there was no way this was a still picture. They were looking like a lifeless form.
Fragile in life and stoic for death. There was no movement at first but then I looked at their eyes and I
knew something was wrong.
19.
“Yes sir, won another 40.” As long as I was winning, these folks didn’t really need to move, as far as
I was concerned.
“20 on odd.”
I decided to start paying more attention to the girl. After all, I had nothing else to do. It’s not like
anyone else was moving. As said earlier, she was young. She seemed tired and perhaps a little
worried. At times, it seemed like she was looking directly at me, but I was sure I was just imagining
things.
Won another INR 40.
I placed four more such bets, winning two out of them. I was sitting on a profit of nearly INR 100 at
that point. That was when the curiosity started kicking in. The people at the back were still not
moving. Something wasn’t right. I decided to keep playing just so that I couldn’t watch those strange
people.
“INR 40 on odd.”
I noticed a chat feature to the left of the webcam feed. I decided to type a quick ‘Hi’ to see if I’d get a
response. As I started typing, I saw a man walk around the room. So, finally, it wasn’t a picture. He
was dressed in a black coat with the collar popped up, so I couldn’t make much of him. He moved
slowly between the tables. He stopped by one of them. Then he stooped and started looking at one of
the men sitting at the table. When his face was just an inch away from the latter’s face, he stopped and
then just stared at him. The seated fellow didn’t as much as flinch. I was on the edge of my seat.
13.
My balance was now nearly INR 230 but I couldn’t care less. I wanted to know what was going on. I
zoomed in on the man. The webcam feed wasn’t exactly high definition, so I couldn’t see much of the
man’s face, but I could tell one thing that disturbed me. The color of his skin was visibly different
from the people around him. A shock registered my face and I stared at the screen with surprise. The
timer had started beeping again.
“Chuck it, INR 20 on odd.”
I zoomed in again.
“Five!” she yelled.
I was startled and I zoomed out. I had won again, but I didn’t care anymore. I was more focused on a
man who stood out—amidst the other people in color, he was the only one in black and white. And he
was apparently angry with another man.
Imagine being in this weird situation. You’re sitting alone in your room, it’s 2:00 a.m., and you are
casually gambling when you realize that nobody besides your dealer is moving in the casino. Then, a
man who appears to be devoid of color starts walking across the place, staring at people.
I had to keep placing bets to stay in the lobby.
“INR 100 on odd.”
The man had started moving again. He walked over to a dealer at another table. He placed his arm on
the dealer’s shoulder. Then I heard him say something. It sounded like “Sey twa.” That made no sense
to me. But, the dealer turned around. That was the first time someone had moved other than the dealer
girl and the black-and-white guy.
“One!” yelled the girl. It was almost as if she knew I wasn’t paying attention and she wanted me to. I
won again, but at that point, I was awfully short of any fucks to give.
The other dealer stared at the man with sheer horror on his face. He just kept staring at him without
saying a word more.
“INR 200 on odd.”
They kept staring for around half a minute. I started typing a message in the chat box to the right. I
wrote, “Hey, what’s happening there?”
The dealer girl didn’t seem to react when I hit Send.
Perhaps the chat option was there just for esthetics.
“Eleven!”
Somehow, I kept winning. But money had become irrelevant by this time. I needed to know what was
going on.
“INR 200 on even.”
The dealer next to the man started shaking uncontrollably. Then he muttered something to the man that
sounded like “Non” and collapsed. The man didn’t move. He just looked down at the motionless
body of the dealer. Nobody else in the room moved, not even my girl.
I yelled “What the fuck!” at the computer and that’s when it all changed.
Every man and woman in the room turned and looked at me. Every single person looked right back at
me. They hadn’t still moved, they just looked toward me. The dealer girl looked terrified beyond
belief. She quickly pressed some button next to her table. The black-and-white guy slowly turned
toward me. He started walking toward my table. I got a message in the chat box.
“Run!”
I felt shivers go down my body. I knew they couldn’t get to me through the screen, but the intimidating
creepiness of the entire situation got the better of me.
The man walked up to the webcam and stared at me. There was no doubt now that he was indeed
black-and-white. I don’t know how to rationalize that.
A glitch? Poor camera? Video editing?
The rest of the people were still looking toward me.
The man’s eyes were open as wide as humanly possible. He seemed to be studying me. I was scared,
but I was mesmerized, unable to quit the game. He got closer to the camera and all I could see now
were his eyes, looking into mine and somehow reading me.
Could he see me? I didn’t think so.
I hoped not. But those eyes. They seemed absolutely cruel and terrifyingly cold. They were also
black-and-white like the rest of him. When he moved away from the webcam, I nearly fell out of my
chair. All of the people in the casino were now standing right behind him.
About thirty people were staring at me, their eyes wide open. They weren’t moving. I have no idea
how they got there so fast.
The man had taken up the screen for only a few seconds.
The one person who didn’t look like she belonged there was the dealer girl. She looked absolutely
petrified. The man turned to her, and then looked back at me. It was almost as if he noticed that she
was out of place in that twilight room. He walked over and stopped behind her.
She was shivering. “O-o-one!” she muttered, obviously terrified by the man behind her.
He put his arms around her shoulders. I yelled. I screamed at the screen.
“What in god’s name are you people up to!” I yelled.
The man smiled. I can’t even begin to explain how strange and surreal this experience was. A
colorless man was looking at me, smiling, with his arms wrapped around a girl.
She looked at me. I could tell she knew I was still watching. She seemed to be at peace. Like she
knew that this is going to end soon.
She finally said, with little energy in her voice:
“Thank… thank you for playing with us today… And don’t forget your numbers!”
As she said that, the man’s arms went up to her neck with unnatural and inhuman speed. At that
moment, the lobby closed.
I was back at the original, brown page. My account balance was INR 520.
I sat there, like a fool. I was pretty sure I had experienced a hallucination. This couldn’t have been
real. Colorless dude walking through the motionless casino, doing weird stuff and finally looking at
me through the camera? I went to bed and although I had trouble forgetting this impossible incident, I
fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, the casino was the first thing on my mind. My initial
thought was to try and get back into that lobby. I decided that it was some sort of a prank. I went on
with my daily chores. But that experience stuck with me the whole time. I kept analyzing. I tried
talking to Vinay about it, but he just laughed at me. I told him the entire story, though. Suddenly, I
remembered the girl’s last words.
“And don’t forget your numbers!”
That wasn’t something dealers usually say at the end of the game. I went back to my notebook and
looked at the numbers I got that night. I had written down most of the numbers from the night before.
16
12
51 19
585 12
16
13
5
And the last three numbers I didn’t write down as I was too focused on the horror on my screen. I
spent a few hours analyzing, trying to figure out a pattern. I had no luck. Once again, I decided that
someone was just fooling around with me. I decided to let the whole thing go. Actually, I couldn’t. I
went back to the website and withdrew all of the money back to my PayPal account, just in case. Then
I went ahead with my daily stuff.
By morning, I had almost forgotten about the freaky night at the French online casino. I had Mandarin
speaking classes. In the class, the lecturer was talking about some game where you had to decipher a
puzzle. He gave it to the class to solve it. A guy came out and started explaining all these principles
he used to solve it. Again, I wasn’t paying much attention, but one thing he said did catch my ear. He
mentioned numbers. Numbers corresponding to letters.
I knew then that was the solution. I went back home and opened my notebook.
16 is P
12 is L
5 is E
1 is A
19 is S
5 is E
PLEASE
8 is H
5 is E
12 is L
16 is P
HELP
13 is M
5 is E
ME
Please help me.
The young girl, trapped inside the casino, was begging for help and I was too stupid to pay attention.
Was this a prank?
I don’t know.
A coincidence? Hardly.
I didn’t know what to do. I tried logging into the website again, but it was completely normal.
There was no lobby. I was, and still am, helpless.
I spent hours, writing this and overanalyzing what could have happened. I googled every phrase I
could think of but to no luck.
And then, just as I started writing this, I remembered the last 3 numbers.
19, 1, and 14.
S, A, and N.
The first three letters of my name.
I could’ve probably gotten the other two letters/numbers if the situation hadn’t escalated. I felt sick.
My knees went weak.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
What could be worse?
They bloody knew my name!
what I was thinking. Curious, maybe or even fascinated by doing something unthinkable. A thought
could be a fiction but that same thought carried a guilt and panic in my mind. A friend of mine
suggested we check out the Dark Web. I succumbed to his plot and did the unthinkable. I logged into
my computer and inserted the URL. Click! Some French website popped up. The concept was simple
— you could earn by placing bets. I know what you are thinking, and I thought the same. This plan
was definitely kickass.
A French gambling website? Sure! Sounds trustworthy!
However, Vinay swore to me that the site was legitimate; it used Zigpay as its only payment method.
That put my mind somewhat at ease.
So, on a Sunday, when I was bored out of my skull, I finally decided to give it a shot. The
grammatically inaccurate English on the home page itself put me off initially, but by then I was too
curious to withdraw. Registration was painless and it took me only a few minutes before I was in the
roulette lobby.
I had around INR 100 in my Zigpay account which I had earned online, so I bought INR 100 worth of
virtual chips.
The site offered three rooms where I could play, but they were all full. I kept on refreshing the page
but in vain. I was on the verge of giving up, when I decided I’d refresh one more time and if it did not
work, I would call it a night. Fine if they don’t want my money, someone else would gladly take it.
I hit the refresh button and something changed.
The whole layout of the page was suddenly completely different. The original, unappealing brownish
page was now all black, but more notably, there was only one website link on it.
A link to a virtual room named Erreur .
I found this really strange. I thought I might have clicked on one of those annoying ads, so I clicked the
Back button, but nothing changed. I had already said goodbye to the INR 100, so I went ahead with the
process. I got inside the damn thing finally.
I am not sure if you’ve ever played online roulette, but this is how it has always worked in my case.
You are connected through a live webcam to some shady looking casino. You choose your numbers
and place your bets and then watch the dealer spin the wheel in real time and see what you won (or
lost, more likely). It’s almost like being there.
So, the webcam loads and the first thing I notice is this girl, who couldn’t have been older than 16.
She was short, skinny, and blonde.
I immediately noticed that she looked tired. She looked overworked. It seemed like her table was on
some sort of a platform because I could see the rest of the room behind her. There were five card
tables, all of which were full. The place seemed awfully quiet. Then, my desire to lose money kicked
in and I decided to place my first bet.
“INR 5 on odd numbers.”
“All bets are in!” the girl said quietly as she spun the wheel. Usually, dealers yell out that line as a
part of the show. I guess these guys were all business.
16.
Shit! INR 95 left.
I wrote down the number in my notebook because that was part of my system. Writing all the numbers
down so that I could predict an upcoming number.
“INR 10 on odd numbers.”
“All bets are in!”
The little ball stopped at 12. Well, I still had INR 85 left.
“INR 20 on odd numbers.”
As she spun the wheel, I started noticing something strange about the room. It almost seemed like
nobody—
5.
Hell yeah! I won 40 and had 125 in total. Maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all. I bet 10 on odd
numbers again.
“All bets are in!”
As the ball was slowing down, I looked at the back of the room. I was right a minute ago when I felt
strange. Nobody in the room was moving.
While I was excited about my winnings going up, I couldn’t help but feel weird about this situation.
Nobody even as much as moved a finger. 5 tables, 6 people, and a dealer sitting at each of the tables.
Even the waitress in the back, who apparently held a tray with glasses on it, was not moving at all.
They all stood or sat still. I tried to rationalize it by assuming that the website had added a still
picture background behind the dealer in order to get the effect of a real casino, but this place seemed
way too realistic to only be a picture. My timer started beeping and I had to make another bet.
“20 on odd.”
As the girl spun the wheel, I studied the background. I became intrigued by the strange situation that I
was in. I mean, there was no way this was a still picture. They were looking like a lifeless form.
Fragile in life and stoic for death. There was no movement at first but then I looked at their eyes and I
knew something was wrong.
19.
“Yes sir, won another 40.” As long as I was winning, these folks didn’t really need to move, as far as
I was concerned.
“20 on odd.”
I decided to start paying more attention to the girl. After all, I had nothing else to do. It’s not like
anyone else was moving. As said earlier, she was young. She seemed tired and perhaps a little
worried. At times, it seemed like she was looking directly at me, but I was sure I was just imagining
things.
Won another INR 40.
I placed four more such bets, winning two out of them. I was sitting on a profit of nearly INR 100 at
that point. That was when the curiosity started kicking in. The people at the back were still not
moving. Something wasn’t right. I decided to keep playing just so that I couldn’t watch those strange
people.
“INR 40 on odd.”
I noticed a chat feature to the left of the webcam feed. I decided to type a quick ‘Hi’ to see if I’d get a
response. As I started typing, I saw a man walk around the room. So, finally, it wasn’t a picture. He
was dressed in a black coat with the collar popped up, so I couldn’t make much of him. He moved
slowly between the tables. He stopped by one of them. Then he stooped and started looking at one of
the men sitting at the table. When his face was just an inch away from the latter’s face, he stopped and
then just stared at him. The seated fellow didn’t as much as flinch. I was on the edge of my seat.
13.
My balance was now nearly INR 230 but I couldn’t care less. I wanted to know what was going on. I
zoomed in on the man. The webcam feed wasn’t exactly high definition, so I couldn’t see much of the
man’s face, but I could tell one thing that disturbed me. The color of his skin was visibly different
from the people around him. A shock registered my face and I stared at the screen with surprise. The
timer had started beeping again.
“Chuck it, INR 20 on odd.”
I zoomed in again.
“Five!” she yelled.
I was startled and I zoomed out. I had won again, but I didn’t care anymore. I was more focused on a
man who stood out—amidst the other people in color, he was the only one in black and white. And he
was apparently angry with another man.
Imagine being in this weird situation. You’re sitting alone in your room, it’s 2:00 a.m., and you are
casually gambling when you realize that nobody besides your dealer is moving in the casino. Then, a
man who appears to be devoid of color starts walking across the place, staring at people.
I had to keep placing bets to stay in the lobby.
“INR 100 on odd.”
The man had started moving again. He walked over to a dealer at another table. He placed his arm on
the dealer’s shoulder. Then I heard him say something. It sounded like “Sey twa.” That made no sense
to me. But, the dealer turned around. That was the first time someone had moved other than the dealer
girl and the black-and-white guy.
“One!” yelled the girl. It was almost as if she knew I wasn’t paying attention and she wanted me to. I
won again, but at that point, I was awfully short of any fucks to give.
The other dealer stared at the man with sheer horror on his face. He just kept staring at him without
saying a word more.
“INR 200 on odd.”
They kept staring for around half a minute. I started typing a message in the chat box to the right. I
wrote, “Hey, what’s happening there?”
The dealer girl didn’t seem to react when I hit Send.
Perhaps the chat option was there just for esthetics.
“Eleven!”
Somehow, I kept winning. But money had become irrelevant by this time. I needed to know what was
going on.
“INR 200 on even.”
The dealer next to the man started shaking uncontrollably. Then he muttered something to the man that
sounded like “Non” and collapsed. The man didn’t move. He just looked down at the motionless
body of the dealer. Nobody else in the room moved, not even my girl.
I yelled “What the fuck!” at the computer and that’s when it all changed.
Every man and woman in the room turned and looked at me. Every single person looked right back at
me. They hadn’t still moved, they just looked toward me. The dealer girl looked terrified beyond
belief. She quickly pressed some button next to her table. The black-and-white guy slowly turned
toward me. He started walking toward my table. I got a message in the chat box.
“Run!”
I felt shivers go down my body. I knew they couldn’t get to me through the screen, but the intimidating
creepiness of the entire situation got the better of me.
The man walked up to the webcam and stared at me. There was no doubt now that he was indeed
black-and-white. I don’t know how to rationalize that.
A glitch? Poor camera? Video editing?
The rest of the people were still looking toward me.
The man’s eyes were open as wide as humanly possible. He seemed to be studying me. I was scared,
but I was mesmerized, unable to quit the game. He got closer to the camera and all I could see now
were his eyes, looking into mine and somehow reading me.
Could he see me? I didn’t think so.
I hoped not. But those eyes. They seemed absolutely cruel and terrifyingly cold. They were also
black-and-white like the rest of him. When he moved away from the webcam, I nearly fell out of my
chair. All of the people in the casino were now standing right behind him.
About thirty people were staring at me, their eyes wide open. They weren’t moving. I have no idea
how they got there so fast.
The man had taken up the screen for only a few seconds.
The one person who didn’t look like she belonged there was the dealer girl. She looked absolutely
petrified. The man turned to her, and then looked back at me. It was almost as if he noticed that she
was out of place in that twilight room. He walked over and stopped behind her.
She was shivering. “O-o-one!” she muttered, obviously terrified by the man behind her.
He put his arms around her shoulders. I yelled. I screamed at the screen.
“What in god’s name are you people up to!” I yelled.
The man smiled. I can’t even begin to explain how strange and surreal this experience was. A
colorless man was looking at me, smiling, with his arms wrapped around a girl.
She looked at me. I could tell she knew I was still watching. She seemed to be at peace. Like she
knew that this is going to end soon.
She finally said, with little energy in her voice:
“Thank… thank you for playing with us today… And don’t forget your numbers!”
As she said that, the man’s arms went up to her neck with unnatural and inhuman speed. At that
moment, the lobby closed.
I was back at the original, brown page. My account balance was INR 520.
I sat there, like a fool. I was pretty sure I had experienced a hallucination. This couldn’t have been
real. Colorless dude walking through the motionless casino, doing weird stuff and finally looking at
me through the camera? I went to bed and although I had trouble forgetting this impossible incident, I
fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, the casino was the first thing on my mind. My initial
thought was to try and get back into that lobby. I decided that it was some sort of a prank. I went on
with my daily chores. But that experience stuck with me the whole time. I kept analyzing. I tried
talking to Vinay about it, but he just laughed at me. I told him the entire story, though. Suddenly, I
remembered the girl’s last words.
“And don’t forget your numbers!”
That wasn’t something dealers usually say at the end of the game. I went back to my notebook and
looked at the numbers I got that night. I had written down most of the numbers from the night before.
16
12
51 19
585 12
16
13
5
And the last three numbers I didn’t write down as I was too focused on the horror on my screen. I
spent a few hours analyzing, trying to figure out a pattern. I had no luck. Once again, I decided that
someone was just fooling around with me. I decided to let the whole thing go. Actually, I couldn’t. I
went back to the website and withdrew all of the money back to my PayPal account, just in case. Then
I went ahead with my daily stuff.
By morning, I had almost forgotten about the freaky night at the French online casino. I had Mandarin
speaking classes. In the class, the lecturer was talking about some game where you had to decipher a
puzzle. He gave it to the class to solve it. A guy came out and started explaining all these principles
he used to solve it. Again, I wasn’t paying much attention, but one thing he said did catch my ear. He
mentioned numbers. Numbers corresponding to letters.
I knew then that was the solution. I went back home and opened my notebook.
16 is P
12 is L
5 is E
1 is A
19 is S
5 is E
PLEASE
8 is H
5 is E
12 is L
16 is P
HELP
13 is M
5 is E
ME
Please help me.
The young girl, trapped inside the casino, was begging for help and I was too stupid to pay attention.
Was this a prank?
I don’t know.
A coincidence? Hardly.
I didn’t know what to do. I tried logging into the website again, but it was completely normal.
There was no lobby. I was, and still am, helpless.
I spent hours, writing this and overanalyzing what could have happened. I googled every phrase I
could think of but to no luck.
And then, just as I started writing this, I remembered the last 3 numbers.
19, 1, and 14.
S, A, and N.
The first three letters of my name.
I could’ve probably gotten the other two letters/numbers if the situation hadn’t escalated. I felt sick.
My knees went weak.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
What could be worse?
They bloody knew my name!
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