Sarah looks out at the gloomy
afternoon sky outside of her single storied terrace bedroom window. A deep
sense of loneliness envelopes her. It has been 5 days since Allyssa and Diane,
her best friends and housemates, left for their end of semester break. Sarah sighs out loud as she looks onto her
computer’s screen. Her thesis work seems endless and she has had little
progress for the past three days. Her mind runs idle as her thoughts go to her
housemates that are still taking their bachelor’s degree.
After 6 minutes of staring blankly
unto the computer’s screen, Sarah decides to take a break and her eyes wanders again
to the window beside her computer’s desk. She can see little children playing
at the little playground across the street. Their cries of joy and laughter
seem desolate and out of place under the ominous, afternoon sky. She wonders
what thoughts are playing through their little minds as they scurry over each
other playfully. Her train of thoughts was disturbed by the sound of the
washing machine’s beeping. Sarah briskly goes to the laundry room at the back
of the house beside the kitchen. As she
walks past Allyssa’s and Diane’s room, she notices that the doors were shut
tight and just out of curiosity, she checks both doors to make sure they are
locked. Both were tightly locked. Sarah chuckles to herself wondering what she
was expecting.
The
clock on the wall reads 7pm. The frantic sounds of keyboards can be heard in
Sarah’s room. She scoured the internet and found a lot of usable information
for her thesis. She has been typing up to her 8th page when she hears
the sound of the kettle boiling. Weird she thought as she can’t recall boiling
any water beforehand. As she approaches the kitchen she can’t help but notice that
the light in the house appear dimmer. Like a thin black veil was covering the
light from the fluorescent bulbs overhead. So distraught are her thoughts that
she rubs her eyes furiously, thinking maybe she was facing the monitor screen
too long, she even tried flipping the light switch a few times but it still
remains the same. She shrugs it off thinking that perhaps it is the wiring at
fault. Gathering her thoughts, she continues on and suddenly realized that the
sound of the boiling kettle has stopped. To her bewilderment the kettle is
innocently sitting on the kitchen counter. I must have been working too hard,
she thought. As she tries to put the strange events behind her, she hears a
timid knock. The knocks are almost inaudible, but clearly there. She approaches
the front door cautiously as she is not expecting any visitors. The knocking
continues and she finds it discerning that the knocks stops after every 9th
knock, a pause and then it would again continue but when she is at the doorstep
she realizes that it is not coming from the front door. It is coming from her left.
The knocking is coming from her room.
She
begins to feel a shudder go through her as her hand turns the knob of her room.
The knocking stopped immediately as she laid eyes on her room. All her things
were as she had left it. All except, for her personal computer. The monitor
screen is inexplicably facing the window. She quickly goes over to rectify the
screen. As her eyes were fixed on the monitor she thought she saw a flash of movement
outside the window. This is it she said she’s in danger. She takes out her
phone and was hitting the emergency number when she was interrupted by a voice.
Let me in. It’s cold outside. Let me in. So cold.
As eerily as the voice was, Sarah
knew the voice all too well. She briskly walks on to the front door and takes a
look onto the peephole. Sarah lets out a relieved sigh as she opens the door to
greet her housemate, Diane. Sarah is perplexed to see Diane looking so frail
hugging herself and standing in front of the doorstep but nevertheless welcomed
the sight of her roommate over the bizarre events that took place. Diane stood
there just staring at Sarah, expecting an exchange of words perhaps, pondered
Sarah. Without delay, Sarah hurriedly hugs her best friend and was caught off
guard at how cold the touch of her bare skin felt. Sarah coaxed Diane into the
house and is surprised to see the change of her best friend upon entering the
house.
Diane let out a huge sigh of relief
and exclaims, “Finally! I’ve left my keys at home and have been waiting outside
for over an hour for you to open the door!”
She beamingly smiles at Sarah and
hugs her lovingly and sincerely. Sarah is taken aback by the sudden change of
mood of her best friend but feels relieved that she is no longer alone.
Sarah tries explaining the events
that took place before Diane’s arrival but she seems oblivious to her story and
keeps staring and beaming to Sarah’s face. Giving up on the idea of sharing her
story, Sarah asks Diane why is she here because she is still in the end of
semester’s holiday break. Diane explains that she had an argument with her
family and decided that she needed a time off and chose to be with her best
friend instead. Sarah says she is sorry to hear about that, but deep inside she
feels glad that she now has company to stay at the house.
10pm. Sarah is hunched over her
computer, eyes glued to the Facebook feeds on the screen. Sarah was about to
continue with her thesis when Diane entered her room. Diane asked Sarah if she
wants her sleeping in her room to accompany her for the night and apparently
she had forgotten to bring her room keys too so it would benefit both of them.
Sarah gladly accepts her offer and starts to rummage her wardrobe for a spare
mattress. As she laid out the mattress on the floor beside her bed she notices
Diane staring at her with an amused look on her face. When confronted, Diane
simply said how grateful she is for having a friend as Sarah. Sarah finds the
answer vaguely evasive but she ignored it nonetheless and switched off the
light. The least she would want right now is to have an argument with her best
friend. Hence she just smiled and to get menacing ideas out of her mind
continues on browsing Facebook.
It has been 11 minutes since the
lights went off and Sarah couldn’t help but feel that she was procrastinating
being on Facebook. She hears a rustle behind her. Diane should be so grateful
that she’s sleeping tranquilly and does not need to be dealing with all this
work thought Sarah. With a heavy heart she opens the Assignment Folder on her
desktop. But nothing happens. Ok her pointers not moving. Great. Her computer
froze just what she needs right now. She glanced at the clock display on her
computer screen. Eleven forty-five. Yawning, she got up off the chair and
starts towards the living room. Sarah slumps herself on the couch then turns on
the television, and starts browsing through the channels careful to turn the
volume down as not to wake Diane. She finds it unnerving that there are forty
five channels but nothing good is on. Sarah turns off the TV. She absent
mindedly rests her neck and stares at the ceiling fan, spinning ever so fast
cooling her on an already pretty chilly evening. It is at that particular moment
that Sarah starts to hear the dripping sound from the bathroom.
Sarah couldn’t care less about the dripping
sound. Not that she can do anything about it in the first place. The pipe was
installed too tightly and no matter how much effort she put in to turn the pipe
to close it, it would still form droplets at its mouth and fill the red pail
below it. But the funny thing is, she and her housemates never notice the
dripping sound nor seen it happen during the day time. Somehow, it only happens
at night. And this night is no exception. It has been a really trying and long
day for Sarah and she decides to call it a night and goes into her bedroom. She
walks carefully around Diane, and onto her bed, pleased to feel the soft
mattress on her back. The room fades into darkness, and she fell asleep within
minutes.
She wakes up at 8am as her alarm
clock dutifully notifies her. She looks beside her bed but Diane is not there.
Nor was the mattress she laid out. It was dark. She went out to the street to
find it empty, the street lights were still on but there was no indication of
life whatsoever. All the other houses were dark. Sarah double checks the time
on her watch just to be sure. 8. 15 Am. The moon was still glowing over the dark,
cloudy sky. Then she heard the sound. Then sound of a person sweeping, the
plastic bristles brushing the tarred streets. The ominous sound seems to be
approaching her, getting louder, and then it abruptly stopped. She turns
towards the source of the sound and could almost see an outline of a robed figure,
about 10 meters away, directly in between two street lamps, barely visible but
undoubtedly there. She can feel the sinister eyes on her as she backed away
slowly, at that juncture, the shadowy figure raised one hand pointing towards her,
it’s pale, skinny hand touching the lights from the street lamp above. Sarah
retreated faster backwards, her eyes never leaving the mysterious figure in
front of her. Suddenly, she bumps onto something soft and tall behind her.
Without having the chance to glance behind, she was deafened by a high pitch, blood
curling scream directly behind her. She tries to cover her ears with her hands,
only to find them being held tightly by Diane and Allyssa. She looks in horror
as the robed figure looming in front of her starts floating just above the
ground, moving left and right but slowly hovering ever closer to her. She feels
the grip on her hands tighten and begins to shake violently.
Sarah opens her eyes to see Diane`s
worried face directly in front of her. Sarah is sweating heavily and gulping
the night’s air greedily. She hugs Diane gratefully for waking her up from the
dreadful nightmare. Sarah sobs profusely as she recalls her dream. Diane calms
her down whilst holding her hands telling her that everything is alright.
Convincing Sarah that it was all a bad dream and did not mean anything. Sarah
could not help but embrace Diane tightly, relishing the warmth of her body and
her presence. Diane rubs Sarah’s back intuitively, knowing that Sarah needs her
now, more than ever. Outside, a gust of wind blew, swaying the playground’s
swings ever so slightly, making a soft, sinister, creaking sound that echoes
through the cold, dark night. Diane steals a glance at her watch. 1 AM. It’s
going to be a long night.
Zulhulaimy Fauzy.
