The Mysterious Ailment of Sameer Ansari (story)

THE MYSTERIOUS AILMENT OF SAMEER ANSARI

-asif uzzaman

1

It was around middle of May when Sameer Ansari began to show signs of epilepsy. Those moments were characterised by Sameer falling to the ground and twisting his body, turning his hands and legs at most unusual angles. His eyes rolled as he slithered on the floor, and all that came out from his mouth was a harsh gurgling sound which made the scene even more ominous to behold.

The summer holidays had just begun, and thus, most of our co-lodgers had already left for their homes and could not be expected to return any time before three weeks at minimum. Which meant that I was left alone for three weeks in two-storey, fifteen-roomed lodge with Sameer who had caught this ghastly disorder lately. Sameer lived in the room next to mine, and we often used to study together. We were the only two who had not left for our homes this summer for our own different reasons. Sameer was an only-child and his parents had gone for Hajj pilgrimage, which practically left no one whom he could go and meet in his house. Moreover, he was not a homesick person. I, on the other hand, could not leave because I had joined a summer camp programme where they taught riding motorbikes.

So, it first happened on the second day of my biking class. The weather was particularly extra hot that day, and I had returned to the lodge all sweats. I made my way into the corridor calling for Sameer but he never replied. I was as irritated as I was tired. Riding bikes in circles and 8s continuously for three hours in such weather was no child’s play. Walking in the corridor towards my room I remembered vaguely that I had regretted joining the camp sometime in the middle of the practice that day, which by now had vanished. Also vanished had the heat by now. It was typical summer dusk and I was amazed why Sameer had not switched on any of the bulbs in the passage that day. I switched on all the lights on my way to my room which was at the far end of the corridor. And there he was. Sameer. He was lying on the floor on his stomach, and his head was twisted at almost hundred and eighty degrees. His left hand was raised unnaturally straight upwards as if someone was pulling it, while the right one was inserted in his open mouth, pulling down his jaw. His legs had gone stiff and were stretching wide enough in opposite directions so as to make a man able to sit between them on the floor. ‘Dumbstruck’ would be an understatement to describe what I felt at the sight. I dropped my bag, and in a hurry nearly dived. I pulled Sameer’s hands and legs and tried to collect his whole body in my hold. After struggling for what seemed like hours, I was able to get his hands and his head in my control. Leaving his legs to fate, I held his hands and head and torso in a bear hug, and remained in the position till his body slowly eased out. Then he fell asleep. I lifted him up from the floor and lay him on the bed.

The whole fiasco had made me so very tired and so very hungry. I went from the room, put a lock on the door for the fear that he might not go anywhere if the fit hit him again. I could not wait for the dubba-wala to arrive with our dinner. There was still hours left for his arrival. So, I went to a nearby restaurant which was neither posh nor particularly low-class and treated myself with two full plates of pasta after having two samosas. It took a lot of time to finish my meal, but I needed that. By the time I was about to get up from my table – I was finishing my second bottle of Sprite by then – it was 8 O’clock.

When I returned to the lodge and opened the lock of my room, Sameer was still sleeping. The dubba-wala had left our box outside the door. I woke Sameer up and talked to him very normally. I told him he had taken too much sleep today and he agreed with a smile, never knowing what he had been through.

“I am feeling very hungry, Rishi,” he said to me innocently.

“Don’t worry. You can eat my share as well,” I smiled. “You’re lucky that I’m filled up to my neck right now.”

“Thank you.”

Sameer was looking as innocent as a newborn and also as cute. I debated in my mind and calculated that it would be a little rude of me if I told him about his epileptic fit, of which he did not remember a thing.

***

2

Two days later it happened again, and around the same time at the dusk when I returned from the camp. This time his body was twisted in very different but equally unnatural and horrible position. Once again, I locked him in the room and went out to eat. Eating junk food was becoming my personal way of dealing with stress.

That night, while offering the two tiffin-boxes to him, I asked him if he had been feeling something unusual happen to him lately, or if he had eaten something unhealthy, or if he had done something which was not usual in any way.

“I don’t remember such a thing, but why do you ask?” he said very confidently, and then his confident vanished. I saw him reconsidering my question in his mind, and then he spoke at length. “Three-four days ago, when you were away, Rishi, a boy came to me here in this room of yours in which I have been living since others have left. He was a small boy, about eight or ten years old. He came and told me that his kite had got stuck on a tree and that he wanted me to take it down for him. So, I went with him and he led me to the bungalow behind the lodge. You must have seen the guava tree there. It is outside the campus of that old bungalow. I thought no one lives there. Anyway, I went there and climbed the tree and dropped the kite down which the boy caught and ran away after thanking me. I remained on the tree and enjoyed the wind. I was looking around when I saw that...”

“You saw what?” I asked.

“I saw an old lady watching me from a window of the bungalow. She was wearing a black saree and black skullcap. Looking at her gave rise to a very horrific scene in my mind and I fell off the tree. I don’t know how it happened, but I am sure that it was seeing that woman that provoked such a horrible imagination in my mind.”

“And what did you see in your mind?”

“Well, I don’t know how to express it in words. But it was very horrible. It was like...umm...an interior view of a wooden house, wood planks were creaking...a man was sitting on a chair singing a horrible song in Sanskrit...and there were many, many things which could not be expressed in words but made my heart sink with fear. And so I fell from the tree.”

“What happened after you fell down?”

“Nothing,” Sameer smiled. “I just returned to the room.”

‘And your body got twisted,’ I thought of saying but held myself back.

Listening to Sameer’s account made it certain that the reason behind his epilepsy that he had caught all of a sudden was the bungalow behind the lodge and the lady living in it. If I wanted to help my friend, I had to take a step ahead. Which I did.

Next morning, when Sameer was still sound asleep and the sky was still dark, I woke up and wrote a message before going to the bungalow.

Sameer,

I know you are not aware of this, but you have caught a rather unusual disease. You have started to get epileptic fits. I have seen your body twisted on the floor of my room twice, and I have been hiding it from you. The account that you gave me last night made things clear to me. I know your disorder has something to do with your experience at the bungalow behind the lodge. And so, I am going to help you. If you are reading this letter, I am out to the bungalow trying to solve the matter. Don’t even think of coming there to assist me. Remain in the room; eat the breakfast when it comes. Eat my share as well. I will be back by the time you finish the breakfast.

Rishi

***

3

I was determined to solve the mystery once and for all. While I could not quite succeed, I did not completely fail either. Here is what happened when I went there. What happened was very similar – almost identical – to what had happened with Sameer. When I climbed on the tree which Sameer had climbed, I saw an old lady watching me from a window of the bungalow. She was wearing a black saree and black skullcap. Looking at her gave rise to a very horrific scene in my mind and I fell off the tree. I don’t know how it happened, but I am sure that it was seeing that woman that provoked such a horrible imagination in my mind. Well, I don’t know how to express it in words. But it was very horrible. It was like...umm...an interior view of a wooden house, wood planks were creaking...a man was sitting on a chair singing a horrible song in Sanskrit...and there were many, many things which could not be expressed in words but made my heart sink with fear. And so I fell from the tree.

But nothing bad happened after that. I returned and Sameer stopped having fits.

As I am writing this, Sameer is sitting beside me, leafing through Concepts of Physics. The other lodgers have returned and it has been about a week since I visited that bungalow. From then, Sameer has never had a fit, and everything is fine. All have indulged back in studies and everyone is living as they are supposed to. Most schools have reopened after summer vacations. The lodge is alive once again, but I and Sameer are still living in my room only. Today someone left an envelope outside our room which we have not opened as of now. I am going to read that now.

Rishi,

Since we have returned, we have noticed that you and Sameer wake up very late. But that is alright. You must have noticed that none of the boys are talking to you and Sameer since we have come back. That is because we are afraid of you two. Each morning, we see you and Sameer twisted in the bed or on the floor. And you both sing a ghastly song in that position, probably in Sanskrit. Most of us are afraid, and do not have the courage to talk about it to your face. We don’t know what happened here while we were away, but it is really terrifying and is becoming difficult for us to reside here. Two of the guys, whose name I won’t disclose, have already packed up and will leave this lodge in a couple of days. I am also afraid to disclose my identity before you. Consider this letter from all the boys living here, and do something about it. We are all leaving this lodge for the time being.

Get well soon!

Co lodgers.

***

END

Originally published on Juggernaut and the winner for Author of the Week on the same.

ALSO READ : Human Skin - A Dark Web Story

100 Mosquito Nets - A Horror Story

100 MOSQUITO NETS

By Asif Uzzaman

The town of Ranchi is blessed with many unique qualities. In the early morning, when you get up – though that’s rare for me, of course – and go for a walk, it gives you a divine feeling to witness the calm of nature. The second thing can be seen in the afternoon; no matter it is June or it is January, never mind the official weather of the month, the sun would always shine above you with same intensity in the afternoon. And in the night, it’s the mosquitoes who rule. That’s the third unique quality. As the sun goes down and darkness spreads over the town, the little demons come out from their resting places to rule over us. I don’t know how many litres of blood are sucked up from living humans each night by mosquitoes.

Image Source: wickedhorror

The incident that I am going to tell you about took place just after a month or so of my shifting here. My name is Salman Ansari and I live in a house which is quite at a distance from the main road. And the condition at night is probably worst here—especially in the rainy season.

I have been working on a novel for quite a few months back, and I was almost about to write the climax that night. I was sitting in my room, on my table, with a pen in my hand and a bulk of A4 sized sheets – my months of hard work – trying not to focus on the howling of the dogs outside. I looked at the clock as it struck 2. The last time I had seen it, it was only 12. So, the horrible fact was, I had been sitting before a blank page for two hours without penning down a single word. This had never happened with me before. ‘There is something so wrong tonight,’ I thought and stood out from the chair. Just at the moment I got up to head for the washroom, electricity went off. I had not yet fixed an inverter in my house. So, I had to light a candle. 

With a candle in my right hand, I moved about in the house almost as a protagonist of some horror movie. In the dim light of the candle, I saw something flying about—a mosquito. They were so quick and there were so many. I realised at the moment that it was because of them that I was not able to write anything since two hours, and not because of the howling of the dogs. In no way I was letting them get away with what they had done to me. “You have no idea what you have got yourselves into,” I spoke, looking at a particular mosquito which flew away and another took its place and then some other one did the same. As I said this, my words reverberated and came back to me, “You have no idea what you have got yourselves into.” 

I fixed the candle on a table and hopped around the room, clapping them out to death. I counted as I killed the mosquitoes. I counted them to fifty-five. That was before I had taken a break to drink water which included a journey to my kitchen and back. After the break I hunted another thirty. The mosquitoes, they just don’t get away. I had already shown eighty-five of them the highway to hell and they were still after my back. It was not because I was too angry for they had not let me complete my novel that night. It was fun clapping them to death and I had begun enjoying killing the mosquitoes more than I liked playing cricket in school days. I was doing this devilish thing just because I could do it, unaware of the things to come, having no assumption of any consequence. After the elimination of those eighty-five – to score a century – I caught fifteen more and burned them alive in the pious flame of the candle. It gave me unique sadistic pleasure. I was even paranoid, afraid that I may get caught in the act, as if I were killing human beings. I slept without any stress that night, though there were still mosquitoes sucking me up from all sides. 

That night, I had a strange dream. In the dream, I was in a cave with a holy man. The man was wearing a white robe and had long white hair. He was quite fat and his face was emitting light. He had a staff in his hand. I was almost drawn towards the holy man. 

“Come here, Salman,” he spoke, and the voice echoed with a soothing effect.

I went to him. It was only when I was just a foot or two away from him that I realised that his face was covered under a white hood. “Salman,” he spoke again, from under his hood, “it is not appropriate of you to do such a heinous thing. It is not human to burn someone alive.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Who are you?” I managed to speak.

He raised his staff high in the air and landed it with all his might on my left shoulder. It hit me hard and I landed on the ground with a shriek. “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted.

“No, Salman,” he spoke soft. And then roared like a hungry lion, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Me?” I was perplexed. “I haven’t done anything to you.”

He squatted and kept his staff on the ground and began crying like a mother whose son has been martyred.

“What’s wrong?” I got up, and went to him. 

He had downed his head further and I had not seen his face so far. He raised his hand up in the air, without raising his head, and something began pouring out from inside the sleeves of his robe. I took some steps back and realised that coming out from his sleeves were waves of mosquitoes. The man raised his hood up and I saw his face. It was not a human face but a cluster of thousands of mosquitoes. Perhaps the man had owned a face once upon a time, which was now the size of a tennis ball under the pack of mosquitoes. “Go away!” he shouted at me. He was perhaps a victim himself. 

Without saying anything I ran backwards, not looking back for even once. But I know thousands of mosquitoes were following me with full speed as I ran.

“You have no idea what you have got yourselves into,” I hear a voice saying. It was not a human voice, but I heard it under the humming of a mosquito. I turned back and saw the biggest mosquito in the pack. It was all red, bulging out with human blood inside him.

I got up with a loud and stretched scream, “Help!” I sat up dried mouthed and found that the room was still dark with no electricity. I went to the kitchen and returned after drinking some water. I even got an excellent climax for my novel which I wrote down immediately. The nightmare had helped me with it, to tell you the truth. I decided to never kill any mosquito again and also to get a mosquito net in the morning.

###

 After taking a light breakfast of bread and omelette, I headed to the cloth market to get a mosquito net. Walking down the road which was filled with cloth shops on either side, I was looking for a less crowded shop. And, I saw one. At the very end of the market, an alleyway led towards left side. I went inside and found a shop loaded with mosquito nets hanging in display. I moved towards the shop to find an old man sitting at the counter. All the other nearby shops had their shutters down.

“I want a mosquito net,” I spoke to the old man.

“Of course you do, Salman,” the man said.

“How do you know?” I popped out.

“It is obvious, Salman,” the man said, smiling. “If you are coming to a shop which sells mosquito nets, you’d want the same.”

“No, no. I mean, how do you know my name?” I asked.

“Ah, that’s not important,” he said and ushered me in.

I looked at the nets and found that most of them had large holes in them. I made an unpleasant face. The man noticed my reaction. “I know you don’t like these ones,” he said.

I looked at him. It was only then that I realised that the man was wearing the same robe as the man in my dream last night was wearing. Only that it was not having a hood.

“Come with me,” he said and led me through a door on the interior of the shop. I thought that it would be a godown where he was taking me to choose from the store of nets there. And I was quite right.

He took me to a godown, but it was twenty-seven floor below the surface of the earth. I was taken to almost three hundred feet below, and on the way several well built men had joined and had tied my hands. They took me down to something like a mining facility by an open elevator.  I struggled all the way to free myself, but couldn’t. They took me down to a cave-like area which was lit by flaming torches installed in the wall. It was a pathway that led somewhere deep. Leaving me there, all the men went back up by the elevator. I was abandoned there, and I had no choice but to explore what led ahead in the cave.

Image: Richard Weir

I staggered, trying to untie my hands. After a lot of rubbing and twisting of hands, I finally got my hands free and walked ahead. After, I don’t know how many minutes or hours, I saw mosquito nets, so many of them, standing erect as cuboids on either side of the way. They were made of metal. This was not the most awkward part; they contained mosquitoes inside them. The metallic nets contained one mosquito in each. There was not enough space to fit two in any of them. Not the size of nets was responsible for this, but the size of mosquitoes. They were as high as me and gigantic. I shuddered and walked to the end of the mine.

There were a hundred nets in total. There, in the last net, was caged the biggest of the mosquitoes. Its whole body was deep red, just like the one I had seen in the dream. And, to my horror, the red mosquito – the head mosquito – spoke up, “You have no idea what you have got yourselves into.” Then the cage was lifted, and it came for me.

My vision blurred.

###

When I opened my eyes, I was still in the cave. For the man standing before me, it was a strange dream. For me, it was happening in reality. In his dream, I was a holy man. I was wearing a white robe and had long white hair. I was quite fat and my face was emitting light. I had a staff in my hand. The other man was almost drawn towards me. “Come here, Ranbir,” I spoke, and my voice echoed with a soothing effect. He came to me. It was only when he was just a foot or two away from me that he realised that my face was covered under a white hood. “Ranbir,” I spoke again, from under my hood, “it is not appropriate of you to do such a heinous thing. It is not human to burn someone alive.”

He didn’t know what to say. “Who are you?” he managed to speak.

I raised my staff high in the air and landed it with all my might on his left shoulder. It hit him hard and he landed on the ground with a shriek.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

“No, Ranbir,” I spoke soft. And then roared like a hungry lion, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Me?” he was perplexed. “I haven’t done anything to you.”

I squatted and kept my staff on the ground and began crying like a mother whose son has been martyred. I don’t know why I was sympathising with the mosquitoes that the guy, Ranbir, had burnt alive in a candle.  

“What’s wrong?” he got up, and came to me.

I had downed my head further and he had not seen my face so far. I raised my hand up in the air, without raising my head, and something began pouring out from inside the sleeves of my robe. He took some steps back and realised that coming out from my sleeves were waves of mosquitoes. I raised my hood up and he saw my face. It was not my face anymore, but a cluster of thousands of mosquitoes. I used to have a face once upon a time, which was now the size of a tennis ball under the pack of mosquitoes. “Go away!” I shouted to the man and mosquitoes chased him.

THE END

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ALSO READ: Human Skin – A Dark Web Story

Human Skin - A Dark Web Story

HUMAN SKIN

By Asif Uzzaman

Last night, just like every other night, after turning off the lights and falling on my bed, I switched to YouTube on my phone and put my earphones on. Watching a load of funny videos on YouTube before going to sleep is part of my ritual which I never compromise with. After the tiring day at school and playing cricket in the evening, it feels good to relax in my bed watching videos which make me laugh.

Image Source: Pinterest

So, last night too, I was surfing through Youtube, watching every title that interested me. After my stomach began aching from laughter and my eyes grew sleepy, I got up to drink water. I drank from the bottle kept beside my bed on the table, and lay again on my bed. When I took my phone this time, there was a video suggestion titled, “Things You Should Never Ever Google”. 

Not to mention, I watched the whole video and did exactly against what the video urged over and over to. I googled every keyword that the video didn’t want me to. Well, if they really do not want me to explore them, why they even made that video in the first place? This was the thought in my mind as I browsed through Google searching all the keywords. Most of them were harmless and tricky, which did not lead me anywhere. I was not content; I really wanted some unexpected, and disturbing, stuff. Which, I got. 

I, like every common school-going kid, was not familiar with the thing on the internet called Deep Web. Deep Web, as I read about it, is a whole lot of contents over the internet which are hidden, are not listed on search engines and cannot be accessed through commonly used browsers.

So there I was, all prepared to go as far as I could to explore what lay hidden from the common internet users. It was dead of the night, and dogs were howling outside our house. My parents were not home. They work together in the same office. Papa had informed me that they would not come home that night, since there was a lot of pending work. They had left my little sister, Aliya, with me, who could barely walk. She cannot even pronounce my name clearly as of now. “Ra..Ra..bhaiya,” she would say after trying a lot and would always end up laughing through her toothless mouth. She was with me, sleeping like a horse beside me.

Listening to the howling of the dogs and clicking on links that I found exciting, I reached a website which said that I could earn money by a simple process. The popup stated that I could earn up to 100,000$ depending upon the ‘weight’. I had no idea what it was talking about and what it meant by weight. So I entered the website and found a rather chubby man’s photograph, wearing a grey T-shirt. He had a knife in one hand and a fork in the other. I realised that the white man looked jolly, and that it was a thumbnail for a video and not an image. I clicked on the video and it played.

The man kept smiling like a child for a few seconds.  Then he motioned his hands in the air, holding a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, as if he were a child playing with an aeroplane. “It’s time for my lunch,” he spoke innocently and made sounds with his tongue. Then the camera lowered a bit and I saw what he was about to have for his lunch. What he was about to eat was not kept in a plate, but was kept directly on his dining table. Well, how can a newborn baby be kept in a plate, it had to be made to lie down on the table itself. The man thrust the fork in the baby’s left palm. It wasn’t moving, the child was dead of course.  The man looked into the camera. “It looks delicious,” he said and used his knife to cut a finger out.

I stopped the video and tried controlling my heartbeat. I wanted to turn the lights on, but was too terrorised to step out from the bed. But darkness was not the scariest part, my heart skipped half a dozen beat when I got a glance of my little sister beside me. I feel guilty about it, but looking at my little sister really scared me, but I couldn’t help it. My mind had begun showing me images of her being eaten by the white man in the video. I was too scared to look at anything. Neither the sight of my phone nor the sight of Aliya and not even the idea of turning on the light could sooth me. I was even more afraid of keeping my eyes shut. Whenever I tried to remain lying with my eyes closed, the scene of the fat man eating Aliya flashed in my head. I finally hugged my sister and pampered her—though it was I who needed to be pampered. I scrolled the website again, in the hope that I might find in the description that the whole thing was a joke. But it was not. Instead, in the description, it gave details about how one can sell little children to the man, and on what bases the price would be calculated. After, some more scrolling, I accidently clicked on something. I don’t know what it was, but a message appeared on the screen which said, “Thank you. You will get it.”

And below this was some blank space, and further below it the text actually said, “We saw you. You look good and your sister is cute. Almost perfect.”

I don’t know how the night passed. But, I don’t remember using my phone any further. I couldn’t call my parents out of fear.

###

Today, I sit in my room, studying some comic books. The more I read them, the more I am convinced that whatever happened last night was either a bad dream or was a joke prepared over the internet. My sister is still asleep, and my parents have not yet arrived. I phoned them about half an hour ago, mumma said they’d be arriving by 12 O’ clock. It is still just 9:30 and I cannot find anything better to do than reading comic books.

The doorbell rings and I jump from my chair. Taking a long breathe, I move to the door and open it. There stand Mumma and Papa. I cannot describe the happiness of the moment. I am finally with my parents and no one can scare me anymore. I hug them together and they look quite puzzled at my gesture. They look at each other, they smile, and then they hug me back.

 “Look, Ranbir, what papa has brought for you,” Mumma says and I look up.

Papa hands me a large white polybag containing a large box which is packed with decoratives. I take the box with me to my room and keep it on my bed, deciding to open it later. And indulge myself in reading comic books again.

###

It is 12 O’clock now. I have been reading comic books continuously for hours today. I even finished the ones which I have already read quite a few times before. The doorbell rings again. Mumma must be in the kitchen. She would open the door, I think.

The doorbell rings for the tenth time and I finally get up to open the door. As I hold the knob and flung the door wide open, I am shocked beyond belief to find my parents standing there with warm smiles.

“But, Mumma,” I struggle for words.

“We are home, Ranbir,” Papa smiles. “I hope we are not late.”

“No we are not,” Mumma says, looking at her wristwatch. “It’s just about 12.”

Then who were they who paid a visit at 9:30? And, more importantly, what is in that large box that they brought for me?

I run towards my room, almost shuddering. I hurriedly jump onto my bed and open the box. There is something packed in yet another black packet. With it is a note. It reads:

Dear Ranbir,

Image Source: Pinterest

We are glad that you chose to barter the most delicious body part from us. Your order is in the black pack. We find you interesting, as you did not want money in exchange for your little sister but something to taste. We are glad to provide you with the skin of the child shown to you in the video. Looking forward to have more deals with you.

Love,

Plump Man.

I drop the note and open the black packet in the box. I tear the packet in two and take out what lies inside. I lift it up and see blood dripping from its sides. The child looked darker in the video; this skin is quite fairer in comparison.

“Ranbir,” I hear Mum calling from the kitchen, “where is Aliya?”

THE END

Note: The story is not real unlike the fact about Deep Web. Deep Web is real and studies show that almost 80% of the content on the internet is hidden in Deep Web and are not accessible through common browsers and cannot be reached through any search engine. What we know in the name of Internet is just the surface of the sea. There exist websites in Deep Web which have been found guilty of drug and weapon dealings. Many people have shared their horrific experiences of the darker side of Deep Web known as Dark Web, including a site which explained step by step how to cook a woman. I would recommend you to never ever try to access these websites if you do not wish to get your privacy intruded.

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 AlSO READ: Puppets of the Magician (a story)