ONE
Crunch... crunch...
She could hear her own stealthy steps up the rickety stairs of that old tower. She could hear her own heartbeat and breathing too...
She turned back; her friends were waiting at a distance, huddled together.
Yesterday when they were walking past this guard tower, built in middle ages, she has complimented it and said the village could use it as a tourist attraction.
"There is a witch....that lives on the tower... she throws stones at everyone who passes by..." Chintu has told her.
"There is no such thing as a witch..." she has wrinkled her tiny nose.
"Oh yes?" he sneered.
"I have been stung by one... just the day before yesterday!" Rinku chimed in.
"I can go there... in the middle of the night..."
"You dare!"
"I don't believe in witches.... I don't.... I don't...." she vehemently shouted.
"Tomorrow is Saturday... the most inauspicious day... we will come for you at eleven, sneak out of the house."
She bitterly regretted the argument the moment she looked at the tower.
It was a dilapidated old watch tower, situated outside the old manor where a wicked king lived centuries ago... her father used to tell them that people dug up skeletons from the surrounding areas even when he was young...
"That manor is haunted..." her father used to scare them with dozens of ghost stories... ghosts he or persons he knows have witnessed.
"One night, I was returning from college, the bus dropped us past midnight. I had to walk past the manor...."
"I swear... I could hear someone following me... I could hear the sound of the small bells of her payel and her bangles all through the way... but every time I looked back I saw a black bitch following me at a distance..."
"Then....?" The kids used to ask in chorus.
TWO
"I fell sick that night...." the story teller continued grimly.
"Doctors could not analyze the cause of my fever, high fever. Grandma used to stay in my room all night."
"That night she suddenly woke up feeling strange, as if something was really wrong.... When she looked at my bed she swore she saw a woman sitting beside me. In the semi darkness she could see that it was a very beautiful woman wearing the dresses of British Era notch girls... glittering lehenga (Indian long skirt), choli (top that comes with her), chunni (stole) and ornaments of pure gold studded with real gems! They were glittering in the moonlight that scattered on the bed, her hair was long and not braided, it fell all over her body like another veil, black one."
"Who is it?" she mumbled incoherently.
"She just vanished right in front of my eyes.....but not before she could see her eyes.... They were glowing like the eyes of predators in dark... "a shudder ran through my spine"...your grandma told me later." Her father would have continued the story, surrounded by a bunch of gaping kids, swallowing every word that came out of his mouth.
"She said she felt like fainting but gathered her nerves and started to shriek. Grandpa came running from the next room... he on his turn swears that he saw a black bitch skulking out of the room, he chased it but could not find it after reaching the garden... the main door to the house was wide open... and he remembered locking it himself before retiring to bed, no one took the blame for leaving it open at middle of night..."
