Desi Horror Stories

Ragpicker

Shrey was walking home from his usual evening routine at the gym, looking forward to a hot-water bath to relax his pumped muscles and then settle down to his dinner. The path from the gym to his home was a heavily trafficked route, both by vehicles and people, which he used every day. But he had never expected that it was on that night, when he was in a crowd of people with vehicles honking incessantly, that he'd have the scariest experience of his life.

He had come to the narrow neck of the road with street vendors on both sides. It was nearing nine p.m. and the vendors were shutting shop, but the aroma of their wares—fresh spices—still lingered in the air. Shrey was making his way through, jostling shoulders and elbows with the other people, when he saw a man about twenty feet ahead of him in the crowd, who immediately stood out because of his physical features.

The man was tall, close to six feet six inches, and he wore a battered black hat over a mop of shoulder-length grey hair. The hair was untidy and had bits of paper and dried leaves in it. He wore a dirtied grey coat that was torn and patched up in many places, and which came up to his knees. His pants were brown and loose like women's palazzo pants. But what was most remarkable about him was his gait. The man was severely bow-legged. Both his legs were bent outward at the knees. When he walked, it wasn't a straight steady motion, but a jerky sideways movement, pushing his weight on one lateral side and then the other. To balance himself, he had a hand on his hat as he walked.

Even as Shrey wondered about the man, he noticed a white sack on his back. The sack was not full and dangled up to his hips. Now and then, the man would stop his strange movement, bend to the ground, pick something, and put it into the bag. Shrey realized then that the man was a ragpicker—one who picks up reusable stuff like bottles and bits of scrap and cloth from the streets and sells them to recyclers. But he had never seen a ragpicker at that hour of the evening, and definitely not one who looked so eccentric.

And eccentric he surely was, for as the man walked along, he sang some weird tune. It wasn't of a song that Shrey had ever heard, and nor did he care about it, but there was definitely something in the man that made him notice him so closely.

Anyway, Shrey focused on reaching home. The hunger pangs had started, but he could not walk any faster, because his muscles still ached. He noticed then that the crowd had thinned. He had left the vendors behind now. The few stray people on the road now were people returning from office who were hurrying to get home.

Shrey quickened his pace. He almost came up to the ragpicker, hoping to overtake him, when something stopped him.

The ragpicker was singing his name!

It was an unearthly tune which went something like, "Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey... Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey..." The quick repetition of the word came out like a hiss, and though he could not see the ragpicker's face yet, Shrey could see the spit flying out of his mouth as he said it.

All of a sudden, Shrey was in the grip of a terrible fear. Who was this man who had appeared out of the blue? Why could nobody else see him? Which was true, because even those who passed by him from the opposite direction did not change their direction or show the least bit of indication that he was in their path. Why was he walking in such a manner? And, why for gosh sakes was he taking his name?

Shrey slowed down. He did not want to overtake the ragpicker now. But as he slowed down, the ragpicker slowed down too. Shrey lost a heartbeat. He quickly assessed the street, and there was no one.

Bloody no one! The street had been bustling with people not a minute ago.

"Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey," the ragpicker susurrated as he began to very slowly turn around. "Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey..."