THE MAN

With all this quarantine madness going on because of
covid 19, I have fled Kolkata to my own house from
Amsterdam to avoid contact with new people. My house
is near a lake, which I won't name for safety reasons
has a bunch of houses surrounding it, and in summer
months it's full with people roaming around and local
boys swimming in it. But right now in late april when I'm
writing this it's kind of a ghost town here and it's weird
seeing it like this here. Anyway I won't be here writing
this if something didn't go wrong, right?
One day, my friends will call Tithi and Mriganka (they
live nearby) were out near the lake, overlooking the lake
with me. We were setting up some chairs for some story
telling, which I invited my mom to be there because she
is a great story teller.
The sky had reached that point after sunset. The sky
was losing it's light, and soon it turned dark. The lake
was calm and quiet, not a single person was up there,
and all the neighbouring houses seemed to be vacant.
We were truly the only one's around there. Still we got a emergency light with us, so that if it gets dark we can
light it up, and so we did. We were all laughing and
sharing our hilarious yet some special moments with
each other. Everything was going great.
Suddenly Tithi dropped her phone on the ground, and
Mriganka went to pick it up. Then he just told us to stay
quiet for a moment, and he turned around to look over
the lake in the grass below. I went over to see what he
was looking at. Tithi followed me. As I asked Mriganka
what's going on he said that he heard something below
us. He could see someone walk onto the deck. So the
three of us went near the deck, there was nobody there.
My mom kept telling us to come inside the house,
because moms get scared easily, and in India they
believe to numerous number of superstitions.
Anyway, I called out a bunch of times to confirm this,
and we went back to our last checkpoint. The thing is
Tithi swore by it as well that she also heard someone
speaking under the deck. Regardless we decided to go
back into the house, and made sure to lock the door. My
mom was in the kitchen, making tea for us. My dad was
upstairs,in the bedroom. He said earlier that he had
some office works to do. While all of us were in the living
room, sitting on sofas and talking about what just
happened out there.

THAT'S WHEN IT STARTED.
Loud aggressive bangs on the main door, accompanied
with the bangs there was a man screams, sounded like
he was screaming for help. Tithi and Mriganka got
scared, and to be honest I was too. I was so afraid that I
didn't even try to look through the peephole to see who it
was. And apparently everyone in the house heard it, my
mom and dad came rushing into the living room. My dad
tried to calm us down , but even he couldn't do anything.
Mriganka told me to call the police, but I got to know first
if it was a prank or what. So me and my dad tried to look
from the peephole, and we saw some red in face man
banging his hands on the door, begging to be let in. He
was claiming he was hurt, and needed help. My dad
asked where are you hurt, he didn't answer it though, he
just kept repeating let me in I'm hurt. My dad yelled at
him to get out of here before we'd call the police. These
days kolkata police is so responsive that we felt some
unknown courage inside us. Anyway, my dad yelled at
him again and told us to shut and lock our windows if
they were open. We all stayed in the living room for
couple of hours, just to be safe. Later on, I said Tithi and
Mriganka to stay a night here, and they were so scared
that they agreed with it in the first place. Eventually with
no other uninvited visitors outside, we all went to sleep.
Tithi slept with mom, while me, my dad and Mriganka
stayed in my room.

I was checking my Whatsapp when it happened. The
crash of shattering glass was so loud that it made me
jump out of my bed. My heart instantly started racing,
because I wasn't sure if I was the only one who heard it.
Because I didn't see my mom or Tithi or anyone in my
room giving a reaction on it. I tried to wake up my dad,
and I saw he's whispering he heard it too. He said me to
tell mom and Tithi to stay in their room, and lock their
door. But I reminded him that their door didn't have a
lock. Because a few days back, I unknowingly broke the
door knob. At this moment Mriganka woke up and he
was so scared that he started to call the police.
Then we all heard footsteps outside my room in the
living room area. I picked up my cricket bat lying in the
closet, my dad told everyone to stay calm and Mriganka
was all scared that he had joined me too. It was the
most tensed moment of my life. I called mom , and she
said that she had also heard the noise and they were all
scared. My mom told me that the footsteps are reaching
them, and someone's about to open the door. Me and
Mriganka thought to do something, and we opened the
door a little so that we could get a glance at him. We
saw he's stopped. We couldn't see his face, as he was
all covered in the night's darkness. But from the best we
could see , we saw he took off one of his shoe and
started shaking it, as if to get something out of his shoe.
He then put his shoe back on, he turned his head to the door we were peeking from. And then there was silence
for the longest time until he finally spoke saying, " I know
you're in there. I'm sure your family has already called
the police, and I'm not sure what my next action should
be.". At that moment I had to decide whether to stay in
there or grab him. And I chose the second option, we all
rushed through the door, and about to catch him. But the
thing surprised me was he didn't even move one inch,
he didn't get scared of us rushing towards him
altogether. And then we rushed into my mom's room.
We could have easily got him but in that dark we didn't
know if he had a gun or anything. So we all waited in
that room until the police entered, and then we all left
the room to meet them. The man of the matter , the
police came to catch was no longer in the house. We
checked every closet, under every bed and every little
corner in the house. A police officer recommended us to
shut the door and lock every window , and to stay
awake. They said as soon as we see any disturbance,
we call them.
So all of us stayed awake for the rest of the night. The
next day Mriganka and Tithi went back to their places.
My dad went to market and bought a glass pane to fix
the window that was broke the other night. We all
quarantined in that house after that. But never saw the
man came in again.......