The arrow of death

Chapter-5

I couldn't sleep. 

I sat up and looked out the window. It was a new moon night so it was considerably dark outside. The sky was cloudless and one could see stars clearly in the sky. There was an eerie silence in the air. It was strange but I knew exactly what to expect. I looked at my watch, it was 1 am.

15 more minutes., I thought.

As the clock went past 1:15 I started hearing a voice calling my name. The hairs on my arm stood up as my heart started beating faster. It was coming from outside, from the direction of the main garden. It was a very soft voice, and yet it was very distinct and I could make out what it was saying clearly.

Karan Bisht said the voice.

Why was I not surprised or afraid you may ask? 

Well, this had been happening for the past six months. Whenever there was a new moon, the voice would grow stronger. Whereas during a full moon, the voice was nowhere to be heard. And for some reason, the voice would only start calling out to me when it was past 1:15.

I had tried telling my dad about this several times but he refused to believe me. He told me to grow up and that I wasn't a child anymore. He probably thought that I was making excuses to make him move out of the house. To be honest I probably would have tried doing something like that so I didn't blame Dad for not believing me. 

What I hadn't told my dad was that I had seen the source of the voice.

The first time I heard the voice, I tried to sleep and ignore the voice by covering my ears. But nothing worked. I could hear the voice even when my ears were covered. I tried wearing my airpods to sleep with music playing but the voice still managed to get through somehow. I closed my windows but to no avail. The fourth time it happened, I got curious. This time when I heard the voice I looked out my window towards the garden. 

And she was there, standing in the garden. Looking straight at me. I'm referring to her as she since I could only vaguely make out the figure of a person and to me, it looked like a woman. Her face was covered by a veil. Another hint of its gender was the clothes it was wearing. She was wearing a white sari and her hands dangling limp by her torso. As far as I could make out she was not wearing any ornaments or accessories. Her hands were bare and due to maybe my poor vision, I could not see her legs or feet.

And that wasn't even the weirdest thing. She wouldn't move an inch through the night. But I could hear her voice. Each time I saw her during a new moon, she stood in a slightly different position, moving ever so slightly closer to the house.

When I had first seen her she was standing in the middle of the garden near the fountain. But the last time I saw her she was only a few meters away from the front door.

It had been happening a lot lately so I had started to get concerned. But I still had not told my dad about the woman because I didn't want to worry him. But also because he would probably think that I was crazy.

How close is she going to be tonight? I thought as I looked out the window. 

There was no one there. The moon was nowhere to be seen yet there seemed to be no sign of her anywhere in the garden. Even her voice had disappeared. The only thing to be heard was the light rustling of leaves in the wind along with the sound of water running down the fountain in the middle of the garden. After the past few months, the fact that she was nowhere to be seen seemed stranger to me than the fact that a literal ghost lady appeared in my garden daily. Sure she looked creepy but she didn't do anything other than stand still and call out my name once in a while. To my knowledge she was harmless but I had never tried approaching her. 

Where could she be? I thought as I walked away from the window and towards my bed. I could now hear my father snoring as per usual. I was feeling a little confused and unsettled. Had it just been an illusion? But you don't see the same illusion every day for six months and then suddenly stop seeing it one day, do you?

Suddenly, I felt a chill run down my spine. It was a feeling I had gotten familiar with. I had come to realize that this feeling came whenever "she" was close. I was confused. I still couldn't see her but the feeling had never been wrong. So why was it telling me that "she" was close, even though I couldn't see her?

I got the answer to that question when the voice spoke up behind me.

Karan Bisht.