Come, hear me!

Yesterday night or rather today morning, a weird incident occured. Around quarter past three in the morning, I was jolted out of sleep by a long string of doorbells. Since I live in the school campus, this meant that there was some sort of emergency and the night guards (3 of them) had found it pressing enough to wake me up.

I tried to get my coordinates right and in still in a haze, reached my door and asked shouting, what the matter was. I could hear faint sound of what seemed like, someone wailing loudly. That sound sent shivers down my spine. I couldn’t comprehend what could have happened. When I didn’t get any reply from my guards, I opened a window and asked them again, what had happened.

Now they heard me, and their reply was something which made me think that this sure was a nightmare. They said that it seemed some child has been locked in one of the rooms and he/she is crying loudly.

Suddenly many things rushed into my mind. Firstly, all cleaning, dusting etc is done in the school in the afternoon after the children leave. So if some student was really left inside a room, then the cleaner would definitely might have seen him/her.

But then I thought what if the student had fainted or drifted off to sleep during school hours in some hidden corner and had been missed by the cleaner.
I immediately did a mental scan of all the class rooms to realize that there *are* two or three places where this could happen.

However, this possibility was still really remote. If a child, for whatever reason, is late in reaching home by ten minutes or so, usually parents call up school, his friends, their friends, all relatives and so on, to enquire about its whereabouts. Also after cleaning, all windows and doors are bolted or locked and hence, another, albeit, quick scan is done.

So I felt there was absolutely zero chance that a child might have been locked inside a class room.
Then I thought of another possibility. It might be possible that some homeless family of sorts has made its shelter in the school at night. Maybe, they get in the school premises when it is still unlocked, keep themselves hidden and then stay in for the night. Now their child is hungry and wailing uncontrollably for milk or food.

My mind was racing thinking all these things, while my hands fumbled around to find a flash light, switch on all external lights and finally open the door.

As I was moving down the stairs, the wailing became all the more louder and clear but I was still unable to fathom its source. By the time, I reached my outer channel gate, where the guards were standing I was really scared and was on the verge of shivering, as it was also quite a cool night, having rained heavily the evening before. But I thought that if the guards feel my fear, it was sure that none of them would turn up the next night. Getting good night guards who stay awake for some part of the night is really a tough job, so I didn’t want to lose my present team. So with as much confidence I could muster, I asked loudly over the loud wailing, “What the hell is going on? What’s this sound?” I could see the fear in the eyes of all three guards. One of them was almost crying. They again repeated what they had said. I told them that it is impossible for a child to get locked inside school building. I immediately regretted saying this, seeing the expression on the faces of the guards. Now, their suspicions about the source of that voice became even more sinister, maybe, even supernatural.

Then something happened. In a blink, the voice stopped completely. Dead silence. Just the silent voice of the breeze passing through trees nearby. Wow, I have lived alone and in remote, dark places many times in my life. I am very confident and proud of the fact that I am not afraid of the dark or of anything which is not living ( I am afraid of dogs and used to be afraid of jokers (Yeah, that’s another story. My friends made a lot of fun of that in college.)) But at that moment, I felt that I should be in a studio room with full lights on, rather than under this external dim light and that there is seriously something wrong.

(To be contd…)