“You were on the verge of tears,” I said teasingly. My father was sitting next to me by the window. We were on our way to our annual family reunion. The train ride to Darjeeling was around seven hours and we had passed only one. The current topic of discussion was a rather uncanny memory our family had encountered the past year on the same trip.
Now that we thought of it, the event was funny but at that particular moment, it was far from that. I mean, just the vision of it still gives me goosebumps.
I still remember the dark clouds encircling around our family house on the hills, and don't even get me started on the creepy noises. This might sound cliche, but it was a dark and stormy night. We had arrived at our grey and gloomy family villa which was supposedly haunted, at around midnight.
‘The Misa Palace’, our ancestral home, was rumoured to be the house of Misa Misa, the old ‘witch’. Misa Misa had been murdered by her own family the night her child was born at this very house and it is said that she haunts this place to that day. I still remember the innumerable jokes we had made about this ‘ghost’.
After getting settled in, and getting somewhat used to the creepy paintings staring at us and watching our every moment, we finally decided to have dinner. At dinner, I had to sit facing the completely transparent window.
Being a person who can't watch a horror movie without the lights on, this was a total nightmare. While eating I could see the shadows of the wind thrashing against the trees, howling. It was not a good night to be here. My sister, being the annoying person she is, started making creepy stories and noises and basically did everything in her power to annoy me. Thankfully, my father, being a scaredy-cat like me, told her to keep quiet. Annoyed, my sister got up and excused herself to go to her room.
I kid you not a few seconds after she left, the windows started sliding up and down. Obviously, my parents didn't believe me and dismissed me thinking it was rather a lame attempt to scare them. Not even a second later, the lights switched off. The windows started sliding again and it made an eerie sound. Concluding it was probably the sound of the rustling pine trees brushing against each other and that the power had chosen to fail at that exact time, we all huddled together next to each other. It was pitch black one instance, and the other we could hear something dragging against the wood floors and a silvery reflection coming down the stairs- a knife. Aghast, terrified, frightened - there aren't enough words to describe what we were feeling at that time. We were preparing ourselves to breathe our last.
Then suddenly the lights came on and we could see a trail of blood coming down the stairs and at the end of the trail- my hands still shake when I say this, this time with anger- my sister.
Before we even had time to process what had just happened, music started blasting through the speakers. Even my addled brain could recognize the song - Never Gonna Give You Up.
Wait, a prank?
A PRANK?
My sister jumped up and started laughing. She was swaying in time with the music, completely carefree. She did all this to prank us? The scariest moment of my life was a prank? I thought I was gonna die and it was a prank? Needless to say, I’m not joking when I tell you that none of us spoke to her for a week.
Later while trying to piece everything together, still not believing this was all a hoax, my sister explained that she had sneaked out after dinner and subtly slid the windows. The eerie noises were the work of the speaker which she was controlling from her phone, and not to miss the final touch - jam as blood. That little mastermind. Even though I was never going to forgive her, I could admire her genius
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