House No. 450

After I finished preparing dinner, my eyes fell on the clock on the wall as I left the kitchen. Oh, it's so late. I quickly picked up the sheet lying on the sofa in front of me, put it on, and put the house key in my purse and left the house. On the way, the Maghrib call to prayer had begun. The children will say, "Mama forgot to pick us up from tuition today." I thought and walked towards their tuition center with quick steps.

Mom, you took so long, seven-year-old Rehan said, looking at me with a complaining look, while six-year-old Anam was also walking with her mouth wide open. Seeing her face, I burst into laughter. "Okay, sorry, Baba, I will take care in the future, such a mistake will not happen again. We will only agree to your words when you let us stay at Nanu's house on Saturday." I laughed and supported Anam on Rehan's condition.

Come on, your father must be coming home too. I held both of their hands and entered the street in front. This route was a shortcut. I used to come home quickly from here. By the way, I used to go by road, I used to avoid passing through this street.

Ugh, mother, this is such a scary house. I feel scared to see it. Rehan said while looking at house number 450, which was completely immersed in darkness. A strange horror was pouring down on her. I quickly moved forward with both the children. After finishing work at night and lying down on the bed, that house suddenly appeared in front of my eyes. My past was connected to this house.

I slowly started thinking about my past.

My name is Alina. We are three sisters and a brother. My father used to be in the army, while my mother was a simple housewife.

When I was in intermediate, my father bought a big house on my mother's request because the house we were in was too small for us. The day my father bought a new house, all of us siblings were very happy. This two-story bungalow was very beautiful. The lower part had three bedrooms, a large TV lounge, a drawing room, and a kitchen, while the upper part had two bedrooms, a TV lounge, and a study room.

There was a small garden with neem and plum trees and the car porch was big enough to park a car.

My elder sister Mehreen, who was two years older than me, and then the younger Sana, who was a year older than her, then me and our youngest brother, who was in seventh grade at the time.

The three of us sisters took the upstairs bedroom, while Haris lived downstairs with Amma Baba. Since the three of us sisters are quite timid, we slept in one bedroom together.

The day we shifted, we were quite tired and packed up our belongings and left late at night.

I'll do the rest tomorrow. Now go to sleep. After finishing eating, my mother spoke. The three of us sisters came upstairs and lay down. We were so tired that we fell asleep as soon as we lay down. It wasn't long before we fell asleep when I felt someone knocking on the door outside. I got up and opened the door. There was a black cat standing in front of me, staring at me. Seeing it, I screamed involuntarily. My sisters woke up in fear at my scream. What happened? Is everything okay? Mehreen came to me and asked.

"You were scared of the cat." She said while looking at the cat in surprise and I got embarrassed and went back to bed and lay down.

On Saturday night, we three sisters stayed up late talking. It must have been two in the morning. We thought we were hearing voices coming from the TV lounge outside. Who could it be at this time? We opened the door to the room while we were talking. As soon as we came out, it seemed as if the voices were coming from the kitchen. We peeked into the kitchen and saw that black cat sitting on the front porch. Seeing us, she jumped up and entered the room in front. We still couldn't understand what had happened. Then our eyes fell on the burning stove in front of us. There was such a smell that it seemed like something was cooking. Lahren went ahead and turned off the stove. All three of us were scared. We mentioned this to our mother the next day, to which she turned around and started scolding us to go to sleep quickly.

On Sunday, Auntie came to visit us with her family. She went to her house late at night. We, the three sisters and my mother, were sitting on the couch in the TV lounge downstairs and talking. Abu and Haris had gone to bed when my mother's eyes fell on the stairs leading from the lounge. Hey, Alina, look up. Is there a child left? Auntie had small children. Quite mischievously, my mother felt that there was no child left upstairs. At my mother's words, our eyes also went up to the stairs leading upstairs. I saw the shadow of a small child on the wall. I got up and went upstairs to look, but there was no one there. I got scared and quickly came downstairs. When I told my mother that there was no one upstairs, my mother also became quiet.

We were all surprised that when there was no child upstairs, whose shadow was that? After a few days, the matter came to light.

All of us family members had to go to Islamabad for our cousin's wedding. When we returned home two weeks later, we were very surprised. The whole house was shining like glass. It seemed like the house was being cleaned every day. We were very surprised to see all this. Rather, Haris said, it seemed like the maid came and did her work every day.

I went to the bathroom to wash my face, and I was shocked to see the wet floor of the bathroom. It seemed like someone had used the bathroom.

Then it became a routine. When the family members were out of the house, the bathroom was also used. And there were sounds of rustling in the kitchen late at night. We used to see that black cat wandering around the house.

We were slowly getting used to these things when that horrible incident happened.

After which we immediately left that house. At some point in the night, Ammi's eyes opened and she felt that someone was on the roof. She thought that we sisters were busy chatting instead of sleeping. She came to the roof with slow steps and saw ten or twelve strange-looking people sitting in a circle there. The scene was so terrifying that Ammi fainted. When Abu got up for Fajr prayers and did not find Ammi in the room and came to the lounge, he saw Ammi lying face down on the stairs.

When Ammi regained consciousness, when she told him about the scene at night, Abu immediately decided that it was appropriate to leave this house before any major damage was done, so we left that house.

Even today, after so many years, a cold wave of fear runs through our bodies that what we had thought was a cat for six months was actually a jinn.