House No 450

On the night of the feast, we three sisters stayed up late talking. It must have been around two in the morning. We thought we could hear the sound of conversation coming from the TV lounge outside. Who could it be at that moment? As soon as we opened the door to the room while we were talking and came out,...

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After I finished preparing dinner, as I was leaving the kitchen, my eyes fell on the clock on the wall. Oh, it's so late. I quickly looked in front of it. She picked up the sheet lying on the sofa, put it on, and put the house key in her purse before leaving the house. On the way, the Maghrib call to prayer had already begun. The children will say, "Today, Mama." I forgot to pick us up from the tutoring center, I thought, and walked quickly towards their tutoring center.

Mama, you took so long," seven-year-old Rehan said, looking at me with complaining eyes, while six-year-old Anam was also walking with her mouth wide open. "I saw her face." I burst out laughing. "Okay, sorry, Baba, I will be careful in the future, such a mistake will not happen again. We will only agree to your words when you let us stay at Nano's house on Saturday, on the condition of Anam Rehan." I laughed and agreed.

Come on, your father must be coming home soon. I held both of their hands and entered the street in front of me. This route was a shortcut. I would have come home quickly from here. By the way, I used to go by road, mostly avoiding this street.

"Oh, Mom, this is such a scary house, I'm scared to see it," Rehan said, looking at House No. 450, which was completely immersed in darkness, a strange horror was pouring out. At his words, I quickly moved forward with both the children. When I lay down in bed after work at night, that house suddenly appeared before 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 one brother. My father was in the army while my mother was a simple housewife.

When I was in intermediate, my father bought me a big house on my mother's request because the house we were living in was too small for us. The day my father bought me 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 a car porch big enough to park one car.

My older sister Mehreen, who was two years older than me, and then her younger sister Sana, who was a year older, then me, and our youngest brother, who was in seventh grade at the time. We three sisters took the upstairs bedroom while Haris lived downstairs with Amma and Baba. Since we three sisters are quite timid, we slept together in one bedroom.

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

On Saturday night, the three of us sisters stayed up late talking. It must have been around 2 am. We thought we could hear the sound of conversation coming from the TV lounge outside. Who could it be at this time? As we opened the door to the room while we were talking and came out, it seemed as if the sound of these conversations was coming from the kitchen. When we peeked into the kitchen, we saw the black cat sitting on the front porch. Seeing us, she jumped up and entered the room in front of us. We still couldn't understand what had happened, then we saw a strange smell coming from the burning stove in front of us as something was cooking, Lahren stepped forward and turned off the stove. All three of us were terrified. We mentioned this to our mother the next day, to which she turned around and started scolding us, telling us to go to bed early.

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

Everyone was wondering whose shadow was that when there was no child above. After a few days, the matter came to a head.

Our entire family had to go to Islamabad for our cousin's wedding. When we returned home two weeks later, we were in for a very strange surprise. The entire house was shining like glass. It seemed like the house had been cleaned every day we were very surprised to see all this. In fact, Haris said, it seemed like the maid used to come and work every day.

When I went to the bathroom to wash my face, I was shocked to see the wet bathroom floor. It looked as if someone had used the bathroom.

Then it became a habit. When the family members were out of the house, the bathroom would also be used, and even in the kitchen, there would be sounds of rustling late at night. We would see that black cat wandering around the house.

We were slowly becoming accustomed to these things when that horrific incident occurred.

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

When my mother recounted the night scene upon regaining consciousness, my father immediately decided that it was appropriate to leave the 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, thinking that what we thought was a cat for six months was actually a jinn.