The Paranormal Activity in My Bedroom

When I walk too close to the TV, the stand it sits on shifts and makes a sound. In the middle of the night, while I’m in bed, the TV stand shifts and makes the same sound. A presence is announcing itself.

It’s an old house with wooden walls and frame, and it makes sounds. Perhaps the knocks and pops are from the warmth of the sun leaving its old bones and the cool night air settling into it.

Though, the sounds are frequent and only in my room. If there are structural or foundational faults, the laundry room should be the room that sounds the alarm. Rainwater gets in through gaps previously chewed through by humongous rats when they temporarily seized the house from us. Heavy rainfall turns the room into a swamp.

Exposed pipes run along its ceiling and their protests filter into my room letting me know someone is showering.

Mendicant. I get words stuck in my head, often in an old formal Hindi that nobody uses, and I have to look up their meaning. On rare occasions I get obscure English words. The definition online for mendicant was ‘beggar’ or ‘given to begging’.

My days have filled with menial tasks that take longer than normal to complete. I start cooking a meal at 7:30 a.m. or 8 a.m. At noon I finally sit down to eat, and then run out to buy groceries or run errands. Washing my hair has turned into a drawn out process. Laundry is an all day obstacle course.

During prayer one morning, in one of the ancient Hindu holy scriptures, the Shiw Puraan, there it was. Mendicant. The missing piece of the puzzle.

Spirits that bring distractions, causing one to become side-tracked, absorbed in daydreaming, unable to attend to duties, or accomplish goals.

The physical world co-exists alongside a spiritual one. There exists powerful unseen forces whose sole purpose is to keep us astray, off course. Some humans ruminate in the same motivations and send these nasty little buggers.

I think of my ex and immediately want to barf. Bad karma spanning 22 years coming in hot for this devil’s agent. Love spells; mysterious red ring-like bruises on my body; sex nightmares; disease; jumbo rats.

It's 1:35 a.m. The TV stand shifts, and my blood pressure rises a smidge. I close my eyes and repeat Shiw’s name until I nod off. A sharp knock jolts me back. I continue to repeat my mantra and slip into sleep again. An aggressive pop yanks me back. They don’t want me to sleep lest the devil hears me hit the ground running in the morning.

Hey, Shiw. Hey, Shiw. Hey, Shiw. Hey, Shiw. Hey, Shiw. Hey, Shiw.

The knocks travel down the corridor. A first. A couple intermittent knocks outside my sister's room. The familiar sounds of a lost battle with her own demons pierces through the blackness. She’s bug-eyed wide awake.

Earlier I wandered around my room, and the corridor, with a bowl of burning, smoking sage, but not her room so as to not disturb her. The irony.

Days later I receive yudd karo. ‘Battle, or go to war’. No search engine necessary this time. Make them irrelevant. Keep them from fulfilling their purpose by fulfilling your purpose. You win, or they win.

From where I sit cross-legged, sunshine pours in and casts a golden glow upon my closed eye lids. The peace is not lost on me as a thought lingers in the blank space. Drive them out. Niskal.

At my computer, I quell the desire to scroll. The upper corner of my ceiling bangs. I diligently work towards my purpose. The following silence is deafening, and most welcome.