City of Screams

by Neil D'Silva

I was back at the original, brown page. My account balance was INR 520.

  I sat there, like a fool. I was pretty sure I had experienced a hallucination. This couldn’t have been real. Colorless dude walking through the motionless casino, doing weird stuff and finally looking at me through the camera? I went to bed and although I had trouble forgetting this impossible incident, I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, the casino was the first thing on my mind. My initial thought was to try and get back into that lobby. I decided that it was some sort of a prank. I went on with my daily chores. But that experience stuck with me the whole time. I kept analyzing. I tried talking to Vinay about it, but he just laughed at me. I told him the entire story, though. Suddenly, I remembered the girl’s last words.

  “And don’t forget your numbers!”

  That wasn’t something dealers usually say at the end of the game. I went back to my notebook and looked at the numbers I got that night. I had written down most of the numbers from the night before.

  16

  12

  5

  1

  19

  5

  8

  5

  12

  16

  13

  5

  And the last three numbers I didn’t write down as I was too focused on the horror on my screen. I spent a few hours analyzing, trying to figure out a pattern. I had no luck. Once again, I decided that someone was just fooling around with me. I decided to let the whole thing go. Actually, I couldn’t. I went back to the website and withdrew all of the money back to my PayPal account, just in case. Then I went ahead with my daily stuff.

  By morning, I had almost forgotten about the freaky night at the French online casino. I had Mandarin speaking classes. In the class, the lecturer was talking about some game where you had to decipher a puzzle. He gave it to the class to solve it. A guy came out and started explaining all these principles he used to solve it. Again, I wasn’t paying much attention, but one thing he said did catch my ear. He mentioned numbers. Numbers corresponding to letters.

  I knew then that was the solution. I went back home and opened my notebook.

  16 is P

  12 is L

  5 is E

  1 is A

  19 is S

  5 is E

  PLEASE

  8 is H

  5 is E

  12 is L

  16 is P

  HELP

  13 is M

  5 is E

  ME

  Please help me.

  The young girl, trapped inside the casino, was begging for help and I was too stupid to pay attention.

  Was this a prank?

  I don’t know.

  A coincidence? Hardly.

  I didn’t know what to do. I tried logging into the website again, but it was completely normal.

  There was no lobby. I was, and still am, helpless.

  I spent hours, writing this and overanalyzing what could have happened. I googled every phrase I could think of but to no luck.

  And then, just as I started writing this, I remembered the last 3 numbers.

  19, 1, and 14.

  S, A, and N.

  The first three letters of my name.

  I could’ve probably gotten the other two letters/numbers if the situation hadn’t escalated. I felt sick. My knees went weak.

  This wasn’t a coincidence.

  What could be worse?

  They bloody knew my name!

  ABOUT KOMAL AMBARDEKAR

  Komal Ambardekar is creative, effervescent, and quirky. She has been writing thrilling stories revolving around mystery and horror for a long time.

  She had a life-long dream of becoming a published writer and her main source of inspiration has been her mother.

  As an ardent reader, she was fascinated by the stories written by Narayan Dharap, Ratnakar Matkari, and later shifted her liking towards Stephen King. This made her explore horror which is now her main genre.

  She is an animal enthusiast who loves spending time with stray dogs and works part-time for a local animal NGO.

  Komal Ambardekar has a successful career in the HR industry and is working for a reputed MNC.

  Born and raised in Mumbai, Komal now lies at Hyderabad with her husband savouring the great Andhra culture of biryani and spices.

  You can contact Komal Ambardekar on komal.amb89@gmail.com

  HOTEL COMFORT INN

  Deepali Adhikary

  Dear Anuj,

  The meeting with the client in Mumbai has been arranged on 28 Feb 2019. Please make your travel and stay arrangements and claim for reimbursements. The brief about the meeting is expected by the end of same day.

  Regards,

  Rashmi Mehta

  Sales & Mktg,

  Pride Software Solutions

  The email from Anuj’s colleague was crisp and clear. He was expected to travel on a short notice of 24 hours from Indore to Mumbai. He worked for the marketing department of a midsized software company and travelled often. The travel was usually planned in advance. This, however, was an exception. He logged on to a travel website and checked for ticket prices. Late-night flights were slightly cheaper. He decided to get a late-night flight that departed at 11:45 p.m. from Indore and landed at 1:10 a.m. in Mumbai. He would have to check into a hotel to get some sleep that night. He had to ensure that fatigue didn’t make him inefficient at the meeting the next day. This client was important for him and his company.

  He had to find a hotel close to the client’s office so that he didn’t waste valuable time in the crazy Mumbai traffic. The travel website offered hotel bookings too. He looked for a hotel somewhere in Sakinaka. He would have to bear the cost in lieu of the convenience of being near the client’s office which was in same area. He explored some of the options and zeroed in on a property decent enough for the price it quoted. He knew that he didn’t have a lot of options at that hour which suited his pocket. He browsed through the photos and read a few reviews. It seemed to be popular amongst the customers and the average rating was 4.2. Anuj decided to go with a hotel named Comfort Inn but sniggered at the unintelligent tagline—“Your comfort is paramount.”

  Then he saw another line:

  This hotel has a 100% advance payment policy.

  Anuj hadn’t seen the payment policy earlier and immediately regretted it. He preferred the ‘pay at hotel’ policy. But then, it was already 11:00 a.m. He couldn’t waste time any further browsing for more hotels. So, he decided to go ahead and make the full payment.

  He received an email instantly, confirming his booking and with some additional details about the hotel and the list of customer care numbers in case anything went wrong or if he needed any support.

  “Yeah, right!” he thought to himself mockingly and buried himself in preparations of the ensuing meeting.

  ***

  You have arrived!

  The flight was uneventful. Anuj was tired by the time he had checked in, and slept as soon as he took his window seat. He woke up only when the flight landed at the Mumbai Airport. He looked at the watch and realized the flight had landed exactly on time. He didn’t have any checked-in baggage, and so he booked a cab on his phone and walked straight toward the exit to the taxi pickup point outside the terminal.

  His cab arrived in a few minutes. He got into the back. The driver asked for the location which irritated him slightly. “Didn’t you get it when I made the booking?” he snapped at the driver.

  The driver was in his mid-twenties and he might have been used to all kinds of weird passengers. He didn’t mind Anuj’s curt response. He exited the airport and started navigating through the sparse traffic on the Mumbai roads at that hour. Anuj dozed off again.

  A loud thump woke Anuj up. The cab had bounced on a pothole. He looked at the watch. He had been in the cab for twenty minutes. He checked his app for location and ETA.

  With great alarm, he noted that the location of the cab was off-track from the route his m
ap showed. “Where are you going? This is not the route,” he told the driver, now both confused and angry.

  “I am going as per the directions of the map, sir. See!” the driver said and pointed at the map on the phone attached to the mobile holder on the dashboard.

  He was right. His device showed that the cab was on the correct route. Anuj checked his app again, but it still clearly showed that they were off-track by a couple of kilometres at least. The driver must have manipulated the location when I was sleeping, Anuj told himself. It’s his way to get back at me for shouting at him at the airport. Sternly, he instructed the driver, “Listen, we will go as per my route. Take a right at the next turning and go as I tell you.”

  The driver gave him a nasty look in the rear-view mirror and took the next right. He navigated as Anuj instructed. Seven minutes later, Anuj’s app announced that they had arrived at the destination. The driver’s map still showed a different route.

  Anuj smiled at his smartness and commended himself for not going by the driver’s map. “Only because I am not from Mumbai, you thought you could take me for a ride,” Anuj said under his breath as his paid the driver.

  The driver was too pissed off by now to respond. He sped off as soon as Anuj stepped out of the cab.

  ***

  The property matched the pictures shown on the website—a navy-blue four-story building with an unpretentious front elevation, looking like a typical economy hotel in Mumbai. Lights were out in all the rooms and curtains were drawn. Anuj stepped inside and found it odd that there was no doorman. He blamed the late hour rather than the hotel for this oversight. The reception area was standard and modest—a cheap vase with artificial flowers, some torn newspapers, and magazines on the table between a couple of battered three-seater sofas. The light blue paint on the walls was chipped off in places and cobwebs had claimed the corners authoritatively. A dustbin in the corner was almost full and had spit stains all over it.

  Anuj cursed himself for having made the full advance payment. He saw a stairway in the corner. The light there flickered, making it look like a creepy den ready to gobble up anything that enters it. Next to the stairway was the elevator. The wall beyond the reception desk adorned the mandatory notices about check-in/check-out timings, no refund policy, CCTV cameras, and such.

  Anuj leaned on the reception desk which reached up to his chest and looked around to see if anyone was around. There was a feedback book on the desk, which had a thin layer of dust and a cheap ball pen dangling from a thread. A tiny cockroach had found its way into the feedback book. Anuj raised a hand to swat the pest when a man suddenly appeared from behind the desk and made him jump.

  “Good evening, sir! Welcome to the Comfort Inn. What can I do for you?” the man said in a flat but polite tone.

  He might have been around 30-35 years of age but his balding head made him look much older. He was dark-complexioned and wore spectacles with thick glasses. He had a nervous look on his face but tried to hide it with a fake smile plastered on it. He didn’t appear to be very smart but had a look that may have attracted sympathy from those who looked at him. He wore a blue suit that needed an urgent visit to the dry-cleaners and a badge that red ‘Hubert Desena – Reception’.

  Anuj composed himself and told the man about his booking.

  Hubert took a couple of minutes to check on his computer while Anuj waited impatiently. Then he confirmed that they had received his booking.

  “Sanju Kaka!” he shouted suddenly, startling Anuj out of his wits once again. An old man appeared from a door behind the Reception counter. He was in a maroon uniform with a badge ‘Sanju’ dangling sideways on his breast-pocket. He was in his late fifties and looked like he had never been younger. Unkempt hair, a thin greying moustache, and a mole on his right cheek made him look like a villain from a Bollywood movie. He yawned unabashedly as he stood there scratching his head.

  “Escort sir to 313,” Hubert instructed Sanju Kaka sternly and handed over a key to him.

  Sanju Kaka, on the other hand made no attempts to hide his irritation at being woken up at this odd hour.

  “He will take you to your room, sir. I hope you have a pleasant stay!” Hubert gave Anuj the same plastic smile that might have extracted a sarcastic remark from him on any other day, but he was too tired to respond today. He followed Sanju Kaka silently into the elevator that would take him to the third floor and to the room number 313.

  ***

  Room 313.

  The key had to be wriggled a couple of times before it gave way and the door opened.

  Sanju Kaka inserted the magnetic tag into its holder near the door and the lights came on. “Your room, sir. Dial 9 for reception, 6 for housekeeping, and 3 for room service,” he said pointing to the room and then to the black phone instrument.

  “What should I dial for comfort?” Anuj said with a sarcastic smirk.

  But the humour was lost on Sanju Kaka as his kept looking at Anuj with the same blank expression. He wished Anuj a good night and closed the door with a bang on his way out. Anuj thought it was intentional.

  The room was small but functional. The furniture was minimal. A single bed lay in the corner of the room facing a small flat screen TV. A small window on the wall behind the bed had faded light-blue curtains to match the color on the walls. A small single-door cupboard stood in the other corner. The bathroom was near the door. Anuj took a look at the room and sighed thankfully. It was comfortable enough to spend a couple of nights. He freshened up and changed into his shorts and T-shirt. He gulped from the complimentary water bottle and slid the curtain slightly to look out. The street was deserted with only stray dogs lurking around. Anuj put a 6 a.m. alarm and slid into the bed. He started thinking about the next day’s meeting and fell asleep in just a few moments.

  ***

  A loud banging on the door startled Anuj.

  He took a moment to grasp his surroundings and the fact that somebody was pounding on his door. The watch showed 3:30 a.m. He sat up in his bed and shouted, “Who is it?”

  The banging stopped but nobody responded. The lights were out in the room, but Anuj could see somebody moving across the well-lit corridor from the slit beneath the door.

  More banging. Louder this time.

  Anuj walked towards the door angrily but hesitated to open the door. He stuck his ear to the door to listen closely. He called out again, “Who is it?”

  No response.

  But he heard someone walking up and down the corridor, panting loudly. He checked the latch on the door and came back to his bed. He picked up the phone and dialled 9 for reception. A man, presumably Hubert, picked up the call and Anuj shot at him immediately, “What the hell is going on here? Somebody is banging on my door.”

  There was a long pause at the other end.

  Anuj thought he heard someone breathing heavily. He was about to shout again when Hubert said, “That bastard is doing it again. Sorry, sir. There is a crazy man in the area who gets into our hotel once in a while and bangs on the doors. He has not harmed anyone so far, sir, but please do not open the door. I will send somebody to check right now. Very sorry, sir!”

  Anuj was too stunned to respond. As he placed the receiver back, he heard Hubert calling out to Sanju Kaka to go upstairs and check.

  There was no way he could sleep anymore. He perched up on the bed and pulled up the sheets. He stretched his hand to switch the lights on but changed his mind. He switched the TV on instead but put in on mute. A random Hindi movie was playing, but Anuj hardly noticed anything on the screen. His eyes were glued to the door and the lights sweeping in from the corridor.

  There was no movement for the next fifteen minutes. Then, he heard the elevator stop at his floor. He waited.

  Travel and tiredness made Anuj doze off once again. The banging startled him again. This time, he was more frightened than irritated. He looked at the door but didn’t move. Then just as suddenly as it had started, the banging stopped.

  But he could
see a shadow…

  Somebody had begun to scratch on the door. Slow, deliberate scratching. He got off the bed and moved toward the door very slowly. The scratching was now accompanied by moaning. He moved closer to the door.

  “Help me!” came a voice from the other side of the door.

  Anuj almost toppled over backward in shock. Then, gathering himself once again, he came closer and softly put his ear to the door.

  “Please help me!”

  A man’s voice. There was definitely somebody outside. And he was in pain.

  “Who is it?” Anuj asked with his hand on the doorknob. He was contemplating opening the door but he thought of Hubert’s advice.

  “Open the door. He will kill me. Help me!” The voice was getting thinner. The man was definitely in pain and needed help.

  ‘Is it Sanju Kaka? He had come up here to check. Did that crazy man attack him?’ A barrage of thoughts came to Anuj’s mind. He made up his mind to open the door. But then he suddenly turned and ran to the phone. He dialled 9 for reception and waited. No answer. He dialled 6 for housekeeping. No answer. 3 for room service. No answer. “What’s going on here?” he said out loud.

  The man outside continued the knocking on the door, but the knocks were getting weaker. He kept on mumbling, “Help me!”

  ***

  4:00 a.m.

  “Please… hellppp…”

  The voice faded away as the knocks died down. But Anuj couldn’t let the man die out there. Also, he hadn’t heard anybody else out there. ‘That crazy man must have ran away after attacking Sanju Kaka!’ Anuj went up to open the door. He looked around for something he could use as a weapon but all he could find was a hanger in the cupboard. He held the hanger like a hammer and opened the door mustering all the courage he had.

  The corridor was empty. He looked left and right. Nobody. And then he noticed. Blood splattered across his door and on the carpet in the hallway. There were marks of something that had been dragged away from his door to the last room across the corridor. Anuj moved ahead slowly and cautiously with his hanger held up for defense. All other rooms looked unoccupied. He reached the last room and touched the door gently. The door wasn’t locked. The drag marks could be seen going inside the room.