Noises in the Night

Since it was pouring on Friday, most of us decided to turn in early. And so here I was sleeping peacefully when I heard this scream. I thought I was probably dreaming this at first, and then I turned to see if my roommate was awake. She was, and was clutching her sheet up to her mouth. She was staring at me and wasn’t even blinking, god that gave me the creeps. The scream came again louder this time, rite outside my balcony. My roommate jumped out of the bed and came on mine. I asked her ‘did you hear that? Should we go out and check?’ I was given this horrified look with a vehement No! It was a man who was screaming; don’t think both of us were too keen to find out.
The screams kept coming and they sounded horrible, filled with pain. Since we didn’t want to go out in the balcony, we decided to get out of the room and go to the others. We got out and saw that the lights were on in the drawing room and everyone was up.

Around midnight, while two of my hostel mates were sitting out in the balcony (upstairs); they saw a man jump the gate and he had a huge log of wood in his hand. He started running towards the hostel keeping near the bushes. That’s when the girls alerted the watchman, who went after him. The watchman caught the guy but was beating him right outside my balcony. That’s what I had woken to. The screams were still going on and well most of us had our ears covered. Suddenly it stopped, we went towards the main door and looked out, the watchman came up and said that the guy had slipped away and was hiding in the shed.

Since the sheds are more like abandoned buildings behind the hostel, it was not safe to venture out in them. We decided to call up the ncc mess that was right next to out hostel. Two bhaiyas came over. Ten minutes there was no sign of that man, so the watchman decided to go out of the gate and look. While these two bhaiyas were keeping watch. Suddenly this man emerged and the bhaiyas went after him. They caught him and started questioning him. He looked horrible and scary. He was acting as if he didn’t know where he was or who he was. The warden decided that he was probably pretending to be mad. Since it was raining and calling the MP in the middle of the night would take a long time; we decided to call the cops.

The cops came, they checked the grounds and then took the guy away. Phew! We then called up the OIC and informed him about the whole affair. It was over, finally.

It was still pouring and with the special effects of thunder and lightning. Nobody wanted to go to sleep after that so we all sat together in the drawing room. Finally around three we all went to bed. I was having a very restless sleep, since I could not get the horrible incident outta my head. Suddenly my roommate screamed. (We sleep with the lights on). She got up looked at the balcony and said "that man". Well since she sleeps near the balcony side I thought there was another man out there. Then she turns to me and said “you woke me up” and promptly went off to sleep. I was sitting with my mouth open. Yikes, she scared the hell out of me. The next morning, she did not have any recollection of the whole incident, except a sheepish grin. Needless to say I was awake throughout the night staring into the balcony.