The Visitor
This story was narrated to me by ‘B’, who is a friend, during one of my stays at his house. Before I tell you the story though, perhaps I should describe the house itself.
It was a huge house with a gigantic lounge on both the upper and lower floors, with a circular staircase right in the middle of the house. I remember quite clearly that the upper floor was always rather creepy. It was usually quite dark, and we only ever really went upstairs when we needed to sleep. I always tried to pass through the dimly lit lounge as quickly as possible and I would run to and from the staircase whenever I needed to sneak downstairs for food, or to go to his room. The lounge racked my nerves for some reason, though I am sure the fear was very irrational. Nevertheless I would never spend too much time there, quite like how we run out of a basement after switching its light off.
It was late one night and ‘B’ and I were in his room deciding if we should watch a movie, or play games. I wanted to watch a horror movie, and ‘B’, who had always been a horror movie buff as far as I knew, simply kept shaking his head telling me he couldn’t watch a horror movie. He did not really offer me a reason for this sudden change in tastes so I got curious and asked him why he didn’t want to watch one. He simply said “Because I am scared.”
I looked at him, puzzled. As the silence stretched over a few seconds he understood that my silence meant that I needed more of an explanation than that, so he sighed, looked around edgily, and said “Things happened… In this room… recently”.
I knew ‘B’ was not someone who could be frightened easily, so I inquired further. And that is when he told me the story:
“It was a little before you came to visit. I was sleeping in my room one night when I was suddenly woken up by the weight of someone sitting on my chest. In the dim light I made out the face of a woman… a beautiful woman. She had beautiful black hair and had I not been scared to death by a stranger sitting on my chest, I would have found her quite attractive. She was staring at me hungrily, and though I tried to shout at her to let me go, I could not make a sound.
I tried to struggle out of her hold, but she held on with a beastly might and slowly started undoing my trousers. I was afraid of what she might do to me, but I was certainly not expecting what happened after. Before I knew what was going on, she was straddling me, with the same greedy and hungry eyes, and as I looked at her, she slowly turned into a terrifyingly scary old woman straight out of a nightmare. Her hair grew white from black and her face aged rapidly in front of my eyes. Her eyes, though hollow, became hungrier, and even more horrifying than before.
I do not know where I found the strength from, but I was scared so much that I managed to kick the old hag in the chest, at which she flew—or floated into the wall in front of my bed, leaving a smudgy imprint of her face on the wall as she dissolved inside it. I expected her to return any moment from the wall, but she didn’t. When I finally managed to muster enough courage to get up, the first thing I did was to take my shirt off and wipe the imprint of her face from the wall. I felt considerably better after the imprint was gone, but I went back to the bed as quickly as I could, hiding myself under the sheets. I lay there till I fell asleep”
By this point of the story I was turning around to look at the wall where the smudge was supposed to have appeared, and indeed, the wall was somewhat marked. But his story was not quite convincing. I felt that he could have, and must have dreamt it all. It happens to all teenage boys. So I told him just that, at which he shook his head knowingly and said “Yes, I know what you mean. But the thing is, that I know it definitely happened.”
“How are you so sure?” I asked him.
“Because when I woke up the next morning, I was not wearing my shirt, and it was lying crumpled exactly where I had left it the night before, smudged, and dirty… And… because…” He grew quite hesitant.
“And because? What?”
“And because… she has returned twice since that night” He said, in a tone that rang of fear. His eyes were darting about the room, making sure there was no one in any of the darker corners, and for the first time, I was equally nervous.
I am still not quite sure whether I believe his story or not. All I know is that we made sure we stayed awake till the sun came out every night after that till I went away. He never mentioned if he saw her again. But I’m not sure it is something he would tell anyone, in any case.
True Story from:
Salman Shahid Khan
Narrated by ‘B’
CompulsiveTypist 
