Chapter 9: The Slide
The following day, all four individuals were in the same room Anay sat cross-legged on his bed, textbooks open, the foldable table balancing precariously on his knees. The evening was thick with the kind of uneasy silence that fills a house after a storm. Suddenly, Zunaid burst through the door, eyes wild, breath ragged, and dove under the bed in a single, fluid motion. Anay blinked in disbelief. Relief flashed through him—Zunaid was back, surely just playing a prank to lighten the tension.
He leaned down, lifting the edge of the blanket that draped over the bedframe. “Zunaid, I saw you,” he called, his voice wavering with forced cheerfulness. “There’s no use hiding.” But as his eyes adjusted to the dusty dimness beneath the bed, he saw only shadows. Zunaid wasn’t there. Not a trace—no shifting feet, no gleam of frightened eyes. Anay’s heart hammered in his chest. A tremor ran through his body, cold and sudden.
Shivam, noticing the change, hurried over. “Anay, what’s wrong?” he asked, his hand gripping Anay’s shoulder with concern. Nitin and Saurav looked up from across the room, drawn by the tension in the air.
Anay could barely speak, his voice no more than a whisper. “Zunaid… he—he ran in here and hid under the bed. But he’s not there. He just disappeared.”
The words hung between them, heavy and strange. The others exchanged glances, trying to find sense in the uncanny. “It must just be the aftermath of yesterday,” one of them offered. “Maybe you’re seeing things.”
Anay stood frozen, every muscle locked in place by a current of fear that refused to let him move. Finally, he tore his eyes from the empty space beneath the bed and turned to his friends. Their concern was enough to jolt him from his trance. Wordlessly, as if guided by an unspoken agreement, they decided to leave the PG for a while. The outside air was sharp and bracing, but it offered a kind of relief that their haunted room could not.
That night, Anay made up his mind: he wouldn’t return to the PG. Instead, he found shelter with another friend, the laughter and conversation there acting as a balm for his rattled nerves. Sleep eventually found him, though it was the fitful, restless sleep of someone chased by memories. But for now, he was away from the shadows—and sometimes, that was enough.
Ink of Dread 
Leave a comment