RED

Back to Ooty

"This only means one thing," Karthik said finally with firm tone distracting me from my thoughts shifting everyone's attention towards him, including his roommate's who had been playing pubg all this time, "This only means that.....someone have stayed along with us secretly hiding somewhere in the guest house that week, with a mobile holding that sim card number."

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"What?" Sushi, Vishal and I said in unison trying to digest what he just said.

"Yes. How else is it possible to have that number located in my guest house?" He asked.

The room went silent for a minute. Someone had stayed along with us hiding in the guest house?

"Exactly!" Vishal snapped making me jump in my seat, "You are exactly right, Karthik. It all makes sense now. You're excellent bro."

"What do you mean it all makes sense?" Sushi asked him clearly confused like I was.

In response to her question, Vishal stood up slowly and looked at her, widening his eyes so big that half of his eyeballs popped out, "All the strange mysterious things that happened in the guest house, Sushma.? May be these two are co-related. How did you forget about them?" He said, followed by opening his mouth and staring at her like a statue of chimpanzee.

Vishal can be a drama queen sometimes.

"Woah! Chill out dude. You're more dramatic than any girl I've ever met." said Karthik's roommate, Sunny, shrugging off his shoulders.

My friends turned their heads towards him, probably acknowledging his presence for the first time since we came in, "Umm, you've heard all our conversations, haven't you?" Karthik asked Sunny. It sounded like Karthik was embarrassed of our dumb discussion being heard by his roommate.

"Yeah Karthik. You guys were talking so loud and I have to cut my mic off so that my pubg friends do not think I'm a dumb person living with a bunch of creepy people who traces phone numbers thinking themselves as crime detectives without a graduation." Saying this at our faces without even considering if we got offended, Sunny left the room playing his game.

Well, we might have sounded creepy after all.

Vishal sat down from his statue position and cleared his throat, "Cool! I wanted that little bastard out of the room anyway. So, you guys remember when Nikita cried telling that she saw someone in one of the locked rooms in hallway? She got terrified and moved out of the guest house with those three girls for last two days of our trip. We didn't believe her. Turns out, she was saying truth and she actually saw someone in that room. May be that was the person using the phone number that Vinny got details about!"

"Yes. You might be right, Vishal." I said rewinding all the things that happened back in Ooty, "We locked those rooms in the first place because Nikita saw some silhouette in that room behind me and that room of course had a basement. It is possible this stranger might have stayed in that basement."

"Exactly, Vinny. You are getting me right. We both went down there to check but Karthik interrupted us. Ahhh! What a fun we would've had if he just slept in his room for a while. Also, doors got locked and banged on themselves. May be the reason was not our hallucinations or a ghost afterall. The question is, who was this person?"

I still remember those eyes I saw in the basement when I went in there with Vishal. All these events strongly implies presence of someone. Why didn't we think about this while we still were there in Ooty?

"So what do we do now?" Sushi asked.

"I will ask someone to check the guest house thoroughly" replied Karthik, "may be this has nothing to do with Nikita's death but this stranger might be living in my guest house since it's abandoned most of the time. That's it. There is nothing more to it."