'Don't let the bed bugs bite,' Mom said. Then she fly-kissed him, turned off the lights, and left, shutting the door behind her and leaving her son in utter dark.

It was a while before Avish slept. Quite a while, in fact. For he could hear the muffled quarrel going on between his parents in the room across the hall. He couldn't really make out the words, but then again, he didn't want to. What he wanted was to storm into their room and shout in their faces That's enough! but what did he know? He was just a kid.

Thinking of bed-bugs and the Boogies at school, he finally went to sleep after he began to lose track of time.

The first encounter of eleven-year Avish with his ghost would never have occurred had it not been for the humming and whistling that woke him about four hours later that night. At precisely two in the morning.

Then again, so much wouldn't have happened if he hadn't met Bhoo. And so much would have happened.

Even before his eyes opened, the beautifully haunting sound penetrated his ears. With no sight, therefore, he absorbed the hum-and-whistle startlingly well, such that he was certain that the source of the tune was within the room itself. That alarmed him to some extent, but he was still sleepy as it was. For all young Avish knew, he could be hallucinating, or dreaming, or maybe it was his parents' rowing that he'd mistaken for music. It was some fine music, at that. Almost surreal, like something right out of the pages of a fairytale. It took Avish a moment to take in the verity that the melody was very real. And yes, the musician was in the same room as him. The aura of another presence was unmistakable, even for a young lad like him. An unfamiliar aura.

That hit hard, and fear began to settle in.

Slowly propping himself into an upright position on the bed, eyes shut tight, Avish felt the hair on his arms stand in attention. He also experienced a strange tingle at the back of his neck, the kind of which he had never experienced before. He knew if he dared to open his eyes, he'd see the one emancipating the mesmerizing melody.

Meanwhile, the music picked pace, grew louder. It filled his blind world. Someone was snapping their fingers too now, synchronizing with each beat, each whistle. Someone near him. Someone whose humming and whistling and snapping had such power, such conviction, that it was pragmatically controlling Avish.

Beckoning to him.

Urging him.

Maybe it was a whole gang. A gang of crazy adults who ate youngsters alive, like in that movie Roy had been talking about in school. It had seemed silly, then, in a classroom, with friends by his side. It hardly seemed ludicrous now.

He would pay for even the Boogies to accompany him at the moment. Avish was suddenly so scared, and gruesome images kept popping up in his mind, that he thought he'd piss himself.

He wanted to scream, oh yes, he wanted to scream so bad.

But the music had ahold of him. It had blocked his motor signals; immobilized him, all the while cradling him in its arms.

Abruptly, all noise waned.

Silence treaded its footsteps, and this particular silence was even more eerie than the music itself. Avish's heart started pounding in every organ, every tissue, every cell of his body. He was convinced that a child-killer gang, like the one from the movie Roy had told them about, had somehow found him. And now that the music had stopped, they'd complete the real job they were here to do.

Avish desperately wanted to open his eyes. Yet, in the end, he was but a scared child.

'Open your eyes,' a voice susurrated just then, reading his thoughts. 'I'm not here to hurt you.'

The voice sounded so good-natured, so serene, so soothing, so deep, that Avish simply couldn't disobey, even though it was not even a command.

Couldn't child-killers have smooth voices? If anything, it probably only helped with their profession. But there was a special quality to this guy's baritone, a - kindness, maybe? A politeness? Earnest sincerity?

He did say he's not going to hurt me.

(and you believe him?)

Yes. Yes, I do.

'Open your eyes, Avish,' the voice insisted.

Involuntarily, he did.

It was impossible to resist that voice. Pointless to even try. It was as hypnotic as the music had been. This was definitely the same guy whose humming and whistling had woke him up.

Darkness engulfed him immediately as his eyes creaked open. True darkness.

Asleep, Avish hadn't been able to register the dark. Awake, he did.

A minimal amount of moonlight flirted in through the little window by his bedside. It granted some clarity of vision, at least.

There was some movement.

There, by the opposite rightmost corner of the room.

The killer-

(don't call him a killer, please, please, hope he's not a killer)

-was sitting on his favorite bean-bag by that particular corner. Moonlight made him scantly visible.

His legs were very, very long, and were crossed neatly in front of him. He was wearing gigantic, black-dyed boots that would legitimately be a fit for Bigfoot. The peculiar part of it was, that he had no socks on. So a very tiny region between the ends of his black pants and his black boots was quite visible - now, perhaps it was the moonlight, perhaps not, but that exposed terrain of his leg was smooth, hairless, emaciated, pale as a bone. In fact, it looked just like one. Thin, quite thin, with seemingly no flesh. And white, in stark contrast with the rest of his attire. There was his shirt, too. It seemed to be pastel-colored as well, edging towards pure white, but Avish couldn't be sure in the darkness. There was a dark-colored tie, that he was sure of; it must be black, was his thought, or the man didn't have a sense of fashion. He wore something over the shirt, probably a waistcoat or a jacket of some kind. His face, though, was completed shrouded in shadows. Avish also saw an uncertain delineate of a hat. And the man's left hand, yes, it had an anomaly - not his palm or anything, but his knuckles, gaunt and scruffy even from a distance: the first knuckle was undoubtedly raised several inches above the rest.

Just visualizing what the man's face would look like gave Avish all sorts of chills.

But if the man was indeed a killer, he surely didn't know how to dress like one.

Avish gulped. His heartbeat ratcheted up markedly.

'How - how do you know my name?' Avish asked, hoping he wasn't sounding as frightened as he felt.

'I know many things about you, Avish,' the man replied. His voice exemplary as compared to that of the kid's. 'For one, you don't believe in the supernatural. Why, then, are you so afraid?'

'I'm not.'

The man laughed. And it was a gentlemanly laugh at that. Not mocking, not assertive. Just an affable, cordial laugh, the kind that makes you want to laugh along.

Only this was no chortling moment. Not to Avish.

'There is no need to lie to me, Avish,' said the man, honey dripping from his tone. 'No need at all. I told you I am not going to hurt you. That's a promise right there. Okay?'

Avish chose silence.

The man continued. 'Let it out, Avish. Whatever you are feeling. We have met before, you and I. Perhaps you remember?'

Avish shook his head. He was pretty sure the guy was bluffing to gain his trust. He was probably scouting his pockets for knives to slit his throat as he talked.

You should scream, Avish told himself.

But his rational counterpart seemed to have gone on snooze. He was doing everything erroneously in the presence of this stranger. The man was a sorcerer, a wizard. He had Avish under his spell by some unperceivable string. The music had done that task, likely.

'Too bad,' said the man. 'Don't you remember when you got lost at the fair last summer? You saw me, did you not?'

How does he know?

'I even waved at you,' imbued the man. 'You do not remember? Me, the balloon, nothing?

The man holding the balloon. Of course.

When Avish had gotten lost that time amongst the wild fair throng, he had seen a lofty man, garbed all in black. Waving at him from above other heads. Standing out from the rest. It had been almost like no one else could see the man, except for Avish. The man had had a sleek black cane in one hand and a balloon in the other. The balloon had said "Lost" with a crying face drawn on it in black marker. The man had started chasing Avish through the crowd, taking huge leaps, sometimes even running right through some people, apparently.

This was the same creepy tall guy who had sprinted after him then . . . or was it?

'I helped you find your parents. Remember?'

'Helped me find them?' Avish rebuked. 'You chased me! Scared me half to death!'

'That's what you think? Why not try to recall some more? I chased you, yes. I apologize for having scared you. But running from me, who'd you run into? Huh?'

Now that he thought about it in retrospect, the man wasn't wrong. 'My parents . . . I'd found them . . . and you . . .'

Avish had bumped into his father as he'd been getting away from his chaser. Tears had started streaking down his tears. Mom had also been crying. The two of them had hugged, the embrace not breaking any sooner than three whole minutes. 'Well,' Dad had said, 'finders keepers.' And then -

'And then I waved you a little goodbye from top of the Ferris Wheel. With the other balloon that said -'

' "Found",' Avish mumbled. He remembered now.

Could this really be the same man? Was this just a big, overly complicated dream? If so, it was vivid as God's presence.

'Yes,' said the man. 'So you do remember. Great. I've met you on numerous occasions, Avish, though you might not remember. Many a time I haven't revealed myself to you, scrutinizing silently from the shadows. Not interfering unless I absolutely had to. It is your life, after all.'

On another day, and from another mouth, these words would've made him uncomfortable. But his discomfort and fright towards the mysterious stranger - or the not-so-stranger, if what he said was true - was increasingly plummeting.

Still, one can never be too sure.

'How do I trust you?'

'Why, take my word for it, 'course.'

'Take the word of a mysterious stranger who broke into my house and my room?'

Avish heard the man sigh. It was a rasping, exasperated sound, crude to the ear. 'Alright then,' said the man, either shrugging or raising his arms up in surrender (Avish couldn't really see). 'Do you remember the funeral of Mrs. Gonzalez?'

'I do.'

'Do you remember why you and your mother and your father left early?' questioned the man.

'Yeah, I mean, I got sick and - '

'Do you recall how you got sick, though?'

Avish strained on the memory. It had been more than two years, and funerals aren't exactly attended for cultivating fond memories that are to be cherished. In fact, Mom had argued against taking nine-year-old (back then) Avish with them at all. But Daddy didn't want a weasel for a son. He said Avish had to know about these things sooner or later, be a man, be rough, be gruff.

At the funeral, Avish had been standing at the very back with his mother. But when Mom went forward to pay her obeisances to the dead lady, the young stirpling found himself to be bored. It was turning out to be a fruitless day, the sun way too hot and crisp, and even Mom taking way too long. So he had wandered off by himself, to sit on a bench under a shed just a little distance away. There, he had found the bench already occupied. By none other than the late Mrs. Gonzalez herself. She had glowed with a dismal sheen, looking miserable. She had neared Avish, smirked almost evilly at him. Avish had backed off one step at a time, unsure of what to do. Then he had slammed into the leg of a grown-up.

A grown-up dressed all in black. A grown-up with a cane in his hand. A grown-up whose face Avish hadn't been able to see because of the hat and the sun. Go back to your mother, the grown-up had said. Go back to her now. Tell her you are sick. Leave.

'It was you,' Avish muttered presently. 'Wasn't it?'

'Indeed.' Avish could nearly hear the beam in the man's tone.

How had he never made the connection before? Now that he thought about it, there were a lot many little incidences where he'd accidentally run into a dingy stranger. Or, rather, the stranger had run into him.

'I have been with you,' the man said, 'all your life. Observing you. Protecting you.'

'Protecting me?' Avish inquired. 'From what? And why? Who are you?'

'That, my friend-' (Avish cringed hard at this) '-is a lot of questions for one meet. Suffice to say for now that I mean you no harm. So - '

Here the man leaned forward in the bean-bag and his face entered the province of the dim moonlight, and became visible for once to Avish. Yes, this was the same guy from the fair. The guy with the balloon was also the guy in his room.

And his face was quite unremarkable, so to say, unless you looked at it for long enough - which Avish did - and started noticing the little subtleties that can go unnoticed on first sight: the countless wrinkles, the innumerable ridges, the cobwebby-thin skin stretched over a canvas of facial bones.

But that wasn't all.

The most atrocious part about the man's face were his eyes. One of them, the left one, was halfway shut, with an old scar running over the permanently closed eye and all the way up to the chipped brow. The other eye, however, was wide ajar, piercing Avish through and through. The eyeball seemed to have been painted over by a stony, moss-green color, which glowed bizarrely in the dark. Like an actual eyeball had been replaced by an antique coin ridden with seaweed, just dangling there in the socket, amidst a network of fiery red capillaries running through the negligible white in his eyes.

One thing was certain: this was no human face. It might as well be a mask. Who knew? Maybe it was. Maybe the actual skin in there was even uglier, all rotten and crawling with filthy maggots . . .

'-what say, Avish? Are you still afraid of me?'

______________________________________
Thirst, oh thirst - one of the few things that could wake her up in the middle of her congenial dreams.

Shweta looked at her cell. Two 'o' damn clock. But now she was wake, she better quench that thirst of hers after all. Or the itch in her cursed throat wouldn't let her return to Dream-Land back again.

So she got up, went to the kitchen, had a glass of water. Not more than a glass, she made a note to self. You don't wanna get up again just to take a damn leak.

While Shweta was at it, she thought she heard some noises from her son's room across the hall. Of light musical notes, of all things. It was stupid, sure, but curiosity has been killing cats for centuries.

Hence she went to check. As she neared the door, for a second she actually mused the sounds were real. Just for a second, mind you.

Of course she found Avish dead asleep on his bed, rolled in his blankets, limbs spread wide. For a minute Shweta's mind fooled her into thinking she had heard some movement in the room, farther back in the corner, where her son's darling bean-bag was placed. But of course it was nothing. Of course.

You're just growing old, Shweta told herself, then cackled lightly. Nah, you're already old. And craggy. And paranoid.

SSDD, bitch. Same Shit, Different Day.

She kissed Avish on the cheek and left. Soon as she lay in bed next to a snoring Dhruv, she dozed right back off to sleep. Her Dream-Land welcomed her with open arms.
_______________________________________

Recoiling, shielding his eyes from the ghastly sight of the man's countenance, especially his sickly eyes, Avish managed a shriek out of his clogged throat as he retreated under the covers.

Long, slender fingers touched him through the sheets.

NOTE: The first few chapters are mainly introductory and create an atmosphere for the story to proceed. Remain patient, and by the time you reach the end - I promise you'll have something special to take away.

Thanks for reading!