By Arnav Mehta

The distant bell clock had chimed eleven times long ago. The dimly lit corridor ahead was as silent as a graveyard and seemed to lead nowhere. My footsteps echoed as I stepped into a still psychiatric clinical room; it smelled damp and dank. Vines had crept and slithered through the cracked windows like they were reaching for something they had lost.

The angry skies rumbled on with thunderous outbursts, white streaks of lightning revealing brief flashes of the room. A tall three-legged chair sat in the corner, a long bed draped in white hospital sheets and an overhead lamp that sputtered in failure. Haunted by my childhood fears, I recalled dark nights which I had been forced to spend alone, glimpses of shadows lurking in corners and swarms of nocturnal whispers that echoed through the quiet corridor. The whispers still reverberated in my ears after all these years, deepening my fear of what lay ahead.

And then I saw it. In a flash of lightning, I caught a glimpse of a shadow reflecting off the wall as if it were silently following me. My heart was beating out of my chest. Goosebumps crept up my spine, and I dared not move, fearing the slightest sound might provoke the shadow. The hanging lightbulbs were flickering rapidly, on and off. Every time the light went out, it shifted and vanished to a different spot. The shadow disappeared only to reappear closer than before.

The lights blinked erratically, and the shadow seemed to be on the move, on my left now and in front of me in the next instant. The wind howled outside, and I felt an icy gust of wind tousling my hair, an extreme nausea hitting me at the same time. It rushed within me like violent ocean waves, like a forest fire threatening to envelop everything it could, and it left me breathless and bewildered as my surroundings began to blur. With a hand on my stomach, I struggled to steady myself.

At that very moment, I felt a presence behind me. The shadow. It loomed over my body until it engulfed me in a blanket of darkness. I knew then that this was no shadow. It was a knock from my past, a knock I had hoped I would not hear again.

It suddenly dawned on me that confronting my deepest fear was the only path to freedom, and I was determined to fight back.

“Been a while, hasn’t it?" I murmured. I opened my eyes, ready to look it in the eye. And then I saw its piercing red orbs glowing coldly in the darkness.