Horrified!!!!@Toronto

It was 11:00 in the night and raining heavily in Toronto. Returning after shopping, parked my car in the dingy basement of my 20 floor apartment which had tube lights flickering here and there. There was not even a single soul around. The whole place looked very gloomy as if filled by some kind of snowy smoke like never before. I always dreaded this kind of atmosphere because back in India it is always crowded any time and it was still initial days here. I had to carry all the shopping bags myself and out of a lot of difficulty walked all the way to the extreme right corner of the basement crossing several rows of darkness and pressed the Lift button. As I waited for the lift I felt a sudden gush of chilly wind from some where that made me frenzy. I looked around to see that it was coming from a small enclosure in the ventilator.

As the lift descended from above I could hear the beep sounds and the numbers on the digital board beside the lift button changing in decreasing order to come to a stand still at -1. The doors of the lift opened and I stepped into the four walls covered by mirrors and pressed the number 13 button. As if the chillness was following me I felt even chillier inside the lift. I couldn’t understand the reason for this as there was neither fan nor any gap through which wind would flow. The lift stopped on the 3^rd floor and the doors opened. But there was no one to enter as if some one waited and waited for the lift to arrive and left through stairs when it did not come. The chillness did not abate even after the doors opened. Infact it seemed to have increased by a degree or two. I heaved a sigh of relief as the lift came to a halt with the number reading as 13.

As the door opened I saw one of the tenants with her pet dog. Usually a calm dog barked so loudly that it scared me and ran away hurriedly taking his master along. I then understood that it was not barking at me rather at something behind me. I just looked around to make sure that there was no one except me and my chillness. But it did dent my confidence and filled my heart with fear. It is about 100 meters from lift to my flat. As usual the whole corridor was deserted and had to cross the several closed doors of other flats to walk to my flat. With so many bags in my hand I decided to keep some of them on the floor so that I can take them on the second turn.

As I walked, though with so much of chillness around I had sweat dropping over my forehead. I could hear my heartbeat echoing through the shrilling silence of the corridors. Nobody was there around but felt as if something was following me all along. Was it my feeling or really happening? Unsurely I trudged along. Reached my flat door, searched my pockets for the keys and opened the door. The moment I opened the door the chillness was gone and I was invited by the air that normally flows from the window in the kitchen. I kept the bags inside the hall and ran back to pick the rest of them. From far I could see a faint figure of a lady in huge gown like dress with short hair standing along side of my bags. Before I reached the place it was gone so were my bags. I couldn’t understand whether I was dreaming or was having some kind of a memory loss. These days I have been forgetting a lot. May be this was also one of those cases. I got back to my flat only to find that my bags were already there. This was a shocker as well as horrific to me.

Next day I woke up with a heavy head. I had to drink coffee to shake it off. In the evening edition of the newspaper as I was turning the papers, came across some pages with excerpts from some of the people leaving in the same area as I do. They seemed to have experienced some kind of a super natural phenomenon similar to what I faced. This caused a flutter in my heart and this fear remained for ever whenever I parked my car in the basement.