A story I shouldn't have told...

Ever since I was a kid, I was fascinated by demons in my closet. I have spent many nights sleeping with one eye open, looking at the door, trying to catch hold of the green eyed devil.  My friends (and none of them was imaginary) were scared to enter my room; frightened that I will once again switch off the lights and tell them one of my favourite ghost stories, with voice modulation and will not let them go till one of them could not control their pee anymore.

With age, my fascination with the dark side only increased. Not for a single moment in my life, I ever believed that it was all fiction. There was perhaps not a single decent ghost story which I had not read. But the time had come to try and actually be in one. In teenage, it is easy to beguile people in your impish plans by entering into a silly bet. The bet was to stay in the graveyard till midnight.

We had decided to meet at the front gate two hours before midnight. I am sure you would have never experienced this, but a graveyard is perhaps the most peaceful place at night. Contrary to what media depicts; there are no screams, no owl hoots, nobody walks with candles in their hands, nobody vanishes in thin air and there is no scary old witch. We decided to sit between the graves and see what happens. I decided to once again see some scared faces and started telling one of the scariest stories I had ever heard.

The story was a about a kid named Emily Drew. She was mentally unstable. She used to cut her wrists and cheeks with blade and kept looking herself in the mirror with her hands covered with her own blood. She liked to see blood on herself. One day she died. But she came back and haunted her family till they publically admitted that they had murdered her because they were too scared of her. My friends were trying to be brave but I could see that they shivered and shuddered whenever I modulated my voice for dramatic effects.

The clock struck midnight. Anyways, we all got bored in a while and started to leave, but one of us kept sitting. We all laughed at him that he was so afraid that he could not even get up. When I touched him on his shoulder, his body just dropped. His face seemed to be disfigured, hands were all twisted and eyes ready to pop out of their sockets; looking directly at me as if pointing at me and shouting that I was the murderer. Our faces were white with fear and without thinking we just ran out of the graveyard.

I remained confined to my room for days to come. The vision of his lifeless body and staring eyes kept haunting me. I had never been so frightened all my life. I cried for hours. I had nightmares; those eyes, they followed me everywhere. I did not have the courage to come out of the house, to hear the news of his death and to give a reaction which will not give away my horrible part in his dreadful death. I kept staring at the closet, frightened for the first time that those eyes are looking at me from behind the door; frightened that the door will open and his lifeless body will fall out of it.

After a point in time, I could not take anymore and just decided to get out of the house. To avoid any interactions, I slipped out at night. I kept walking absent-mindedly and to my horror ended up at the familiar gate of the graveyard. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I entered. I reached the same place as we were sitting the other day. Something compelled me to sit at the place my friend was sitting. I kept sitting for a long time. The clock struck midnight, and then I saw a sight after which I had no doubt why my friend died. A small girl, with hands and face covered in blood, was standing in front of me looking into a mirror. Beside her was a grave with the engraving – Emily Drew.

I passed out.