Superstar: Horn OK Please by Kartik Iyengar Read Free Book Online

to calm my frayed nerves.
     
    I filled my bathtub with hot water, grabbed a can of Redbull; took off my clothes and slipped in. The chill from the cold evening had seeped to the bone. I kept the washbasin tap on, just to hear the sound of flowing water.
     
    And then I closed my eyes as I let the hot, salted water soothe my tired body.
     
    The time had finally come for my annual bath. I was feeling relaxed. It was a ritual I chose to indulge in once every year, no more, no less. As the warm water gently blanketed me, it opened up numerous pores, both physically and mentally. I was feeling calm and happy.
     
    Suddenly, the music stopped playing and I woke up. I could hear a wolf howling in the dead of night, somewhere far away. It must have been close to midnight when I opened my eyes after a few minutes of a good snooze, my blood froze in horror.
     
    The lamps in the bathroom were flickering and made a strange crackling sound, as though they were about to explode. The water in my tub had turned red and was overflowing. I was submerged in a pool of blood. I tried to scream but I couldn’t.
     
    The washbasin was overflowing. Blood overflowed from the basin and covered the floor. The bathroom mirror had turned misty. Inside the mirror was a young woman in black staring at me angrily.
     
    She was drenched and her hair covered her face, I couldn’t see clearly what she looked like, but it looked exactly like Jenny. She was wearing a black dress. The look in her eyes was evil. I say that for her eyes were black and they had no pupils, darker than death itself.
     
    Then those black eyes turned red and started to burn like fire. They burned like the wolf’s eyes – the wolf we had seen at the junction. She was grinning at me. The apparition flickered on the mirror and disappeared. The lamps stabilized.
     
    I could feel goose bumps all over my body. I tried to run but I felt paralyzed. My entire body turned numb as my heart thumped against my chest like a heavy hammer. I could see death breathing down my neck.
     
    I didn’t even have the audacity to scream. It was as if something heavy had descended in the bathroom, it felt difficult to breathe. It took some time for me to regain my composure after which there was no looking back into the spooky bathroom.
     
    I sprang out of the tub, drained it and closed the tab. I took a few bottles of mineral water from the refrigerator and cleaned myself.
     
    I scrubbed like crazy that night; it left me a few scratch marks. I promised myself that for a month I wouldn’t bathe again till I got out of this spooky mansion.
     
    It took me a while and a few shots of single malt Scotch to calm down before I knocked myself off to sleep with the lights on, wondering who she was.
     
    Did I just have a crazy nightmare? Maybe, I just imagined that because I was too exhausted. After all, ghosts and apparitions are supposed to be a figment of one’s imagination.
     
    But the incident shook me up completely that night.
     
    Goose’s Suite:
    Goose walked into his suite and threw his rucksack on the bed and kicked out his shoes. He was too tired to explore what the room looked like. The only thing that beguiled him in the Spartan room was the four-poster bed adorned with floral linen and a soft mattress.
     
    He looked at his watch and was happy to note that the day was about to end in 15 minutes. He took off his bag that contained his tripod and camera equipment and lay it down carefully on the comfortable couch beside the balcony.
     
    It was expensive stuff and he’d gone broke trying to pay the installments for the filters.
     
    The same miniature of the ugly portrait downstairs stared him in the face. It was in his room as well. Fine, he couldn’t do anything about the painting above the fireplace, but surely he could take matters into his own hands in his suite room.
     
    He hated that ugly painting of Jenny’s great grandpa on the wall. He went to the bathroom, grabbed a towel and