Shrey was walking home from his usual evening routine at the gym, looking forward to a hot-water bath to relax his pumped muscles and then settle down to his dinner. The path from the gym to his home was a heavily trafficked route, both by vehicles and people, which he used every day. But he had never expected that it was on that night, when he was in a crowd of people with vehicles honking incessantly, that he'd have the scariest experience of his life.
He had come to the narrow neck of the road with street vendors on both sides. It was nearing nine p.m. and the vendors were shutting shop, but the aroma of their wares—fresh spices—still lingered in the air. Shrey was making his way through, jostling shoulders and elbows with the other people, when he saw a man about twenty feet ahead of him in the crowd, who immediately stood out because of his physical features.
The man was tall, close to six feet six inches, and he wore a battered black hat over a mop of shoulder-length grey hair. The hair was untidy and had bits of paper and dried leaves in it. He wore a dirtied grey coat that was torn and patched up in many places, and which came up to his knees. His pants were brown and loose like women's palazzo pants. But what was most remarkable about him was his gait. The man was severely bow-legged. Both his legs were bent outward at the knees. When he walked, it wasn't a straight steady motion, but a jerky sideways movement, pushing his weight on one lateral side and then the other. To balance himself, he had a hand on his hat as he walked.
Even as Shrey wondered about the man, he noticed a white sack on his back. The sack was not full and dangled up to his hips. Now and then, the man would stop his strange movement, bend to the ground, pick something, and put it into the bag. Shrey realized then that the man was a ragpicker—one who picks up reusable stuff like bottles and bits of scrap and cloth from the streets and sells them to recyclers. But he had never seen a ragpicker at that hour of the evening, and definitely not one who looked so eccentric.
And eccentric he surely was, for as the man walked along, he sang some weird tune. It wasn't of a song that Shrey had ever heard, and nor did he care about it, but there was definitely something in the man that made him notice him so closely.
Anyway, Shrey focused on reaching home. The hunger pangs had started, but he could not walk any faster, because his muscles still ached. He noticed then that the crowd had thinned. He had left the vendors behind now. The few stray people on the road now were people returning from office who were hurrying to get home.
Shrey quickened his pace. He almost came up to the ragpicker, hoping to overtake him, when something stopped him.
The ragpicker was singing his name!
It was an unearthly tune which went something like, "Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey... Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey..." The quick repetition of the word came out like a hiss, and though he could not see the ragpicker's face yet, Shrey could see the spit flying out of his mouth as he said it.
All of a sudden, Shrey was in the grip of a terrible fear. Who was this man who had appeared out of the blue? Why could nobody else see him? Which was true, because even those who passed by him from the opposite direction did not change their direction or show the least bit of indication that he was in their path. Why was he walking in such a manner? And, why for gosh sakes was he taking his name?
Shrey slowed down. He did not want to overtake the ragpicker now. But as he slowed down, the ragpicker slowed down too. Shrey lost a heartbeat. He quickly assessed the street, and there was no one.
Bloody no one! The street had been bustling with people not a minute ago.
"Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey," the ragpicker susurrated as he began to very slowly turn around. "Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey..."
Shrey's legs had turned to lead. He wanted to do something, run away maybe, but he felt his body getting weightier, like it would not respond to the instructions of his brain. All he knew was one thing—he did not want to see the face of this man.
The ragpicker did not turn all the way. He had seen something valuable on the ground, for he suddenly lunged at it, picked it, and tossed it in the sack he was carrying on his back. That deed done, he turned ahead again and carried on with his strange walk.
Shrey found his breath again. This was just a harmless ragpicker, foraging through rubbish for his survival. He was also physically disabled. Shrey had no business getting afraid of such a man. It was not right. Inhaling hard, he continued to walk.
Till he came up to the spot where the ragpicker had stopped and picked up the object...
There was no object there now, but there was something left behind that was red and shiny. Blood. Clearly shining in the moonlight. What in the blazes had the ragpicker picked? What was in his bag?
Shrey stood upright again and a wave of relief swept over him. The ragpicker was gone! The path ahead was clear. Only for a second did his sudden disappearance surprise him, but then he smiled. He walked briskly now, almost running.
And then he heard it again, this time behind him, so close that he could feel the warm exhaled air on his shoulder—"Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey... Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey..."
Petrified, Shrey turned to look. There he was, the ragpicker, just over his shoulder, his face ten inches above him, looking down at him now with differently colored eyes—one sparkling like an emerald and the other a furious ruby. And on his cheek was an open wound, a blood sore of some ancient injury.
And on his lips was his name.
The ragpicker stooped suddenly, this time right next to Shrey's leg and picked something else from the floor—another bloodied bit of something—and tossed it in his sack. Then he picked something that was on Shrey's foot. And then he touched his arm and pulled something out of it, another bloodied bit. All the time chanting his name, he filled his bag with the bloodied goodies.
Just when the ragpicker was about to grab his throat and pull a bit from there, Shrey found his energy again. Screaming at the top of his lungs, and despite his aching muscles, he turned and ran. Ran like he never had before. And as he ran, tears flowed out of his eyes thinking of the bits of flesh that had been removed from his body.
Who in the name of hell was that guy?
Shrey only relaxed when he was in front of his bathroom mirror. He got naked in a hurry and checked his body. He examined every bit of it and then broke into an odd giggle. He was still whole. Whatever that was, whoever that was, he had not plucked out his flesh. Nothing had happened. It was only his bizarre imagination.
He went to bed with that happy thought, trying not to think of that horrendous man, and not to think of the phantom pains of his missing body parts, for he was whole. He snuggled in his quilt and drifted away to sleep.
It was in the middle of that peaceful sleep that he sensed a pair of fingers moving towards his throat. The fingers were curved like the talons of a predatory bird. He knew whom they belonged to, but he was paralyzed. He wanted to at least scream in the extreme terrified anticipation of what was going to happen, but he could not. He could not do anything either when he saw his throat being ripped off his body and dangling between those two fingers to the accompaniment of the chant, "Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey... Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey Shrey..."
And he knew he would wake up and be fine again, but why did it have to be so real in this moment? So real that he no longer knew which his reality was—the one now sleeping whole under his quilt or the one who was being pecked at by a disgusting ragpicker like a dying victim of a bird of carrion.
[Thanks, folks, for the love you have showered on Desi Horror Stories. Do take a look at my book Haunted with paranormal investigator Jay Alani, which narrates his real-life horror experiences in the most haunted places of India.]