My name is Sami Ahmad, I am a 17 year old living in Lucknow, India. I am currently in my junior year of highschool and this year, I’ll be promoted to the senior year. I was decent at studies, decent and sports, phenomenal at coding and writing articles and blogs. Me and my brother were very different from your average Indian teenager, you see, majority of the people in India, either want to pursue biology or engineering as their main career path, they either give the infamous JEE exam, or the NEET test. The one’s who are not able to make it in the competitive exam scene usually just got to expensive private colleges, but for me and my brother, it was quite different.
From a very early age of 14, my brother Aamish, wanted to attend a college in the United States of America. He pioneered and paved the way for me to pick up a creative direction, as opposed to the “learn by rote” mentality of the Indian competitive exams. Our family was really supportive of this idea and was the most “picture perfect” one you could’ve imagined. Happy, non toxic parents, a great brother who I had a great “master-student” relationship with and an overall wholesome living environment.
My brother, Aamish was two years older than me, but only one year senior to me at school, I started going to school at an earlier age as compared to my brother. A few months ago, during the “Early Decision” rounds of the college admissions, he got into Dartmouth with a 90 percent scholarship. We were hyped up, a family member goes to study abroad for the first time, and that too to one of the best colleges in the world.
We were celebrating his big win, at the most expensive and bougie 5 star hotel of the city. I remember vividly still, when we stepped out of the hotel, it was around 6 p.m., still laughing and cheering, when a drunk driver hit him with an SUV. The big tires of the vehicle crushed his legs, he bled and screamed, my parents and I screamed in terror. Tears started forming in our eyes as we realised that although he was alive, he could not be saved as he laid there screaming, with crushed up legs and his guts split all over the road. The driver stepped out and my father jumped him immediately, almost smashing his skull in with a rock, however the people caused a separation, giving him a chance to flee, and giving us a moment to take in, what had happened in the last 15 seconds.
We mourned his death and cried till there were tears no more. We had accepted the fact that the family prodigy, but most importantly my brother, was no more. Life has its ups and downs but this was the lowest of the lows we’d ever faced before. We made a little shrine in his room with every single possession he loved and we made sure that it was always clean. In our hearts Aamish was still with us.
After his death, I wrote a long paragraph to him in his dms, I don’t know why, maybe I was insane, maybe I was desperate, maybe in my heart I wanted a reply, maybe in my heart I didn’t want to say goodbye. 1 month after the events I received a notification at 3:05 a.m. it read
“Aamish sent you a message”
I was half asleep then but quickly woke myself up and opened the messaging app, there were 7 texts from his account. I found it weird since only he had his account password, and it was 2 factor authenticated, so no regular person could just hack into his account. The messages were pretty normal. But they screwed with my head for a good 3 hours.
“Who tf are you man? Stop playing around, this isn’t funny to me, I’ll report you and get your location with ease, I know it might be comedic to some scumbags like you but please, just know that what you’re doing is the most insensitive and un empathetic thing you can do to a person who’s brother just passed a month ago”
“It’s really me bro :) “ replied the imposter.
I could feel my blood getting warmer and myself getting angrier. The sorrow washed over me as I closed my eyes and involuntarily pictured the gruesome scene. I wrote him atleast 70 texts with profanities and words which I cannot type here for the reasons of being a little more child friendly.
The imposter went offline, and the ordeal confused me to a large extent, I emailed Instagram from Aamish’s email account to reset his password and check the latest activity. They responded, they told me that they had reset the password, but had found no new log ins in the last 4-6 months. I rechecked my phone, there were the messages, I emailed them a screenshot of our conversation and they told me that all those messages were sent by Aamish’s phone, but the weird part was that his phone was in his room, with his other belonging, and nobody in the house would do something of this kind.
I talked to my parents about it, but they didn’t care as much, since they just thought somebody was “messing around” and wanted to spend no time in seeking a prankster who wasn’t a threat, they asked me to simply not reply to his messages and not worry about it. I am pretty sure they had no conception of identity theft, and I wasn’t going to argue over that.
We went shopping that day, while returning from the mall, at around 6 p.m. we saw, the clouds were drearier than usual. The grey clouds roared with intensity, and then came the rain, big drops of water came crashing down, hurting a few on-foot civilians in the process. We drove back to our house and settled down.
That night at 3:07 a.m. I received a notification again.
“Aamish sent you a message”
I sighed and opened the message, it read :
“Yoo, they had some good adidas shorts there, I wish I could’ve gotten my hands on some”
I felt my blood start boiling,
“WHO THE F*** ARE YOU?” I replied.
“I am Aamish believe me, don’t you remember our time at Bhopal ? The competitions…”
And then he went off to describe our time there intricate detail, things only we knew, inside jokes, secrets. My eyes widened as I came to the realisation, that he actually might have been, my brother. But it was impossible, he lay dead before me, I remember gasping for air and consoling my parents as an ambulance took him away. I threw the phone down and darted to the living room, where I noticed, the light to Aamish’s room was turned on.
When I opened the door, the lights flickered and then turned off. I was scared, too scared to move, when I heard the familiar footsteps of Aamish coming towards me, I wanted to run, but saw a light coming from one of the windows. Something about that glow enchanted me, and caused me to walk into the room and look through the window, there I saw, hovering outside the window, my brother Aamish, perfectly intact, a glowing aura around him, he gave me a smile and waved me goodbye before starting to hover back into the night. I was practically about to sprint outside the room to go and get my parents but as soon as I turned around, I blacked out.
I woke up in my bed, with a temperature, I was shaking uncontrollably. I called out to my mom, and she came running in, trying to console me, I told her about the whole ordeal but she reassured me that it was just a nightmare. I wanted to believe that too, it sounded stupendous and if I talked about this with anyone they’d think that I was insane.
The day went normal, as any other day would. When the night rolled around, I waited intently for the text, and there is was, a notification.
“Aamish sent you a message”
I unlocked my phone to a few more messages, “goodbye” and “I will miss you” being 2 of them. Tears rolled down my eyes as I realised that, the whole ordeal yesterday was most probably a farewell, a farewell to me. And the final message read,
“Break it, break the phone, my phone, it is kept in my room, just pick it up and hammer it to pieces, they come every night looking for it.”
I was confused, “What? Who comes every night? And why would I break your phone?” I replied.
“Enter the room.” Wrote ‘Aamish’ moments before going offline. I complied and moved straight inside his room, there I saw a note on his bed which read “look outside, only you can see that”. I quickly moved toward the window, to see a semi holographic type clip, of men in grey suits, barging into our house and taking the phone away from us, before brutally attacking us with pistols and crowbars. The 3 D clip ended with a big “BREAK IT” hovering in the air.
I was too shaken to do anything, but felt a push back from the window, towards the bed. I picked up the phone and threw it against the wall, then picked up a dumbbell and smashed it to pieces before running back to my room and pulling the covers over my head. The next morning, a few gentlemen, dressed in grey suits came to our doorstep, claiming to be “officials”. They wanted to look through Aamish’s phone for some “verification”, his college accounts to be exact. They said they’d provide the scholarship money to us still, for when I went to college as a show of respect to the prodigy.
My parents asked me to go get the phone, and I pretended to look for it for like 5 minutes, before telling them it wasn’t there. The looks on the faces of the men changed, as they bid us farewell, darted back to their car and drove off in a panic.
Everyone found it weird, but my parents didn’t care as much. At 1 a.m. we received the news that our grandmother, who lived in the same city as her, had broken her backbone, my parents wanted to go and check on her but also didn’t want the house to be unattended. So they left me in charge of the house, and said that they’d be back in about 5 hours.
I agreed hesitantly, not wanting to be alone in this house with my supernatural brother lurking somewhere, but I didn’t have a choice. At 2:30 a.m. I was in my room on the second floor, when I heard the doorbell ring, I was tensed up, because we weren’t expecting anyone. I got up, and looked outside my window. There parked in front of my house was a black Toyota SUV with tinted windows. And to both my surprise and horror, stood the same 4 men who visited us during the day, this time in black and purple suits. They looked up, straight at me, like they could sense my presence, and smirked.
I slowly backed away from my window, and picked up my phone. I proceeded to call the cops but to my surprise, they were not picking up. I looked outside, one of the people had pointed what looked like a mini satellite towards my window, the others just unlocked the door and walked in, like there weren’t like 3 locks on that door.
In a panic I ran inside, closed all the lights and hid in the closet, I heard them scurrying around in the 1st floor. The noises downstairs made it seem like they were destroying stuff, moving things around, and looking for something. My eyes widened as I realised, these were the same men I saw just a few hours ago, at midnight. I heard slow, thumping footsteps in the room next to me, that was weird to me, because to access that room, one had to climb up some stairs, and I didn’t hear any footsteps coming up the stairs. After 30 seconds or so the footsteps stopped.
I sat there in the darkness, in silence. Shivers ran down my spine when I felt a pat on my back. I almost leapt out of the closet but composed myself so as to not garner any unwanted attention from the uninvited people on the 1st floor. Not a minute later, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, i could here them talk among themselves, though I couldn’t make out any words.
I heard a door open, followed by rapid gunshots, metal clanking and an ungodly banshee like screech. This was further followed by the sounds of low growls, muscles tearing and bones breaking. After everything went silent, I opened the door of the closet ever so slightly, to peek outside, that’s when the door flung open. In walked a bluish silhouette of a person, almost identical to my brother. The supernatural “spirit” waved me goodbye before slowly melting away into thin air, I walked outside to no signs of any damage or bodies. I rushed downstairs to check on the damage done, but to my surprise, there was none, no damage with no signs of forced entry.
I decided not to contact anyone and went straight to my room, and fell asleep. I wanted the night to get over, it was like living a dream, but this dream was a nightmare. I woke up the next day, and went about my day as I usually do, only stepping out on my balcony at 6 P.m. this time to see the beautiful yellow-blue hued sky in all its glory, with a little piece of “Aamish” somewhere in the unknown.