As children, we travelled from the city to the village where my grandmother lived. We enjoyed our journey and cherished it. Our ancestral house was situated a little away from the small town and each house stood in hectares of land, unlike the ones we stayed in, in the city.

Our days in the village began with the early morning prayers. During the day, Ahmed (my brother) and I, along with the village children played, a lot of ‘desi games’, ate sweets made with ghee prepared by our grandmother, enjoyed fresh milk from our cow, climbed up the trees, went hiking, etc. At night, our grandmother made sure that we went early to bed.

We enjoyed each and every corner of the village. The village seemed to have something that the city lacked. But there was one place that the elders prohibited us from going. And that was the little green house that stood in the corner of the lane. The house was quite pretty from outside. There was a beautiful garden with a path paved from the gate to the entrance of the house. Though the house looked quite old, it still seemed impressive.

We kids were very eager to explore the place but were never given a chance to go near it. There were stories that the house was haunted by a ghost. The ghost was seen by some elders in the village. But the underlying mystery was unknown.

One Sunday evening, with the permission of our grandmother, Ahmed and I, along with the village children, visited the temple fair in our village. We promised our grandmother that we would be back before dusk. True to our word, Ahmed and I walked back to our house while the other children returned to theirs.

The night had started to set in. The trees were creaky and the owls flew among them. We walked through the lane. The green house could be seen at a distance.

Suddenly Ahmed said, “Iqra, can we check the green house?”

“But Ahmed granny will be furious at us,” I replied.

But Ahmed had made up his mind. He was slowly pulling my hand and before I could say anything more, we had entered the compound of the house. The house looked a little dirtier than what it looked like from a distance. Dried leaves lay all along the ground. We moved one step at a time towards the entrance of the house.

We pushed the doors of the house and it opened. We were startled as we didn’t expect the house to be unlocked. Ahmed and I walked through the dark passage of the house. The lights of the house were broken, but the courtyard brought in some dying sunlight into the house. The moonlight led us into a huge room with some broken old furniture.

“Iqra, do you expect a ghost here?” asked Ahmed.

“Shh ….” I had to silence Ahmed. I wondered if the ghost stories were true. We moved from room to room. The walls of the room were decorated with huge scary paintings.

“Ahmed, let’s go home. Granny will be worried,” I said.

Ahmed reluctantly agreed and soon we walked back to the front door. We tried to open the door but, to our dismay, the doors would not open. It had got locked from the outside.

“Let’s see if there is any other way out,” I comforted Ahmed who seemed pale.

We moved through the house, trying to find some rear entrance or openings. The rear doors were all locked from outside. I realised we were trapped.

We sat on a broken sofa in the passage, now very scared. The dusk passed into a starry night. Hoots of some wild animals, cry of cats and all sorts of frightening sounds filled the air. For once, I felt that we had lost our lives to some ghosts.

Time passed. I didn’t know when we dozed off holding each other tight on that tattered sofa when I felt Ahmed’s hands on my face.

“Iqra, wake up!” said Ahmed.

I opened my eyes. The first rays of sunlight crept through the courtyard ceiling. In the daylight we saw a prettier ghost house and this time less scary than it appeared in the night. The courtyard had a glass ceiling and the sunlight was coming through it. The pictures which seemed scary the previous night looked beautiful and aristocratic. They looked like some modern art and pictures of Greek gods. The house must have belonged to someone who had interest in paintings.

“Ahmed, let’s see if we can get out of this place. Granny would have filed a case at the village police station by now.”

We moved through the rooms to see if there was any way out which we could not see because of darkness the previous night. The rooms looked much better though they were very dirty.

“Iqra, what is that?” Ahmed pointed to a huge chest in the corner. It looked like a treasure chest. The metal on top of the box depicted a devilish face.

I opened the chest. We were surprised to see the chest full of antiques, gold, jewellery, precious stones and what not.

“Look, granny’s diamond necklace!” Ahmed shouted.

Granny had a diamond necklace which was stolen sometime back.

“Ahmed, I believe, this chest contains things stolen from the villagers!” I said.

We could hear noises outside and soon the front door opened with a bang. The village police had arrived to rescue us.

“Ahmed! Iqra!” granny could be heard shouting. She stood beside policemen as she shouted their names and her eyes were filled with tears.

“Granny, see … your diamond necklace,” Ahmed was excited.

We walked out of the house into the village lane. There was a crowd outside, but we children walked like heroes from some detective story who had helped the poor villagers to hunt their treasure. The air was filled with gossip of how we children had recovered the lost belongings.

So it dawned upon everyone that there were no ghosts in the house and the thieves must have spread the rumours about ghosts so that no one could think of entering into the house where they kept the stolen things.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 27th, 2018