Amyra woke up disoriented and puzzled from her deep slumber when it was still dark outside. She didn't know what has woken her up until the sound came again, cutting and booming in the dark silence of the night.

BANG! BANG!

The sound startled her. Her eyes were wide open now and she was sitting upright in her bed in a flash, her eyes still trying to adjust to the darkness in her room. She didn't move an inch, sitting still like a statue as she paid attention to anything and everything that her senses could pick up on. Breathing slow and steady, her mind tried to register any little change in her environment, her room. Tiny sweat droplets decorated her forehead in a strange kind of pattern as they merged in each other and trickled down her temple in a single line and dropped on the sheets. She looked like a plastic doll in the darkness with her raven hair framing her pale, ghost-like white face and sitting unnaturally still in the darkness. Amyra waited silently - she was as much alert as she seemed dazed - for a second bang on her main gate. She waited for confirmation that she wasn't dreaming or hallucinating in the late night, or maybe early morning (who cares about the time?) And then it happened again.

BANG! BANG!

The second rumble broke the spell and she hurried out of her bed to the bedroom door in a flash. There was a hockey stick by the wall and she slowly picked it up. It was kept there just for situations like this. She hadn't turned the lights on yet, she didn't want to alert the perpetrator. Keeping her hands on the door handle, she debated if she should go out and check on the door, or just wait inside the safety of her room.

And then there was Riya. Hadn't she heard that loud sound? She doubted, otherwise Riya would've already been here in a minute or two. Heaven save her from her deadly slumber - who the hell could have slept through that?

Finally, slowly, taking one step at a time, Amyra retreated back to her bed and sat there on the edge of it, hockey stick resting on bedside between her knees, her eyes still looking everywhere and her ears still hearing out for every loud noise and every quiet tinkle of sound. She was still shaken from the sudden attack on her door. Alert as ever, she felt around the bed for her cellphone. She groaned in frustration when realized that her phone was switched off. Of course, the battery was dead and she had forgotten to put her phone on charge last night.

When there hadn't been another crazed banging at the main door for some 15 minutes or so, she got up from the bed, hockey stick still in her hand, and carefully opened her bedroom door. She really hoped as she walked out that whoever the crazy psycho was outside, had gone away by now. The hallway was very slightly illuminated, only enough to figure out the silhouettes of the furniture in the living room. Her own footsteps were too loud in the silence of the night.

Riya's room was across Amyra's, on the other end of the hallway. She got there and knocked at her room, waiting for the door to open, uttering silent prayer in her head. It felt stupid to be scared when she knew that the main door of the house was locked and the culprit was outside, but she couldn't help the feeling of dread that was slowly overcoming her rationality. When Riya didn't open the door, she knocked again - louder this time, wondering what the hell was taking her so long. Frustrated and without really paying attention, she pushed at the door in annoyance and it creaked open, having been stuck earlier. Amyra was startled for a second and then walked in hurriedly and switched on the lights, only to find the room empty and abandoned.

Panic struck her immediately and an involuntary gasp left her mouth. "Oh God! Where is she at this time?"

Amyra stood there for a moment holding her head in her one hand and a hockey stick in another, puzzled and confused and scared. She could feel her heart going fast enough to drum her chest and loud enough to ring her ears. Many pernicious and baneful thoughts started to occupy her mind even after much resistance.

She looked around the house for Riya and possibly for some trespasser too; the hockey stick was held with a dangerous grip in both her hands, raised high to attack any dangerous invader in her house. When she found that the house was empty, she felt both relieved and stressed. She made sure that all the doors and windows were locked and then turned back. Riya, where is Riya? The question kept popping in her head as she walked back towards her own room.

As soon as she was back in her room, she put her phone to charge and impatiently tapped her feet on the ground as she waited for the phone to get charged enough to be at least switched on. It took a few minutes before she switched the phone on again. Several messages and notifications popped on her screen but she swiped them all aside and called Riya. Her head was starting to throb with the onset of a headache and fever and it was just 04:40 in the morning. She called Riya but her phone was switched off and yet she called again and again. Every failed attempt to contact Riya just amplified her fears and added to the ever-increasing list of bad ideas and theories about her absence in the middle of the night. Defeated, she then dialled the number of the first person who came to her mind. Dhruv.

He didn't receive the call until five full rings, and when he finally did, she heard his sleepy, curious voice gushing in before she could even say hello. "Amyra, what's up? Why are you calling at this time?" He was slightly annoyed but his voice also held a hint of curiosity and he waited impatiently for her answer.

"Dhruv, Riya is not in the house. I can't find her. I tried to call her but her phone is switched off. God! I don't know what the hell is going on here! I-"

"Hold on a second, wait. Amyra, if this is your idea of a joke, I can assure you it's not entertaining at all. I mean, look at the time! Yo-"

"It's not a joke!" Amyra shouted over the phone, on the verge of crying now. "Riya is not in the house! And I don't know where she is!" Her voice broke and she tried hard not to cry. She was miffed and scared and it angered her that Dhroov thought she was joking, although it wasn't really an unlikely assumption on his side, considering the fact that there had been such pranks in past between them. But this time was no prank. It was all bloody serious.

The agitation and fear in her voice registered itself in Dhroov's brain and he spoke softly this time, carefully. "Okay, okay. Try to relax first. Tell me from the beginning. What happened?"

Amyra took a deep breath and then spoke quietly, her voice shaking. "I woke up to someone pounding the main door of the house, just like last evening before we left. I got up and went to Riya's room to wake her up, but she was not in her room. She's nowhere in the house! I tried calling her, but her phone is switched off! I'm scared, Dhruv. There is something seriously wrong, I'm telling you."

Dhruv heard her patiently and waited for a second, trying to understand everything and find the appropriate words to speak. A part of his mind still waited for her to burst out laughing any second, and at that moment, he wished for just that. It'll be so much better to know all of this to be a prank than it is a reality, he thought. Then he spoke. "Okay, listen to me. I'm coming over there right now. Just stay in your room and lock it, okay? I'm coming there and then we'll think over this."

Amyra felt herself relax a little. "Okay, okay. But be careful. I know there hasn't been another one of that door pounding, but someone might still be outside." She spoke in a little voice, unsure of her own statements. She didn't really believe that someone could still be outside - it was about to be morning in a few minutes and it'll be bright outside soon, with joggers going around the locality in groups and alone. Yet, she considered it her responsibility to warn him.

"Yes, sure. I'll be careful. See you."

"Okay."

That's all she could manage to say before hanging up. And as if her phone had just been waiting for them to finish, it's barely charged battery gave up and it went off with a final resounding vibration. Battery empty again. She put her phone on charge again and slipped back in her bed, leaning against the headrest, her knees drawn up against her chest and hands wrapped around them, resting her chin on her forearms, looking everywhere inside her room, waiting for Dhroov to come. Hockey stick was still near her, on bedside - just in case. Although she was pretty much sure she was alone now since there hadn't been another banging on the door or creepy phone calls.

She wondered if she should call the Police too, but decided against it. She needed to think through this thing clearly first and make sure that Riya really was missing. It wasn't worth getting the Police involved if it turned out to be an overreaction on her part. She couldn't trust her own mind these days, with all those petty blank phone calls and a non-existent stalker stalking her. But was that really a non-existent stalker? She couldn't tell. She knew she was being too careful about smallest things for some days and even her friends had noticed that; Riya pointed it out to her the other day, that she was being super careful with everything. But Amyra couldn't help really, it just made her feel safer to double-check everything. And also more paranoid, she noted with embitterment.

But now she started to believe what she had been denying herself again and again over the last few days - that probably there really was someone she needed to be safe from. And that her fear might not be completely frivolous after all. As she tried to analyze everything, she realized that her arbitrary fear actually made some sense.

Last evening Dhruv had asked her about the phone call earlier evening when he dropped her at home last night after the party. She had told him about it briefly, brushing it off as some sort of suspected prank. She herself wasn't sure what it was and she didn't want to sound like making too much fuss out of nothing. But it wasn't nothing. Like hell, it wasn't a nothing. All those feelings of being followed, being watched every other time wasn't a nothing, as she had tried to convince herself. It wasn't a nothing that after a few days of unending paranoia and feelings of being stalked, she suddenly starts receiving weird blank phone calls and doors of her house being pounded in the middle of the night. And it definitely wasn't a nothing that around the same time Riya disappears suddenly without leaving a message or telling her about it in person. Oh no, none of it was a nothing. It was all probably connected to each other.

As Amyra sat there waiting for Dhroov to come, she contemplated over everything that had happened over a course of few weeks. When was it the first time that she felt as if someone was following her? It must have been some three weeks ago. She had just walked out of a beauty salon and was waiting for the cab. She'd had that feeling then, for the first time, the feeling of being watched. She had looked around several times, unconsciously looking out for someone, anyone malicious and dangerous. But there had been no one there. No nothing, except that creepy feeling rising from her gut that said something was wrong. She had looked around several times and found no one at all. There were people going past her, around her, but none seemed to be interested in her. She found no one in the crowd. But the uneasiness remained, it crept up her sleeves and gave her goosebumps. And it remained with her until she ducked inside that cab and went away towards her home, leaving it behind, that awful feeling of being too open and exposed. Only after setting her feet inside the house had she completely relaxed.

But tonight, even being at home did not comfort her. Even this didn't feel safe enough.

She had felt that way again and again, more frequently as the days passed and every time, every single time, that she had tried to look around and spot someone, she would be faced by the thin air and open space, a sudden disappearance of whoever it was who kept a watch at her. And it made no sense for her to feel the fear and paranoia that was slowly creeping in her life. There is no one here, no one at all, she remembered telling herself again and again. She often felt like a fool. She had thought about telling her friends, telling Riya about it, but the utter stupidity and absence of any logical fact held her back.

And now here she was, curled up on her bed, thinking about how stupid she had been to ignore all of that just for the fear of being proven an idiot. She felt like an idiot right now more than ever before. What if there really was someone stalking her? And who could it be? She asked herself that question many times but she didn't like the name that her brain immediately suggested. Could it be....? No, no, it's impossible. She banished the idea as merely a result of fear and shock. That chapter is closed forever, she reminded herself. It has nothing to do with what's happening right now. It can't have anything to do. Not after all these years.

"Not after all these years." She whispered to herself, but the feeling of discomfort only grew stronger and the thought registered itself more firmly in her mind the more she tried to get rid of it. It was now occupying her mind and making her uncomfortable and jumpy. It's not possible anyway, she told herself. Just snap out of that memory. There might be some problem, but nothing related to that incident.

The doorbell rang and she jumped, suddenly pulled out of her pensiveness. She turned her head towards the window in her room and walked over to it, pulling aside the curtains to reveal the orange, bluish and purple shades of dawn in the sky. It was bright enough outside. Maybe it was Dhroov outside.

She went out to check. As she peeped out of the window near the main door, she caught a glimpse of Dhruv waiting outside while looking around himself carefully.