The ghost on the rooftop!
Written by Dr.Laxmi Iyer

The sound of the monster from the bungalow next door shook her awake from a deep slumber. Eleven year old Harriet trembled with fear. She jumped out of her bed...beads of perspiration gushing like a river down her face. Boom! Boom! Clinkety! Clank! Clinkety! Clank! It was the same sound...in the same sequence.

For the past fortnight, almost every other day, she had been waking up trembling from head to foot. With an alarmed scream, she would run to her grandma's room. And her grandma would comfort her. It was the same scene everyday.

Harriet had come to her granny's place to spend the summer holidays. And granny had a family of cats - nearly eleven of them - a complete cricket team of cats, so to say. They would be all over the house - lounging about on the sofa, in the bedroom, study...every where you looked, you would see a cat.

Harriet loved cats. For Harriet being with the cats was a very soothing experience. When she had been a baby, a Siamese cat - Fog had been her constant companion. Her mother was an artist and her dad a sculptor.

They would be absorbed in their creative work while Harriet would be baby sat by Fog. Ever since her bawling, crawling, crying baby days, whenever Harriet was shown Fog, her crying would stop.

That was how the remarkable bond of attachment between Fog and Harriet developed and Harriet's instinctive love for cats.

Her family had soon discovered, that whenever they needed to quieten Harriet, all they had to do was call Fog.

And what a remarkable baby sitter Fog would be, she would sit by Harriet patiently, keeping her eyes wide open, and whenever she noticed that Harriet was having any discomfort, she would mew loudly and walk over to Harriet's mum or dad.

With that understanding Fog had perfected her communication skills with her foster family.

However, this time her parents had not allowed Fog to accompany her. The instructions were clear. Harriet was to spend her holidays with her grand mum and her cricket team of cats.

On her visit this time, Harriet noticed that the bungalow next door had been vacated.
There was an eerie stillness and silence that bounded off the bungalow walls right into Harriet's heart.

Each passing day, Harriet was getting more and more frightened. It was impossible for her to communicate with her parents since they along with Fog had decided to spend their summer holidays in the wilderness of the Kalahari desert in Africa. No emails. No mobiles. No way Harriet could talk to her mum and dad and tell them about the ghost in the next bungalow.

Harriet began to think that her grandma too was very strange. She was not at all disturbed by all these sounds. To Harriet, that felt very odd.

Harriet felt very ashamed of her fear. She thought she would conceal it in different ways. Each day, she thought of a new strategy.

One day, she decided she would ask her grandma to tell her a story and then pretend to fall asleep in grandma's bed. Just when her grandma had finished telling her story, suddenly a question popped up in Harriet's head and she jumped up wide awake.

" Grandma, where are all the cats?".

"Why! They must be lounging about all over the place as usual", said Grandma.

When Harriet went in search of the cats, she found that there were only 4 of them. Where were the remaining seven?

She didn't have to wait long for an answer. In the morning when she woke up, she saw from Grandma's window facing the neighbouring bungalow, all the 7 cats returning home - walking in single file.

The next day, Harriet decided she would follow the cats and see how each cat slept in the night.

She carried a torch with her and just as dusk was falling, she slipped out of the house following the cats. In the darkness, she saw them climb up into the deserted bungalow
rooftop and then when she flashed a torch to look, she saw them playing enthusiastically - with small clinkety, metal bars, balls and handles, toy swings and seesaws.

Boom! Boom! Clinkety! Clank! Clinkety! Clank! Boom! Boom! Clinkety! Clank! Clinkety! Clank! Boom! Boom! Clinkety! Clank! Clinkety! Clank!

It was a deafening cacophony.

Boom! Boom! Clinkety! Clank! Clinkety! Clank! It was the same sound...in the same sequence.

Harriet was no longer afraid. She smiled feeling a little unhappy that she was not light enough to crawl upto the rooftop and join the cats in their game.