The Man Who Wasn’t There: A Midnight Encounter in West Tilak
Hey there, folks. Let me take you on a journey—a story that has haunted me for years. It’s a tale of mystery, fear, and something far darker than what we can comprehend. I want to tell you about the night I met someone who wasn't there. A shadow wearing a familiar face, a ghost in the moonlight, and a presence that still sends chills down my spine to this very day. Buckle up, because this story takes us deep into the heart of the unknown.
The air was crisp, laced with the damp scent of earth, and the world around me stretched into an infinite, all-consuming silence. The village lay in deep slumber, yet the hush that enveloped me felt oppressive—thick with an unspoken presence lurking just beyond perception. The only sounds that punctuated the quiet were the whispering rustle of rice straws swaying in the night breeze and the steady rhythm of my footsteps pressing against the earth.
As I approached my home, just before reaching the main entrance on my right from where I stood to the west, my eyes caught a shadowy figure standing at the southeastern corner of my property, near a dense cluster of rattan palms. He faced south, the tangled mass of rattan looming behind him to the north, his presence unnervingly still against the moonlit backdrop.
It was my neighbour, Kadir—Bhai “Bhai” meaning brother in Bengali.
In his hands, he cradled a bamboo flute, its polished surface catching the moonlight with a spectral gleam. Beside him, a small fire smouldered, its embers pulsing like the breath of some unseen force, while flickering flames cast restless, shifting shadows across his face. He was wrapped in a silvery Pashmina Kashmiri woollen shawl, which shimmered under the moon’s ethereal glow, clinging tightly to his form as though shielding himself from an invisible chill. His gaze remained fixed upon the fire, lost in depths beyond mortal reach, while his fingers absently traced the flute’s contours as if attuned to a melody only he could hear.
Kadir Bhai was no stranger to the night; an amateur flautist, he often played long into the late hours, filling the darkness with the mournful strains of his music. Yet, on this night, something about him felt profoundly… wrong. An unnatural stillness clung to his posture, an eerie detachment that sent a whisper of unease through me. The familiar presence of my neighbour seemed distant, his essence veiled, as though he stood on the threshold of another world—neither here nor there, neither wholly man nor wholly shadow.
A mischievous thought crossed my mind—a harmless prank.
It was the perfect opportunity to scare him. As I had planned, I would take on the role of a ghost, intending to frighten him out of his wits. A mischievous grin tugged at my lips as I pulled my shirt over my face, obscuring my identity in the dim moonlight. With deliberate stealth, I switched on my torchlight, its cold beam cutting through the darkness like a blade. Step by step, I crept toward him, anticipation thrumming in my chest, eager to shatter his eerie stillness with a sudden, blinding flash.
But then, something strange happened.
Kadir Bhai did not react.
No startled jump. No flinch. Nothing.
Instead, he simply turned to the north—and, without hesitation, walked straight into the dense tangle of rattan palms. No startle, no hesitation—just a slow, deliberate movement, as though he were being pulled by an unseen force.
The firelight flickered behind him, casting his retreating form into an eerie silhouette before he disappeared into the shadows. A chill prickled down my spine. The night, once filled with the hum of insects and the rustling of leaves, now felt unnaturally silent.
Something was terribly wrong.
The Impossible Path
A shiver crawled up my spine.
I knew this land. Behind the rattan grove lay only a narrow, dead-end space—a small canal and an old toilet nestled beside the bank of our front pond. No one could navigate that tangled thicket so effortlessly; the rattan palms, thick with merciless thorns, interwove to form an almost impenetrable barrier.
And yet, Kadir Bhai moved as if the undergrowth were nothing more than a figment of my imagination, gliding through the dense jungle with an ease that defied logic. His movements were impossibly smooth, unnaturally fluid.
Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
A chill snaked through my bones.
This wasn’t right. Something was profoundly amiss.
I called out, my voice quivering against the heavy silence.
“Kadir Bhai! Kadir Bhai! Where are you going?”
Only the whisper of the wind through the leaves answered my plea.
I shouted again, louder this time, my heart hammering in my chest—still, no response.
The prank I had set out to play no longer felt playful. The very air around me had shifted—thick, heavy, laden with an unshakable dread that pressed down upon my chest like a living weight. A cold shiver cascaded down my spine as my pulse thundered in my ears, each beat drumming a frantic rhythm of fear. Without a second thought, I turned and bolted toward the Bangla Ghor courtyard, my feet barely touching the ground, desperate to escape the suffocating unease that clung to me like unseen, spectral hands.
But when I reached the courtyard—breathless, my limbs trembling—my blood ran cold.
The Man in the Courtyard
Seeing Kadir’s brother made my blood run cold. I stood a short distance from the wide pathway—or perhaps the driveway—that stretched through the centre of the front yard, leading from the vast pond to the grand entrance of the main estate, where all the large houses stood.
He was there, in the middle of the courtyard, waiting for me—as if no time had passed.
It was humanly impossible for him to have arrived before me. The path through the rattan palms was far longer than mine, winding through dense, thorny vines. I had just seen him vanish into the grove mere seconds ago.
Hadn’t I?
A creeping horror coiled in my chest, tightening with each passing moment. I tried to speak, but my throat was dry, strangled by an overwhelming sense of dread. Every instinct screamed at me to run—to put as much distance as possible between myself and the thing standing before me.
Because deep down, I knew.
That was not Kadir Bhai.
Yet the night around us remained unnervingly still. My heart pounded in my chest. My breath hitched.
Something had been lurking in the darkness, drawing me in. And I had barely escaped.
The realisation crashed over me like a tidal wave, leaving me breathless.
This was no ordinary man.
It was the ghost.
A chill gripped my soul as I gasped, my voice barely above a whisper.
Before I could even ask, what do you want from me? he spoke first.
“There you are! I’ve been waiting for you for so long—I was about to leave. Where were you in the hour of the late night?”
His voice was warm, casual—just as it had always been. Soothing. Familiar. Unassuming.
Oh Lord of the Universe, Sustainer of all worlds, I bow in gratitude—thank You for saving me.
The words echoed in my mind as I stared at the real Kadir Brother.
He was here standing in front of Bangla Ghor, where I slept at night. Just as he so often did for our late evening chats. His presence was steady, unwavering. His expression was calm, familiar. He stood in the courtyard, bathed in the pale glow of the night, an ordinary man in an all-too-familiar place.
And yet, my soul refused to be at ease.
Because I knew—the figure I had seen moments ago was not him.
The flute was gone. The shawl had vanished.
But the smile remained.
A slow, creeping terror took hold of me. The prank I had played on my neighbour—meant to be harmless mischief—had unwittingly drawn something far darker into my world.
Something that should not be here.
A phantom, unbound by the laws of the living, had been watching me all along. Not just watching. Studying. Waiting.
This entity, untethered by the rules of time and space, had slipped through the veil—donning Kadir Bhai’s face like a mask, a guise meant to deceive and ensnare. Its presence had carried an aura of unspeakable dread, a distortion itself.
At that moment, I understood with bone-deep certainty: I had come face to face with something ancient. Something that did not belong in this world.
And I had barely escaped its grasp.
I stood frozen, my mind spiralling between the real and the unreal, haunted by the truth:
Something had reached out from the shadows, wearing the face of my neighbour.
And deep in my bones, I knew—it was not done with me yet.
The Jungle That Awakens at Night
The rattan palm (Calamus genus) is no ordinary plant. By day, its thorn-covered vines are harvested and put to practical use. But as night falls, the jungle transforms.
Superstitions whisper that these vines awaken in the darkness, shedding their mundane nature to become something else—something sentient.
Something that watches.
Something that waits.
Something that mimics.
Something that lures.
A spectral sentinel lurking in the shadows, the rattan grove has long been feared—a place where the living dares do not tread after dusk. And now, standing in the courtyard, staring into the eerily familiar face of my neighbour, I understood why.
No human could have done what I had just witnessed.
The realisation sank deep into my bones.
I had seen something that was not Kadir Brother.
Something that had worn his face.
The Morning After
At sunrise, I forced myself to return to the place where I had seen the fire burning the night before. My feet felt heavy as if the weight of the night still clung to them.
But when I arrived, there was nothing.
No ashes. No smouldering embers. Not even the faintest trace of burnt grass.
The ground was undisturbed, untouched, as though nothing had ever been there at all.
Had I imagined it? Had my mind woven shadows where there had been none?
No.
I knew what I had seen.
I knew what had seen me.
And I knew, deep in my soul, that something had tried to lead me into the unknown. Something that had taken the form of a man I thought I knew, drawing me toward the darkness—toward the place where reality blurs and the night holds sway.
I may never fully understand what happened that night, but one truth is clear: it wasn’t Kadir Bhai. It was something else, something far older and more sinister, wearing his face. As the sun rose over West Tilak, I understood that I had come too close to something that was never meant to be seen.
The Haunting Question
I never spoke to Kadir Bhai about that night. Never mentioned the fire, the shawl, or the way I had watched him slip into the impenetrable rattan palms as though the thorns and tangled vines did not exist.
What would he have said?
Would he have laughed it off? Would he have denied ever being there?
Or would he have simply smiled—that same eerie smile I had glimpsed in the courtyard—and asked me the same chilling question?
“Where were you?”
Even now, the memory lingers, a shadow trailing my every step. The thought of that dark figure, wearing the face of someone I trusted, still sends a shiver down my spine. And I wonder—how many times has it done this before?
How many times has it worn the face of a friend, a neighbour, or a loved one?
How many unsuspecting souls has it lured into the darkness, pretending to be someone they know?
And how many never returned?
I have never told anyone about that night, but it haunts me still. Even now, I avoid that patch of rattan palms once the sun sets. I don’t know what it was I saw in the shadows, but I know one thing for certain: it was not Kadir Bhai. And I have never been the same since that moonlit night in West Tilak.
I often wonder if the figure I encountered that night still lingers in the rattan groves, waiting, watching, searching for its next victim. Perhaps one day, someone else will hear the soft, hypnotic strains of a flute drifting through the night air and, like me, will be drawn toward the figure that isn’t quite real.
And if they do—if they follow that spectral presence into the dark—I fear they may never return.
And if they do… I do not wish to know what they become.
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