The case of the screechy scream terror!

And because of the lack of obstructions in between, the sound was carried by the wind straight into his room.

His family had moved into the suburbs just a week ago. Being sparsely populated, sounds were carried far and wide in the open, silent spaces. And this particular sound was of a very high decibel.

He wondered whom it belonged to. The feminine voice could belong to a woman (battered and beaten by a cruel husband?) or perhaps a young boy (probably forced into child labour and exploited by an employee?). He definitely sensed something strange.

When he mentioned this to his mother, she dismissed it as his detective buddhi ruling over an idle mind. “Now that you have very few holidays left, why don’t you read some books to kill time – but no more of your favourite mysteries please”, she said suppressing a smile. His father took him seriously and said, “I had one such experience in my childhood.

I heard a woman sobbing bitterly every evening crying out for help. Your Nina Bua and I snooped around and to our embarrassment, discovered a drama troupe rehearsing in a house. So it could be that you are making a mountain out of a molehill. So chill! If this continues, we shall try and find the facts. But till then, don’t play detective all by your self. It could be dangerous if there is something untoward. With your mom and me away at work, I don’t want you to take any risks.”

But it so happened that Vikas did hear the screams again, twice or thrice almost every day. They came in long spurts of three or four, with pauses of a few seconds in between. Quite disturbed by it, he decided to investigate.

He called five of his friends to spend a weekend with him. They arrived early Saturday morning with packed breakfast from their homes. Later, Nitin the budding chef planned to cook a meal for them with Mili’s help. The twins Urja and Udit would toss up a salad. As usual, Moksh would entertain them with his witty wisecracks throughout their stay there. Vikas’s main plan of course was to seek their help in solving the mystery of the shriek.

By noon, Vikas had briefed his friends about the strange recurring sound. So, they were alert and quietly going about their work. At precisely 12:29 they heard it loud and clear. Mili was visibly shaken and scared to death. The expression on everybody’s faces confirmed the seriousness of the situation.

That night after a wholesome dinner courtesy Vikas’s mother, all the friends played a game of scrabble. Co-incidentally the words they formed were ‘unknown’, ‘secret’, ‘sleuth’, ‘cop’, ‘explore’ and the likes. Realizing what was on their minds, they gave up playing and worked on planning a strategy to find out who was screaming and why.

Next morning, around 7:30 am, they all went walking towards the lane where the sound came from. They looked around to guess the possible address of the scream. And then they heard it again – extremely loud and deafening this time because of the proximity. Discovering where it came from, they zeroed in on an old, quaint looking house. They opened the rickety wooden gate, and alternately rang the doorbell and knocked on the shut window. For ten whole minutes, they continued patiently but no one answered.
They did hear bustling sounds from within and even the dragging of a chair.

Was the woman gagged and tied to a chair? Was she slowly pushing herself to the main door to attract attention? When these thoughts occurred to them, they sensed danger and were really afraid.

Just then, Nitin felt a tap on his shoulder from behind. He gasped loudly and turned around – frightening the others in the process.

They faced an old man with a walking stick. With his burly, curly white moustache and thick white eyebrows that he raised three times to indicate a “What’s up?” question, he looked more like a caricature than a human.

Vikas muttered, “Uncle, I’ve heard screams from this house many a time from my house close by”. Without uttering a word, the old man opened the door with a key and ushered them in. Everyone except wary Mili followed him. Inside the house was a maid dusting the furniture quite immaculately. Udit asked her who was screaming.

She continued going about her work without even looking up. The old man said, “It’s of no use,  Gowramma is stone deaf. As for the screams you keep hearing I think I can help you on that one”. He led them to a mixer in the kitchen in which was some freshly ground chutney.

He ran it and the kitchen reverberated with the same screeching sound that sounded so human, scaring the daylights out of them. One glance at the maid revealed that she was unaffected by it.

The children laughed loudly and apologized to the old man. He said, “Actually, I’m sorry. I should have got the mixer repaired. But since I’m away at work or on my walks when it’s being used, it slips my mind. I’ll get it serviced or replaced at the earliest”.

The children couldn’t stop laughing when they trooped back to Vikas’s place. --“Embarrassing situations are heredity I guess”, said his father when updated on the incident. His mother quipped laughing heartilys, “So much for playing detectives”.

Moksh added quite seriously, “We still have two mysteries to crack. How did a human soul get entrapped in a mixer? And, was the maid stone-deaf before coming to work there or is her condition a result of using that mixer so often?” Everybody present there, burst out laughing.