You would not meet Garrett Beverly from Blackhaven during your typical holiday. He went by the nick name ‘Hunter’, a rather unfortunate name, yet none could have fit him better.  He wore the façade of a heavily built man with a rough voice, unfriendly nature and a keen eye that watched everything around it, often without blinking and caught every detail. He had not appeared to the village for many a year now, and except a few of the older folk, no one knew the truth of nature.

He lived on the edge of the village, away from people, in a rambling hut on the top of a hillock. The hut lay in the middle of an unkempt garden that kept him company where human civilization had given up after being clearly unwelcome.

However, the rambling hut and unkempt garden royally failed their goal in keeping people away. Far from inducing fear in the local children, the place further fuelled their imagination and their daring. The children often made it a game to try and enter the ground, the hut, go in and explore the hallway and the kitchen while hiding from the old man who lived there. Little did they know when they played that their innocent game would invite plenty of trouble for the village in the very near future.

Our tale began on a cold winter evening when two children Adam and Kevin were playing a game of catch not far from the hut where Garrett lived. Quite by accident, one of them threw the ball harder than he initially had meant to, and the ball flew over the fence and right into the garden that belonged to old Garrett Beverly. Unperturbed, the children happily went into the garden to retrieve their ball. The children moved around quite a bit looking for their ball in the thick undergrowth, without knowing that a keen eye followed every move they made.

After a minute or two, Adam found the ball fallen right next to the hut, below the windowpane. He bent down and picked up the ball, glancing into the building while he did, privately hoping to catch a quick look of the rumoured old man who everybody talked about and liked to annoy. Peeking in, Adam tried to adapt to the dark in the room, for he blocked the only way light could get in. Before he could, though, both the children heard a jarring voice that began laughing manically, like it belonged to a mad man. At eight, courage quickly failed the children, and they ran away from the hut, terrified.

The children ran all the way home, panting through the crowd of people dawning the road during the evening time. They narrated their experience to their mother and father, recounting the incident with the avidity of an eight-year-old who had gotten over their fear now that they were under the protection of their home. To their annoyance, nobody believed them, rather thinking that the children had let their imagination run wild with them. The people in the village quickly forgot their tale, except when they wanted to rag the children in good humour for getting terrified of a mere voice, a voice that in fact no one other than the children had heard.

With time, though, it became harder to ignore the tale narrated by the two children. When more and more people began to hear the manic laughter coming from the hut, they were forced to pay heed to, and believe them. The fear among the people of the village had become palpable.

When at one point of time, the fear induced by the voice became high enough to hinder to daily life of the people, the old folk of the village all met together. Bought together by their experience with life, they came up with a plan of action together. They called for any villager who felt brave enough to join them in exploring the hut, and trying to find an explanation for the queer and alarming laughter that they had heard.   

That night, the people began their journey. When they reached the hut, they could not hear even a faint voice. They initially knocked on the door of the place, hoping that Garrett Beverly would come out and explain everything without having to force him to do it. However, when no one attended to the door for a long time, the people began to get impatient. Finally, they broke open the door, and entered the hut, not knowing what to expect. They were all in for a huge blow. They watched dirt cover every inch of the ground and it looked like no one had ever lived in the hut. Upon thorough examination, the people of the party concluded that no one lived in the hut anymore, and Garrett Beverly definitely did not. They left from there more perplexed and frightened.

No one ever heard any voice from the hut again, and nobody ever found out how Garrett Beverly had unfathomably appeared to fade off the face of the Earth.

The people of Blackhaven wondered and talked about the queer hut a great deal for quite a long period after that. One man opined that the voice belonged to the apparition of Garrett Beverly. Another man thought that Garrett Beverly captured a phantom and put it there to frighten the people of the village, who conveniently ignored him all the time. A third man forgot the whole event, looking at it like a bad dream and nothing more than that.

Whatever other impact that the queer event had or did not have, one thing became certain after that. The people of the village never went near the hut again; even the few brave people who were not bothered by it before avoided it now. Children abandoned the hut, and found a different place and a different game to play.

That had been the only time when people of Blackhaven had watched any trace of the imaginary phantom, but then the name became glued to the mind of the innocent people in the village, and from that day onward the hut and the hillock that lay under it came to be known ‘Phantom Hill’, remaining that forever until the end of time.

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Hi reader!
Thank you for giving this tale the time of your day. I wrote the piece a few years ago, but it is still very close to my heart. Did you notice that there is not a single ‘s’ in the entire tale?

I hope you enjoyed reading this piece; I had tons of fun writing it.
Stay healthy, stay safe
Lots of love,
Anvita