Just as I was about to step into my neighbourhood, I spotted a hearse parked a few metres away from my house. Someone must be dead.

Stepping into my neighbourhood is somewhat a transformative experience. One step into the alley off, the busy street, and you feel a steep urban gradient. The loud hustle of the bright lights is replaced by dim incandascent street lamps and shades of crumbling concrete covered brick-work draped by the dark greens of unlit trees. A usual day back from work — about three score steps to home after getting off on the main street.

Looking at the hearse, my mind postulated it to be the ill-treated and ailing father of the notorious neighbour living across my house.

I was just about to drop my cigarette in anticipation of crossing their porch; an inherent need to respect the gelid misty evening. But glancing sideways, I noticed that the front door of a house was kept ajar. It was not of the notorious neighbour. There lay someone enshrouded with flowers, and near the feet stood burning, a profusion of tall incense sticks.

With heavy steps I reached up to a person, who seemed to be the hearse driver, “who is dead?”. “The mother” he replied and immediately turned around to immediately walk away towards the street. The mother? I never knew that she existed. All that I knew, was that an old man lived in that house. The perpetually knitted scowl on his face with steely eyes and wrinkled pale face is what stood out even more than the blue-dyed whites that he would always wear. He lived with his mother, I wondered? I did not know she existed. Perhaps no one knew that she existed, perhaps not even herself.

I had another look at the body and from this distance, managing to avoid looking at her face. All that stole my attention was the smoke from the incense that was blurring the worlds. It felt as if she had stepped into another gradient as she had walked out of herself — the bounds of the silently creaking body replaced by the atomic chaos of the cloudy smoke.

I prayed for the next 5 seconds, with the cigarette still lit, and continued to walk up to my house.

Back in my bedroom, I was narrating the incident to my fiancé. It is wondrous how radio waves floating through the air can make a house feel inhabited by more than one person. Some time into our conversation, she had a waiting call and we hung up. The beep of disconnection immediately segued into clanky metallic rings from the telephone out in my living room. It was one ring, a brief pause and followed by another ring.

Quite unnatural.

I promptly walked up to the telephone. It was an antique wooden phone, that I had acquired from an auction house. It has long been disconnected to protect its failing components. Now it stood as a curious monument to preservation itself — switched off in the hopes of existing for a bit longer. Hmm. I did not even know she existed.

But wait — the phone could not possibly ring by itself. All the doors and windows were firmly shut, sealing out any trace of external noise. In the still silence of my home, nothing else bore even a remote resemblance to that distinctive, ancient ring

An overwhelming sensation, flush with an intrepid mix of curiosity, disbelief and irritation, rushed in. I brisked back to my bedroom and hastily typed in a message. Although the exact words escape me now, I vividly recall the sinking feeling that ensued as I watched the message fail to send. There was no network coverage. It was a troubling coincidence. I reached for the (not antique) landline next to my bed and dialled her. She advised me to spend the night at a friend’s house. Her suggestion was well-intentioned, of course, but I had my own compelling reasons for not wanting to leave my home.

I was not feeling scared. The difference between haunted by an invisible omnipresence, was distinctly discernible from what I was feeling then. That was coupled by this irrational logic of not succumbing to acknowledging the supernatural by running away. The thought of running down the dimly lit staircase and then trailing past the hearse and into the confined space of my car did not appear as a better proposition.

While I was mulling over these reasons, a sudden power outage filled the room with darkness. The landline died mid conversation, her voice clicked short. A sudden draft whispered across my face. The world slowed down and my mind started racing at a lightning speed. I could sense the draft fleeting in towards me from the door leading out of the bedroom. The draft, mysteriously present despite all doors and windows being closed, seemed to provide a sense of dark volume to this obscurity. My eyes had not adjusted to see anything. I knew there was a torch nearby. But where?

I had always imagined that I would gracefully endure any adversity that came my way. Yet, in reality, when the unexpected strikes, our bodies often betray us, reacting in ways we cannot control. A chill ran down my spine, compelling me to quickly sprint forward and shut the bedroom door.

The thud of the door coincided with a burst of unexpected light. The emergency light began to fill the room with a soft glow, slowly but surely. It felt as though I had severed the flow of darkness itself, as if the emergency light had been on all along. The world seemed to settle; the phone network was restored. She was calling me back. The power surged back to life. I could feel the normalcy returning. Yet, following her instructions, I turned on all the remaining lights in the house and settled down to rest.

I am perpetually haunted by the notion that regardless of whether there is a door or not, light or darkness, night or day — unexplainable events beg to pose the question, is reality an imagination or a shared experience within the concentricity of many worlds?