Cigarette Smell

This story I'm about to tell you, happened to a friend of mine while I was at his place long time back,

I will try my best to describe the situation as it happen.

In Sri Lanka, we had a regular power cuts (some years back) due to no rain and water to generate power, so every night from 7 PM to 10PM we used to get a power cut, mornings also but since we were schooling we had no issue with that.

So, on this Saturday a friend of mine invited me spend a night at another friends place, my friends name is Chanaka, and his friend's name is Hemal.

I knew Hemal but not as close as Chanaka, anyway we bought Koththu (a delicious street food junk in big time!) and Pepsi, also a pack of playing cards to spend the night at Hemal's place. His parents were going to a funeral home, one of his cousin's has passed away by cancer.

Hemal did not go because his parents were worried about thieves breaking into houses when the power goes off.

So we got there by 6PM and made plans to how we going to spend the night with all sort of activities. Including me, altogether four guys are there, Hemal's parents took off to the funeral home and we were left home.

I looked at the time they cut off the power, it was 7.05PM and one candle were burning from left side, we were talking about girls and you know being a teenager, opposite sex was a huge topic for a long talk.

The guy sitting left to me pinched my arm, I jumped and turn to his side to ask what's his problem. He was all stones and looking at the plain right side wall to me. We all three looked at the wall there is nothing special... Except for the shadow of the fifth person.

We stopped talking, started waving our hands and heads but this shadow was just there and it wasn't any of us... We started getting the smell of cigarette as if one of us smoking very near to us, but no one is smoking. To our surprise the fifth shadow blowing smoke out of its mouth time to time but we could not see any hands appearing in the shadow.

My whole body went numb, I know for a fact this is not normal, I pulled the hand of my friend who was sitting left to me and stood up. Told the others that "I need to go to washroom" and went upstairs, the other two also followed me. Hemal walked passing me and went to his room, stood behind the door and waved us to come in quick.

As we went inside he locked the room. He had a torch somewhere near to his bed, with the help of that he found an old candle and lit it up. All four of us knows what exactly we saw, there was a fifth person and we could only see the shadow on the wall, to make matters worse this person smoking too. Yaiks!

We whispered to our self's using filthy words, to come up with all the possibilities about that shadow must be from outside, but then how come the cigarette smell? While we are talking we heard footsteps, as if someone, very tired walking very slowly and heavily. Coughing time to time and we could smell the cigarette smell getting more and more to the bedroom.

As if this person is walking towards Hemal's room, the first friend who saw the shadow passed out. We dragged him to under the bed and took all the bed sheets and pillows we could find and covered our self's. We started praying, the cigarette smell was there for some time then went away like the wind took it.

We stayed in the room under the bed until the power come. When power came we slide out from under the bed and thought of what we are going to do. Waited nearly for an hour and went out of the room. Our friend who passed out earlier is sleeping so myself and Hemal went downstairs to check. Nothing has changed, no cigarette smell or anything. We took the food and playing cards pack rushed to Hemal's room, closed the door and waited until next day.

I have to tell you that time to time we could smell the cigarette smell but we stayed in room as if everything is fine, (maybe we were imagining the cigarette smell is still coming).

We slept around 3 in the morning and woke up when Hemal's parents were shouting outside to open the door. We ran out of the room and open the door. Sun is shining and it's a nice clear day.

We did not say anything to his parents, thinking they will never believe us.

His mom made breakfast and while we were having food his mom said, that the cousin who died by a cancer... He was a heavy smoker. We looked at each other. Then we had to tell his parents what happened last night.

His mom said that this cousin used to play with Hemal when he was very young and everyone in a funeral house asked why Hemal didn't come.

Came to a conclusion that the person who died must have come to say good bye to Hemal.