The Chain Sounds

This story happened to me on my school days which means to say about 24 years back. I am so sorry for my poor English and I will try my very best to make you understand what had happened and I am so sorry it's longer than I expected.

Here in Sri Lanka, we have an Exam, Ordinary level, it's the first big exam we face when we start school, if you pass this, then you get to study further in a school if not then private courses and things cost more money.

There is friend of mine, Ruckshan... He lived in the same scheme as I do and same age as I am, but goes to a different school. There are 2100 housed in this scheme, my house is somewhere in the middle and his house further to left side where it's near to a village which is outside of this scheme.

In this village there is a river running and I remember my father used to say there were dead bodies floating between the years of 82 to 84, cause of political war went on between government and a Communist party, people were picked up and killed no one knew until their bodies were found either burning or hanging on sides of a bridge or just simply close range headshot... Girls were raped and killed, but those days were long gone.

This river belongs to the village but still it's near to my friend's house. Many days when I met him on afternoons he used to say he heard chain sounds at night but never made a big fuss about it. We used to ride bicycles until about 6PM every day after coming home from school.

He and I thought of spending the nights at my place and his to do studies until morning, and our moms were very help full with hot coffee and plenty to eat...:)

So on this day I came to his place and we watched TV until nine with dinner and went to his room upstairs to start studying.

We were making maths questions and all of sudden I heard a chain noise, a kind a noise you get when a heavy chain is been dragged on a tar road. But it's still a faint sound, I looked at my friend with big eyes because I never believed when he said he heard it almost every week end.

He smiled and said "see I told you but you never believed me". I told him there might be some people dragging three trunks which been cut illegally we might be able to see them.

Being teens we had a huge curiosity to find out what's going on and we had only couple of months left for the exam so we waited until we finished it.

On this Friday, he and I thought of doing little investigation by ourselves about this tree cutting thing, so we lied to our parents that we will be spending the night at each other's places but truly we were out near the River.

There were some big grown wild mango trees which was easy for us to climb and stay comfortably.

We ate some sweets, fish buns which we took in the evening and drank water. Did little chit chat talking about how to catch the men who do the illegal tree cutting.

It's very dark, there was no sound and no body. We were feeling down that the tree cutters didn't turn up. We could not go home also so we had to spend the night. We didn't have cell phones those days and no watches to tell the time.

Slowly I fell asleep. I remember my friend awaking me with his hand on my mouth and it's dead cold. I looked at him and I could see his extra wide open eyes and a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth.

I woke up then he made me like don't make a noise soft of a wave and showed me the road... Damn to my eyes a bright white dress with long curly hair is passing by very slowly. I could just guess it was a woman, and as she walks I could hear the chain noise and I could see the chains are been bound to her hands which getting dragged along when she walks slowly.

Well, I was not scared but puzzled why the hell something like this? My friend took his handkerchief from his mouth and whispered me with some explicit, " what the hell is that?" I did not know how to answer.

It's just completely silent and all we can hear is the water sound from the river and the chains. The white dressed woman just vanished into thin air and came back near the river and fell in to the river.

In a split second we both got down and ran to the river shouting to stop and no no's, we were just trying to save a life from getting drowned.

When we came to the river, no one is there. With the moon light we could see the river but it's just water and nothing else.

Because of the shouting we made people from nearby came to running thinking we were in trouble but we told them what we just saw...

They took us to a home and gave some coffee, we told them the whole story... About our investigation about the chain sound, the man in the house told us that woman is a ghost who had been killed during that time... She was gang raped and drowned in the river by the men who raped her by hanging her hand in a chain on a Saturday early morning.

Not every Friday but some Friday's villagers could hear the chain noise.

It's bit strange and funny that I did not get scared and we wanted to see that woman again, but after our parents got to know about our adventure I got grounded for a month, No Friends/No Tv or Radio only story books and stay at home.

Me and Ruckshan decided not to go again to see the ghost. Several years later the water board (Department) came and built a water refining plant in that place. They redid the roads and area so after the factory starts working, people said no more ghost came.