Written by Kay
The sun has gone down and the moon was shining in all its glory, an eerie silence lingered in the air and I was standing in from of my old family home that we had stopped residing in 7 years ago when my grandfather mysteriously died.
I was 17 and still jittery from that day when I was startled awake by the screams of my mother, that frightened and frightening, screech of a scream. My sister who was 15 started crying hysterically.
I gained some composure and immediately went near her and embraced her with my reassuring whispered words.
I hadn’t had much time to comprehend what might be the reason behind the scream of my calm caring mother, who many a times had shown us how strong and fearless she was, one of the incidents included the fight that she had taken up with the town hooligan who threatened my little brother because he looked in the eyes of him, straight, unfearing.
I knew something really bad must’ve happened for it had shook us all.
My sister and I got to our feet and started for the door, each second was a threat to our lives, either we would die by the hands of the intruder who might have murdered my parents or the fear that was taking ground on each cell of our body would kill us.
When we reached the stairs of our home, I still remember the way my heart was beating so rapidly, each beat scared to run a full course, my whole body was trembling and the stairway down seemed like an abyss that had no turning back from, as if every step down was leading to a forever changed life.
With much scavenged courage and a young sister behind me, who she might’ve thought as her saviour but who really was a frightened child much like her, we were standing outside our grandfather’s room and there stood my mother leaning against the wall and as our eyes met, I saw how the fright was being covered with false bravery. Her eyes were wide and I just couldn’t look away, there was a silent request, begging even for answers, “Mom, what is happening?” And ” Mom….Mom….”
She couldn’t answer neither with words nor with silence and I knew that she was in no way to reply to our pleas.
It felt as if hours had gone by, but in reality it had just been a few minutes, no more than 20.
My father came out of the room of my grandfather and the same expression as my mother smeared his face. He came rushing to us and started shoving us away, told me to take my sister to our room and be there until we were called.
I wanted to scream and ask what had happened, what was the reason behind the shrill we felt. No answers were ever given. We silently went to our room and there were my younger brothers, and they too were scared and sought refuge in the room of their older sibling.
I sat all of us down and tried to capture as much fear as I could out of our brains and heart and cast it away somehow but it stung us like a leech who just wouldn’t give in even after sucking us dry of life.
After the long wait, we were called down, we were to gather together and be present downstairs in the living room.
There, laid the corpse of my grandfather, covered with white and the blood was seeping out to the clean layer of the sheet. It was not something we should be in presence of but the rituals and traditions needed to be followed. Which they did. All of it was a blur to me. All I can remember afterwards is that we were sitting in the living room in the evening, nobody told us anything, no one was told of this, that scream and horrifying fear of the morning.
The house haunted us for the next month, my mother and father weren’t the same, I wasn’t the same, no one who was there in that house that morning was the same.
We moved out after a month or so but the nightmares didn’t leave us, my mother and father both experienced nightmares. My mother was released from this torment when she died of declining health.
The last breath she took, I was there, she was not herself, her cheeks were sunken in and her bones were trying to be free of her thin flesh, she called me near her and whispered “Go, go far away from this place, don’t look back ever.”
And after all those years, I am here again.
This place is abandoned, people tried to rent it for sometime with the intent to live in it, but no one lasted.
No one who came here ever went home perfectly fine.
I was not to come here but when my mental state became severely effected by the incidents that took place in here and what followed, a month ago, I just had to know what had happened, I came knowing well that I might never leave this place alive. I had to come, I had to, If I didn’t, these voices won’t leave me alone. He is calling me here, he has been calling me here, he called me here that night too and I did go to him and woke up the next morning with the scream of my mother.
