The Tales of Achelo – Episode 2

Episode 2

My mother would go on and tell me that grandma had been a very terrible witch. That she would kill anyone! Kills even her very children! Could it be the reason why father had to choose this place to build? Or perhaps father just didn’t have land where they had been staying before?

The following week when I was coming back from the hospital, mother told me something that wasn’t pleasing. She told me that father died a month after my accident. She said she had not known father’s family background before she opted in to marry him. It was the day that he lost his job that he proposed to her. Some unknown thugs had murdered his secretary and the knife was thrown in his office. The manager had to fire him. When father came back to village, he had to move to this house. Our grandfather had built the house to escape from people trying to bring troubles to grandma.

My grandma then died a week after my father’s death and that night I never slept. I was constantly reminded of her cruelty. People killed her in mob justice. They claimed she had evil powers which she used for killing innocent people. They said she would make people walk. Walk at night. Walk without their consciousness. She would make people cultivate her garden at night.

Grandpa was scrawny, mother told me. He was bonny with traces of veins clearly visible beneath his face. He had deeply indented cheek. Mother said grandpa could sometimes bite his own fingers and eat them. Suggestions were that, grandma had charmed him. Grandpa died mysteriously later, mother would continue, and only his head and the right arm were found under grandma’s bed. They were wrapped in a dark paper. People got pissed! They were pissed and killed grandma after twenty unsuccessful attempts.

Grandpa’s spirit could have helped people killed grandma! Because I saw her acting weird the day she was killed. She came and stood behind that house. People first chased her before they bumped into her, seated staring at the graveyard direction speechless and frozen. She uttered no word. But her lips revealed she was muttering something. Something only the dead could hear!