The Tales of Achelo – Episode 5

Episode 5

Though I knew it was only a word of comfort, I believed it anyway. Mother held both of my hands, bent and gave me a kissed on the forehead. She helped me to stand up. We prayed without stopping for about thirty minutes. By the time mother finished the payers, my eye was already coated with sleep. She wished me goodnight and went away.

I closed the door behind her. I dropped on my bed dragging sleep but it couldn’t come again. I had taken some minutes on bed when this thought came to me. What was there in that place? What was there inside grandma’s hut that made father to die? Why did father build this far, near the graveyard? The place that harbors grasses that never dry nor grow tall! My mother loved God and there is no way she could have accepted to come here if it was that so evil!

Edith had told me that when we were passing near the graveyard next to that hut, I fainted and hit my left eye on a stone. It took me some times before I could recover a little of my senses. She narrated that I fell down just the moment I was opposite grandpa’s grave. What would it be like to walk there in the dead of the night when the dead would want to feed? I imagined. Cold sputum of fear bathed me at this thought. I crippled up inside my bedsheet. My stomach rambled. I could not move any of my limbs. Some unforeseen force was pressing me down. I became dizzy and loss feelings.

I noticed my door opens gently. No hands were pushing it. It just swung smoothly inside. A strong wind was blowing outside. Window shutters were hitting their frames so often. The sheets of the roof were crackling as though they wanted to blow off, especially near the hole above my bed. The light of my bulb was flickering intermittently. Thunders were roaring like angry volcano and lightening accompanied it with flashes of white lights that reflected in my room.

At the door, was a figure looking blurred. It was hard to distinguish whether it was a man or a woman. But then while the figure drew closer, I could associate the sluggish gait to that of a woman. The eyes were oozing blood. Cheeks looked to be eaten halfway by termites. Her breathing was more of a whimper. The fingernails had overgrown. When the lights held stable a little, I noticed it was an old woman. The canine teeth had overgrown past the lower lip. She had bulging eyes. She held her right arm out, beckoning me. She was staggering. She couldn’t lift her legs above the floor as she kept sliding them coming toward me. Her left arm fell. She didn’t pick it and neither did she look back.