On a frosting, winter night I was coming back from my relative’s residence which takes 45 minutes to reach as it was twenty blocks down the street. I realized that the clock had already struck 11. The cold was so dense that it was biting my bones and almost drained my energy. I was sauntering and harking to some music as I always did.
All of a sudden someone was stomping behind and it was so loud that it captivated the sound of my music and stole my downright attention. I quickly pulled out the earphones I had stuffed into my ears. The noise was no longer heard and it was as if I was imagining things and I considered it to be a part of the music I was listening to. I resumed my lingering walk.
Everything around me was tranquil and again I heard the stomping which was louder than the last time. I turned back quickly and I saw something abnormal. A little far by, I saw a black figure which made me ponder that it was watching me intentionally and constantly. At first, it appeared to be my hallucination and I kept telling myself that it was just my imagination that was sown inside me by the act of constantly watching horror movies and videos. But my instinct kept on provoking me to go check on what it was.
There is nothing better in this whole, entire world than following your instincts. So, I kept reverting and went back to check on the bizarre black figure. The black figure began to receive a colorful look. It was a woman who was standing with a weird look and she was acting all weird.
When she witnessed me walking by her side, she started to moan in some sort of pain seeking help. She had a deep cut on her left leg and she was bleeding so much that the blood that poured down must be capable to fill a pool. She asked me to lend her a helping hand. Opportunely I had some first aid appliances in the bag pack I was carrying for emergency. I gave her some first aid and I made her take a seat on the bench which was near the dim street light just beside us.
The lady pulled me to her side and told me that she lived two blocks up. Although she said she was a part of the dwellers of that street, my guts realized that there was something going wrong as I had never seen her around my street. She told me that she had lost her family in a recent car accident and she had to thrive for survival on her own. She seemed to be gentle and humble by her accent and the mannerism she used for communication.
One of my neighbors passing by that side, looked at me talking to the woman and rubbed his eyes, and ran away from there as if there was a devil beside me. After I received a call from home questioning my location, I realized that I was superlatively late and I also had some homework pending for the next day of school.
I waved her and made sure I gave her all the necessary things she needed in case her bleeding wouldn’t stop and I gave her some water as she seemed so tired and restless. I started running and this time there was no disturbance on my way. Although everything was fine until then the thought of my neighbor running away from me while I was talking to that woman kept on striking me and it left me quite puzzled.
My feet began to hurt and I was breathing so hard as I had to run a few miles from there. I drank some water and there was a poster beside me which was pulling my attention. When I looked into it, I received the shock of my life. The poster was a death condolence of a woman who lived in that block. The vision of the woman on the poster that my eyes captured was none other than the women whom I had been talking to a couple of minutes ago.
My heart was pounding so hard and I thought it was one of my worse nightmares or some kind of a hallucination. But I was not able to digest that moment and I started putting back all the stuff I had taken out back to my bag-pack. Holding my heart and my soul within my little, cold hands I started running as fast as I could to reach home. I was home. Without uttering a word, I removed my shoes, threw them beside my shoe rack, and ran away to my room.
That incident haunts me even now and I feel so happy and relieving to have escaped the clutches of death that day. The questions of why the woman came up to me and why did she pretend to have gotten hurt and her poster staying up, all still remain unanswered. I never dared to take a walk, alone, specially at night even to the next door. Whenever I keek into the poster of that woman, I remember of that haunted incident. What a freaking, creepy, unnatural incident it was!!
Author: Jamuna