Day Forty - Afterlife

...or Poltergeist part II.

You see, this place we moved to in that tiny hamlet I wrote about also had its share of weird things. I really can't tell what followed us and what was already there, but for sure things were pretty damn strange there as well. We still had the bloodstained walls that no matter ho much you scrubbed them clean would always regain the blood stains, and because we lived in a two-storey villa, where our bedrooms, living room and main bathroom were in the first floor, that meant that both the kitchen, pantry, dining room and a very small bathroom adjacent to th entrance were on the ground floor. And let me tell you this : I was deathly afraid of goint to the ground floor, especially at night. If I was thirsty and had to go downstairs for a drink of water, I'd make sure I'd light up the house before going down the stairs - something my parents often got mad at me for doing. Even with all the lights on, I'd always feel this unease whenever I was down there, as if I wasn't alone, as if something bad was watching me. And though things in my previous house were definintely worse and weirder, I never ever felt the same sense of utter dread as I felt in this new house. Even during the day, I nerver quite felt safe there - there was a definite presence there that manifested itself as an old man, and one day I was home alone and sometime after lunch the sense that somethig was wrong was rapidly growing on me. I left the house in a hurry, and went over to our neighbour's on the other side - I wouldn't say that we got along swimmingly, but they were at least somewhat friendly to us and tolerated my presence. They - and a bunch of other families - lived in the lot of land next to mine, and on it they'd built a bunch of smaller villas for each individual family; I can't say for sure now but I think they were all related somehow. I recall being on the terrace of one of the buildings and looking directly at my house - in my room I could see the outline of the man standing in the darkness, staring silently at me. It sent shivers down my spine then, it still does now, just thinking about it. As night drew close, I filled up my heart with courage and returned home. I raced up the stairs to the first floor, and locked myself inside my living room until my parents got home. 

There was a ritual I performed every single night I spent in that house : after I went to bed, I pushed the covers just above my head, and underneath I'd recite to myself a cobbled up prayer I'd made up and to which I'd add to every so often. Somehow I always felt safer after intoning those words, it's as if they erected some form of potection over me.