A sound jarred me awake. Heart thundering in my chest, I tried to put myself back to sleep but the sound, like a saw mutely but determinedly cutting through wood, wouldn’t let me. So I got off the bed, needing to see what the fuss was about.
As my legs hit the floor, I realized I was a lot closer to the ground than I was used to. I looked at my hands and feet…they were definitely smaller. I was clutching onto Mr. Bears and it struck me that I was 8 years old.
I walked around my bed, shifting Mr. Bears to my front, holding him like a shield. The sound was at once hypnotising and unpleasant, forcing me to put one foot in front of the other, unable to bear the mystery.
I reached my window and peeped outside. I saw two figures, on top of each other on my front garden. Going red in the ears, thinking mummy and papa were indulged in some adult activity I turned around, ready to go back to bed.
But then that sound came again…whispering on the breeze…like a slow, harsh rubbing. I turned back to the scene. This time, the two figures took on sharper outlines. It was definitely a man and a woman but it wasn’t mummy and papa. The man was staring at me, his eyes glassy. In an instant I knew he was dead. Biting my fingers to stop me from screaming, Mr. Bears no longer a shield but as petrified as me, I saw with horrified fascination as the woman with practiced ease hacked through the dead man’s leg.
When another sound jarred me from my concentration on what was happening outside my window, I was in bed, back to my 23-year-old self.
I turned to my partner and let lose a muted scream. For a tense moment it felt like the woman from my dream was lying beside me, blood dripping from her nose, and spattered on her clothes and bedsheet. The moment passed but the feeling remained. I was too afraid to verify so went back to sleep, turning away from my partner, curling into myself, clutching an imaginary Mr. Bears, my shield and protector.
To this day, I don’t know what I saw outside my window when I had been 8 years old. Nothing was reported in the papers, there was no gossip that my parents had to shield me from, no tense whisperings in school. All I know is, a ghost has been haunting me for the past 15 years and it has an uncanny knack of showing up every time I am close to being happy.
Written as part of the #WordsMatter Blog hop hosted by Corinne, Shalini and Parul. Happy to take this baton on from Keerthi and passing it onto Vinitha.
tales of Suchita 
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