The first time Gemy heard his name coming from an empty house, he thought someone was playing a prank on him. The second time, he ran. By the third time, he had learned something he wished he had never discovered: some things do not need you to enter their house. They only need you to answer when they call.
It started on a Thursday evening when Gemy was returning from his aunt's house. He had stayed longer than he planned because the rain had refused to stop. By the time it finally did, the sky had turned dark, and he had to choose between taking the longer road home or using a shortcut through an abandoned settlement.
Everyone in the village knew about that settlement. There were only six houses there, all built close to one another. Years ago, families had lived in them, but after a terrible incident that nobody liked discussing, the settlement was abandoned. Grass covered the paths, the roofs had collapsed in some places, and the trees had grown so thick that even sunlight struggled to reach the ground.
Gemy's mother had warned him never to use that road after sunset.
He never mind.
Naturally, he had convinced himself that she had only wanted to frighten him as a child.
Besides, he was tired, hungry, and impatient. He did not have the strength to walk an extra forty minutes simply because of an old village story.
He took the shortcut.
At first, everything was normal. The wet leaves shone under the moonlight, and water dripped from the branches whenever the wind moved. His slippers made soft sucking sounds in the mud.
Then he noticed something strange.
There was a light inside the third house.
Gemy stopped walking.
He knew that house. Everyone did. It had belonged to an old woman called Mama Nkem, who had died before he was born. The building had been abandoned for more than twenty years. Its windows were broken, its wooden door hung from one hinge, and part of the roof had fallen into the sitting room.
Yet there was a yellow light behind one of its windows.
He stared at it for a moment, trying to understand what he was seeing.
Perhaps someone had entered the house to steal something. That was the only explanation that made sense to him.
He continued walking.
Then someone called his name.
"Gemy."
He stopped so suddenly that his right slipper slipped in the mud.
The voice had come from inside the house.
It sounded like a woman calling someone she knew very well. There was no anger in it, no desperation, just the familiar impatience of someone who had been waiting for him.
He turned towards the window.
Nobody was there.
"Gemy, come inside."
This time, he recognised the voice.
It was his mother's.
His heart began to beat faster. His mother was at home, probably preparing dinner. She had no reason to be in an abandoned settlement, especially at that hour.
He told himself that fear was making him imagine things. Perhaps the sound had come from another house, or perhaps someone had a voice similar to hers.
Then the voice spoke again.
"Your food is getting cold."
He ran.
He did not stop until he reached the main road, where he found an old man sitting beneath a mango tree. The man was holding a lantern and watching the road as though he had been expecting someone.
When he saw Gemy, he stood up.
"You heard it, didn't you?" he asked.
Gemy could barely speak. "Heard what?"
The old man looked beyond him, towards the settlement.
"The house."
Gemy wanted to ask him how he knew, but the expression on his face frightened him more than the voice had.
The man introduced himself as Baba Danladi. He had lived in the village since before Gemy was born and had known Mama Nkem personally.
"That woman lost her only child many years ago," he said. "The boy disappeared one evening. She searched everywhere, but nobody found him. After that, she stopped sleeping properly. She would sit beside her window every night, waiting for him to return."
"What happened to her?" Gemy asked.
"She died waiting."
Baba Danladi paused before continuing.
"After her burial, people began hearing the boy's voice inside that house. Sometimes it sounded like their children. Sometimes it sounded like their parents. Anyone who went inside after hearing the voice never returned."
Gemy felt cold despite the humidity.
"Then why haven't people destroyed the house?"
The old man gave a sad smile.
"Some houses are not empty simply because nobody lives in them."
That night, Gemy returned home and told his mother everything.
She listened without interrupting. When he finished, she held his hands and asked him to promise never to use that road again.
He promised.
For the next three days, Gemy slept badly. Every small sound made him sit up. He kept thinking about the voice, especially the way it had spoken about his food getting cold.
It had sounded so ordinary.
That was what frightened him most.
On Sunday night, he woke up to the sound of someone knocking on their front door.
Three slow knocks.
Then silence.
He checked the time on his phone. It was 2:17 a.m.
Nobody visited at that hour.
He waited, hoping whoever it was would leave. Instead, he heard his mother's voice from the other side of the door.
"Gemy, open the door."
He sat upright.
His mother was sleeping in the next room. He had heard her snoring before he fell asleep.
The voice came again.
"Gemy, it's me. I'm cold."
He wanted to call his mother, but his throat had become dry. He stepped out of bed and moved towards her room.
She was there, sleeping peacefully beneath her wrapper.
He shook her awake.
"Mummy, somebody is outside."
She opened her eyes. "Who?"
"I don't know. But it sounds like you."
The moment he said those words, she became completely still.
The knocking stopped.
Then something scratched the door.
Slowly.
Three long scratches, followed by a sound like fingernails dragging across wood.
His mother pulled him towards her and whispered a prayer. They remained in her room until morning, neither of them sleeping again.
When the sun finally rose, they opened the door.
There were no footprints outside.
But three deep scratches marked the wooden door.
And beneath them, written in wet mud, were five words.
I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.
Baba Danladi arrived before noon. When he saw the writing, he closed his eyes and sat down heavily.
"It has never followed anyone home before," he whispered.
"How do we stop it?" Gemy asked.
The old man did not answer immediately.
Instead, he asked a question that made Gemy's stomach tighten.
"When it called your name, did you answer?"
Gemy shook his head.
"Did you speak to it?"
"No."
Baba Danladi looked relieved.
"Then it has not been invited inside. But you must understand something. It has learned your voice, and it has learned where you live. Do not answer it, no matter what you hear."
He left them with a small bottle of oil and instructions to keep every door and window locked after sunset.
For two nights, nothing happened.
On the third night, the power went out.
Gemy was lying on his bed, using his phone, when he heard a familiar sound outside his window.
Someone was crying.
Not the loud, desperate crying of a stranger, but the quiet, broken sobbing of someone trying not to be heard.
Then he heard his younger sister's voice.
"Please, open the window."
Gemy sat up slowly.
His sister had travelled to visit their grandmother that morning.
"Please," the voice repeated. "I'm scared."
He covered his ears.
The crying stopped.
Then came a soft laugh.
It was not his sister's laugh.
It was something pretending to know how his sister laughed.
The window handle began to turn.
Gemy remembered Baba Danladi's warning and refused to move. The handle twisted harder, rattling against the frame. Then, from the other side of the glass, a face appeared.
It was his own face.
The same eyes. The same nose. The same small scar above his left eyebrow.
But the person outside was smiling.
Gemy was not.
The thing pressed its forehead against the glass.
"Gemy," it whispered, using his voice. "Why won't you let me in?"
He stumbled backwards and fell.
The thing outside began to cry again.
"Please. I'm the real one."
Then Gemy heard footsteps in the corridor.
His mother's voice called from outside his room.
"Gemy, open the door. There's someone outside your window."
He froze.
If his mother was outside his room, who had been sleeping in her bed earlier that night?
The footsteps stopped.
The door handle turned.
Then the voice on the other side whispered something he would never forget.
"Don't trust the one outside your window. I'm the one who came home with you."
Gemy did not remember how long he sat on that floor. He only remembered praying until his voice became hoarse and the first birds began singing.
When morning came, his mother found him beside the bed, shaking.
They checked the window.
There were muddy fingerprints on the outside of the glass.
All five fingers were unusually long.
But that was not the worst part.
On the wall above Gemy's bed, someone had written a sentence in black mud.
THANK YOU FOR SHOWING ME THE WAY HOME.
Baba Danladi came again that morning. When he saw the writing, he finally revealed the truth he had hidden during their first conversation.
Mama Nkem's missing child had not been an ordinary boy. Before he disappeared, he had been known for imitating people's voices. He could sound exactly like anyone he had heard, even after listening to them only once.
The night he vanished, he had called his mother from the abandoned house.
She had gone inside.
And she had never come out.
"Whatever is in that house," Baba Danladi said, "has spent years learning how to make people believe it belongs to them."
Gemy left the village two weeks later to stay with a relative in another town. He never used that shortcut again. In fact, he avoided walking alone after sunset for months.
Eventually, life returned to normal. He began to sleep peacefully, and the memory of the abandoned settlement became something he rarely discussed.
Until one night, three years later.
At exactly 2:17 a.m., his phone rang.
The caller's number was hidden.
He answered before he could think.
For several seconds, there was only silence.
Then he heard a woman's voice.
It was his mother's voice.
"Gemy, my child," she whispered. "I have been waiting for you."
Gemy stopped breathing.
His mother had died three years ago.
The voice began to cry softly.
"Please come home. I'm cold."
Then he heard the sound of a wooden door opening, followed by the familiar creak of a floorboard.
A moment later, another voice spoke.
His own voice.
"Don't worry, Mama. I'm coming."
The call ended.
Gemy did not sleep again that night.
Because he knew that voice.
He knew exactly how he sounded when he was half asleep, when he was frightened, and when he was trying to comfort someone he loved.
And the voice on that phone sounded exactly like him.
The frightening part was not that something in that abandoned house had learned Gemy's name. It was that, somewhere in the darkness, something had learned how to answer for him.