Episode One
“Believe me or not, I shouldn’t be alive. The fire that killed my parents was meant to kill me too. Sometimes, I think it did and what’s left of me is just a shadow.”
We were travelling through a town I didn’t know when it happened. My parents called it “just a stop,” but it became the end. That night, fire devoured the little lodge we stayed in. I remember the smoke choking me, my father’s hands shoving me toward the window, my mother’s voice screaming my name. I ran barefoot into the dark street. They never came out.
By morning, I was alone. Eleven years old, covered in soot, no family, no home. I didn’t even know where my people were my parents had never spoken of relatives.
That’s when Clara found me. She wasn’t much older than twenty. She worked at a bakery, smelled of bread, and had eyes full of pity. “Poor child,” she whispered, wrapping me in her scarf. She took me to her small rented flat in a compound owned by Mrs. Grace, a loud, nosy landlady who never missed a chance to gossip.
There were others in the compound. Ruth, a girl my age, always smiling too wide. Peter, Clara’s old school friend, who teased me endlessly. And behind the compound stood Elder Daniel’s house, quiet by day, but strangely alive at night. People said he was a holy man. But I had already seen his window where a pale face once stared at me, eyes black as ash.
The only man people trusted with their fears was Pastor Kingsley, the young, fiery preacher at the church nearby. Some said his prayers healed the sick. Others whispered his prayers stirred forces best left alone.
At first, I thought I’d found safety in Clara’s house. But then, the nights began. The whispers. The laughter. The voices calling my name.
And one night, I saw it for the first time. A shadow in the corner of the room, tall, bent, moving though no one stood there.
It whispered: “Mary… you should have burned too.”
TBC ✍️…
