He was fearless, he was daring, but is there any sense, one will wonders in being daring to the point of being neglectful of that natural human sense for self preservation and survival? especially when one is at no external pressure to prove anything to anyone?
More so people who care not or are bothered about one’s welfare or care about if lived or died.
For what is the prize of bravery if the only reward for a risky stunt wrapped in the cloak of braveness is the viewing pleasure of a bold thirsty crowd of apathetic and mindless spectators?
Why would a young promising man risk everything including his own life all for a show, will the sight his dead body bring any satisfaction to a people already inundated by the sad tales of unexplainably needless and pointless deaths and destruction?
But it was too late to rationalize, for cowards are always full of excuses. If you really don’t want to do something, there are a thousand reasons to keep one from doing it.
The house was said to be haunted and everyone seemed to agree on it and knew well to stay far from it. The story says that a little virgin girl going about her business was lured into the house by it’s owner, a certain member of a deadly cult which frequently engages in ritualistic human sacrifices.
He was the patriarch of a well respected aristocratic family who had lured and killed a little girl who he had sacrificed to consolidate his status and wealth.
They victim it was said had an unusual and stubborn spirit that refused to go down like the other victims before her, there must have been something about that girl they said that made her spirit too tough to tender. Some said that her mother had mourned her so regretfully that a decade after her death, she still calls her name sometimes in the middle of the night and tasks her to destroy any and all who have a hand in her death or attempts to profit from it. She beseeches to remember the daughter of whom she is and strike her killer with the stroke of a miserable and shameful death unto their 3rd generation.
The story says that the curse of the bereaved mother seemed to have taken breath and materialized as the spirit of the girl has been aggressive and effective in it’s destructive path, from causing her killer, the house owner to hear obscenities, a swollen right leg, total blindness, a paralysing stroke, a painful boil and leprous fingers, he said to hear voices of her cries and even in his critical state which spanned 10 odd years, he heard her last cry and bemoaned about it to his care givers, his siblings who he confessed his evil deeds to before he suddenly went motionless one morning. His body was said to be carried into the evil forest and left at the mercy of the wild animals, for he was considered unsuitable to be buried in the land of the living.
His children, had all died mysterious after a protracted mental illness that caused them to roam around unclad and scavenged from the waste bins in company of the goats and chickens.
It was a tragic tale of generational degenerates!
The house was ordered to be demolished at the behest of the king but, when the youths who had been contracted to carry out the task assembled in the premises, they were suddenly stricken with a blindness that lasted for 3 moons and ever since then, everyone steered clear of the house.
But he heard all these tales and wasn’t fazed, he said they must be superstitious moonlight stories, borne by idle housewives and must have been told so often with exaggerated details, passed from generation to generation and no one could have really known the fact of the matters that had transpired.
He made his way into the house in defiance of his fears, ready to confront whatever spirit that said lives in the house.
He walked with a confident gait, bearing only his torchlight, room after room he went, calling on the spirit to come out and be appeased, or forever be put to rest. He had imagined that a spirit would have a sense of human orientation towards diplomacy and conflict resolution, he had mistaken the realm of the spirit for the realm of the material world.
He went deeper and deeper, searching the nooks and corners but found nothing, at this point, he was convinced he wasn’t going to find anything and he would be right and all would be wrong.
But how wrong he was, for he heard a sound on his right and pointed his torch to the direction and saw the face of a young girl with long hair and blood stains on her clothes, she had a smile on her face as her eyeballs refracted the light from his torch giving it a glistering glow in the darkness!
“Noooo” he screamed!
And she asked smiling
“Looking for me?”
