Image

Daya’s new apartment had been in the crest of her residential pipe dreams. If not what she had earlier marked as an utmost life holy grail then it was just one of those castles suspended loosely in the air. The site was on an pupular coast line, and on an ideal topography that perfectly welcomed fresh life-giving breeze from the ocean. Three days into the apartment, she hadn’t experienced any upshot beneath her desired expectations. During the day, cool air whips could always rise over the waves, bringing to her direction the salty taste of the ocean. At sundown, while the sky changed second after second, she adored snapping the heavenly horizons with the sun’s fresh, bounteous and rich hues brushing over the ocean surface. The two mooned nights had been accompanied by audible rhythmic pounding of waves and the usual saline air. Her husband had acquired this beauteous apartment two weeks into her maternity leaf and she had undeniably loved it from the first sight. Besides being located at one of the country’s most pre-eminent lands, she deemed it a perfect place to raise her unborn baby.

“Hi, hun” She received her phone call, turned on to loud speaker as she sauntered to the balcony for her late evening revivals.

“Querida” Her husband Mr. Yobo responded in his untimely cheerful and touchy-feely tone.

She giggled a little bit then posed “What’s up?”

“The meeting would take a bit longer” Mr. Yobo responded. They engaged in a prolonged conversation which ended up with a tender smile on her face. She hung up, gave her phone a peck then placed it on a concave-surfaced white hairy vanity stool standing excellently next to a deftly cushioned bamboo rocking chair.

 The twilight had fast waned out and the sky had already gone dark, graced by a bright gibbous. Daya sat on the rocking chair, used the balcony flood light to launch into one of the few novels she had topped up to her massive bookish shopping of first-time mothering and parenting. As she turned the first page, she raised her face to study a cluster of comparatively thick cloud layer rush on the surface of the sky’s waxing gibbous but the golden beauty wasn’t going to be long lived. She rapidly paced back to her second page as the lights suddenly went out. Her next vision was a shadow passing through her novel’s hoary page toward her new grand dwelling from the balcony, and this from the spot edited every ambience to a heart of terror.

Daya found herself in total darkness, wrapped in thick panic creams. She felt like everything had suddenly been commissioned to haunt her deep maternity stages, why? Immediately the lights went off, the ocean’s life-giving audible salty breaths suddenly became poignant, and she could clearly make out whispers of her name moving at the same pace with the breezes. The gustier the winds grew the more clearer she could figure out her name from the moving air.

“H-u-n a-r-e you the-re?” She called out flapping, when she all of a sudden heard a clack of falling kitchen gadgets. But what followed was a petrifying silence accompanied by a faded series of iterated whispers of her own tensed words.

“H-u=n a-r-e you the-re? H-u-n a-r-e you the-re? H-u-n a-r-e you the-re? H-u-n a-r-e you…”

The panic cream wrapping her flesh, consistently grew more thicker. She helped herself up the rocking chair, and from the snowy floor of her balcony, she again watched a humanoid shadow race into her house. She dropped down the novel that had long been glued on her hand, then tried to reach for her phone which slipped through her fingers to the blurry white floor, she let it go then prowled towards the entrance to her house. Pulling out her white heavy drape, another humanoid shadow rushed past her shaken heavy self into house. She held back her steps and could now feel her rapid heartbeats, every single pound on her chest sounded like an echo, at the same time threatening to throw out her grown feutus, like she had been possessed by one or more of the monstrous shadows. Her mind paced to ghostly narratives about the coastal locales being hauted and therefore became certain that their new house had been haunted.

“Y-O-B-O” She called out again as she tried to figure out her way into the living room, but the same whispers responded to her in the same repeated manner.

“Y-O-B-O….Y-O-B-O…Y-O-B…Y-O…”

She was first running out of breath, she let go the heavy curtain to make her way in, something caressed her back that sent a sharp sting on her down her belly and a shooting chill on her spine. “That couldn’t be the curtain” she thought then veered to check on the tangible company but again, a monstrous shadow rushed into the house before her. She wanted to shout but again she thought that shouting could only speed up her journey to the gallows. She therefore rested on her hesitant steps to guide her to her to the living room where she could put on a back up light.

As Daya walked past her kitchen entrance towards a door to two unoccupied bedrooms, her right foot brushed on something she responsibly thought she should carry with her to the living room. She turned to her right, stooped lazily with left hand on her waist to pick it up. She again heard whispers of her name in the air, however, when she raised her head to face the voice that had grown even clearer, right in front of her was a soul, solidly staring at her. Its eyes were not well visible with the little penetrating moonlight, but it had a wrinkled nose with mouth firmly tightened. It looked more frightened and tensed than she was. It suddenly began making backwards steps towards the wall, in which she landed stiffly on her back.

“We’ve prescribed her medication, everything would soon be okay” a middle-aged woman, face like a smiley, with a long white coat and a stethoscope hanging on her neck assured standing next to Daya’s bed. She gave her a warm a hospitalised smile as she struggled to open up her eyes then made her way out. Everything appeared blurred in the first place, but as Daya gradually regained her full consciousness, she noticed a familiar palm texture stroking her left wrist. It was her husband Mr. Yobo.

“Hun” she smiled “How did I get here? Let’s go home. I’m fine” she said tenderly.

“Querida. How are you feeling love?” Mr. Yobo countered with a welcoming grin. “The doctor said you’ll be discharged in a few minutes” 

Mr. Yobo in a yellow polo and white shorts sat on the balcony, a separate rocking seat next to an empty one. Daya had gone for her book in the living room to join her love in fancying the usual pleasant waves and breath from the ocean. She picked her novel then made her way past the entrance to the two empty unoccupied bedrooms before getting to the kitchen door, on her left she noticed a large mirror which she gave a quick glance, sighed, smiled and moved on to join her husband.