Chapter 01 - 1986
Do you know the feeling that someone will ring the doorbell and seconds later, you hear the knock-knock? Have you lived the experience of answered a phone call and then realize that the person was moments before in your thoughts? A wardrobe half-open have ever got you a schism that held you disturbed?
I had an identical concern, and the instinct drove me scared. I tried to be cautious, but I woke up my brother who slept on his bed. Maybe he was a sensitive too. I rushed to my parents’ suite, but surprised I did not find them. The neat bed gave me a clue. The living room door’s latches were off, but it didn’t open. It was an old door with a glass window at the top and I needed a key.
I was eight years old and a creepy idea popped into my head, making the shadows coming from the kitchen gain strange shapes. My father kept complaining when someone left the lights on, but fear forced me to turn on the lights. I took a deep breath, wondering what to do. The fresh smell of serene entering the hatch gave me the courage to go back to the room and get the extra key, hidden in a drawer. My brother guessed the plan, yet I was four years older. This proved enough to push him back to the bed where I buried him under the sheets and pillows, earning the time to leave and lock him.
It was summer dawn in the suburb of Rio de Janeiro and there was light only coming from few houses that bordered the street, from one corner to the other where my grandmother lived. Hope sprang while fear infiltrated. I couldn’t distinguish who it was, but I saw a movement in front of her house. For a moment, I watched and remembered that my grandfather woke up early every day to handle with his bird breeding. I was sure it was him an no one else. Then, I started my walk on the darkness.
I had gone a long way until I lost sight of him. In the middle of the stump of clay, I stopped under a lamppost, trying to check if he still there. The light disturbed more than helped and I needed to return to the dark to see. As my eyes adjusted, my legs wobbled and a wave of heat rushed through my body causing a sudden urge to vomit. The dread that once stalked, invaded me at once, when I noticed my mistake. That figure of a tall man coming in and out of the darkest parts of the street wouldn’t be my grandfather. I tried to stay calm, but somehow, my presence caught the stranger’s attention, bringing him to meet me. A hollow buzz spread around me and I didn’t faint only because a raindrop strikes my face. I looked up, but the sky was black, empty with no stars. I searched for a stone on the floor, or anything to use as defence, but the muscles didn’t obey. The more the stranger approached the more drips hit my body and when he got close, the deluge fell.
My eyes glimpsing only a black silhouette in the shape of a man in a wide-brimmed hat that terrified me. The figure composed only of deep darkness. Faceless and without a body, only a shadow, denser than the night itself, through which the rain passed by straight. The cold rain soaked me and I had to grind my teeth to stop the shaking. An intense impulse to scream for help attempted to escape my lungs, but something stifled my voice.
The creature bent forward, standing only inches away, as if analysing my soul. The rain stopped with no warning announcing that the worst would happen. I gathered the remaining strength and turned my face, avoiding imminent death. A prayer that my mother used to whisper popped up in my head and then, the groans from the pedals of my father’s bike reached my ears. I knew the sound well and looked towards the house, long enough to see what he was riding fast, taking vantage of the rain truce.
I didn’t remember what happened from that moment onwards. Sometimes, images of my father taking my mother to work sprouted in my mind. Other times, I recall him with bulging eyes with me on his lap, while in haste. He struggled to close the gate. For countless nights, when the rain fell hard, I still felt through the shadows, a stare stalking me.
This story happened years ago, but my family never spoke about it and I ended up accepting everything as a nightmare what in fact, were common in my childhood. Until one day…
