I haven’t slept in days. I’m 26 years old, and I don’t know if I’m going mad or if the world around me has been taken by something… dark.
I’m writing this because I feel like I’m losing grip on reality. Please — if someone has answers, I need them.
My mother died last November. She had been sick for months with a strange illness that no doctor could explain. Her skin turned grey. Her eyes went dull. She started speaking in her sleep — in a language no one understood.
The doctors gave up. The prayers didn’t help.
One morning, she just… didn’t wake up.
We held a proper burial in our village, Nkolbisson. I saw her body in the coffin. I touched her cold hands. I nailed the cross to her grave myself.
She was gone.
At least, I thought she was.
But four days later, everything changed.
I came home with my two sisters. And there she was.
My mother.
Sitting in the kitchen.
Grating cassava.
Humming like nothing had ever happened.
I screamed so loud my voice cracked. But my sisters didn’t even flinch. They walked in, smiled, and said, “Mama, do you need help with dinner?”
They called her Mama. They hugged her.
They ate the food she cooked.
I stood there frozen. The smell of cassava filled the room — but the air was cold. Ice cold. And her shadow on the wall… it moved even when she didn’t.
I ran to my aunt’s house shaking and sobbing. She looked me in the eyes and whispered:
“That is not your mother. It’s a thing. Do not call it out. Do not make it angry.”
Since then, I pretend.
I pretend to laugh. I eat with it. I even say “goodnight Mama.”
But I sleep with one eye open. Because at night, it changes.
I hear it laughing in the dark — low, raspy, not human.
The walls crack. The doors creak even when they’re locked.
Sometimes I see her just standing over my bed at 3am… staring. Not blinking.
I went to her grave yesterday.
The cross I nailed was broken in half.
And the earth? It looked like something had clawed its way out.
I don’t know what’s real anymore.
I don’t know what it wants.
But whatever is wearing my mother’s face…
It is not here for love.
Please… someone tell me:
What came back?
And what will happen when it decides I know too much?
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