MALEDICTION (17)
Children will be sought after." Once upon a time ago, the children of the village would gather around mama Njeri's little cottage at exactly 4pm. The reason for this was because it was universally agreed upon that she had the best stories. But they came from 4 to 6 because it was universally agreed upon that she had the scariest stories.
"Mama, could you please tell us about the pumpkin patch children?" One of the boys who sat next to Gil asked.
Gil was around fifteen at the time, and had recently been accepted as an alter-boy. Today he would move out of the orphanage and into the cathedral, but before he did so he wanted to hear one of Mama Njeri's famous stories.
"What's that, I've never heard you tell that one." Gil said, his eyes glowing with anticipation.
"Well I had just began before you interrupted me."
"Sorry, please continue." The children shouted in unison.
"Good. It is said that naughty children will be sought after by the pumpkin patch children. A long while ago before most of us came to this village, there was said to be a family of white folk that lived a few kilometers out of the village. They were a strange bunch, often depicted with pale skin and strange haircuts. The father was a plump man with a pot belly, while the mother was thin and looked malnutritioned. They had six children, these six children are known as the pumpkin patch children as they are known to hide in pumpkin patches and wait for other children to pass by before inviting them into their house."
"But mama, there are no pumpkins in our village." Njeri expressed her doubts about the authenticity of the story being told to her at that moment.
"True, however, it is said that pumpkins would naturally grow wherever the children may be regardless of whether it was there prior or not. And the strange thing is, they would always refer to the children as kind sir or madam when asking them to come home for dinner."
"Is this story even true?" One child asked.
"The old house was closed because of that?"
"But surely those children can't be alive, its been over a hundred years since the first colonialism."
The children began to discuss amongst themselves. And it was at that moment that mama Njeri had completed her story, the reason why the children enjoyed these stories so much is because regardless of the stories conclusion, it would always spark discourse among the children. Some laughed it off as some fable parents would tell them just so they could go to sleep early, others expressed concern and would be unable to walk home at night by themselves.
Which is why when it was exactly six o'clock that evening, Gil did not wait for anyone to tell him he needed to head home. Njeri would always laugh at him, calling him a scardy cat.
"You shouldn't take mama's stories too literally." She would tell him, and even offer to walk him home if he was too scared to do so.
In the course of the next few days, Gil had forgotten about the pumpkin patch children as mama Njeri would tell them a new scary story that would have him on edge for the next few days.
But at the back of his mind, there seemed to be truth to this story or rather to every one of her stories. Because she never really finished them, leaving the children room to imagine their own scenarios for what went down in.
But perhaps there was some truth to them, and maybe one day he would end up seeing this truth unfold.
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PRESENT TIME!
After much time spent lurking in the corridors, the eldest finally came to a halt in front of a room with a skull as the knob. He turned it and entered the room locking the door behind him.
Catherine fazed through the door following him into his room.
WOW!
Her mouth was left agape at how big and spacious it was. His bed on the bottom floor just below a wooden platform that housed a library of books. The platform extended to all corner of the room and so did all the shelves.
The eldest went up using a flight of stairs that randomly appeared when he lifted his legs at the foot of his bed. Catherine decided it was best not to do anything and just observe for the time being.
The eldest went to one of the shelves and could be observed writing something in the book on his lectern, then after a minute or two he clasped his hands together.
BOOK: OF WITCHES & DWARVES
Then from the opposite shelf, a book flew through the air into the eldest s hand. He grabbed it with both. It was a book with a thick cover and the picture of what appeared to be an apple bitten on one side. Catherine couldn't make out the details from that distance away
'I thought this was the place Gilly was, but it appears as though this was just his room… should I go back out there and look? No its too much of a waste of time and we have to get out of here before sunrise.'
She then thought for a minute before a light bulb clicked in her head.
'Oh, since there are a lot of books in here, perhaps there is a map of the house along with them, like in those stories mama Njeri used to tell us. But how to go about looking.'
She already had one bad experience with the youngest daughter, imagine having the entire family know that she's just creeping around. Her life wouldn't go smoothly and finding Gil wouldn't be easy.
She observed as the eldest took the book and walked back down, sitting on his bed and flipping through it.
"Great now I can--"
"Do you wanna know what the book's about?" The eldest spoke, his voice commanding locking Catherine into place as she trembled.
'Does he know I'm here?'
"Long ago there were no such thing as witches, they came into existence recently, or so I'm told. But then again, who's to say if something is real or not based of hearsay. As such a famous poet suggested that perhaps they were always there but we never knew."
HE then laid back in his bed, his bald head covered by the sheets on his bed. "There is a story in the Christian bible that I find most amusing, the story of the Christ, the story of Christianity. I've never understood how shallow humans could be, believing every single word said to them by man or by an external entity that claims not to be man." He then looked over at Catherine's direction, she jolted back ready to faze through the wall when the eldest spoke again.
"Relax, I can't see spirits. But I can feel them, you guys are everywhere, although I've never felt one this close to me before. From time to time I'll talk out loud until you decide to leave and continue roaming the mortal realm." HE then continued with his original story, "As I was saying, the entirety of the bible is made up of people being 'chosen' or whatever, by someone's voice. Take Samuel for example, it is said that the lord called onto him three times before he answered.
My question is, couldn't it have easily been the devil in disguise?"
The eldest rambled on, Catherine took this opportunity to move. Obviously he could've been lying this entire time, however, he wouldn't be lumping her with all the other spirits in the house which was something she thought made a good point.
She then hovered over to the book shelf floating over to the lectern and staring at it for a moment before passing it.
"In truth, I cannot express how upset I am at humans for their lack of survival skills. I believe when Jesus claimed to be the Christ, he should've been stoned first, just like the rest of them… Why can there only be one savior? Why should we rely on just one? When he did miracles they were godly but when others did..."
As he continued to ramble Catherine was busy having an inner dialogue of her own. 'Ok Blake, of the things you were teaching Gilly, which one can I use? I believe he said something about energy existing all around us and we breath it in and we can then use it as output… I didn't understand the whole word of evil thing either…God damn it!'
She sighed heavily. She let herself fall in frustration, levitating over the eldest s bed. She then turned to face him, he did look familiar, something about him ticked some boxes in he mind.
Pale skin.
Weird haircuts.
Strange behavior.
"…" She was silent for a moment, "That's not right, there aren't any pumpkin patches… wait actually there was a few meters away from here, but that doesn't really mean anything right?"
To ease her suspicions she floated back to the lectern and clasped her hands together.
BOOK: THE PUMPKIN PATCH CHILDREN!
Nothing happened for a moment after she said it.
"Darn it, I thought that would work."
She sighed and looked down at the lectern, her eyes then widened for a moment. Pictures of all six children were in the book.
"He used this book to summon the other book." She whispered, "But then what's this book about anyway?" She scratched her head, she couldn't interact with the book but luckily for her she didn't have to because the page she was on told her everything she needed to know, although she didn't know that at the time.
"The title of this chapter is called…"
…THE WALTEN FAMILY.
TO BE CONTINUED!