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CONVERSATION WITH THE DEAD..... 1 (A True Life Story)
We hadn't crossed paths in years, until that fateful day when we ran into each other at the Federal High Court in our home city. I could barely recognize her. It had never crossed my mind that I would ever see Sharifah Nasir in this country, let alone at this specific location and at this exact moment. To the best of my knowledge, Sharifah didn't even reside in Nigeria anymore; she lived in Europe.
She used to be a stunning woman—fair-skinned, exceptionally elegant, remarkably well-built, and exuding high class. When she first spoke to me, I refused to believe it was really her until she firmly reassured me of her name. She had completely withered away. She had deteriorated to the point where not even twenty percent of her original appearance or her former dignity remained.
"Glory be to the Lord who breathed life into me and breathed life into Sharifah. My dear friend, what on earth is happening to you?" That was the first question I asked her. I held onto her tightly, my entire body trembling as a wave of intense panic washed over me.
I expected her to burst into tears and pour her heart out to me, because anyone who knew her past self and saw her current state would instantly recognize that she was trapped in an unimaginable catastrophe. Instead, she stood there, frozen and unmoving, speaking with a voice that was eerily calm and filled with a chilling fortitude.
The response she gave me sent shivers down my spine. She said, "Hmmm, Sharifah simply dropped out of thin air. She is entirely alone in this world—possessing neither parents nor family. She has only her Lord, and He alone is sufficient for her."
I stared at her with deep suspicion. There was no doubt in my mind that she had succumbed to mental illness, because I personally knew her biological parents and over twenty of her siblings from the same womb, not to mention an immense network of extended maternal and paternal relatives.
Before I could utter another word, an elderly man poked his head out of an office door and called out, "Sharifah Nasir, you may step inside."
She bolted toward the door to enter without even saying goodbye to me. I quickly grabbed her hand and asked, "Can I come inside with you?"
If I didn't go in to see what she was doing, I knew the sheer anxiety and endless speculation would keep me awake all night. Moreover, I thought I might need to help her interpret; the way she was twisting her Hausa was entirely incomprehensible to me, and it was obvious she had no intention of explaining her situation.
She didn't give me a verbal answer; she simply yanked my hand and swiftly pulled me along into the office. Seated inside was an elderly judge whose stern expression made it clear he was not a man to be trifled with. He looked at us with a highly perceptive, analyzing gaze. In a cold, frosty voice, he inquired, "Are you two together?"
My heart plummeted, terrified that he would order me to leave.
Sharifah answered him, "Yes, Your Lordship, we are together."
I immediately bowed, greeted him politely, and found a chair in the corner where I sat down with utmost respect and a heavy sense of trepidation.
She took the seat directly across from his desk. After exchanging brief greetings, the judge began passing various documents to her, explaining how she should fill them out as she meticulously completed each one.
From what I could gather, Sharifah was filing a lawsuit against another judge who had allegedly denied her justice in a previous legal ruling.
Good heavens! She was dragging an entire judge to the National Federal High Court. That particular judge was undoubtedly in deep water, for he had crossed paths with a relentless storm; I knew Sharifah to be entirely fearless and fiercely uncompromising once she set her mind on a goal.
The judge directed her to some offices on the upper floor to secure signatures and make photocopies, instructing her to bring them back to him afterward.
We stepped out of the office, but unfortunately, the person I had originally come to see at the court had just arrived and was in a massive hurry to leave. He called my phone, scolding me for wasting his precious time.
I turned to her and said, "Tell me what is happening to you in brief. I am in a hurry because someone is waiting for me."
She simply kept walking briskly, completely ignoring me, as though she had absolutely no time to spare for me.
I quickened my pace to catch up and said, "Give me your Nigerian phone number so I can call you later and we can discuss this thoroughly."
The response she gave me was: "Have you ever seen a dead person answer a phone call?"
A sharp pain shot through my head and my heart pounded violently. I whirled around instantly to look at the office we had just stepped out of moments ago. To my absolute horror, the office door was now locked tight with a heavy padlock, showing absolutely no sign that it had been opened at all today—even though we had literally just walked out of it. I turned back in a state of utter panic to question her, only to find the corridor completely empty. She had vanished into thin air. Had she ascended to the heavens? Had she swallowed into the earth? God only knows.
"Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un (To Allah we belong and to Him we shall return)," I cried out loud, clutching my chest where my heart was hammering so violently it felt as though it would burst out of my ribcage from sheer terror. A sudden, violent fever took hold of me, and my body became burning hot to the touch.
I was consumed by absolute terror and a profound regret: what on earth had brought me to this court today? The man I had come to see began calling my phone again. The sudden ringtone terrified me so deeply that I jumped, genuinely fearing that the ghost had returned.
2
I froze completely in my tracks, my entire body shaking with tremors. I felt an intense urge to simply abandon the meeting with the judge I had spent weeks trying to see. My older brother had spent a long time pulling strings to secure this appointment, and today was the day it finally materialized.
I heard the booming voice of my older brother, Anas, yelling at me to hurry up. He shouted that the man had been waiting for us for quite a while, which was why he had instructed me to go ahead and start presenting the details of our case before he arrived.
I followed behind him, my teeth chattering from fear. The moment I entered the office—before I could even sit down—I caught a glimpse of Sharifah swiftly passing by outside. I bolted from my seat, jumped toward the window, lifted the curtain, and peered out at her.
By Allah, there was absolutely no mistaking it. It was her, and she was entering the exact same office we had just come out of earlier.
This time, it wasn't just fear that gripped me; I felt like I was genuinely losing my mind. My brother reached the absolute limit of his patience with me. Looking as though he wanted to slap me, he unleashed a barrage of furious scolding, while the elderly judge himself swelled with visible irritation.
We had come to seek legal counsel regarding a major fraud case involving pre-ordered goods. I had gathered a massive amount of people's money and transferred it to a supplier, but we received neither the goods nor a refund.
But by Allah, when they asked me for the financial records and the initial sequence of events, my mind went entirely blank; I had forgotten absolutely everything.
Before they could even formally dismiss me, I bolted out of the room and sprinted back toward the office Sharifah had entered. Finding the door wide open, I plunged right inside without a second thought, noticing other people casually walking in and out.
To my bewilderment, the elderly judge from before was nowhere to be seen. An entirely different official was seated in the chair.
With a trembling hand, I pointed wildly at the empty space around the desk and stammered, "What... what about the occupant of this chair? Is he dead too?"
The people in the room stared at each other, then turned to look at me in utter confusion. They began bombarding me with questions: "What are you talking about? What do you want? Who are you looking for?"
I began stuttering and making incoherent excuses until they lost patience and kicked me out. The moment I stepped outside, I collided with my brother Anas, who immediately unleashed a torrential downpour of fury and insults upon me. He yelled that I had thoroughly humiliated him, warning me never to ask for his assistance again whenever I brought my troubles upon myself.
We trudged toward the main gate. I didn't utter a single word in response, but anyone who looked at me could see I looked like someone who had completely withered away.
"Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un," my brother heard me mutter in a panicked frenzy as I suddenly dashed toward the gate, screaming at the top of my lungs, "Sharifah! Sharifah!!" I had spotted her just as she was boarding a commercial tricycle (Keke Napep). She turned to look at me briefly before stepping inside.
Anas lunged forward, grabbing me tightly, and demanded, "What on earth is wrong with you? Who is this Sharifah anyway?!"
I snapped at him to leave me alone and told him I was going to take a tricycle home. He barked back, reminding me that we had driven here in a car, asking if I had completely lost my mind.
I screamed her name repeatedly, but she never looked back. The tricycle sped away, leaving me stranded. Anas became fully convinced that I had suffered a supernatural encounter (gamo) the moment I stepped into the court premises, noting that the yard was heavily lined with old tamarind trees—frequent haunts of spirits.
He forced me into the car, reciting protective verses and blowing over me. He then pulled out his phone and dialed our mother, asking, "Mama, does Samha have a history of spirit possession?" Mama responded firmly that I had never experienced such a thing in my entire life. He told her, "Well, we are on our way home right now."
We drove off. When we stopped at a major traffic light, I suddenly spotted Sharifah right beside us in another tricycle. I surged forward in my seat and screamed her name frantically: "Sharifah! Sharifah!!" Three distinct times I yelled, but she merely glanced at me and coldly averted her gaze.
Seeing this, my brother began reciting the Qur'an out loud with terrifying intensity, even pulling the car over to the shoulder of the road to prevent me from opening the door and throwing myself out.
He was now irrevocably certain that I had encountered a spirit, and that the spirit's name was Sharifah.
By the time we arrived home, I was shivering violently with a severe, raging fever. I couldn't even bring myself to tell them that I had seen a ghost, out of fear that they would lock me away as a lunatic.
The family gathered around, offering intense prayers over me until the fever finally broke and I drifted into a heavy sleep. Strangely, I plunged into a horrific nightmare where Sharifah and her judge were commanding me to gather plastic bags and documents to sweep the area because they were expecting guests.
I woke up consumed by a terrifying, paralyzing dread. Thank God, I woke up reciting praises to Allah rather than screaming. The household gathered around me once more, raining a bizarre assortment of spiritual blowing upon me. I was subjected to spit laced with the smell of kola nuts, local baobab soup, and even a heavy stench of marijuana—courtesy of some local addicts in the area who claimed they had brought their own form of "spiritual reinforcement" to aid my recovery.
Allah is truly all-powerful; I had left the house perfectly sane, only to return completely unhinged. They didn't grant me a moment of peace until nightfall. The moment I finally got some privacy, I hastily dialed several of our old university friends. Every single one of them confirmed that they hadn't heard from Sharifah in ages, but they insisted that if she had died, word would have definitely reached them. One of them even mentioned that they had spoken on the phone just yesterday and that Sharifah was very much alive. I begged her for the number and called it immediately, but it was switched off. Furthermore, the line registered as unregistered.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un. Whose word was I supposed to believe? My absolute greatest fear was that once deep night fell and everyone went to sleep, leaving me entirely alone, the ghost would manifest right before my eyes.
My husband was out of town, so I explained to him over the phone that I would be spending the night at my family house due to the severity of my sudden illness. He had already been informed of my condition earlier in the day, so he readily agreed.
I slept surrounded by my younger siblings after forcing them to stay awake with me for hours, until exhaustion finally claimed me.
The following morning, the family strictly forbade me from leaving the house to go to Sharifah’s family home, firmly believing that I was completely out of my right mind. They confiscated my phone, thoroughly exhausted by my endless frantic pacing as I dialed and screamed "Sharifah! Sharifah!!" into the receiver.
I pulled out my old wedding albums, staring intensely at her pictures. She had been my maid of honor. There she was in the photographs, standing alongside her younger sister, Shariqah, who looked remarkably identical to her.
Under the pretense of going to the restroom, I slipped out of the back door and ran without stopping until I reached the front gate of Sharifah Nasir's family home. I encountered some neighborhood children playing outside the house and asked them, "Has there been a funeral in this house recently?"
One boy jumped forward and said, "Yes! It happened a long time ago. Sharifah passed away."
Instantly, another boy cut him off aggressively, saying, "No, it wasn't Sharifah who died! It was Shariqah!"
A fierce, chaotic argument erupted between the children. I clamped my hands over my head, feeling an overwhelming urge to scream at the top of my lungs, barely managing to restrain myself.
The sudden emergence of Bello Nasir—Sharifah's younger brother—from the house brought a wave of immense relief over me. I rushed toward him and asked frantically, "Bello, is it true that Sharifah has passed away?"
He looked at me in surprise and said, "Oh, Aunty Samha, you didn't know? Shariqah passed away over a year ago. It wasn't Sharifah."
I gasped and countered, "No, no! You are mistaken! It was Sharifah who died, not Shariqah!"
Bello gave me a deeply unnerved, highly judgmental look that clearly read 'you are completely insane.' He shook his head quickly, stepped into his car, and sped away, leaving me standing there.
As I stood frozen by the gate, I found myself completely paralyzed, unable to bring myself to step inside. I knew for a fact that both their parents had passed away long ago, and Shariqah was supposed to be living at her matrimonial home.
Suddenly, to my absolute horror, the form of Sharifah appeared at the window, peering out at me. Our eyes locked. By Allah, it was truly her. In that horrific moment, a chilling realization hit me: I was the only one who could see her. To everyone else, she was invisible.
3
With one foot inside the gate and one foot outside, my eyes rolled back in sheer terror as my vision began to blur. There was no doubt about it—I was looking directly at Sharifah. She had a cloth wrapped tightly around her chest, completely bare-shouldered, and her entire skin—from her face down to her chest—was heavily plagued by a horrific outbreak of black, rotting boils.
This was a woman who, to the best of my knowledge, had never possessed a single blemish on her body. Her skin used to be flawlessly radiant, so delicate that you felt the need to wash your hands before dare touching it.
Her head was bare, devoid of any veil, and her thick hair stood wildly on end, stiff and coarse—even though Sharifah’s natural hair was famously soft, flowing elegantly down to her shoulders.
This time, the sheer magnitude of the terror paralyzed my limbs, preventing me from running away as my mind shattered completely.
My entire body shook uncontrollably. I couldn't form a prayer; I couldn't take a single step. I became utterly convinced that I had stepped onto the threshold of death myself. Even if I survived this, I knew I would never recover; my sanity was permanently fractured.
Suddenly, I heard Sharifah’s voice right behind me, whispering directly into my ear. It was so close that I could literally feel the icy, breathless draft of her exhalation against my skin: "Move aside, let me pass."
I leaped into the air with a bloodcurdling shriek, crashing into the courtyard of the house as I cried out, "Inna lillahi! I am doomed!"
I whirled around frantically to look at her. It was undoubtedly her, walking through the entrance. But this time, she was dressed in a neat school uniform. Her appearance had shifted drastically into that of a young girl—a teenager who couldn't have been more than sixteen years old.
Just as I had noticed during our encounter at the court, Sharifah spoke to me without ever making direct eye contact. Furthermore, her speech was clipped and unnaturally brief, her cadence completely uncharacteristic of the living.
I clutched my chest, trembling violently after backing away to a safe distance from her. In a cracking, broken voice, I whimpered, "Sharifah, what have I done to you? For the sake of Allah, forgive me if I have wronged you. We haven't met in so long. I didn't even know you were no longer among the living."
She looked down toward the ground and muttered coldly, "I am not Sharifah. My name is Hamidah. I am her daughter."
I snapped my head back toward the window where I had seen the disfigured version of Sharifah moments ago. The window was empty; she had vanished.
I asked in a panicked frenzy, "Where is your mother?"
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over her. Her eyes turned blood-red as they filled with pooling tears. She whispered, "She is dead."
My panic reached a fever pitch. I screamed, "Who exactly is dead?!"
She answered, "My mother. She passed away last year."
"Who was your mother? Sharifah or Shariqah?!" This time, she raised her bloodshot eyes to meet mine, tears streaming down her face. A violent, icy jolt went through my entire body, vibrating from the soles of my feet straight to the top of my crown.
She turned and began walking into the house, completely ignoring my presence.
I bolted after her, yelling another question, "Then who is inside the house right now?!"
Without stopping, she called back, "My mother is."
Then, as if descending from the heavens, Sharifah’s unmistakable voice boomed from within the house: "Hamidah! Hamidah!! Hamidah!!! Lock the main gate immediately, and tell that guest to come inside."
Hamidah turned around with the explicit intent of sliding the iron bolt across the gate.
My heart practically stopped. "Lock the gate?! Absolutely not!" I shrieked. I turned and bolted out of the compound at maximum speed.
Only when I hit the open street did I manage to inhale a breath of fresh air, feeling as though I had barely escaped the jaws of hell. Hamidah stood at the gate, her eyes locked onto me, watching my flight with an unreadable expression.
From a distance, she called out, "My mother says you must come inside."
My eyes rolled back in panic. "Go inside where?! Who exactly is this mother of yours when you just told me she is dead?!"
The response she threw back at me delivered the final, undeniable confirmation that I was dealing with entities entirely detached from the realm of the living. She said, "My mother explicitly told me that there is life after death."
My eyes went wide as a raw instinct for survival kicked in. It became terrifyingly clear that I was interacting with Sharifah herself, who was shifting her form to masquerade as a young schoolgirl. She was living a parallel existence after her death, and she desperately wanted me to join her in it.
I sprinted down the street with everything I had, coming within inches of being obliterated by an oncoming tricycle.
The driver prepared to unleash a torrent of abuse at me, but stopped abruptly when he saw that I was completely breathless and suffocating from terror. Without a second thought, I threw myself into the back of his vehicle and gasped, "Take me to the Yankaba quarters immediately! I will pay you whatever you want!"
He looked at me through his rearview mirror, highly unnerved by the way I kept frantically looking over my shoulder. "Hajiya, is everything alright?" he asked.
By the absolute will of Allah, the moment we began driving—barely a few meters away from the house—I spotted five children dressed in school uniforms walking in a single file line down the alleyway. There were two girls and three boys, and every single one of them possessed the exact, identical facial features of Sharifah.
"Hasbunallahu wa ni'amal wakil (Sufficient is Allah for us, and He is the Best Disposer of affairs). What crime have I committed against you, Sharifah?! Are you now splitting your form into the likeness of children—both male and female?!" I screamed in absolute hysteria, bursting into a fit of violent weeping.
The children stared directly at me as we sped past, and I stared back at them until they faded from view. Not a single one of them lacked Sharifah's precise face; they even shared her exact manner of laughing and talking as they chattered among themselves.
The tricycle driver watched through his mirror as I completely collapsed onto the seat, losing all structural strength. He stammered anxiously, "Hajiya, please, I beg you, do not die in my vehicle. Give me a phone number for your relatives or describe your house so I can drop you off. I can see you can barely speak."
I managed to groan, "Just keep driving, I know exactly where I am going. I am completely fine. I just had a supernatural encounter."
"An encounter? With spirits?!" he asked with an uncomfortable, defensive chuckle. He kept his eyes glued to me through the mirror as he drove.
I knew deep down that I had crossed the threshold into madness. My sanity was entirely gone, and only a profound miracle from Allah could restore me. Due to my shattered psychological state, we drove past more than three familiar streets before I finally recognized the house of our mutual friend, Nanah Ahmad.
I handed the driver a one-thousand-naira note. When he attempted to count out my change, I snapped at him to keep the rest as charity. He began showering me with prayers of gratitude, but I abandoned him and rushed through the gate.
As I bounded into the compound, the security guards attempted to intercept me, but quickly backed off when they realized I was running entirely without brakes. My veil was dragging across the dirt, my headscarf had slipped down to my shoulders, and my handbag was tangled awkwardly around my neck. Thank God I was wearing a long gown rather than a wrapped waist-cloth, or it would have completely unraveled.
I burst straight into the main parlor, completely bypassing all social protocols. I didn't offer a greeting, nor did I acknowledge her husband and his friends who were gathered at the dining table eating.
I plunged directly into her bedroom. She wasn't inside, but her children—who had just returned from school—were there. They greeted me politely, but I was too far gone to respond.
Every single sound—the rustle of a curtain or the slight click of a door handle—caused my heart to violently drop, and my brain felt as though it was literally boiling inside my skull. I collapsed onto her bed, thrashing around in sheer agony.
"Please... call your mother for me! Tell her to come immediately for the sake of Allah, before I draw my last breath!" I gasped out in complete exhaustion.
Unbeknownst to me, her husband had already rushed into the kitchen to alert her. He told her, "You need to come to the bedroom right now. Samha just arrived, but something is terribly wrong; she looks like she has received news of a devastating death and is completely out of her mind."
Nanah came sprinting into the room, reciting protective verses in a panic. She aggressively ushered the children out of the room, closed the door, and bombarded me with a rapid-fire volley of questions: "Who died?! Tell me, who passed away?!"
I choked out, "Sharifah Nasir is dead."
Nanah clutched her chest in absolute shock. "Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un! No wonder... no wonder she hasn't logged onto WhatsApp in ages, her phone line is permanently switched off, and every time someone tries to call her, it never goes through!"
I urged her, "Pull out your phone right now. Call every single one of our friends. Tell them we need to assemble at her family house for the mourning."
Nanah replied, "Let us coordinate and fix a specific date for all of us to go together before the three-day prayer takes place."
"No!" I shrieked. "You all must go right this second! And you must go without me! Just go there and confirm it for yourselves!"
Nanah froze, staring at me with an expression of complete incomprehension. "What do you mean we should go without you? You are closer to her than any of us!"
I demanded that she dial our entire circle and instruct them to gather at her house immediately so we could deliberate.
Nanah was thoroughly bewildered by my erratic behavior and strange demands, but she nonetheless complied with my instructions, dialing one friend after another to break the grim news.
Cries of shock and loud weeping echoed through the phone lines as I periodically chimed in, demanding that they drop everything and rush over to Nanah's house because I was already there waiting.
When she reached Rakky and Halima, they fiercely disputed the news. They insisted, "It was Shariqah who died, not Sharifah! And that funeral happened a very long time ago! Unless you are telling us that Sharifah has also died just now."
Nanah argued back, "No! Shariqah is not dead! I literally ran into her a few weeks ago during the Umrah pilgrimage in Mecca!"
This revelation completely scrambled my remaining senses. Out of the nine friends we managed to contact, four achieved to arrive within a short time, and we all gathered in the parlor.
However, they were highly disturbed by the sheer scale of my hysteria; it was visibly excessive. Yet, they tried to rationalize it, knowing that Sharifah and I shared an extraordinarily deep, unbreakable bond since childhood.
They turned to me and demanded, "Who exactly broke this news to you?"
This was where the web caught me. I didn't dare confess that I had encountered her ghost, out of fear that they would immediately transport me to a psychiatric ward.
I forced myself to remain tight-lipped. When they relentlessly badgered me for an answer, I lied and claimed I had heard the announcement over the radio.
They reached a consensus to drive over to the house immediately to verify the situation. I adamantly refused to join them, begging them to go ahead on their own and report their findings back to me.
Thoroughly confused by my resistance, they completely ignored my protests, seized me by the arm, and dragged me toward their three parked vehicles. We drove off.
My heart was thumping so violently against my ribs it felt ready to tear through. Nanah kept trying to soothe me, entirely unaware that my agony wasn't stems from grief over a death; it was the psychological terror of having interacted with a phantom. I genuinely felt as though I had become a walking corpse myself.
When we arrived at the compound, we found the massive main gate wide open. Everyone scanned the area, expecting to see a crowd of men gathered outside the house as is customary for a funeral, but the street was utterly deserted.
They turned to me, hurling a barrage of confused questions, but I maintained a stony silence. Just then, Bello Nasir pulled up in his vehicle. He stepped out and greeted us politely, and the ladies immediately began showering him with condolences, to which he solemnly responded, "Amin."
They asked him, "Has the burial and final preparation already taken place? Why is there absolutely nobody here?"
Bello blinked in confusion and repeated, "Final preparation for whom?"
They responded in unison, "For Sharifah."
I watched Bello's eyes snap wide open. He glared directly at me, instantly recognizing that this rumor had originated entirely from my mouth.
He pointed a finger toward the open gate and said, "Why don't you all just go inside? They are all inside."
The ladies immediately took his words as confirmation of her demise, bursting into fresh waves of weeping and prayers as they hurriedly marched into the courtyard. I trailed a considerable distance behind them, taking agonizingly slow steps.
The moment I stepped past the threshold into the courtyard, I looked back and saw Bello entering behind us. He grabbed the heavy iron gate and began sliding the massive metal bolt to lock us inside.
I lunged forward, violently shoving his hand away from the lock, and screamed, "Do not dare lock this gate against us in the broad daylight of Allah!"
Bello stared at me, his eyes wide with absolute bewilderment. He maintained his gaze on me as he silently turned and walked into the main house.
I stood frozen with one foot inside the courtyard and one foot outside, anxiously waiting for the inevitable, horrific collision between Nanah's group and the phantom.
A long, suffocating silence followed. Since they had entered the interior of the house, they had completely vanished into the quiet; I couldn't even hear the sound of a cough. A terrifying thought pierced my mind: they had crossed over into a realm from which there was no return.
Before I could process this thought, I suddenly felt a hand firmly drop onto my shoulder from behind. A woman's voice whispered, "Move aside, let me pass."
I whirled around. It was Sharifah, dressed in a spotless white hijab. I was completely trapped; there was no way for me to bolt out into the street because her body was blocking the exit.
She looked at me with an expression of mild amusement, and then burst into a horrific, mocking laugh upon seeing how utterly terrified I was—clutching my chest and shaking like a leaf.
She spoken my name out loud and stepped into the courtyard. To my absolute horror, she reached up and engaged both the top and bottom iron bolts, locking the massive gate securely from within. She then turned, raised her hand, and pointed directly toward the dark corridor leading into the depths of the house.
This time, she wasn't requesting my compliance; she was issuing an absolute command.
"Get inside," she said, her voice dripping with supreme, terrifying authority.
I attempted to resist, but she suddenly reached out and violently snatched my wrist, dragging me forward. In that instant, I knew I was taking my final breath in this world, without ever having the chance to say a proper goodbye to the living.
I began reciting prayers frantically until my mouth completely ran dry of saliva. I kicked off my shoes, abandoning my veil and my headscarf right there on the pavement. I simply walked forward blindly into the dark, having absolutely no idea where she was taking me.
4
As is typical with the grand, sprawling mansions built by the old-money aristocrats of the past, we bypassed the long outer veranda and...
