This is not just a story—it is my story. I was a boy then, barely eleven or twelve years old, still chasing cricket balls and childish fun. But some memories don't stay harmless. They rot in the back of your mind, waiting for a sound, a
smell, a shadow, to wake them again.
There was a park near my house. A simple ground where kids yelled and played until dark, our feet kicking up dust, our chests burning from running.
That evening was no different—bats swinging, voices shouting. Until I hit the
ball, and it flew high… landing in the one place we never wanted it to go.
It had crashed into the courtyard of the old lady's house.
Nobody liked that house. Its walls were taller than the rest, its paint cracked and peeling, its windows always covered with heavy curtains even in summer.
Even grown-ups muttered about it, lowering their voices as if the house could
hear. And then there was the mystery of the woman herself. We didn't even know if
the girl living with her was her real daughter or adopted.
The old woman looked eighty-five, maybe ninety, her body hunched and shriveled like she was already halfway into the grave. But the girl was young—twenty-four, maybe
twenty-seven. Their presence together never made sense. Nobody ever saw them go out to the market. Nobody saw relatives visit. The only sound from the house was sometimes a faint dragging noise at night, like furniture scraping the floor.
The two of them were infamous. The daughter cursed at children, threw bricks and rusted pipes when we dared to knock for our ball. Once, a boy was struck, bleeding, and still they did not care. They were not just unfriendly; they radiated something worse—an aura of bad omen, as though misfortune itself lived inside that house. And then, one day, the daughter was gone. Vanished. We never saw her again.
The kids said she had left, or maybe gone for studies. But none of us truly believed our own words.
That evening, as my ball disappeared into that broken house, my friends turned on me.
"You go get it," they said. "It was your shot."
I protested. But I was eleven, and friendship is fragile at that age. I went.
The house stood like a corpse on the first floor, its walls peeling, its windows
blind. Not even insects seemed willing to claim it. I climbed the steps, each one
trembling beneath my feet. I rang the bell. No answer. I called—"Aunty? Didi?
Please… my ball." Nothing. Only silence pressing against my ears.
At last, I touched the door. It creaked open with no resistance, as though it had
been waiting. Inside, the air was heavy with dust, thick enough to taste.
Evening light leaked weakly through the windows, painting the corridor in dying gold. My footsteps echoed too loudly.
There were three doors ahead. I hurried past the first, gagging as a sour stench
clawed at my throat. From the second, a noise bled out—a faint, crawling hiss,
like the static of an untuned television. Against every instinct screaming in my
bones, I peeked inside.
That was when I froze.
The old hag sat there, her back hunched, her skin sagging like melted wax.
Beside her, in a chair, was her daughter—or what I thought was her daughter.
They sat in front of a blank, hissing TV screen, sipping something thick and dark
from cracked cups. The old woman mumbled to herself, her voice like dry
leaves scraping across stone.
"Hungry… take it… hungry… take it…"
I should have run. I should never have entered. But my ball lay in the last
room. I told myself I could take it and slip out unseen. I crept forward. My fingers closed around the ball. Relief fluttered in my chest.
I turned—And the whisper cut through the air again.
"Did you take your ball, my dear?"
I looked. The hag's head had twisted toward me, her hair falling like a curtain
over one eye. And the daughter—she was no daughter at all. Just a skeleton in
faded clothes, her bones propped upright like a grotesque doll. The cup in the
hag's hand was filled with some rancid green liquid, reeking of rot.
Her lips stretched, wrinkled and cracked.
"Come here, my child. I will give you more balls…"
I could not move. My body refused. She rose, her limbs bending wrong, crawling toward me on all fours, her voice breaking into a chant.
"Come here… come here… aren't you hungry, my child? I am hungry too…"
I saw her clearly then—the burn marks etched into her skin, the wounds she had carved into her own flesh. Her face was no longer human—sunken eyes
glowing with madness, jaw unhinged too wide, her expression twisted into
something between hunger and hatred. It was a face like a demon's mask, an ugly vision no one should ever see twice, one that brands itself into your nightmares. Her mouth opened wider than it should, and between her teeth
dangled a piece of raw intestine, slick and twitching, chewed like meat.
My stomach lurched. My heart shrieked.
She followed—faster than I thought possible, dragging her body across the floor, clawing at my ankles with skeletal hands. Her voice cracked through the dark:
"AREN'T YOU HUNGRY? I AM HUNGRY TOO, MY CHILD!"
Her nails tore at my skin. I kicked, struggled, screamed, and by some miracle, I
broke free, bolting down the stairs, into the open air, into the world that still breathed.
I told my parents everything, breathless, sobbing. They called the police. Police
arrested her and the house was searched. The truth unraveled like a nightmare with no waking.
The daughter had been dead for ten months. The old woman had kept her
corpse, dressing it, propping it beside her, convinced she was still alive. She
had eaten her—flesh stored in the fridge, blood saved in jars. And when that
was gone, she turned upon herself, carving and chewing, punishing and devouring, keeping her daughter alive inside her twisted delusion.
The marks on her skin were burns she inflicted upon herself. The intestine I
saw in her mouth—perhaps her own.
Some say she killed her daughter. Some say the girl died of illness or heart failure. The truth drowned in rumor. But one thing remained certain.
That house was never just a house. And she was never just an old lady. She was hunger given form.
And I… I was almost her meal.
Only later did I remember something else. The old lady had always kept a
dog—a thin, bony creature that barked at strangers from behind the gate.
But the day I stepped into that house, there was no sound of claws, no growl, no
sign of it at all. Perhaps it had simply died. But in the silence of my memory, I cannot shake the thought that the poor animal had met the same fate as her daughter.
She hadn't just devoured family. She had devoured loyalty.
I didn't tell anyone for years. Nobody would have believed me anyway. She died a few months later. People said it was old age. But I knew better. I knew
what I saw.
And sometimes, when I close my eyes at night, I see her face again.
Not human. Not kind.
That same demon's mask, twisted and starving, waiting in the dark—ugly beyond words, the kind of face no one should ever see twice.