1
That fateful night not only brought with it the hush of the
undead waiting for Judgment Day still, but also unforgivable sins of the past,
of the bygone yet to be paid. It was also that night that the village lay heavy
under the guise of that pretentious silence, trapped beneath a force only a few
truly understood with their senses. Hah! Even those abysmal stray dogs
stopped barking for a change!
The derelict mosque had loomed high in the clear sky,
casting the rural village located in the middle of nowhere into a deep and
suffocating gloom, and out of that darkness a woman emerged though no one
expected her. She walked down the centre of the road, her steps steady and
gingerly – all alone yet not at the same time – her obscure face clouded with a
sorrow so deep and gut-wrenching that it was nothing less of a sin to look into
her misty, ancient eyes. It was as though she had fled something dreadful, as
though she carried the weight of a vile curse upon her shoulders, one only a
few had experienced – thank god.
Her hands, those wrinkly and fragile hands, were clenched
together and trembling – mind, not from the biting cold but from fear in its
purest form, somehow, anyhow. No one knew why, no one could say the reason
without sounding mad, but one thing was certain: whatever horrors pursued her
had driven her here, into the night, to this very town, just as an unknowing girl
stirred from her slumber with a gasp, drenched in beads of cold sweat running
along her brows and tiny neck.
This was the first time Irmak had ever seen the mysterious
visitor, though she had heard rumours of her existence. You couldn’t exactly
stop children from running their mouths, could you? But she didn’t know the strange
lady would be there too, in that deep darkness, as sleep eluded her without as
much as a warning and she found herself in front of the frosted, laced window.
She loved to watch the world at night, watch life pass her by and reminisce of
another time, one different from hers. Also, strangely enough, whenever
darkness fell over their village, it was like it was breathing differently for
some reason, pulling at her, drawing her into the depths of the secrets she had
yet to uncover.
Sometimes she imagined the shadows carried the shadows of
the past, the unforgivable sins of those still alive and kicking, and that if
she listened closely enough, she might see the vicious shadows look back at her
and whisper something wild back – heck, she wanted that to be the case! But
they never quite did, as if they pretended she wasn’t there, lurking in the
murk, watching their every move. Nevertheless, she would find herself there, at
the window, whenever the call to evening prayer rang and brought with it the
darkness that soothed her soul so. But that night, the suffocating silence she
otherwise despised so, gave way to something else – something else
entirely.
The woman’s feet were bare and her whole body was soaked
wet. Her hair clung to her face, caked with dirt, and foul droplets traced her
arms as though she had been dragged straight from a river. There was a smell
about her too, of damp soil and something faintly metallic. It was clear at
first sight that something terrible had happened to her.
Irmak’s first thought was to wake up her parents, tell them
that an elderly woman might be needing their help, but then she remembered that
they would only scold her for being awake at this late hour. Thus, she
dismissed the thought just as quickly as it crossed her mind. Still, she could
not leave the woman in such a pitiful and poor state, could she?
She opened the front door just enough to peer out. The
woman was there, motionless, as though she knew Irmak was watching her all
along. With her heart in her mouth, Irmak then stepped into the garden and onto
the narrow, bumpy road, where the woman lingered still until she raised her
head ever so slightly. Irmak’s eyes narrowed as she took a good look at the
woman, but her wet hair veiled her face and obscured all hints of what the strange
visitor might look like.
“Hi,” she gingerly said, waving her hand awkwardly, “I’m
Irmak. Do you… need help?”
The woman did not answer. She only stared at the girl, then
slowly lifted her arm and pointed into the distance – towards the mountains.
“Is that where you want to go?”
The woman gave a nod.
“Do you want me to help you go there?”
The woman, once again, nodded and confirmed her.
Though hesitant, Irmak stepped forwards and supported the
woman, helping her down the bumpy road with her small build. Together they
walked into the night, farther and farther away from the heart of the village
and closer to the mountains where no sane soul dared to linger in the wee
hours.
The woman’s arm felt icy under the touch, and though the
night was still, the woman’s hair seemed to stir with a breeze that wasn’t really
there. Irmak tried to hum a tune under her breath, to calm her nerves and
convince herself that everything was under control – the way she did whenever
she was frightened – but the sound was meant to die in her throat eventually.
From time to time, she tried to speak and break the silence
with her childish questions, but the woman never replied, and so they walked on
in silence until they reached the fork where the mountain path began. Well there,
Irmak hesitated for good. Her mother warned her never to take the mountain
road, though she never explained why. She knew only what she overheard
from the kids in the village, that once, long ago, a witch lived in the
mountains and practised black magic, cursing the women so they could no longer
conceive and bear children. No one knew why she bore such a grudge against the
villagers as far as she knew, but Ahmet, the village fool, said he knew why.
When she was only a child, Ahmet had said, the imam of that
time raped her and demanded later that she get rid of the foetus since he
planned not to take her as his second wife. The unfortunate thing, however, loved
her unborn child so much that she wanted to keep it despite the imam’s threats.
And when the imam’s wife and family got wind of what had happened at last, they
presumed that poor child had seduced her abuser and forcibly took the infant
from her, ripped it straight from her tomb prematurely and buried her alive to
save their face and honour.
From that day forth, the witch swore an oath of vengeance;
she conspired with the djinn and vowed to bring ruin to the village. The
men, terrified, dragged her into the mountains and savagely violated her,
hoping to shatter her power and resolve. Even Ahmet, that fool, was forced to
take part, though he did not want to at first, out of fear of what the men
would do to him should he refuse. Like that, they thought they had defeated her
and forever silenced her. And not long after this happened, the women once
again began to bear children. Six babies were born in total. Irmak was one of those
six babies. But aside from her, no one else survived early childhood. The
children who lived in the village as of writing these arcane words leading
nowhere came from other, nearby villages in the hopes of keeping the population
from shrinking any further.
People came to
believe it was the witch’s doing that too, and so they found her and killed her.
No one knew where they had left her body, though, since she was never reported
missing by her family, who fled the village overnight that same day. However, people
claimed they could hear her cries in the witching hour still, mourning her
child who had been buried alive and whispered curses, colliding with the djinn.
Irmak pulled her arm free as these thoughts resurfaced from
the deepest corners of her subconsciousness telling her to be careful and not to
take a step further than she already had.
“I-I should go home now, it’s getting late.”
The woman spoke at last. Her voice was heavy with sorrow, just
like how Irmak imagined it would be, and a chill shot down her spine.
“I am your mother, child. Don’t you recognise me?”
Her eyes narrowed, deep wrinkles forming. She didn’t know
this woman, yet the words pierced her heart like a wound torn open for reasons
she couldn’t understand. The way she said them… as though she truly believed
those words…
“No.”
“Oh, my child… My sweet, sweet child…”
The woman cupped her face, and in her eyes, Irmak saw
tears, saw a sorrow so deep it seemed endless. She knew, then. This was her.
The witch. The woman who had been raped, who had lost her baby, and who had
sworn vengeance against the villagers.
“You’re a witch,” she said, the words escaping her before
she could hinder them. “Right?”
The woman lowered her head, shame shadowing her face.
Painful memories seemed to weigh her down and take over her bleak mind. Then
she looked up again and met Irmak’s quizzical gaze.
“Forgive me, my child,” she said, her voice breaking. “You
are not her. Go back to your family now. Don’t look back and… promise me to never
walk out at night again.”
The woman then turned towards the mountain path and walked
away, leaving Irmak no chance to reply. Instead, she stood watching until the
woman vanished into the dark, then returned home as she had been told.
By dawn, before the first light touched the sky, soldiers
came with sudden, grim news: the entire village had been poisoned, and no one
survived except Irmak and her family. Doors hung open, meals sat unfinished,
and bodies lay where they had fallen, some in beds, some in the streets, faces
twisted as though they had seen Shaitan himself. Irmak clung to her
mother’s skirt as the soldiers told them what had happened, and her small heart
hammered out of control as he thought back on her encounter with the witch.
Years later, long after she and her family fled that cursed
place, Irmak heard the truth of what really happened that night. Apparently,
the soldiers had found the source of the poisoning and wrote off the macabre
case as an accident caused by a rotten corpse that had been found in the well
the villagers used for drinking water. But there was no update on whose corpse
it was or why it had been inside the well – or for how long…
The incident affected her in more than one way. Even as a grown woman, she would wake some nights with her face wet from tears she did not remember shedding. In her dreams, she walked again on that mountain path, always with the woman at her side, always hearing those same swords on repeat: “Oh, my child… My sweet, sweet child…” And when the wind howled and whistled in those harrowing moments, she could hear the djinn echoing those same words from the mountain path she had left behind in her past but never truly escaped.
