The house on Mbele Street wasn’t supposed to be theirs. At least, not according to the widow who still sat on the porch every night, muttering to the shadows. Mrs. Maleka had lost the house the same month her husband died. Papers, debts, and things nobody explained properly. When the new family moved in, she didn’t scream or fight. She just watched with those sunken eyes and whispered. The neighbors said she was harmless. The neighbors lied.
Within a week, strange things started happening, mirrors dripping with black water, doors slamming at 3 a.m., the smell of smoke and old roses crawling through the halls. The family tried praying, cleansing, ignoring. It only grew worse. One evening, seventeen-year-old Amara had enough. She stepped out and found the widow sitting in the dark by the gate, her thin fingers tracing circles in the dust.
“Stop cursing my family,”
Amara said.
“We didn’t steal this house. We bought it.”
The widow lifted her head slowly, like her neck was full of broken parts.
“You sleep in my bedroom,”
She whispered.
“You cook in my kitchen. You walk on the tiles my husband laid. And you think you are not thieves?”
Amara’s heart pounded, but she didn’t step back.
“Whatever you’re doing, leave my family out of it.”
A long, crooked smile crept across the widow’s face.
“Oh, child. They were never the target.”
Amara blinked.
“What?”
The widow reached out and touched Amara’s forehead with a finger colder than a morgue slab.
“I only needed you to come to me.”
The streetlights flickered violently. Wind howled though the night was still. Something invisible snapped in the air like a string being cut. The widow leaned close, her breath sweet and rotten like decayed flowers.
“The curse is yours now. I gift it freely. Every shadow in that house will follow you. Every whisper, every hand, every nightmare… They belong to you alone.”
Amara stumbled back, her vision blurring. The house behind her seemed to groan, as if awakening. Dark shapes shifted in the windows. Something heavy moved in the attic. The widow stood, brushing off her dress.
“Your parents will sleep peacefully tonight, only you will hear the knocking. Only you will see him. Only you will feel what I felt when death took my husband in that very house.”
She said. Amara turned to run, but the widow’s voice struck her like a blade:
“Tonight, he comes to finish the death he started.”
Amara froze.
“Who?”
She whispered. The widow’s eyes glowed with a grief so deep it had rotted into hatred.
“My husband.”
Behind Amara, the front door opened on its own. Slowly, patiently revealing a darkness so thick it pulsed. And in that darkness, something breathed her name.
