While growing up in the country, Having electricity was like living in luxury, So only some people could access it in an honest way. For others, well I’m not sure what to say but all I know is that they had electricity in the night but none in the day; they were determined to enjoy some of the so-called luxuries, come what may. Street lights were found on only some light posts, so the majority of the community was dark at night. It was so dark that I used to look forward to seeing the moonlight; thanks to the full moon and new moon.
People of old used to say spirits are afraid of lights but I thought otherwise; I used to see strange shadows in the day and night, in darkness and in the light. I used to see them so often that one could almost say I had a high-tech vision. After all, if what I saw my siblings couldn’t see then how differently could they have described my vision? Come to think of it too, it was so high- tech that one morning I saw a neighbors twin brother, even though his mom didn’t have twins when she was giving birth to him. As for that, I’ll now enlighten you on how it unfolded.
On that morning, my mom and I decided to go to a place called Cedar Valley to visit her mom. We decided to take a shortcut but had to walk through bushes and a special place called Gunland. I’m not sure how the land got its name but as far as I can recall, I’ve never seen any guns there. It was an area of land where farming was done and the farmers didn’t use guns to farm but a machete, fork, and hoe – unless when it was reaping time gunmen reaped what they didn’t sow and hence the name.
My father is a farmer and on that day, a group of them decided to clear an area of land, in Gunland. When we were close to the farm, mom called to dad and asked if lunch was ready and fortunately, we timed the pot well; lunch was indeed ready so dad invited us to join them. As soon as we stepped on the farm, a tall man who was sitting among them, got up and walked away. I didn’t focus much on him but despite not giving him that sort of attention, I noticed he was dressed in a suit a neighbor, Puttash, used to wear on a regular basis. I did not even see his face but he had a similar built – slim and tall. I then thought it was Puttash who was having lunch with them but got up as soon as he saw us. At that time, hunger had attacked me so my thoughts were more on how to murder hunger with the food.
The food was my only weapon of defense and I wasn’t going to allow anything to block my progress. As soon as we murdered hunger with the food, our tummies felt blessed and the desire to stay was no more, it was time to leave – a ‘nyam ah lef’ situation. While on our way to grandma’s place, we spoke about the time we spent on the farm but didn’t say anything about the man who got up, shortly after we reached there. It was nothing important to talk about because after all, he was just a normal person who probably went to ease himself. He may have had too much to eat and drink as we did, so his body wasn’t too pleased and wanted to eliminate the excess amount.
We proceeded on our fun-journey, spent some hours at grandma’s place, then left for home. On our way back, an inner voice said, “Ask your mom why Puttash had to move when he saw us, earlier in the day?” I did accordingly but was surprised at Mom’s response; she told me Puttash wasn’t there! I tried convincing her by even describing the clothes he had on but it was to no avail. Seeing none of us decided to agree with the other, she then said, “Let’s ask Dad when we reach home”.
It was late in the afternoon so all the farmers had already left the farm. The conversation about Puttash started when we were close to the farm, and it made me wonder why my inner voice reminded me of that time. Anyway, the road was actually a track and I was at the front. After a while, I became afraid and was happy I wasn’t at the back as I would have ended up with crooked neck; I would have looked back every five seconds to ensure nothing strange was following us.
We finally reached home and so as to bring some sort of closure to the whole scenario, we asked Dad and he agreed with Mom. He said Puttash was nowhere on the farm and nobody else was with them on that day. What made it more alarming too, was when he said some tall people used to live in that area of land, but they died years ago. With that bit of information, who/what then did I see that morning? Did I see a tall ghost?
