Bedtime Stories: My Grandma’s Old Locket

Hey, guys! 😊
So I just started writing flash fiction today on my Facebook timeline. My followers there love this very story and think I should continue writing horror/ghost stories like this in a new Facebook series – Bedtime Stories.

Now, I know that I mostly blog about self-improvement (for teens) and my blogging/writing experience and tips, still I feel like I should share stories like this on the blog more often. What do you think, though?
Will you like to see stories like this on the blog? Please, let me know your thoughts in a comment after reading the story below.

Sorry about the length! X

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I shut my eyes and scream in agony as the fork digs deep into the back of my neck and slides down my back to the base of my spine, tearing me open. When I manage to open my eyes, I’m on the floor in my room, panting.

Right next to me is the bowl of noodles my mum made for me just a few hours ago, still untouched. And a fork – wait, my favourite fork – entangled in tufts of black, curly hair. My hair.

Adrenaline, fear, and something darker, something queer, surge through my veins and I stagger to the bathroom, ignoring the searing pain and the blood that’s trickling down from my neck, drenching my pyjamas; drawn to an unseen force beckoning me to come to it. In the bathroom.

Instinctively, I walk to the bath tub and there, I see it, exactly where I had dropped it just an hour ago. Grandma’s old locket. I pick it up, wear it around my neck and walk back to my room.

In the same instant, the door opens and my mum comes running in. We both remain still, staring at each other for a breathtaking moment. Silent. Drawing breaths. She must have heard me scream.

“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” She asks cautiously.

I steal a glance at the clock: 1:01 AM. Then I nod.

Sweat drips from my forehead and my fingers tremble as the horror of the event that happened just a minute before sears into my memory.

“She was here, mum. Again,” I sob softly.

I stare at my mum’s face grimly, looking for a hint of shock, of fear, in her expression, but I don’t find any. It’s either she’s not scared, or she’s good at hiding it.

She’s good at hiding it.

“She asked me to let her comb my hair this time. With a fork,” I continue, sobbing intermittently. “And I let her.”

***

The story has always been the same since the night I first wore grandma’s locket around my neck. Grandma visits me by my bedside every day by 1:00 AM, smiling sinisterly, and I would always ask, sheepishly, “What do you want?”

It was what was expected of me to ask – what was expected of anyone cursed by the locket to ask.

Tonight, she had grinned at me, her eyes darting from my bowl of noodles on the floor and back to my head.

“Will you let me comb your hair, Obinna, with your fork?”

“Yes,” I had replied tartly. I had no choice. I couldn’t have said no to her.

***

Two weeks ago, on the night my grandma died, my father found an old locket she used to wear around her neck. It was a golden locket and had the same engravings that appeared on my brother’s tombstone two nights after his burial.

It was the locket that caused grandma to hit Chukwuma, my brother, on the head with a swivel chair, when she caught him wearing it around his neck. I was there. Although, it was nothing serious; it was only a mild concussion. He was going to be fine.

My clock chimed 1:00 AM that same day and almost immediately, my brother’s shrill screams filled the air. We (my parents and I) ran down to his room where we found his body sprawled across the floor, with the locket wound tight round his neck. It was strangling him, and in terror, in shock, in horror, he was cutting at his neck ferociously with a knife.

His wrists and neck were splurting thick, black blood.

“Make her stop, make her stop,” he pleaded, tears, blood, streaming down his face from his eyeballs.

“Make HIM stop!” I tugged at my mum’s nightdress. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. No one could stop him. Not when he had said no to grandma.

My brother watched us in terror, stopped struggling with the locket, smiled weakly, then walked back to his bed as if in a trance. Then he lay on it, and slept.

He never woke up.

And grandma wasn’t in her room that night.

***

It was this same locket grandma had given to me on my eighteenth birthday, the night she died, as a birthday present, but I couldn’t bring myself to take it from her. It so much reminded me of Chuwkuma. It so much reminded me of the fear in his eyes that night, of the blood. Thick. Black. Blood.

The night my grandma died, my father found this locket in her room. He took it and slid it into his breast pocket.

That same night, my father died.

***

I stare at the clock again.

1:03 AM.

My head begins to throb so I close my eyes and tuck my head between my legs. It is then that I hear it. Water. Dripping. In the bathroom.

Drip.

Drip.

Fast.

Faster.

1:05 AM.

The shower turns on and the pain throbbing in my head becomes worse.

“She’s here,” I whisper. “She’s still here.”

I know it. I feel it.

My mum feels it, too.

Drip.

“Obinna…” She begins to cry. She knows what to do, though. She would have to leave me alone by myself tonight. Wherever she would go to doesn’t matter. But she mustn’t be here. At least, not tonight; not when I’m vulnerable, ever willing to do the bidding of my grandmother.

“GO! FAST!” I command.

I watch her face turn pale, and the fear drain her eyes. I’ve seen that look in her eyes before. Yes, those glassy, brown eyes. Her eyes wore this same expression that night my brother died.

I watch her run out of my room just as fast as she had come in, slamming the door behind her. Seconds later, I hear the car start, then tyres screech, and moments later, I hear nothing.

Until…

“Obinna…,” a snakelike voice calls.

The voice is coming from behind me. Warily, I turn around to see an old woman, clad in a skirt and blouse, bathed in red soil, wrapping her fingers around a knife on one hand, the other hand unearthing tufts of my hair. She’s smiling at me. I freeze. It IS my grandma.

The blade glints in the soft light.

“This isn’t right. This isn’t fair.” I stagger backward. I can feel her in my head now, gazing into my soul, wading through my fleeting thoughts, infecting me with the feeling of fear and feeding off it. I shut my eyes again, shaking off the feeling that the unreal standing right in front of me is actually … real.

“I did what you wanted. I let you comb my hair; I’m not supposed to see you again until 1:00AM. Tomorrow.”

She smiles and inches toward me. Then she stops, her face just a few centimetres from mine. “Take off your clothes.”

The effect is instantaneous. In one fluid motion, I pull down my trousers and pull off my T-shirt. I’m sweating. Trembling.
“Please, please, don’t hurt me,” I plead amidst the tears, then I remove my underwear and throw it behind me; warm urine trickles down my legs. Grandma notices this and smiles. Oh, she nauseates me.

“Don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want, please.”

She smiles at me. “I know.”

I take in a deep breath, partly wishing it were my last.

“What do you want?” I ask breathlessly.

Slowly, she pulls off her sequinned blue blouse – the one my father got her last Christmas – then she unzips her tattered skirt and it slides down her slender legs, along with her muddy brown undies. I direct my gaze down to the bowl of noodles on the floor as she unhooks her bra, then on impulse, I look up to her again. She’s stark naked. And…beautiful. Oddly beautiful.

“I want to have your baby.”

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