My name is Aida Fatini. This true story i never told in print for fear that i would sound mad. It is the version of events as i remember them, so that the tale told by another member of my family might differ slightly in order or timing.
When i was 16 years old, my family moved to Ampang, hidden behind trees, high-ceiling and replete with corridors. This sudden gift of space was not before time. When people asked how many siblings that i had , i tended to chirp "we are too many" or " we are legion" . Ours, in fact, was the perfect situation for a horror story. Three girls of 16, 15 and nine, a boy of 11 and one of barely four years old.
To be sure, our new house had a degree of notoriety. local gossip held that it boasted three "presences" a woman who stalked the ground floor , an elderly doctor forever racing up its stairs searching for a dying grandson and, in its upper reaches, the victim of an argument that had spilled over into murder. There was even what appeared to be the requisite bloodstain that could not be removed, since covered with carpet.
The more credulous would not step upside it. We were not so naive. And yet, there was something unsettling about our new home, a personality a sense that we were installing ourselves in a place already occupied it never felt quite empty. Doors would shut of their own volition, footstep would sound, it felt as if we were being watched, assessed.
Very soon, this phone-war period became the subject of nostalgia. For, when the house kicked off, it kicked off in epic style. Every night 4am, someone - something would tear up its stairs, ratting , then forcing open, the doors in its wake, like all of which required proper turning and thrusting , until it reached my mother's room, entering in a furious door slamming blast. Once comically , but in ghastly , it even seemed to relieve its excess energy with a few stroke on her rowing machine.
Aida Fatini Binti Rozman.
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