Souls

She told us they were souls of children snatched violently by death.

Grandma used to tell us about the Night Children, souls of kids taken too early. She said they were snatched by sickness, by hands that hurt them, by something that never let them grow. It was a spooky tale. But that was all it was, a tale.

Until I started to hear them.

My room backed onto the parlour. I liked that a lot because it meant I could slip out for midnight movies or snacks without getting caught, most times. I stopped sneaking out when they began coming.

The first night I noticed, I woke with gooseflesh and a sudden chill. I’d just turned ten. At about three in the morning, laughter rang from the parlour. For a moment I blamed Chidiebere’s alarm, because he set the strangest sounds and never woke to them, but this was different. It was a cluster of small voices, bright and breathless, giggling like children playing tag.

My door had been wide open, (Chidiebere called me a scaredy-cat for hating closed doors), so their noise drifted in. They sounded like children, all of them panting, hopping and banging things as if in a game. Once something heavy fell and shattered. In the morning, Mother’s precious china lay in a hundred white pieces on the floor. I was blamed for pushing it while sneaking out and all my protests about hearing children playing were met with rolled eyes and accusatory looks.

They raided the kitchen next. Pots and spoons made a mad clatter. The next day the food in the pots had soured and the refrigerator door was yawning wide. After that, they came every night, muttering in a language I could not understand with the scrape of little feet and the occasional silence that left my ears ringing.

Once, they watched the television and we woke up to ruined remotes. We bought new ones, but the Night Children never touched the TV again.

I never saw them, only felt them. There was always that strange press of breath at my neck, and the odd cold that pooled in the doorway. Once I crept to peep and felt someone breathe down my neck, but when I turned there was no one. I ran back and did not peek again for weeks.

They stayed only in the parlour and kitchen. For three years they were part of the house as part mischief and part sorrow. Their laughter never sounded cruel. It sounded like the echo of lives that should have been.

The night I turned thirteen, they stopped coming.

At first, the silence felt like relief. I could finally sleep without waiting for the clatter of spoons or the sudden giggle in the dark. But the quiet grew heavy, like a blanket that pressed too close to my face. I found myself reaching for them in the stillness, listening for that breathless hop of feet, the soft language I could never understand.

Years later, sometimes, when the house is too still, I catch myself pausing, just to be sure. And every so often, in that pause, I think I hear it. The faintest ripple of laughter, just beyond the door.