Come Out & Play, Child, Come Out & Play~..... Part 1 BY -D-

as one enters my little sister's room, located on the ground floor, you'll come face to face to a wide window, looking directly out to the grass field, and a tree covered with vines. to your right, outside on the corner of the window, you'll find a small pot, containing an unimpressively small plant made up of only it's stump....

late 2004, long before the STPRI incident (so don't you dare compare that with this), when my sister was only 14 years of age, my grandma had to take an emergency surgery in KL, and my parents, worried about the outcome, decided to go as well, leaving only me and my 4 other siblings, and the maids to take care of the house. also take note we had a rabbit cage back then, located outside, just underneath my parents bedroom.

that year, we had just started subscribing to Kristal/Astro, so while the parents were away, my sister frequented their room, which at the time had both of it's light bulb broken, to watch TV, since that was the only place in the house with a decoder. it was around 11 pm, and it was the monsoon season, so strong winds were blowing at the time. and need i remind you our place was located between two steep hills, making an eerie sound as the storm was about to start.

feeling thirsty at the time, i made my way to my parent's room upstairs, maybe to steal some juice from their fridge. not three steps up the stairs, i heard the sound of a door banged open, loud sobbing and moaning, and another bang as my sister stormed out of the master bedroom, crying and hit herself on one of the wooden wardrobe. she sat there on the floor, crying and then screaming hysterically as my older sister held her in her arms, all the while bleeding from the elbow and her head after hitting the door and wardrobe respectively. what happened?

my sister was watching tv at my parents' room alone in the dark, as the wind outside began to pick up speed. it started off with the usual eerie howl, which she was already used to. later on, there was another sound that mixed in with the wind, one that sounded like a high pitched, shaky "eeeEEeeeEeeEEEee~". not long afterwards, she heard the voice of a girl repeatedly calling her name, which came from the door leading to the veranda which was 3-4 metres right in front of her. after she had ran out, i entered the room and went out the veranda to take a look. it may have been my imagination, but despite the strong winds, i swear i could smell the faint scent of something sweet.

when my parents got home and heard the story, they explained the sound may have came from the rabbits we were keeping, since they always made those "eeeEEeeeEeeEEEee~" noises during cold nights, and that my sister was just imagining her name being called. this put her at ease, until of course this fact was proven wrong. that potted plant i mentioned has it's role..... in part 2 and my final story.....

Rosemary's Baby BY -D-

funny thing here is my sister-in-law's nick name IS Rose. okay, maybe not Rosemary, but it's still pretty close....

early February of 2008. as i went to the kitchen to grab a late night drink, i noticed the lights to the living room were still brightly lit up. my brother had had a guest over, a scene quite rare especially at that hour (it was 2+ AM, me thinks). i had thought the other guy was an old friend of his, and they were just re-living the good old days when they were younger, spending the later hours of the night hangin' and chillin', with no worries of getting enough sleep to get them through work the next day. then i heard the word "bayangan". so i eavesdropped to find out more;

more than a week earlier, my brother and his wife were terrorized by the sudden repetitive sound that came from their bedroom window, making them lose some sleep. the culprit; a black crow, who kept pecking at the window, which, you guessed it, was facing the grass field. now this wouldn't be much of a problem if it was just some pesky crow with some obsessive-compulsive drive to peck at the window every night, however, the fact that his wife seemed to wake up from a nightmare, sweating, exactly before the crow would start pecking the window, and that the pecking would start at around the same time every night made my brother a bit TOO worried. he tried to scare the crow away by banging on the window; it just perched there staring back at my brother, as if he's mocking him even. it wasn't until he'd open the window that it would fly away. and every time he shooed it away, it went in the very same direction, into the darkness of the grass field.

as for my sister-in-law's nightmare, the one she wakes up to before the crow starts pecking the window? the first couple of nights, she can't exactly recall the dream, but they were definitely the same ones. on around the fourth night, she could finally remember what it was; she would dream that she was sleeping in the room, alone, at night, when she'd suddenly wake up, the window opening on it's own at the same time, while the crow, which was larger in her dream would perch there, staring at her. it would then spread it's wings, which were large in her dreams, as if it was going to engulfed her. before it did, she'd always hear a deep, thundering voice that commanded her to hand her son over to "him". only problem is, they have no son. now, as i've mentioned, if all this had happened only once, heck, twice at most, this would have all been just a coincidence. but all this 11 nights in a row, it's not pretty strange for someone who's heavily as superstitious as my brother to go find a medium after the third night. the whole ordeal left his wife weak and tired, vomiting the next day after it had happened.

it took a little while for him to find a medium with his connections, but the night i went for a drink was the night they had just finished cleaning up the problem. it wasn't two days later my brother told my parents what happened, along with the big news they had. what supposedly happen, based on the medium's report, was that a something, an unknown being, was stalking my sister-in-law. it originally came from the hills next to my sister-in-law's parents house and followed her to my place when she came back, and was of notable high rank among it's kind. one other characteristic that made a problem for the medium dealing with "it" was that it was a giant of some sort; it was taller than our two storey house. the crow that came pecking their windows was a messenger of sort asking his wife to hand over her son, one they didn't have, to "it" who was hiding in the forest beyond the grass field.

and their other news to my parents? my sister-in-law was pregnant. months later, we would find out that it was gonna be a boy.....

(next story will be a two-parter, and the last of my stories)

BY -D-

"eh. si 'K' balik jua udah, kan?" asked my older sister, as i made my way from my room to my parents' room upstairs to grab some grub, passing the living room where she sat down in the dark. i've seen my sister mad, confused, and many other expressions that normally requires a person to be so wide-eyed. in that particular moment, i guessed "freaked out" describe her expression best.

'K' was our former driver/gardener. if there's one easy way to describe him, it'd be VERY tall and lanky. think Shaggy (not the singer), only taller, and less hippy. other notable features would be the fact he always wear a white tee as his work clothes as he goes around with his business on the front yard. now enough about him, on to the time of the incident;

one December evening of last year, after 7 pm, bored and with nothing better to do, my older sister lounged around the living room, chatting with her friends on MSN via her cellphone, while facing towards the window looking out of the front lawn. trying to relax her eyes for a bit after staring into the screen for too long in the dark, she looked up in front her and through the warped glass brick right next to the main entrance, saw a tall white figure passed by. she saw it again through the window overlooking the front lawn, making it's way towards the tool shed, found near the back close to the large (haunted) grass field. now at first glance, she didn't think much of it as her first impression was that "K" was just finishing some stuff up. then she remembered how a few days prior that i sent "K", my mother, and herself to the airport to send him off (she wanted to stop by elsewhere afterwards, and her car was in the workshop). one other detail worth mentioning was that the figure had quite an eerie white glow, and that white part was way too long to be a t-shirt of any sort as it extended way past the waist.

as she came to realize all this, i had just came out of my room, ready to cook something up.

well, the next story is gonna be just as weak and unscary as this one, considering that i'm pretty much near the end of the road here....