Horror surged through their hearts, something terrible was about to happen to all of them. They could feel it in every heartbeat. The clock on the wall came to a halt, time was up. Kitchen cupboards started shaking, plates fell down on the floor. Things got from bad to worse, they couldn’t even feast their last supper that night. In what started happening early hours ago, it was too much for them to bare. What was going on, they wandered.

The mother, father and their two children, were no longer a happy family it seemed. Mr Jacobs felt less of a man, wishing he could do something to protect his own family from what he couldn’t see with his own eyes. Thando and Lindokuhle, his twin daughters, looked at him with terror on their faces, chanting silent noises in their hearts. While his wife could only hope the Lord would shepherd her from evil.

The nightmare continued. What happened to be a figure of a man emerging from out of nowhere, caring a large hammer with his left hand and dressed in dark colours. The kitchen light bulb became dim. This was a signal of danger ready to strike. Indeed it all happened in a flash. The man smashed the mother of the house on top of her head. She died instantly, leaving her eye balls on the floor, looking like they were watching her headless body smashed into pieces of flesh.

The other family members could no longer feel her presence in the house. All they felt was her soul being taken away from them. “Jabulile!” That was her husband, Mr Jacobs. “Baby, please talk to me…” he continued talking to a body with no soul. The children were traumatised, watching their father speak to their dead mother.

The father quickly went to the bathroom, splashed his face with some water. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw the reflection of his own wife. He tried to wipe his eyes and blink twice, thinking that there was something wrong with them. He still saw his wife’s ghost before his face. The horror turned him against himself, as he broke the mirror on the wall with his bare hands and took his own life by stabbing himself to death.

***

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