Curse of the Nightfall

There is a rape-murder situation in a small town where we live. It’s in a house in the residential western block along the national highway a short distance from the business hub in town. Streams of crowd have gathered in curiosity as spectators trying to witness an imagery of a crime done. It is a rare occurrence that such crime emerges in the peacefulness of the municipality. Random dark flyers are ornaments of the grid line. Crows—in that superfluity of humid weather flock as though participants to a developing scenario. Dark-hues feathers are unperturbed by the gusty wind as their conscious eyes focus on the immediate scenario below where the fading siren of police cars with their interlaces of bright patrol lights indicate something disturbing in the vicinity. Police authorities cordon the place. A crow caws then follows off by a cacophony of a chorus. The crows are making a noise as though a signal. They bring out the dead victim and slowly departed in an ambulance for autopsy. I am among the crowd and notices the dangling electric wires due to how the crows behave in a matter of atrocity wherein they appear offended then disperse.

The victim is Mrs. Chair who happens to be the wife of a police officer in town. They have a teen-ager son who attends college nearby. His name is Stephen taking in a nursing course and is now a 2nd year college student. He is informed of his mother’s fate.

“What happened, sir?”, he asks in trembling demeanour barely understanding the police officer.

“Your father wants to inform you that your mother is dead. Kid, sorry but life is quite hard head-on when she died brutally murdered. I have to be frank. She was raped and murdered.”, the police officer didn’t leave him any room for response then follows-up, “better go to your father”.

Shock ensues. He barely grasps reality in a sudden strike then as slowly the realization dawns, he run and running in that pace of apathy. Oh no, it cannot be true. He hurried home maintaining the pace and as he nears, he notices the seemingly abnormality of the horizon like a dark cloud that is shifting in such suspicious form then he realizes, it is a clustering of crows that suddenly erupts in audible sound of distress. It scatters above in that disturbed cacophony as though an omen of something that is approaching in the days ahead. Indeed, it is. He reaches home as scarce distribution of some spectators are still around. He called, ‘Papa?’, His father is in the living room on the sofa talking with his police mates trying to condole him. His father stands and with lightning speed hugs him tightly, and with a hoarse voice confirms, ‘Your mama is killed, son’ In mutual understanding, the silence falls deep then in slow eruption, the emotion hardens into a bawling. Stephen comes to the point of denial, yet the shift to a stronger emotion of lament quickly paces.

‘Mamaaa.’ Then the silence as his father tries to comfort his grief in abeyance. ‘We will have to be strong, son. The police will get the criminal.’

The thing is, it is an unresolved case in the local police force until the dead in the coming days arises to haunt the community in her fierce, wanton evil of vengeance, in her atrocious way to find her killer.

They buried her.

Mourning follows in the days ahead and the ability to cope is strong. Stephen though attends school yet the effect of it lingers as depression is a building parasite that gnaws deeply in his heart. Fortunately, the absolution of time intervenes as slowly his mourning fades like the nightfall traversing in its course. Time heals all wounds and as far as Stephen is concerned, he needs to move on yet with his mother as inspiration, she will never be forgotten.

The 1st death anniversary comes. Father and son visit the local cemetery at the far-flung area north of town. They bring some flowers and lights a candle while they offer some prayer. The thing is, the bleak morning sky prefers to intervene with cracklings of thunder and lightning, then—rain. Something cold pervades and the chilly wind disrupts the voraciousness of rain fall. The rain suddenly stopped.

They left the graveyard.