Chapter 8: The Woman in Red
Never be alone during a blackout, you never know who might be coming for you.
I remember the first blackout we ever had at the Academy. It sticks in my mind because it had been raining all day. The wind made the glass in the louvers rattle and Sophie and I spent all day trying not to get too wet as we went from class to class.
The blackout came at 8pm, right in the middle of prep time. The lights over both Sophie’s desk and mine flickered and then died. I remember looking out at the world and seeing nothing but darkness. I couldn’t even make out the shapes of the trees.
Flashlights were one of the items on our ‘First Year Away’ list and I got mine, switched it on and sat on my bed facing Sophie.
“At least this means our homework for tomorrow won’t be due.” She said.
All around us the other girls in the corridors were whispering in their rooms. Being in another person’s room, even during a blackout, was forbidden but I could hear doors quietly opening and closing as people did just that.
Clarissa, Alinafe’s best friend and hanger-on, came to our room to tell us that she was inviting everyone to her room to tell ghost stories.
“It will be fun like one big sleepover.” Clarissa said.
I didn’t really want to go but Clarissa was nice and I could tell Sophie, who was more of a social butterfly than I was, was itching to be around more people.
It seemed like the entire corridor was crammed into Clarissa and Alinafe’s room. People were sitting on the desks and on the floor. Alinafe looked up and glared at me as I sat by the door, ready to make a quick getaway.
“That last story was just okay so you better have something better Thabo.”
It was hard to tell who was speaking. The curtains were drawn and two girls on each desk had a flashlight pointed at the ceiling so that everyone’s faces looked ashy and drawn, our eyes sticking out like corpses.
Thabo was loped over one of the chairs and looked around as she began her story. The wind pushed against the windows.
“This is the story of the woman in red. A story almost as old as this school because this is where it began.”
Sophie snorted, a sure sign that she was already nervous.
“Once upon a time there lived a woman and her daughter. They lived in a small house on the edge of the girls hostel and together they cleaned the corridors and cooked in the dining hall as a form of rent. The woman’s dream was that one day her daughter would also wear the same uniform and attend the Academy. Everyone loved her daughter. Everyone except a small group of Form One girls.”
The curtains flapped wildly as a gust of wind swept through. We were all leaning towards Thabo now, constricting our space even more.
“These girls all came from rich families and didn’t want a cleaner’s daughter to go to school with them so they found a way to make her life miserable. Everyday they teased her and made a big mess on purpose so that she would have to clean it up. These girls were popular and had connections in high places so no one stopped them, some girls even joined in.”
I saw Ali shift uncomfortably out of the corner of my eye.
“One day the girls convinced the woman’s daughter that they had lost something in the ornamental lake. The daughter, wanting to believe the best of them, waded into the shallow parts to try and find it but the girls kept telling her to go further and further. The girls wanted to humiliate her and so when she was waist deep in the water they called all the girls they knew. The daughter was embarrassed but in her hurry to leave the lake she cut her foot on a piece of rusty metal.”
Sophie’s hand closed around mine in a tight grip.
“That’s when they came for her. All the snakes and the monitor lizards dragged her body down into the lake as she screamed for help. The details of what had happened reached the woman and in her grief she drowned herself in the same lake.”
A loud bang on the window made us all jump.
“It’s just the tree branches.” Clarissa said.
She was trying to keep her voice steady but I knew that those tree branches were nowhere near her windows.
“Legend has it that every year the woman emerges from the lake. In her arms she carries the body of her daughter and her dress is red from her daughter’s blood.”
Thabo lowered her voice so that we had to strain to hear her above everything happening outside.
“Every year she finds one girl who she deems has a black heart and she and her daughter drag her down to the bottom of the ornamental lake to be their slave forever.”
Silence.
“That was alright but…but everyone knows that monitor lizards don’t eat people.” Ali said.
No one spoke. One girl got up to return to her room then thought better of it and sat down. Clarissa was just about to say something to lighten the mood when a long wail came from outside the door.
Everyone screamed.
“It’s her! It’s the woman in red!” Ali said.
She had run out the garden door to investigate whilst the rest of us cowered in her room. Curiosity got the best of us, however, and well all followed her to see. I was hoping that Ali was just trying to show us how stupid we were acting but there in the distance was a figure in an ill fitting red dress.
Elita had gone to see a friend in another corridor and by the time she got back and managed to calm us down it was past midnight. We all had the same question on our mind, who was the woman in red coming to take?
For weeks after that night no one went to the bathroom alone.
