It was a cold winter night, the kind where the chill from the wind seeped through the thin walls of the house, making the bones ache. Granny, back then just a little girl in middle school, lay on the narrow wooden bed at the end of the room, with her two cousin sisters fast asleep beside her. The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that wrapped around her like a heavy blanket, pressing down on her chest. The only sound was the creaking of the old wooden floorboards and the distant howling of the wind outside.
The room had a small window that faced the barren property next door. It was an old property that nobody cared to visit anymore. For years, it had been abandoned, left to rot. Sometimes, late at night, people—alcoholics, thieves—would sneak in to steal scrap metal to sell. Granny and her cousins would often hear muffled voices and the clinking of metal as those people worked under the cover of night. But it wasn’t unusual. It was just the way things were in that part of the village.
But tonight… tonight was different.
