I Know What You Did...
"Tommy come back. Don’t' go to that house." Rani told her dog.
Rani had three dogs and she took great care of her dogs. She loved Tommy the best. Although he was the naughtiest of her three dogs, he was her favourite.
Tommy loved people. Not afraid of almost anything, Tommy would go up to almost anybody, wagging his tail in a friendly manner. To Rani's bafflement, Tommy liked to go to her neighbour's house, and despite countless scoldings from Rani, Tommy never learnt his lesson.
Rani's neighbour was a Malay family, and they especially hated dogs. While other Malay families on the street showed tolerance, this neighbour would scream at Tommy whenever she found him in her garden. Sometimes, while chasing him out, she would even take things and throw at him.
Tommy did not understand anything, and thought the neighbour was playing with him half the time. Rani tried her best to stop Tommy from disturbing her neighbour, but despite her efforts, Tommy still went there.
After a while, the relations between the two families soured to the point that they were no longer talking to each other. Rani also noticed that the neighbour did not mingle with the other neighbours, keeping to themselves a lot. The few visitors that visited would only stay a short while and leave soon after. Rani was curious about her neighbours, but her good upbringing stopped her from snooping into their affairs.
One day, Rani noticed that Tommy was behaving rather strangely. Tommy no longer barked at strangers. He just laid there in a corner all day. Sometimes, he would whine loudly at night as if he was in pain. Tommy was just not himself. He had stopped eating and even stopped disturbing the older dogs. Rani tried to interest Tommy with his favourite biscuits, but no matter what she tried, Tommy was not interested. After a while, Tommy stopped responding to Rani's calls all together and she began to worry.
Rani asked her children if they knew anything.
"I'm really worried about Tommy. I wonder what is wrong with him. He is not sick, but he is not his usual self."
"Mom," Ragu paused, "I think I know something."
"What do you know? Is something wrong? Tell me," Rani told him.
"You know, our neighbour, the Malay aunt next door, I think she did something to Tommy. I saw her placed an egg at her door and she called out to Tommy to come and eat the egg," Ragu told his mom.
"Did Tommy eat the egg?"
"Yes, of course. He is such a nice dog."
Rani suspected something and told her husband. He told her that their neighbour might have done something to the egg. That day was also the last day Tommy ever went to the neighbour's house.
After about a month, Tommy had to be put to sleep because his condition had worsened beyond help. Vomiting every day, Tommy was becoming too thin and unhealthy. Rani missed her dog terribly but she knew that it was for the best.
Soon after, her children started to get affected. They were getting nightmares and fevers. None of them went near the Malay neighbour. Rani suspected something was wrong, but could not pin-point her finger on it.
One afternooe, she accidentally kicked over a bottle outside her house. Picking it up from the floor, she realised that it contained a tiny foetus within. Knowing that such things were often used in black magic, Rani realised that her family had been the target of black magic spells.
Suddenly, something twitched inside the bottle. Startled, Rani dropped it. Dropping to the pavement, the glass bottle shattered into pieces. The dead foetus within writhed on the pavement as it was exposed to the air. It was a while before the thing stop moving, its ill-formed eyes looking at Rani in a dead stare.
It was time to move.
Without any time to lose, Rani went into her house and gathered all her family members. Together with her children, she and her family moved into her mother's place. Talking to her husband, Rani decided to sell their house and buy another. Making sure that none of the neighbours knows their new address, Rani and her husband moved into another state and had been living there ever since.
Rani
knew that it was the work of the neighbours. After enquiring around, she
found out that her neighbour was dealing in black magic and that the people
who came to see her were people asking her for help. After Rani left her
home, everything was back to normal, except now, there was no more Tommy.