Periapt : A Family's Secret

ONE : INFESTATION

IT ALL STARTS in a whisper.

A distant echo humming a descending prayer.

"Mia..."

Every night, I wake up in the dead of night feeling a heavy weight on my chest as if someone is invoking my soul through the name I own.

"Mia..."

I convinced myself that this is just a dream. It should be. I can feel my own body and command it to wake up but my eyes fail to work with me as if my physical energy is drifting farther and farther away from me.

"Mia..."

Whispers turn into an eerie call from the darkness.

"Mia..."

I tried my best to pull away even if the void of the unknown keeps pulling me back to a place where I know I don't belong.

"Surrender yourself to me, Mia."

No.

"I own you."

NO.

"Mia." my father's voice emerges out of nowhere like a flickering light in the darkness. I ran towards him as the weight on my chest became lighter. "I love you." I see my father's face with a soft childlike smile, "Whatever happens, always remember that love brings in the light whenever darkness corrupts the heart."

I didn't understand that phrase back then. Yet for some reason I do now.

Everybody has their own darkness that takes a sinful form. My father said that demons only influence people with their malice through a small whisper, in fact it is the person who is in total control of their own decisions. Either they surrender to temptation or resist it.

I choose to resist it.

I fought my way out of the darkness clinging into my father's light. I smiled seeing him smiling back at me with pride, "Mia you've grown so strong," he utters my name as if we're having this conversation at this very moment, "I am so proud of you."

I don't know why that statement pinches my soul as if he is looking at his precious treasure with a soft smile. He touched my face and felt him kiss my forehead as his light turned into a small fragment of flickering firefly that I took inside my heart.

Upon taking it inside of me I see the amulet he gave me with a light twinkling like a star that warms my body as if it is telling me that I am alive.

Wake up Mia.

I'm almost feeling conscious not until that whisper calls out my name again, "Mia, come back to Mama..."

I gasp for air as soon as I open my eyes. I hold on to my chest feeling my heart beating rapidly as if I ran a thousand miles. I wiped my tears away, embracing myself from that strange dream that I thought I'll lose to the unknown.

I fixed myself together as I checked the time.

3:13 AM.

Inhale.

Exhale.

My phone suddenly rings.

"Mia you have to come back home!" a familiar voice calls out my name.

"Uncle Jude–"

"Your father," his voice uttered with great regret and sympathy as he delivered terrible news that stopped me from accepting this reality.

Every word I hear slows down the beat of my heart.

Not until I heard how it stopped from beating.

"He's dead."