Neighbour With Necromancy

[ritu 1]

Back at my previous place, (previous as now I stay away from them with my husband) it is a small town and the locality we live in is a closely knit one. In instances of any trouble, they are found supporting one another , especially referring to the co-residents of our building. To share a space within this environment came a mid-aged lady with her son. They were the new tenants in my cousin's apartment and our next door neighbours. My mother, like a good neighbour, welcomed them by offering them help to settle down and later some tea . The lady was overwhelmed and was full of praise for my mother, there was a fact that grabbed my attention, their own kins were also the residents of the building, were pretty social with the other families, but didn't even drop to see whether their relatives had had anything since morning.In the very next lane, another family who were also in relation wasn't present as well. Why were they left alone by the rest of the kin? However she had a considerably warm relationship with my mother. After a few months, during some occasion, we happened to meet those families who appeared to be irresponsible for not helping their aunt and her son. I would also mention that the lady had two daughters older to her son and married, about them the lady would go on and on, describing her daughters as women with unmatchable qualities. So, we met the indifferent relatives and guess what they almost warned my mother to stay away from the lady for she allegedly practised necromancy.........all hell broke loose for my mother. They even narrated a few instances which justified their point. One of them said that the lady who earlier lived in a different state, once had come to her house, being their aunt she was offered to stay with them, by midnight some peculiar and scary noise started coming from her room, when the younger relative rose up to see what it was, she found her aunt chanting something in an unknown language, sitting beside dirty objects, couldn't see more as foul smell was coming out. Shivering with fear she quietly slipped into her bed without uttering a single word. Her husband was prospering in his job and this became unbearable for her aunt, like no one could be better off than her own sons -in-law, the very next day he faced an accident, which was nearly fatal. If this could be dismissed as superstition, the other family now started, their aunt had thrown a dirty piece of metal into their house and their child had seen this, after which great misfortune followed. The lady's daughter's in-laws also had similar complaints, so my mother decided to avoid talking to the lady(she was more concerned about me and my sister). Soon after the lady realised this, she also stepped back, but what we considered superstition was actually challenging our faith, there were fights in our house often, we started falling sick and everything was going wrong. We wondered how this was happening. There was our faith in God which got intensified and within a few days everything was sorted out . Thank God! was what we could say. Within a few months, the news of the lady's "Black Art" spread in the locality, as a matter of fact it is said that such art loses its effect if it is exposed, for it is a secret art and secrecy is its strength. As a step of caution, people started avoiding her, she also had the habit of landing into quarrels with people for nothing. After being avoided, she would go to people's house almost forcibly and try to talk to them, another peculiar feature was that she tried to touch whoever she met, so more and more people started to put her down. It had taken the turn of a fact than a superstition and the lady was left alone only with her snobbish daughters and an equally avoided son. She continues to be a part of our locality, but totally out of our society