My younger brother Vijay, who was very naughty and who wasn't afraid of anything, and I myself were totally terrified by that incident. May be that is the reason I remember it so well. To tell you the truth, we were so scared that we hardly slept at nights..... Even today, when kids don't listen or do some naughty things, most of the parents scare their children by telling them this story.

Vijay was nine yrs old and I was twelve then. Those were the most beautiful days, nothing to do much, go to school... rush home as soon as the last bell rings, practially throw your school bag from the gate into the house and go play with your friends...., just play, play and play till you exhaust yourself ..... In those days, teachers were never so strict nor were the parents....It's not like now a days system which does not include playing at all, now a days kids exhaust themselves studying... poor chaps!!

In those days, my father was working as a clerk and we used to live in a small rented house... Our house was very cosy and what I liked most is that it was in a very good center. There were lot of shops and a big open place, which all the kids liked. It was so big that at any given time there were atleast four crickets teams playing in that ground. My mother used to give twenty five paise everyday as pocket money, Vijay used to buy junk food with that but I used to save it. I used to save that money for renting cycle in the cycle shop which was just in the corner of our street, I always wanted to have a cycle for my own but my father could not afford one.

One day, Vijay and I went to the cycle shop to rent a cycle, and we heard some men talking... about some lady who was trying to kill people at nights. We rushed home immediately and went directly to my mother and told her about this. She nodded her head as if she already knew about it. But with little fear in her face, she said," She won't harm us." And that assurance didn’t console us.

Vijay and I went out to meet our other friends. Raju and Kaveri were playing around the corner, we rushed to them. As soon as they saw us, they cheered and shouted at us for coming late. But noticing our moods, they calmed and asked what happened.

“Do you know the story?”, I inquired.

“What story?” Kaveri asked with a big puzzle on her face. She is the eldest among us.

“We heard that there is some strange woman trying to kill people in the night”

“She comes in white saree and taps your door in the midnight”, Vijay added.

“Who said?” Kaveri asked.

“The cycle shop owner was telling this to some people there and when I told this to mother, she also said it is true”, my voice was shaking.

Kaveri asked us to wait there and she ran to her home. Raju looked scared and was silent.

After five minutes Kaveri was back with Srinivas, her younger brother. “Yes, it looks like the story is a true one. My mother also said so", Srinivas said.

We spent that evening talking about the incidents which happened around the villages near our town. It looks like a woman comes to everybody's home in the midnight and taps the door. If anybody opens the door, she kills them and vanishes. Some people said she was a ghost and some said she was a witch. We were too terrified to play that day. We spent whole of that evening talking about this till our parents yelled at us to come back home for dinner.

When we went home, Vijay refused to eat dinner. Mother scolded him. I knew why he wasn't eating the food. There was that sublime fear in both of us and we didn’t tell that to our parents.

That night it took longer than usual time to get into sleep. Whenever I closed my eyes, all I could see was a women in white saree coming towards our house and tapping our door. I tired not to think about her but I could not do it. I turned and saw Vijay and he was also trying hard to sleep.... Finally, I don't know when but I slipped into sleep.... some where in the middle of the night I woke up and called my mother for taking to me to the bathroom, I was too scared to go alone. After that, she put me in the bed and tucked me in the bed sheet and she went to bed. I didn’t get sleep after that. My mind was so fully occupied with the thoughts of that killer woman, that my ears heard some small noises also as if there were loud enough to wake everybody in the house. Any kind of noise made me think of the killer. I kept on seeing the roof and the yellow bed lamp till I fell asleep early in the morning.

The next day in the school, same topic continued among kids. There were lot of stories. Niranjan said he heard the woman entered our town outskirts. So, it might be hardly a day or two before she would attack us. That scared us very much.

After the school, when we gathered for playing, same topic returned. Kaveri’s dad told her that the killer would be caught by police in a day or so. Srinivas sweared that he would kill that lady-killer with his dad’s pistol. Their dad was a police constable.

Vijay was more scared than all others. That night, he held me close while sleeping. I could feel his breath and his body’s warmth. I got a nightmare and woke up in the mid of the night with sweat all over my body. My mother came and told me stories of courage and said that that lady wouldn’t come close to our home. She asked me to recite the name of the God, such that the devil won’t come close to me. I did follow her advice and chanted Lord Hanuman's name all through the night.

Next day, when we woke up we found Vijay in fever. My father took him to a near-by doctor and I kept on watching him all through the day. By evening he showed some progress.

In the evening we all gathered in the play ground. We went there to share our fears rather than playing.

“It looks like people found a way to get away from this killer”, Srinivas said.

“How?”, all of us asked coherently.

“I read in the news paper that the village people are writing on their walls a slogan such that the lady won’t hurt them”

“People are writing ‘Oh Lady! Come Tomorrow’”

“Will the lady read that?”, Raju questioned with big eyes.

“If we write that on our walls, she would read that and would come tomorrow”, Srinivas continued.

“And tomorrow also, she will read the same thing and will go away and come the next day”, Srinivas explained the logic behind the slogan.

That idea gave us so much of hope. We all of us decided to write that slogan on our walls.

That night my father asked me about the slogan on our wall. I thought for a second and told what Srinivas told us. He heard everything and just gave a smile and kept quiet.

That night I could sleep little better in the assurance of the slogan which I wrote on my front door wall. I told Vijay about it, so that he would be comfortable and he too would sleep well that night.

The next day Vijay's fever almost came down. And when I went to school that day, I found almost all the kids telling others that they wrote that slogan on their walls too. The word about that slogan just spread over our entire town like a forest fire. I think it boosted everybody’s confidence and gave them enough courage to face that lady-killer. It was like the only weapon against her. And for the next couple of days, that story was so talked about, that where ever you went you would find some one or the other telling the next person what happened. But like any other gossip it slowly got faded away and after some days, nobody remembered anything....

I am not really sure whether that lady-ghost-killer ever really existed at all, or if she was really there then, was she ever caught? Suppose, if something of that sort happened now and my son come to me and asked me about it, I might end up laughing. But, I would certainly understand how his heart would feel about it. Now I know how to build his courage to face something like that. I learnt it in my childhood.

-Vijaya Madhavi

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