At that moment, I heard the hair raising sound again. Then, I started to see the woman. She had this murderous gaze as she crawled inside while scratching the floor with her long nails.
The woman had fully entered the attic. As if she had reached her goal, she began to get closer to me.
Only then I got to take a good look at the woman's face. She was truly terrifying. Her eyes were all white and bulging as if they were ready to pop out of her eyeshocket.
Her tongue was out of her mouth as she panted, breathing loudly. Also, blood was dripping out of her mouth as if her tongue had been cut in half.
And then the women reached out her hand right up to my nose. I was starting to lose it then.
"You wench!"
I heard someone yelling at her loudly from somewhere. Then I lost consciousness.
I didn't know how long I had been out.
As soon as I opened my eyes I saw my mom, she was shaking me vigorously to wake me up.
"Are you awake?"
"Mom."
"Are you hurt?"
"You're lucky she was there." My mom said thanking an old lady who was there with us in the attic. I hadn't even noticed her till then.
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it." The lady said. "I came because he needed me. What matters is that he is okay now."
The old lady was a shaman who performed all the rituals in our village. My parents told me later. Her shrine was located at the midpoint of the mountain, I frequented.
That day, she was praying to the deity at her shrine. She stopped her prayer when she felt something spooky.
She saw me getting chased by that woman. She quickly gathered her shamanistic tools and came down to the village.
She came to my house and performed a ritual to drive away the ghost. The woman only then went away after that.
So, the one who screamed was the shaman.
According to the shaman, the woman was a beggar who lived in our neighbourhood a long time ago. But she wasn't alone.
She wandered around with her young son. Some of the mean kids in the neighborhood used to throw stones at the kid. The kid got stoned many times so he suffered from the injury for a long time.
A few days later, he died. So, the woman buried her son in the mountain. Then she never left his grave.
In the end, the woman died too. People buried her next to her son's grave.
The shaman suspected that the woman chased me because I was playing with the slingshot and practicing shooting with stones.
And after that incident, the ritual the shaman performed might have been effective. The woman never came back.
But I still can't forget the sight of the woman hitting her head on the ground when it has been 36 years now.
(You can check out my original story. Its title is 'The Reddest Red')