BUANASENI

My First Encounter with the Demon

When I was small, like really, really, small, like three years old, I think; I encountered what I can probably now categorise as a demon. Although I am still unsure of it, but the sheer magnitude of the fear (arising out of the encounter) as memory serves me now, would suffice to allow a demon to have been the object.

The encounter happened in my late grandmother’s house in Minden Heights, Penang. For some reason, that day, my parents were not around, nor any of my siblings. It was just me and my late auntie whom I call Mimin. She was sitting on the floor sewing some cloths by the bedside and I was at the corner of the room staying as far away as possible from the sewing needle. I am not sure why but maybe because I was phobia of the needle piercing my skin causing injury.

Mimin kept on calling me to come to where she is sitting but I refused. In her attempt to persuade me, she may have said something like this, “Mai sini, ada hantu kat tepi tu”, that translates to, “Come here, (as) there is a ghost near there”. I did not believe her. Then, a huge nasty bloody mouth full of sharp teeth appeared in front of me as if emerging from another dimension munching with clanking metal sound moving closer and closer to me. I cried and cried with two hands closing my eyes. Every time I peeked through my fingers, the object seemed closer from before. It was my first experience of fear.

I cannot remember what happened after that. But I do recall my auntie kept on calling me to her while the God-damned demon was approaching me. Today, every time my youngest son shows any fear of darkness (as he may have imagined some ghosts or creatures), I would yell at him, “Don’t be a scary cat. There is no such thing as ghosts”. However, often I would look back over my shoulders when in a dark space. So far, no more encounters. I just hope that in the case of my son, it is pure imagination instead of a Stranger Things episode coming to live.