Oak Tree

“I’ll come back for you, I promise.” 

And guess what? She did keep her word.

Everyday at night, I hear my bedroom door creak open. She enters in my room. I hear her footsteps advancing towards my bed. I hear her quiescent voice whisper in my ear “ Cressi, I’m scared. Can I sleep next to you?” and then I feel her warm, moist breath on me. 

At Tea time, I often hear the fridge door open when I am not present in the kitchen and then I look into the fridge only to find that a quarter of the tea cake I had kept is gone. I can say with certainty that it’s her as there is not a single soul present in the house other than me and well, her.

Well, who is she, you ask? She is my sister Cynthia Rose.

There is a tree near our house. It’s a beautiful, large and ancient oak tree. It’s like it always existed. It was even present at the time when my grandparents were young children. They grew up in this very house. Cynthia, she..she loved and hated the tree. She would say there were spirits drawing her towards the tree and she said that she detested going there. Buy somehow I always found her there, sitting under the tree. At night though, she would complain about the spirits drawing her to the tree and would come and sleep next to me.

One cold December morning, I woke up to find that she was not home! I then went to search for her in the most obvious place you would expect to find her- the oak tree. She wasn’t there either. But there was a note stuck on one of the branches. I immediately recognised the handwriting as Cynthia’s. And it read: “I’ll come back for you, I promise.”