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This is a true story my friend's mother told me some years ago. She didn't tell it to me like this, all written out like fiction, that's just the way I write and remember things in my head:
Lizette would've jumped for joy when her 5:30 to 7PM class finally ended. Instead, she blew her nose and instinctively knew without having to feel her forehead that she was coming down with the flu. Her classmates Marian, Joel, Tim and Freddie noticed her weak state and announced they would accompany her home to her boarding house.
"I can go home on my own thanks," Lizette insisted.
Marian rolled her eyes. "You're so stubborn. You're sick and it's so dark already. You're not going home without us. Who knows what might happen to you?"
"Don't worry, Lizzy. I'll protect you!" cried Tim posing like a muscled man and showing off his barely there biceps.
Joel playfully tapped Tim on the head. "That's enough. Let's start walking or we'll all get home late."
Lizette's boarding house was one ride away from school. After getting off at the stop, the five friends started walking to the subdivision where Liz's house was. Busy discussing their project in Philosophy, they argued and shouted amongst themselves with gusto as they walked along. Freddie was ahead of everybody with Marian and Lizette bringing up the rear.
It was a cold night, made even more so by the light drizzle falling around them. They reached a fork in the road and took the one on the right. Further along the road was a curve, and at the right of it stood an old, empty house. The thin iron grills of the gate were rusty. The white walls of the house were stained and some of the windows were broken. Overgrown waist-length grass crowded every soil space outside and inside the gate. Its sad and sorry state lent an eerie feel to the night.
"I'll do the research on Aristotle's biography and Joel, you do the.." Freddie was saying when a movement caught his eye. A girl with long hair in pajamas was walking a few meters from them. She went for the old house. "..do you know her, Liz?" he whispered.
"No I don't," Lizette replies.
The five friends watched stunned as the girl glided through the gate of the old house and disappeared into the house.
Panting and puffing with fear, they ran to Lizette's boarding house and told the landlady what they saw.
"You probably saw the spirit of Maria Beatriz, the daughter of the couple who used to live in that old house," she explains. "She appears now and then to people walking down the street at night."
She then tells her that one late night, three men broke into her house and raped her. The case was never solved that's why to this day, she roams around at night. She has never seen the girl though. It's said that she only appears to young people, especially to students who were the same age as her then.
Everyone went quiet as they thought of her story. But there was only one thing that remained in Joel, Tim, Freddie, and Marian's minds. How were they going to get home without passing by Maria Beatriz's house?
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