Word: Conjuring

Word inspiration: Rewatching The Conjuring: Last Rites on a Sunday afternoon. Somewhere between the possessed dolls and haunted houses, I remembered the first haunting of my life.

The story I have with it:

I was in Class 4 when I first learnt that you do not need ghosts to haunt someone.

Until then, life was fairly simple.

I was the teacher’s pet. I didn’t have to do much, actually; my Chubby-face, obedient demure, and being reasonably good at studies generally made me everyone’s favourite child.

As life usually balances itself, this also earned me my first enemy.

Her name was Tanaya.

Looking back, I think she was one of the most competitive people I have ever met. But in a vicious way. She had joined our school only a year earlier and by Class 4 had developed an intense need to be better than everyone else.

Especially the students who scored well.

At first, her attacks were physical.

A push during PT class.

A shove during games.

The usual childhood nonsense.

Then she discovered something much more effective.

She started planting false information in my head.

Tanaya began telling me wrong facts with complete confidence, knowing I would repeat them. Later, when others laughed at me for getting it wrong, she would quietly enjoy the outcome.

For some reason, I never confronted her.

This is the problem with believers. Maybe these moments grew their roots to later turn me more aware and develop my fact-checking acumen. But during those times, I suffered!

And then one day she asked me a question.

I answered.

Apparently, the answer did not satisfy her.

The next morning, she came to school angry and accused me of lying.

I explained.

She wouldn’t listen.

And then she said something that completely altered my little nine-year-old universe.

“Because you lied, your mother will die.”

That sentence lodged itself somewhere deep inside me.

Looking back today, it sounds absurd.

But I was nine.

And when you’re nine, certain people have extraordinary power over your imagination.

For weeks, I carried that fear around.

I started watching my mother differently.

Every time she left the house, I worried.

At night, I would wake up suddenly and walk over just to check if she was sleeping peacefully.

I kept looking at her face for reassurance that she was still fine.

The strangest thing was that after a point, I stopped questioning Tanaya and started questioning myself.

Had I actually lied?

I genuinely could not remember anymore.

Eventually, my mother noticed something was wrong.

I was quieter. Distracted. Constantly hovering around her.

One evening, she sat me down and refused to let me escape until I told her what had happened.

And then everything came out.

The lies. The accusation. The fear I had been carrying around for weeks.

I remember crying uncontrollably.

My mother listened patiently and then slowly helped me see how ridiculous the whole thing was.

By the time that conversation ended, Tanaya no longer felt powerful.

She was just another classmate.

My mother was still my mother.

And for the first time in weeks, I slept peacefully.

Looking back now, I think that was the real conjuring.

Not what happened in a horror film.

But how a single sentence managed to create an entire haunted world inside the head of a little girl.