SISTERS IN CRIME — A GOTHIC TALE

The night Chief Aro died, the moon hung over Orita Village like a cracked skull, white and hollow, watching. Everyone believed the Chief would live forever. He walked like a man held together by iron bones and stubborn pride. But inside his compound, behind thick mud walls and iron gates, his three daughters—Morayo, the eldest; Molayo, the quiet one; and Moriyanu, the impatient lastborn, carried a storm no one could see, and on that night, the storm broke.

It began with shouts—small at first, like ordinary quarrels. Villagers around the compound heard Morayo’s sharp voice, Molayo’s trembling protests, and Moriyanu’s angry retorts. Nothing unusual, nothing loud enough for alarm, just the sounds of a family used to fear. But inside, it wasn’t ordinary. Chief Aro stood before them, drunk and raging, accusing them of stealing money from the family safe. His cane rose and fell, his voice growing darker, uglier, sharper. Moriyanu snapped first. She grabbed the pestle from the kitchen corner and swung. The crack was loud, loud enough to silence the compound, loud enough to stop the world for a second. Chief Aro fell, shocked, blood rolling like a lazy river on the cement floor. Morayo stood frozen. Molayo unshaken. Moriyanu dropped the pestle as if it were fire. And in that silence, something evil began.

When the police arrived the next morning, the sisters acted like perfect victims. They cried, they shook, they trembled. They swore armed robbers had broken in. “We hid inside,” Morayo said. “They killed our father and ran,” Molayo whispered. But Orita Village didn’t buy the story. No one heard gunshots or any unsual sounds. No one heard running feet. No one heard chaos. Only faint arguments—a sound they were used to in Chief Aro’s house. Still, there was no proof, no murder weapon, and the sisters stuck to their lie like glue. The police, suspicious but powerless, moved Chief Aro’s body to the morgue for autopsy. And that was when the haunting began.

Morayo woke to someone calling her name. Morayo… Morayoooo… The voice was deep, slow, wounded. Her father’s voice. She sat up, trembling. Her room was cold, cold like harmattan inside a freezer. Her window rattled though the night air was still. And then she saw it: a shadow, tall and familiar, standing in the corner. Molayo experienced it next. She was washing her face when the mirror fogged up from inside, and written on the glass were the words, “I KNOW.” Then Moriyanu. Her phone rang at 3 a.m. The caller ID read: “FATHER.” The number was his old landline, disconnected years ago. She answered. Only breathing. Wet. Gravelly. Cold. His.

They didn’t tell anyone. They didn’t tell each other. They stayed silent, clinging to the lie that was already eating them like termites on dry wood. Two days later, police came with results. Chief Aro died from blunt force trauma. Not bullets. A single blow from something round and heavy. The sisters insisted, “The armed robbers did it.” With no weapon, the case hung loose in the wind. The body was finally released for burial.

The funeral was quiet, too quiet. As the coffin lowered into the earth, the wind rose suddenly, turbulent, violent, carrying dust and whispers. Morayo felt a hand grip her wrist, cold as river stones. Molayo smelled his aftershave, pungent, sharp. Moriyanu heard him laugh, low and mocking. Everyone else felt nothing. Only them. When the last handful of sand covered the coffin, the air went still again. But the haunting didn’t stop. It deepened.

Morayo stopped sleeping. Every night, she heard his cane tapping up the stairs. She heard his footsteps in the corridor. She heard the scrape of the pestle dragging on the ground. One night, she woke to see him sitting at the foot of her bed, his skull cracked, blood frozen on his cheek, eyes white like ash. “Why did you kill me?” The voice was layered, one voice on top of another, like many spirits speaking through one throat. She screamed. By morning, she had bitten her own fingers trying to claw him away. Molayo’s haunting was quieter but cruel. She saw shadows crawling on walls, dark hands pulling at her hair, her father’s reflection appearing in spoons, buckets of water, windows, even in the steam above her food. Every mirror she passed whispered, “Confess… Confess… Confess…” Molayo smashed all mirrors in the house, but reflections don’t die; they found other places to appear. Moriyanu, the boldest, became the most broken. She began sleepwalking, speaking to empty chairs, laughing suddenly, crying without reason. Her father followed her like a second shadow. She heard him breathing behind her constantly, even in daylight. One evening, the villagers saw her wandering the streets barefoot, hair wild, whispering, “He wants the pestle back… He wants it back… bring it… bring it…” but she could never say where she had hidden it.

People in Orita village began avoiding the compound. At night, they heard doors slamming, girls screaming, objects breaking, footsteps running, voices arguing with no reply. Sometimes Chief Aro’s voice floated over the fence. The villagers whispered, “His ghost is fighting them.” “His spirit has come back to his home.” But still, the sisters did not confess. Not once. Not even when madness fully gripped them.

One night, their neighbors found them in the courtyard, half-naked, shivering, eyes vacant. They were talking to someone she could not see. “We are sorry,” Morayo whispered. “We didn’t mean to,” Molayo cried. “He said he would kill us first,” Moriyanu stammered. But there was no one there, no one living, just their father’s cold presence weighing on the air. Their neighbour screamed until everyone came. The sisters were taken to the psychiatric hospital at dawn.

After they left, their neigbours locked the house, but at 2 a.m., they saw lights turning on and off, windows slamming, curtains moving, and then a deep, angry voice echoing through the compound: “Where is my pestle?” The villagers scattered. No one has entered the compound since.

Morayo, Molayo, and Moriyanu never returned home. They roam the psychiatric ward like ghosts in human skin. They talk to invisible shadows. They laugh at empty air. They avoid mirrors. They scream when they hear footsteps. And every night at 2 a.m., all three wake up at the same time and whisper the same words: “He’s here to take us.”

And Chief Aro may be gone from the world, but he is not done with them, not even a little.