I was only eleven years old then. We were playing ball in the front yard. I was playing on the slope by the side of the road. The ball rolled down before I could catch it. It went in a 'v' shape, as if pulled by a string, towards the open garage in front of the house.
It went into the garage that I always avoided going into.
I don't know if it was because I was a child that I was more wary of the darkness, but there was something there that gave you the creeps and goosebumps. No matter how bright it was, no matter how bright the sun shone, there were walls it couldn't reach.
I stopped at the garage door. No matter how hard I looked around, I couldn't see the ball. I bent down and looked under the car. There it was! I thought it was strange. I thought, the ball had already turned right on the sloping road leading to the garage and at that slow speed it went under the car? That's impossible.
I would do anything not to go in there. I took out the handle of the broom that was on the garage door and put it under the car. But the broom wouldn't reach the ball. I was going to give up and go get my uncle, but when I stood up I saw the thing that had stopped me breathing for a while: a pair of red eyes watching me with a smile from the front seat of the car. He had no mouth, but I could feel him smiling at me. I couldn't see his body, only the inside of the car was darker than it was. It was so dark that I thought it was his body, the black that swallowed the car. I just froze. I didn't have the courage to move. As the seconds passed, his smile widened. Suddenly the front of the car the door opened and he came out. He still hadn't blinked. He didn't look away for a second. He was only looking at me. The car door closed and I saw the ball in front of him. He didn't have hands, but it looked like he was holding the ball or it was just floating in the air. I'm not sure. The ball back and forth and back and forth. I didn't know what to do, I could only shake my head left and right. When I did that, the ball fell to the ground and rolled towards me. It stopped on its own when it hit my foot. When I looked back in front of me, there were no smiling red eyes, no gloomy darkness in the garage. I picked up the ball and joined the others. I never passed by that garage again.
The funny thing was, every time the garage door opened, I would stand in a corner and peer inside. What I saw was gone, like the darkness inside the garage. But where? I knew the answer to that.
The thing that knocks on my window late at night, the thing that draws a circle around me when I'm alone, and the thing that stands right behind me even when I'm away from home. The red eyes I sometimes feel when I look at him.
After that day I understood one thing very clearly, that the spirit was in the ball.
Yu Mə
