During my early childhood years, my family and I travelled to another place where the weather was nicer and the environment was calmer. Upon arriving, my dad called a former acquaintance of my mother who offered us to stay at their house for bed and breakfast. He even said that we could live in his house forever - if we wanted. We accepted his generous offer without hesitation. This was really nice because all of the properties in that area were a bit too much for our budget and renting an apartment was not an option because the prices were too expensive.
We arrived at the house and knocked on the door. There was silence for several minutes. We knocked again. After a few moments, we were greeted by a tall and elderly man who welcomed us in and showed us to our room. We brought our bags inside and organized our belongings in the room that we were assigned. Once we finished, the man visited our room and told us that the only rule of the house was simply to be ourselves. He wanted us to feel as comfortable as possible which was really nice. He even said that we could stay as long as we wanted without paying a single penny. The elder members of my family offered to do work for the man to repay his kindness, but he refused. The elderly man lived with his wife who tended to the house and followed a strict "religion" that she did not want to talk about.
During the first week, there were parties that were held in some of our neighbors' houses. My father attended some of those parties and socialized often. During one of his conversations, I joined him and overheard him talking with a former coworker that he recognized. At one point, the coworker seemed to be giving cryptic messages to us saying, "Yeah, you know the person who is hosting your BnB? He's OK, haha!" Then he murmured, "I would be very careful in that house if I were you. They're very jealous. Move out while you can. Remember, this conversation never happened". Afterwards, he returned to his normal indoor voice and said, "It's been great seeing you all. Have a good one!" Then, he quickly walked away as if he'd never known us. My father and I didn't think too much of it.
The first two months staying in that house were perfectly normal. We shared the TV, travelled to different places, went shopping, played games, did schoolwork, and enjoyed the delicious cooked food that the man served to us. Once, he even brought us special gifts and offered to take us on special trips to various destinations. Over time, the excitement within the house dulled down and most of the activities focused on socializing about various topics about life, news, and sports.
After a while, we learned that the host was a very unsanitary person with unorthodox methods of doing things. He always chopped fish and meat on the garage floor and never washed his hands. Every time he worked on the garden, he would come back and show a live mouse that he caught to my mother. Then he would either perform nasty experiments with it or keep it somewhere just to scare her again. Eventually, she developed a personal trauma from seeing these rodents. My father took issue with his methods of cooking. For example, he would use random food droppings from the floor as part of the main dish - which we politely refused to eat. He would also leave some trash to rot around the house which attracted lots of insects. At one point, my father found a cockroach in a hard boiled egg which had a small crack in it. What really irked my father was the man's tendency to be offer inappropriate things. One time, when my father returned from his trip to the beach, he found the man trying to convince me to smoke and drink beer. My mother was also smiling and cheering his actions which confused my father even more. At one point, he asked my mom, "why would he do this to a small child and why would you support this?" A few days later, my dad let it pass and somehow forgot about the event.
On the third month, the elder members of our family began feeling really bored with life. It's not the normal kind of boredom you might think about. Sometimes they would lean on a chair and fall asleep for hours in the middle of the day. Other times, they would drowsily do their activities and chores as if they were extremely lethargic. The majority of the day was basically about watching a bit of TV and going to bed.
On the fourth month, things took a turn for the worse. Our father began having frequent coughing fits in the bedroom and soon became bed-ridden. The other members of my family began purchasing cough medicines and scheduling routine appointments with the local doctor. A few weeks later, my father regularly started to cough up chunks of blood which looked like a mix of liquid blood, clotted blood, and phlegm. Just as a bit of background, my father never smoked, never drank, and never did any kind of drugs (or magic shrooms) for that matter. It was a taboo in our family.
On the fifth month, my father recovered enough to be able to walk, but his hips were really painful which made him have to bend over and limp just to get to the other side of the room. We always had discussions about what could be going wrong. I myself was very groggy every time I woke up and sometimes I would start getting sick and regurgitating all my food especially when I least expected it. At this point, my family felt that something was really wrong in the house. Initially, we suspected that it was just the smoke caused by the routine burning of part of the nearby sugar cane field which was about 300 meters from our house. We approached the elderly man who was the host of the house and he agreed with our assumptions. Based on this thought, we decided to close the windows in the afternoon and only open them in the evening to let the cool breeze in.
Half a year into our stay in that house, my family just seemed to accept our fate. Maybe, it was something wrong with us. Maybe, it was hereditary that we got these sicknesses and ailments. My father was the only one who was really skeptical and basically forced us to THINK. What could have happened? Why did we experience this only during the past six months of our lives? The doctor had said that they could not find the root cause of his bleeding bronchial tubes and started attributing it to a psychological disability. We knew that we were not going "crazy". So, what must be happening?
After asking the same questions over and over and over again, life slowly gave us an answer - in the most frank (and horrific) way possible. But, you know, at least it was an answer.
On one of my father's "good" days, he could walk normally and even run short distances. Early one morning, my father woke up feeling really energized. He took in the fresh morning breeze and smelled smoke instead. Smoke? It was not the typical time for part of the sugar cane field to be burning, so he had to check out what was going on. Maybe it was a house fire? He quietly slipped onto the floor in his pajamas. Then, with a burst of energy, he dashed as fast as he could to the main door of the house and ran around the house to check what was going on. What he found (and later told us) made us doubtful of everything around that house from then on.
When my father rounded the corner of the house where our bedroom windows were located, he caught a fleeting glimpse of elderly man (our host) running away from him and rounding another corner of the house with a big metal cookie can. The can had lots of smoke coming out of it. My father did this "trick" again and again. Each time he did this, he caught the man running away with his smoke canister. My father spoke to us about this saying that he was sure that the elderly man was the one who literally could have been "smoking us out" for months! When he described what the smoke looked like and smelled like to an herbalist, they immediately recognized it a mix of marijuana and some other powerful drug.
One day, while we discussed the possibilities, the elderly man knocked on our door and said "good morning" with a smile. None of us were smiling back - except for my mom. My father quietly nudged my mom to ask if the man had smoked us out while we slept. She asked, and he furrowed his brows at us before saying, "No, why would I do that?" Then, he immediately walked out of the door. Well, of course, he wouldn't admit it to all of us. So, my father decided to bring my mother with him on his next "mission".
To provide a bit of background before what happened next, my father was allergic to mushrooms and MSG (or monosodium glutamate) which is a specific type of food additive. Just one teaspoon of these substances gives him a massive headache, extreme lethargy, and in some cases, violent vomiting episodes. Our family is always careful to make sure that our store-bought products do not have these substances. We informed the host and he acknowledged this. He reserved a separate shelf in the fridge just for us and let us cook our own MSG-free food in his kitchen.
Early the next morning, my mom and dad silently crept barefoot into the living room in the dark and hid behind one of the couches that faced the corridor to the kitchen. After what seemed like an eternity, the man entered through the kitchen door and silently walked barefoot to the cupboard. He opened it and brought out two jars. One was labelled "MSG" and the other was a murky colored glass jar with some pickled mushrooms. Then, he placed them silently on the table before opening the fridge. The glow of the fridge light shown on his face and illuminated the jars on the table.
He extended his hand and opened on of our food containers which contained chicken legs and salad. Then, he began licking the items in our container with his tongue. Not long after, he got a chicken leg and ripped its cooked flesh like a demonic madman who was triumphant in his evil endeavors. Afterwards, he opened the glass jar of MSG and scooped a huge hunkful of MSG with hands before spreading it in our food. He did the same with the pickled mushrooms. At this point, my mom and dad silently returned to our bedroom and told all of us about what happened as soon as we woke up. We decided to dump all of our food and purchased our own mini-fridge to store our food. My dad told all of the members of our family to avoid communication with the host as much as possible.
Then, my father asked my mother if she saw what happened with her own two eyes. She said yes. But when he asked her if the man was literally poisoning us with unknown substances she kept quiet and smirked at us. My father was so furious because the woman that he'd known and loved for so long could possibly be betraying him. He asked my mother to ask the man about what happened early that morning. The man responded that he was outside tending to the garden in the morning. When my father asked my mother who she believed, she said, "of course, I believe that man" with such loving gusto.
Not believing his eyes and ears, my father showed and proved to my mother (in the dark) that the man kept doing this to our food in the fridge on several occasions, but my mother refused to believe it and kept smirking as if she felt triumphant that we were literally being poisoned by this man. It was at this point that my father never really trusted my mother again. She wanted to push herself on him while softly saying "oh baby", but he pushed her away multiple times. She was part of this scheme after all, which was very surprising to say the least.
Later that year, my dad decided to move out of the house. He thanked the man for being the host and asked for tips on where to move. The host was visibly angry and responded that he didn't know where we could go. After a few minutes, the man calmed down and said that if we were tired of living in his house, we could live in a brand new house next to his. My father was inquisitive and asked about what he meant. The host offered to buy us a brand new house that would be built next to his house. My father couldn't believe his ears! That was so generous of the man!
My dad accepted the guy's offer on the condition that a tall fence should be built between the houses. He repeatedly emphasized that no one should cross that fence without his permission. The man agreed to my dad's condition and said that his true purpose and intent was to help us out - nothing else.
Fast forward one year and the beautiful new house was built and completed! We were all so excited to move out of that man's house and into the new one that it took us only three days to move and organize about three roomfuls worth of items into the new house. We thought that all of our troubles were behind us. Or so we thought.
About one week after we had moved into the new house, we began to hear strange noises outside of our bedroom window at night. It sounded like some wood or piping materials being moved around. By this time, we didn't want to open any window because we all knew about the risks of inhaling toxic fumes from the man's smoke canister. So, we let it pass.
Over the next month, my dad began feeling slightly sick every now and then which we attributed to the residual smell of the new paint that was drying in the unused rooms of the new house. One afternoon, my father came home exhausted from his DIY home improvement endeavors. He was so tired that after he had his afternoon snack, he fell asleep on the dinner table. A few hours later, he groggily woke up and found himself crawling on the floor. He suddenly felt the urge to go back to sleep, but he forced himself to go to the window and get some fresh air. Maybe, it was too stuffy inside he thought.
He literally crawled on his hands and knees to the window and slowly peeked outside. What he saw sent shivers down our spines when he told it to us. The man was creeping into our driveway straight towards our house as if he was intent on doing something hideous. My father immediately secured the house - blocking doors, closing windows, and moving everyone in the bedroom. The only hole (or opening) of the house was on the roof where our bathroom exhaust was connected with the external vent of the house. My father asked us to use the bathroom before he closed it off to stop any fumes (just in case the man was trying to "pump" fumes down our vents).
That night, we were expecting weird noises or strange sounds, but there was nothing. My mother was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, my father ran to our bedroom and whispered, "everyone, gather you stuff up NOW! Any belongings that you want to travel with, get it NOW! We need to get out of this place NOW!" The calm and focused intent in my father's voice was unmistakably clear. Within minutes, we were all ready to leave the house. I had so many questions for him, but the priority was to get out.
My father had already called up for a taxi to arrive at our driveway and we all got in hurriedly. My mother came running out, but my dad told the taxi driver to go to the airport with haste. The driver did so. During the ride my dad explained that he had recently booked a flight and asked us to stay calm. When we arrived at the airport, my dad paid the full amount and tipped the driver.
The airport experience was equally as hectic as our preparations to get out of the house, but we did it. We travelled thousands of miles away to another location. Upon arriving, we stayed at a decent looking apartment that my father had apparently reserved a few weeks before our arrival. We were so exhausted from the trip that for about a week we simply woke up, ate a small meal, and slept again.
When we recovered our energy, my father told us that a few weeks after we had moved into the house, he noticed that some of our belongings were moved around and the items inside our refrigerator were opened and rearranged every time we left the house to go shopping. The man had told my father that he did not own any copies of the keys to our house, which my father did not believe. Shortly before we left, my father presumed that something was really wrong when he began feeling sick for no apparent reason. He presumed that either the man and his wife were trying to pump deadly fumes through the bathroom vent or poison our food before we returned home from our next shopping trip. Whatever the motive, he did not want us to be the victims of the man's "final plan".
He also told us that he had met with some of the other neighbors and they told their stories about the BnB host and his wife. The wife of that host was apparently the wife of another husband who originally came from a small island in the early 1940's when WWII was still raging. That husband had perished in battle, so she remarried. Both the man and his wife practiced witchcraft, dark magic, and voodoo which spooked me out even more. My father, said that he saw lots of other activities going on in that man's house before we moved to the new house. At one instance, while my father was cleaning the bedroom that we had stayed in, he found a plate underneath our bed. On top of the plate was a bowl filled with milk, a piece of garlic, and a large knife. This was not there when we had moved into the house. My father also found several sticks of incense and small scrolls containing evil messages hidden within our cabinet. Among other things, the worst thing he found out was that my mother was cooperating with her so-called "aquaintances" to do some dark "stuff" to us. He didn't want to describe the rest of the events that he witnessed to us for fear that our childhood would get ruined by trauma.
As time passed and I started going to high school, my father revealed that the other neighbors he had talked with said that there were many families that had stayed with that particular BnB host. Apparently, we were not the only ones who were exposed to that man's evil schemes. They said that countless other families experienced different kinds of schemes from that man ranging from forcing families to consume drugs, drink alchohol, or do illegal activities against their will for years! People in the area said that he did it out of pure jealousy and hatred towards anyone he thought was more educated than he was. It also turned out that he dropped out of school when he was grade two and developed an extreme inferiority complex. People were very superstitious in the area and did not want to speak out because of fear that they would be the victims of black magic, voodoo, or some sort of witchcraft. My father also told me that he could not take action in the host's house because once he realized what was going on, he'd soon forget about it because of the effects of the drugs that the man was secretly "feeding" us with - from smoke inhilation and from putting MSG and other unknown substances in our food. That man literally ruined a huge chunk of our lives because we would have to spend over a decade recovering from the unnoticed exposure to those evil substances!
I still couldn't stop thinking about what could have happened if we did not leave that house that night...
Author's Note: This is a fictional story that is loosely based on a true account that one of my secondary school companions had experienced.