The abandoned village

Written by: Salim Al-Dukhi

“My name is Ibrahim. I will keep my age to myself because it is not important. What is important is that you focus on the events so that you understand exactly what happened to me.”

Ibrahim lived with his mother, father, and younger brother. سمير who was one year younger than him. The family had no close relatives; the mother lost her parents in an accident one month after her marriage, and the father had been an orphan since childhood, with only one brother who worked abroad and visited them only every few years. Therefore, the family members were very close to each other.

Ibrahim's father worked for the rescue service, and his daily life was simple: he would take his two sons to school in the morning, then return to pick them up at noon. One day, the father suddenly arrived at the school in his car, picked up his sons, then got out alone carrying an official letter. A few minutes later, he returned with their school files. Ibrahim and his brother did not understand what was happening, but they later learned that their father had received a promotion that required him to move with his family to a distant location.

Ibrahim was very sad, especially since he was in his final year of school and would be leaving his friends, whom he had known since childhood. But there was no choice; the decision had been made, and the family would be moving in just two days. They spent those two days packing their belongings and locking up the rooms, because the old house belonged to his father and they would return to it one day.

Then it was time to leave.

The journey was very long, until they arrived at their new destination. The first thing that caught Ibrahim's attention was that the place was strange: at the beginning there were modern houses, but deeper inside there were very old mud houses, close together, looking abandoned as if they were over a hundred years old. The house they would be living in was the last of the modern houses, separated from the mud houses only by a narrow road.

When they arrived, they found an Indian labourer sitting under a tree, laughing strangely. He gave them the key to the house after Ibrahim's father told him his name, then showed them the way to the house. From the very first moment, Ibrahim felt uncomfortable; the silence was suffocating, the air whistled eerily between the houses, and the village seemed deserted. Even stranger... a group of dogs stood in front of the first mud house, staring at them intently, then ran away.

They entered their new home, which was spacious and had two floors, but their mother assigned Ibrahim and his brother a small room despite there being seven empty rooms. The room's window overlooked mud houses on one side and a modern, empty house on the other.

In the evening, Ibrahim, his father, and his brother went out to pray at the mosque that the worker had told them about. When they arrived, they found it open and lit... but completely empty. When they began to pray, The lights suddenly went out, and the door closed by itself..

They immediately stopped praying and headed for the door. Ibrahim called out from the mosque window until he saw the worker standing outside. The worker hurried over and opened the door, looking around fearfully and saying in a low voice:

“Do not pray here at night… Pray only at noon and in the afternoon. Do not come at sunset and in the evening.”

He did not explain why.

They headed back towards the house. As they passed by the mud houses, Samir suggested going inside to explore, but dogs suddenly came out and began barking fiercely at them, as if to prevent them from entering. They were frightened and hurried back. Ibrahim was certain that there was something dangerous in that village.

A few days later, other families of Ibrahim's father's colleagues arrived, and the area became home to six new families. Among the children were:

• Salem
• Saleh
• Khalil
• And with them were Ibrahim and Samir.

They all became friends, meeting almost every day, especially in Ibrahim's room, which was new at the time, to play PlayStation.

One day, while they were playing at night, they heard the dogs barking again. Ibrahim looked out the window and saw A younger brother of one of his friends He entered one of the alleys leading to the old village. They all ran to rescue him, but as soon as they entered the alley, they felt suffocating heat and strange humidity, as if they had entered a steam room. They saw the child running after something invisible.

Khalil carried him quickly, but before they could leave...
They heard a heavy wooden door slowly closing inside the village.

They fled in terror without looking back.

From that moment on, Ibrahim realised that the village was not as deserted as it seemed.

That night, Ibrahim couldn't sleep. He remembered the heat of the alley, the sound of the door, and the sight of the child running after something no one else could see. He decided to look out at the village from his bedroom window. He slowly opened the curtain... and saw a scene he would never forget:

More than twenty dogs stand in a row at the entrance to the village, staring directly at him without moving..

He wanted to wake Samir, but as soon as he tried to close the window... the dogs suddenly disappeared from the village, as if they had vanished into thin air.

He returned to his bed and stayed awake until sleep overcame him.

In the morning, the women went out to visit each other, while the men were on a work assignment that would last several days. Ibrahim felt that he was the eldest among those present and that he had a responsibility towards the families. In the evening, the friends gathered near the house and talked about recent events. As time passed, darkness fell.

And so began the night that changed everything.

When night fell, my mother took the containers and food she had prepared and went to Mrs. Um Ahmad's house, which was right next door to ours. My friends came to our house, as usual on weekends, and the house was empty of others, which gave us a feeling of fun and enjoyment. Suddenly, while we were playing, we heard women screaming from Umm Ahmad's house. Without thinking, we all went to see what was going on, and found Umm Ubaid crying and telling us that her young son, Ubaid's brother, had left the house and they did not know where he was.

We asked the young children where he was, and they said he had been playing with them and then suddenly disappeared. I told them that he must have entered the abandoned village, as had happened before, and that it was strange that the dogs had not appeared this time. Obaid, who was afraid for his brother, asked us, "Will you come with me, or should I go alone?" Saeed replied, "How can you go in and search when you don't know if he's there?" I said to them, "Okay, let's split up. One group will go into the village and the other will search the rest of the houses."

My brother Abdullah suggested, "Let's all go into the village; he won't go anywhere else." As I noticed last time, Ubaid's brother was crying and wanted to return to the village. We all agreed to go in, and the women accompanied us out of fear for the little boy. We reassured them that we would not leave without him.

We went inside and felt an unnatural heat, causing us to sweat. We ventured deeper into the abandoned village. The silence was frightening, as if we were inside a maze. After a while, we heard the sound of a child laughing and thought it was Obeid's brother, so we followed the sound, but it seemed to move away as we got closer. Suddenly, I saw something black moving quickly between the stables, and I signalled to the boys to follow me in that direction. We followed the sound until we reached one of the open houses.

We hesitated to go in, but there was no other solution, so we went in to find the child, and suddenly an unknown person appeared from the door. As soon as I asked him for help, he slammed the door shut, and we found ourselves facing fear once again. We tried to shout to find a way out, but the echoes came from all directions. Suddenly, we heard my mother calling me from behind the house, so we approached the sound and found the right exit.

At the exit, we saw a group of dogs with a strange man whose back was bent and whose face was covered with hair, to the point that he looked like an animal. Strangely, little Obaid's brother laughed and reached out to the man as if he wanted to play with him. The man ordered us to follow one of the dogs out, and we did so, leaving the abandoned village in a pitiful state. Abdullah and Saeed remained exhausted on the ground, while Obaid carried his little brother to his mother.

My mother returned to reassure us, telling us to avoid the village altogether, as it was full of strange and dangerous things. The next day, our father and his colleagues returned, and it became clear to them that the worker guarding the village knew everything but did not want to reveal it. After observing the guard, he admitted that the hairy man and his sons had been living in the village for six years, after a strange incident had transformed them. They had noticed the treasures in one of the old villages and wanted to explore them, but the Muslim jinn prevented them from leaving, so the man and his sons remained in the village.

We later learned that the disappearance of the young slave boy and the appearance of hair on his body were the result of the presence of these mysterious people in the village, and his condition continues to this day. As for the labourer, nothing more was heard of him after that.