Submitted by Juno
When I was a kid, life was simple—dusty streets, endless games, and laughter that stretched until the sun disappeared. Our house was flanked by tall mango trees, their gnarled branches twisting like ancient hands reaching for the sky. Those trees were my playground, my castle. At ten years old, I didn’t know much about the supernatural. Ghosts were just stories meant to make kids behave.
Until the night I saw her.
It started as any other evening. My friends and I were playing beneath the trees, our shouts and laughter cutting through the growing darkness. As the shadows deepened, I felt a chill—not from the air but from something else, something wrong.
That’s when I saw her.
Perched high on one of the branches was a girl, around twelve years old. She wore a white dress, simple but oddly pristine, as though untouched by the dirt and dust of the world. Her long black hair fell over her shoulders, catching the faint glow of the streetlight. At first, I thought she was just another kid. Then I realised she had no face.
The skin where her features should’ve been was smooth, blank. She sat with her legs dangling, feet brushing the air, and one hand repeatedly stroking her hair. Her head tilted slightly, as though listening to us, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at my friends.
I froze, my heart pounding in my chest. I wanted to run, to scream, but I couldn’t move. Something about her was magnetic, like staring into a nightmare you couldn’t escape
“What are you looking at?” one of my friends asked, nudging me hard enough to snap me out of my daze.
I pointed to the branch. “That girl,” I whispered.
“What girl?”
“She’s sitting right there!” I said louder, my voice shaking.
They all looked where I pointed, but their faces remained blank. “There’s nothing there,” one said, laughing nervously before running off.
But she was still there. Still stroking her hair. Still swinging her legs like she didn’t have a care in the world.
“Come inside!” my yaya called sharply from the doorway, her voice cutting through the eerie moment.
Reluctantly, I turned toward the house. But before I stepped inside, I glanced back. The girl was no longer looking at my friends. She was facing me. Even without a face, I knew she was watching.
I bolted inside, my heart racing. When I told my yaya what I’d seen, her face went pale. Her hand flew to her mouth, and for a moment, she just stared at me. Then, like a switch, she snapped into action. “It’s nothing,” she said quickly, her voice tight.
“Just your imagination. Don’t talk about it anymore.”
That night, I heard her whispering to my parents.
“She saw her,” she said in a shaky voice.
“What did I see?” I asked, stepping into the room.
My parents turned to me with forced smiles. “Nothing,” my dad said. “It’s just the shadows playing tricks on you. Forget about it.”
I wanted to believe them. But the way my yaya’s hands trembled, the way my mom’s voice wavered—it wasn’t nothing.
Years later, when I was older, my brother told me the truth. He had seen her too.
“She’s always been there,” he said, his voice low. “The girl in the mango tree. I saw her when I was your age. So did Dad. They just don’t want us to talk about it. They think ignoring her will make her go away.”
“Did she ever move?” I asked. “No,” he said, his face pale. “But once, I thought I heard her laugh.”
The mango trees are gone now, replaced by concrete and steel. But the memory of that girl—her faceless head tilted as though she was watching—still haunts me. She wasn’t just a shadow or a trick of the light. She was real, and she was waiting for something.
Maybe she still is.
