Late one moonless night, I lay awake in a house that creaked with secrets. The wind howled, and from the darkness, I heard it—a whisper, so faint, it sent a chill racing up my spine: “Johny Johny…” My heart thudded against my ribs as I slipped from my bed, drawn toward the kitchen by that voice, urgent and eerie.

Every step felt heavier. The wooden floor groaned beneath me, shadows twisting along the hallway. And then, closer—right behind me—another whisper: “Johny Johny…” My breath caught. I managed, barely, to answer, “Yes, Papa?” But the reply came, guttural and cold, echoing through the icy room: “Eating sugar?” My voice shrank to a whisper. “No, Papa.” Thunder rumbled far away, a spoon clinked on the counter, and the door creaked open by itself.

“Telling lies?” The words hissed at me as I tried to swallow the sweet taste lingering on my tongue. The silence pressed in, my heartbeat roaring in my ears. “Open your mouth…” the whisper commanded, chilling me to the bone.

And then… I woke up.

Relief washed over me for an instant, but the feeling didn’t last. I reached for my phone, desperate for a sliver of light—anything normal. But when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. The screen stayed dark. Dead. A new wave of dread rolled over me.

I stumbled to the washroom, splashing cold water on my face, trying to shake off the nightmare. For a moment, I almost convinced myself it was just a dream.

But as I stepped back into the hallway, I heard a sudden crash from the kitchen. My heart stopped. Something had fallen. I crept toward the sound, nerves buzzing, every shadow thicker than the last.

The kitchen was empty. Nothing on the floor, nothing out of place. But the air felt off—heavy, like it was holding secrets.

Then, as I turned to leave, the lights flickered—once, twice—and went out completely. Darkness swallowed the room. My mind spun. Was I still in the nightmare? I pinched myself, desperate to wake up. But before I could move, another voice echoed through the dark, even more chilling:
“Johny Johny…”

Panic took over. I bolted for my brother’s room, desperate for comfort. He was sleeping, calm and oblivious. I dove under his blanket and clung to him, holding on as tightly as I could. For a few minutes, I just listened to his breathing, trying to slow my own racing heart.

Then, I heard a flush from the washroom. My blood ran cold. I opened my eyes and slowly pulled the blanket off, barely daring to breathe.

The bed was empty. I hadn’t been holding my brother at all—he was in the bathroom the whole time.

A chill crept up my spine as the bathroom door creaked open. Heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway.

And then, that voice again, impossibly close:

“Johny Johny…”

Terror crashed over me. I screamed—loud, raw, desperate—until my throat ached, until the hallway light flickered on and my brother rushed out of the bathroom, face twisted with worry and confusion. He wrapped his arms around me, trying to calm me down, whispering that it was okay, that I was safe, that nothing was there.

But I couldn’t stop shaking. I clung to him, gasping for air, my ears still ringing with that voice from the dark:

“Johny Johny…”

Morning sunlight crept through the blinds, thin and gray. It felt unreal, almost cruel, to see the house bathed in ordinary light after what I’d endured. I lay on my brother’s bed, still trembling, the memory of the night clawing at my thoughts.

He sat beside me, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Bad dream?” he asked quietly.

I nodded, unable to meet his gaze. My voice was a whisper. “It felt so real. The whispers… the shadows… and you weren’t here. I thought you were next to me, but you were in the bathroom.”

He frowned. “I heard you scream, but nothing else. You sure you didn’t just… dream all of it?”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe it was only a nightmare. But as I sat up, a prickling unease crawled across my skin. Something still didn’t feel right.

Downstairs, the house was silent. Too silent. No birdsong, no distant hum of traffic. Just the slow ticking of the clock and the creaks of settling wood.

At breakfast, I poked at my cereal, replaying every detail in my mind. My brother avoided my eyes. We ate in silence.

Suddenly, I noticed something odd—on the kitchen floor, by the counter. Sugar. Tiny, scattered grains, glinting in the sunlight. My chest tightened.

“Did you spill this?” I asked.

He shook his head, confusion flickering in his eyes. “No. Maybe you did last night?”

But I hadn’t. I was sure of it.

Later, as we got ready for school, I found myself checking the shadows in every room, expecting to hear that dreadful whisper at any moment. Even as I stepped onto the school bus, the world felt different—like I was moving through someone else’s dream.

The hallways buzzed with the usual morning chaos, but I felt apart from it all. In first period, I tried to lose myself in lessons, but the unease wouldn’t fade.

It got worse during junior class. Our teacher, Ms. Patel, smiled as she stood before the board. “Today, we’ll start with a nursery rhyme. Everyone, together now—‘Johny Johny, yes Papa…’”

A chill raced through me. The words echoed in my ears, almost exactly as I’d heard them in the dark. My classmates chanted in sing-song voices:

“Eating sugar? No, Papa. Telling lies? No, Papa. Open your mouth… Ha, ha, ha!”

I sat frozen, my skin crawling. Ms. Patel’s eyes seemed to linger on me a moment too long. I glanced around—nobody else seemed bothered.

At recess, I pulled my friends aside: Aman, Priya, and Yusuf. I told them about the nightmare—about the voice, the empty bed, the sugar on the floor.

Aman laughed, but it was nervous. “Bro, you just watched too many scary reels.”

Priya frowned. “Sometimes nightmares are messages, you know. My grandma says you shouldn’t ignore them.”

Yusuf shivered. “That rhyme is creepy, actually. My cousin said she saw something in the mirror after singing it three times.”

Their words didn’t help. I felt seen and unseen at the same time—half in this world, half still lost in the shadows of last night.

The rest of the school day blurred by. In every corner, I imagined I heard a whisper, soft and insistent: “Johny Johny…”

By the time the bell rang, I knew one thing for sure: the nightmare hadn’t ended.
Somehow, it had followed me into the daylight.

The walk home from school felt longer than usual. Every step toward the house made my stomach clench. I kept replaying the rhyme, the whispers, the way the sugar glinted in the kitchen sunlight.

When I finally reached the door, I hesitated on the threshold. My own room felt like a trap. Even the kitchen—the heart of our home—looked strange to me now, shadows pooling in the corners.

I dropped my bag and made a beeline for the living room, where Mama sat folding laundry. Without a word, I wrapped my arms around her. She smelled like lavender and clean cotton, and her hug was warm and real. For the first time all day, I let myself breathe.

“What’s wrong, beta?” she asked softly, stroking my hair.

“Just… bad dreams,” I mumbled into her shoulder. She didn’t laugh or brush me off. Mama believed in things you couldn’t see. She said prayers for us every night, and in our house, the small prayer room was always lit with candles and the soft glow of a night lamp.

After a while, I slipped away and went to the prayer room. The walls were lined with pictures and idols, each one familiar. I picked up the wooden cross from the shelf—small, smooth, and cool in my palm—and slipped it into my pocket. Somehow, just holding it made my heart slow down.

Dinner was quiet. I picked at my food, glancing at my brother and Mama, wishing things felt normal again. They talked about school and work, pretending everything was fine.

When it was time to go to my room, I lingered in the hallway. My feet dragged, but eventually, I crossed the threshold. My room felt colder, unfamiliar. I changed into my pajamas, took the cross from my pocket, and placed it carefully on the table next to my bed. Just seeing it there, small and solid, made me feel a little braver.

I climbed under the blanket, eyes flicking to every corner of the room before I finally let my eyelids drift shut.

Sleep came quickly, but it didn’t bring peace.

The nightmare began almost at once—worse than before. The house was darker, the air colder, thick with whispers that crawled along the walls. Shadows twisted into monstrous shapes, and that same voice—deeper and more menacing—hissed from the darkness:
“Johny Johny…”

I tried to run, but my feet wouldn’t move. Doors slammed shut in front of me. The kitchen glowed with a sickly light, and I saw shapes moving behind the counters, flickering in and out of sight. I screamed, but the sound died in my throat. I could feel something reaching for me, long fingers brushing my back.

Suddenly, I jerked awake, heart racing and breath coming in short gasps. My room was silent, but I was shaking all over.

Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed the cross from the table, clutching it tight in my hand. Warmth seeped into my skin, calming the panic in my chest. The shadows in my room seemed to fade, growing softer, less threatening.

With the cross in my hand, I lay back down. The fear loosened its grip, and slowly, I drifted into a gentler, dreamless sleep.

The first day of summer vacation arrived with a promise of escape. For the first time in weeks, I didn’t dread waking up in my own bed—because today, I wouldn’t have to spend the night in it. Mama bustled around the house, packing our suitcases and humming to herself. My brother was unusually cheerful, making lists of everything he wanted to do at Granny’s place. Even Papa seemed lighter, almost as if he, too, was relieved to leave the house behind.

The thought of getting away—from my room, from the kitchen shadows, from the whispers that haunted the night—filled me with hope. As we loaded up the car, I barely glanced back at the windows or the closed door. This wasn’t running away. It was a holiday, and I needed it more than anything.

The drive to Granny’s house was long and winding, taking us through villages and past endless fields of sunflowers. I pressed my face to the glass, letting the warm sunlight blur my worries away. Still, there were moments that made my skin prickle. Once, I saw a lone figure standing at the edge of a field, motionless, watching as our car sped past. Later, a black crow swooped low over the hood, cawing loudly before vanishing into the trees. There was even an old, weather-beaten sign at a crossroads with faded letters that read: “Johny Johny – Sweets This Way.” I blinked, and the words seemed to change, or maybe I’d just imagined it.

Despite these strange moments, the farther we drove, the more the tension melted from my shoulders. Mama passed around homemade snacks, and my brother tried to make up silly car games. Papa tuned the radio to old Bollywood songs, and for a while, the world outside was just green and gold and blue, full of summer possibility.

When we finally pulled up to Granny’s gate, everything felt lighter. Her house stood at the end of a shady lane, its white walls glowing in the afternoon sun. The air was thick with the smell of baking bread and wet earth after last night’s rain. Granny’s garden was a riot of flowers and buzzing bees. My grandparents were waiting on the porch, faces split wide in grins, arms open for hugs that made everything feel safe and simple again.

The first couple of days slipped by in a happy blur. I played cricket in the yard with my brother, chased butterflies through the marigolds, and spent lazy afternoons helping Granny in her sunny kitchen. We picked ripe mangoes from the tree and peeled them with sticky fingers, juice running down our arms. At night, I fell asleep to the gentle hum of ceiling fans and the sound of my grandfather’s stories—ghosts and lost treasures and childhood adventures—none of them as scary as what I’d left behind.

For the first time in weeks, I felt normal. I almost forgot the weight I’d been carrying, almost believed that the nightmare had stayed behind in my dark old room.

But sometimes, late at night, when the wind rattled the shutters or a dog barked far off, the unease would creep back. Just a whisper of it. I would turn over in bed and see the cross I’d brought from home on the table beside me, and the comfort would return, warm and quiet. I would hold it until I drifted back to sleep.

On the third morning, Granny sent me and my brother to the local shop for bread and milk. The road was lined with tall trees and the air smelled of rain. On the way back, we passed the old school where Granny said she once taught nursery rhymes to dozens of children. I shivered and tried not to think about that song.

We laughed and ran up the lane, arms full of groceries. The world felt right.

But that evening, just as the sun dipped below the trees and the house filled with golden light, I heard it again. Faint, almost lost in the noise of the kitchen, but unmistakable:

A whisper—soft and sing-song—drifting through the open window:
“Johny Johny…”

I froze, heart suddenly pounding, bread slipping from my hand. My brother was already upstairs, Granny humming to herself, the rest of the house quiet.

For a moment, I told myself it was nothing—just the echo of a rhyme, a memory brought on by an old sign and too many stories.

But deep down, I knew the truth.
The nightmare had followed me.

The house was unusually quiet that afternoon. Sunlight spilled through the lace curtains, throwing patterns onto the floor and making the whole place seem softer, almost peaceful. Mama and Papa, along with my grandparents, had left for a visit to relatives in the next town, their laughter and goodbyes echoing down the lane. They promised they’d be home before dark.

For a while, the silence felt like freedom. No grown-ups, no chores, no rules—just me, my brother, and the hum of the television. We stretched out in the living room, legs tangled, a bowl of popcorn balanced between us. Cartoon after cartoon flickered across the screen, colors bright, music cheerful. My brother, fighting sleep, soon lost the battle and curled up beside me, his breathing deep and even.

I barely noticed when the next show started. The program was new to me, a children’s series I didn’t recognize. The episode opened on a gentle, everyday scene—a sunlit kitchen, a mother humming as she wiped the counter, her little boy playing nearby. There was something soothing about it, something that reminded me of lazy summer mornings at home.

The mother’s song drifted through the speakers, a lullaby soft as feathers:
“Johny Johny, yes Papa…”

A familiar tune. I almost relaxed, letting the comfort of her voice wrap around me. For a moment, the fear and the darkness from the past few weeks faded away. I could have been any other kid, on any other day, watching a harmless children’s rhyme.

But then the mother turned toward the camera. And her eyes—big, gentle, brown—seemed to meet mine, steady and unblinking. My pulse skipped. There was a weight to that look, a focus that didn’t fit the cheerful setting. It was as if she could see me, as if I was the one in the room, not her.

Her voice grew softer, drifting from the speakers like a sigh.

“Johny Johny…”
It was almost a whisper now, breathy and distant. The kitchen on the TV seemed to darken, the sunlight fading away until only shadows remained around the mother and child.

Suddenly, I felt my body begin to rise, slowly, as if invisible hands were lifting me right off the sofa. My feet dangled in the air, and terror crashed through me. I tried to scream, to move, but my mouth opened on its own, wide and helpless. I felt my feet start to shake with fear, dangling helplessly above the ground.

The mother on the TV stepped closer, her body melting out of the screen and into the living room. She grew larger, her eyes expanding, turning black and endless. Her sweet smile stretched, twisting into something monstrous.

She hovered in front of me, impossibly close, and leaned in until her huge, frightening eyes stared right down my throat, searching, her breath cold against my skin. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. The room spun, my heart thundering in my chest, my whole body trembling as I hung in the air.

Then, suddenly, the front door burst open. The room was flooded with noise—laughter, cheerful voices, the jingle of keys. My parents and grandparents came in, talking and joking with each other.

In an instant, I dropped back onto the sofa with a jolt. The TV showed nothing but a cheerful cartoon and the mother was gone, as if she’d never been there at all. My brother stirred, blinking awake, yawning as if nothing had happened.

I stared at the screen, my heart still pounding, wondering if anyone would ever believe what I’d just seen.

That night, I couldn’t stop shaking. The memory of floating in the air, the monstrous mother’s eyes, the way she stared into my mouth—it all replayed behind my eyelids every time I tried to blink it away. Lying in the darkness, clutching the cross, I realized something terrifying: this was no dream. This was real, and it was after me.

But why me?
Had I done something wrong, or was it just some twisted game that only I could see?

Unable to stand the thought of being alone, I left my room and tiptoed down the hallway. Mama was already asleep, her breaths deep and even, but as soon as I crawled under her blanket, she wrapped me in her arms without a word. I pressed close, desperate for the safety I used to feel in her embrace. Even then, a part of me wondered—could she really protect me from whatever was out there?

Morning came gray and heavy, the kind of day where the sun never quite breaks through the clouds. Breakfast was tense. Everyone was quieter than usual. My brother watched me with curious eyes, and Granny seemed distracted, stirring her tea long after the sugar had dissolved.
Mama made an announcement: “We’re all going to the village prayer home today. Good for the soul,” she said, but her voice didn’t match her words.

We walked through the village together, my family’s shoulders hunched as if they were bracing for a storm. The streets were empty, and the only sounds were our footsteps and the caw of distant crows. I held the cross in my pocket, turning it over and over in my palm, trying to keep the panic away.

As the prayer home came into view—an old, stone building covered in moss—a strange man stood by the entrance. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, hair wild, clothes ragged and dirty. His eyes darted from side to side until he saw me.
That’s when he started to shout.

“He’s coming! He’s coming to take the boy away!” The man’s voice cracked, desperate and shrill. “Time to fulfill the promise, or it will be painful—so painful!”

He staggered toward us, waving his arms, eyes rolling in their sockets. My heart pounded so hard it hurt. I pressed myself against Mama, but she stiffened, standing tall and fierce.

My parents and grandparents reacted immediately. Papa stepped forward, voice sharp: “Leave us alone! Don’t listen to him, he’s just a crazy man.” Granny grabbed my brother’s arm and pulled him close. Mama squeezed my hand, her grip almost too tight.

But the more they tried to ignore the man, the more frantic he became. “You know what you did! You know the promise! You cannot hide him forever!”
His words felt like knives.
But what promise? What did they know?

My family herded us quickly past the man and into the prayer home. I looked back just once—the stranger was standing at the gate, eyes locked on me, lips still moving in silent warnings.

Inside, the air was thick with incense and something older—a feeling of secrets pressed into the walls. Candles flickered on every surface. We knelt and tried to focus on the priest’s words, but I couldn’t stop glancing at my family.

They were acting so strange. Mama’s prayers were frantic, her lips moving too fast, knuckles white as she pressed her palms together. Papa kept glancing over his shoulder, watching the door. Granny clutched her scarf and whispered to herself in a language I didn’t understand. My brother stayed close, too quiet for once, looking between all of us as if he was waiting for answers too.

Something wasn’t right. It was more than just fear. It was guilt, maybe—regret, or even shame.
For the first time, I wondered if my nightmares were connected to something my family had done, some secret they’d hoped would stay buried.

After the prayers ended, we left quickly, avoiding the crazy man, who still hovered at the edge of the courtyard. My family walked faster, their eyes fixed straight ahead, their words clipped and tense. As soon as we got home, Mama and Papa whispered in the kitchen, voices low and urgent. Granny stayed in her room, praying even harder.

I sat on my bed, cross in hand, a thousand questions buzzing in my head. I stared at the ceiling, searching for comfort in the swirling shadows.

What promise?
Why me?
And what if my family’s secret was the reason the nightmare had come for me?