Al Nadaha

LAYLA

The days we stayed over at my grandmother’s house were exactly what I needed.

It was refreshing to be able to think of something other than all the toxic thoughts that had long since established control over my brain and been tormenting me to a great extent.

All I could think about nowadays was Al Nadaha and all the mysteries that accompanied her notoriety.

When we finally arrived at our apartment after a long ride, my mother was so tired she ended up in bed with the same clothes she had on.

I, on the other hand, went straight to my room and threw my body onto the bed, not bothering to change my clothes. I grabbed my bag and got the journal out of it.

I stared at it for a good minute without opening it.

Certain that it would bring so many agonizing memories to my grandmother, I couldn’t bring myself to read the journal in front of her.

She had so much to tell me about the countless, horrifying stories that were lived and witnessed by the people of her village.

Stories that kept me baffled with dozens of different questions occupying my mind.

All the stories shared terrifying similarities. The victims were killed almost the same way, with an identical MO.

And there were too many people who disappeared without leaving a single footprint behind. While the people whom she had called and survived her allure lost their minds forever.

All those questions got me to the point where I kept wondering whether Al Nadaha was only a mythical creature, created by the poor people in the country’s darkest times.

Maybe they took it as some kind of refuge where they escaped their heinous reality and pretended that only a monster could do such horrible things and not a fellow human.

Or was there another entirely different possibility that this creature had been real all this time!

For as long as I could remember, I was always fond of paranormal and supernatural cases. I have read hundreds of stories about haunted places, ghosts, evil spirits, and possession.

I even started doing my own investigations, which led me to start my own blog that was dedicated to articles and stories about supernatural creatures and incidents.

Then eventually, my blog started to become more recognized until I was discovered by Kamal Fahmy and started writing for his magazine.

And through the course of time, I visited so many dubious places and met a lot of people who claimed that their homes were haunted, that they made contact with evil spirits, or that they were even possessed.

And, well, some of those stories turned out to be true.

All of that made me very aware of the fact that we weren’t the only creatures in the universe, and there were so many things our simple minds couldn’t come to understand.

And that was why I wasn’t abandoning the fact that Al Nadaha might have actually existed at some point in history.

Taking a deep breath, I finally opened the journal to its first page, deciding to start my journey of disclosing the secrets and the mystery behind that horrid creature.