Episode 2 Script: The Letter from the Crypt

Episode 2: The Letter from the Crypt 

By Grace Antiedu 

They said Mrs. Ntiamoah’s house had been empty since the funeral.

Dusty curtains, locked windows, the air stale and unmoved. No one had gone in. No one had dared to.

Until Kwabena.

He hadn’t planned on entering — not really. He only came by after school because of a dare. Some of the older boys had laughed when he’d hesitated. “You want to be a man?” they’d teased. “Then go in. Say her name. Say it loud.”

They shoved him through the rusted gate. The hinges groaned behind him like a warning.

He should have left then.

But he didn’t.

The house seemed to breathe around him as he stepped into the corridor. The faint smell of lavender soap still clung to the air -Mrs. Ntiamoah’s scent. She had been his mother's teacher once. Stern but kind, they said. 

The sort who saw through your excuses before you said them. The sort whose eyes lingered too long when speaking about the past — like it haunted her.

She died many years ago. A heart attack, they said. But nobody had really seen the body. Closed casket. Quick burial. No wake.

He called her name once.....

Then again.

The boards creaked above. Just the wind, he told himself. He was about to turn back when he noticed the crawlspace door under the stairs — slightly ajar. A dull, thudding sound came from behind it. Like something... shifting.

He approached it slowly.

“Ma’am?” he whispered. “Mrs. Ntiamoah?”

The thudding stopped.

A figure emerged, crouched low, hidden in shadow. It slowly lifted its head.

It wasn’t her.

It was him.....the man at the graveyard....

Kwabena had only seen him once, during the burial — tall, lean, wrapped in a black shroud, eyes closed. Some whispered he wasn’t family. Some said he wasn’t even alive.

Now, he stood there in the crawlspace, skin stretched thin over bone, eyes sunken deep like pits in ash. His lips barely moved, but the words came like a gust of wind in a crypt:

“You opened the door. Now close it… or join us.”

Kwabena stumbled back, breath caught in his throat.

 The end of episode 2. Coming up: Episode 3. Keep watching.