“I know her rage is justified. We did a terrible thing and we deserve to be punished for it. For what it’s worth, it was never our intention for things to turn out as they did.

We just wanted to teach her a lesson.”

(STORY CULLED FROM AN ENTRY IN A JOURNAL BELONGING TO A MR. FOLAJIMI BALOGUN)

It happened in April 1993.

Everyone knew she stayed late on Fridays. That, we decided, was the perfect time to execute our hastily put together plan. We hid close to the staff room so we wouldn’t miss her exit. We’d fashioned masks out of our shirts. We were ready.

“She deserves this,” I said to my friend and eventual accomplice, Joe, that morning. “She’s a fucking terrible person.”

And in our defence, she kinda was.

Miss Caroline was, hands down, the meanest teacher at our school. She was like a real life Disney villainess. She owned a Sport Billy-style torture sack that contained such a wide variety of stuff (canes, kobokos etc) that no one would’ve batted an eye if she’d whipped out nipple clamps at any point.

Well, maybe our parents, but not the students. You see, Miss Caroline was very attractive. And when you’re in an all-boys secondary school, raging hormones force you to ogle whoever you get the chance to. In this case, Miss Caroline.

Not me though. I hated that woman with as much passion as my 16-year old heart could muster.

But I’m digressing.

As she left her office that evening, her red high-heeled shoes clacking away on the concrete floor, Joe and I tackled her to the ground, dragged her back into the empty staff room, gagged her, and turned off the lights.

The plan was to rough her up a bit. Scare her a little. Let her know that we (the students) weren’t going to take her shit any more. But as the saying I’m making up right now goes; revenge is one hell of a drug.

The thing they never tell you about accidentally beating another human to death is how much acting you have to do after. We had to act shocked when the news spread after her body was found. We had to act disgusted during the assembly on Monday morning when the principal described, in graphic detail, the state in which Miss Caroline’s body was found.

“She was barely recognizable. She had been beaten to a pulp, teeth smashed in, and the heel of one of her shoes was firmly lodged in her right eye.”

Revenge is one hell of a drug.

We had to act sad during her funeral, which took place in our school’s chapel, as we watched members of her family break down in tears. It was an open-casket funeral and the morticians did the best they could but she still looked like she’d been hit in the face repeatedly with a mallet.

Damn.

The entire time, I wondered if the police had gotten any leads. I mean, we panicked when we realized she’d died and taken her purse with us to make it look like a mugging gone wrong but no one inflicts the kind of damage we did for a purse. A couple of days passed without any major events relating to the incident so I believed we were in the clear.

Then Joe started to crack.

To say that Joe was wracked with guilt is an understatement. He was constantly freaking out, convinced that he was being haunted by a “shadow demon that tapped the floor as it moved. I remember making a joke about the demon wearing 6-inch heels. Joe was not amused.

When I couldn’t handle it anymore, I decided that I was going to deny Joe if he mistakenly blabbed to anyone. This wasn’t necessary though because Joe left the school a few days later in a straitjacket after biting off a sizeable chunk of another student’s ear. I never saw or heard from him again. I graduated not long after that.

That’s when I started seeing it.

And somehow, I knew it was her.

Every time I closed my eyes, there she was, invading my dreams. She was exactly like Joe described; an ethereal shadow entity that made a clacking sound when it moved. This went on until I began to dread falling asleep. Exhausted from my lack of sleep, I remember thinking I was hallucinating when I saw her for the first time in my dorm room in Uni.

In real life.

I stared at her for what felt like a full minute and pinched myself to make sure I was still awake. As I did this, I saw a face form and give the most spine-chilling smile I’ve ever seen. Anticipating my next move, she moved to block the door.

Then she came at me with the quickness.

I woke up a couple of hours later and she was gone. My room was a mess and my body felt like it had been hit by a truck. Everything hurt. Unable to move because of the pain, I lay still on the floor, fucking terrified that she would come back and finish me off.

I eventually dropped out of Uni and went back home. My parents were confused but I couldn’t explain to them without revealing that I’d straight up accidentally murdered someone a while back and was now living in my own supernatural sequel to “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

I pretty much became a hermit. Figured it was an easier way to deal with things. With every encounter (every single one of them violent), I begged for her forgiveness.

This went on for ten years.

I don’t know if she’s finally forgiven me or made the decision to do something productive with her (after) life but I haven’t seen her in months. I feel like I’ve done my penance. I can leave the house in peace now. I even spoke to my parents about going back to Uni and they’re stoked. Sure, I’ll be one of the oldest there. But, better late than never, eh?

Today is the 12th of June 2003, and for the first time in a long time, I’m happy because the future looks good. I’ll finally be able to move on with my life. I couldn’t be happier tbh.

Click here to read other stories in the NIGERIAN HORROR STORY series.