THE OLD LADY GAVE ME A SNAKE THAT KILLED MY OWN FAMILY

The House, the Old Lady, and the Snake

I want to tell the truth, even if it scares me to say it out loud. I am writing this as a confession — small words, honest heart. For a long time I felt the shame and the fear alone. Now I need to put it down so someone else may understand what happened to me.

After my parents died I moved to my grandmother’s old house in Polokwane. The house was big and quiet, full of old furniture and smells that belonged to other lives. An old lady lived at the back — everyone called her a healer. She said she could help me, protect me, and bring money into my life. I was weak and I wanted to believe her. I wanted things to be easier. I did not imagine how much I would lose by trusting her.

At first the rituals were small things: herbs, candles, strange songs at night. The old lady told me not everything — she said some things I did not need to know yet. I listened. I followed her instructions because I was afraid to refuse. I thought I was only making small bargains. I thought I could stop any time.

Then the signs began.

I started noticing a huge snake lingering in my room. It would come in the evenings when the house grew cold and the lights were low. Every time I looked at it, the snake’s head had a human face. Not just any face — it was the face of someone I was related to. Sometimes it was my cousin’s face, sometimes my uncle’s, sometimes the soft face of my aunt. I would wake up shaking, convinced I had dreamed it. But the next day, quietly, someone would die. A few days after seeing the snake with that face, the very same relative would be gone. No one could explain it. The deaths were sudden and mysterious. That was the moment I knew I had messed up.

Fear wrapped itself around me then. I began to understand the old lady’s work was darker than she had told me. She never said the full price. She never told me about the faces on the snake, or about how each sighting felt like a promise being written. If she had told me, would I have done things differently? I do not know. Maybe I would still have been weak and proud enough to continue. Pride is a strange, dangerous thing.

After that, the house changed. I felt watched even when I was alone. There was a male ghost that followed me sometimes. No one else could see him. He would slap me in public when I looked at a man or when a man looked at me. People around me only saw me crying and begging, and they thought I was losing my mind. The ghost whispered orders — cruel, shaming orders — and sometimes it forced me to do things in public that made me humiliate myself. I do not tell this to gain pity. I tell it because it is part of the truth of what living with these bargains cost me: my dignity, my friends’ trust, and my peace.

The old lady kept telling me the rituals would bring protection and success. I began to get small things: a little money, luck in small deals. But the cost kept coming. Every time I thought something good would grow, someone I loved would fall ill or vanish. The snake’s face would fade from my dreams only to return later with another name I recognized. How do you live with that? How do you sleep?

I tried to stop. I burned the herbs the old lady had given me. I smashed the tiny objects she had hidden in my drawers. I told her I wanted nothing more. She only smiled and said, “You cannot undo what you have taken.” Her smile felt like a lock.

Sometimes I wake up with strange marks on my skin after nights I cannot remember. Sometimes I find myself walking to the dam behind the mansion, even when I have no memory of going there. The old lady would make me swim there on certain nights and I did not know why. Even now I do not understand all of it. I only know that the house kept a hunger that could not be satisfied.

I am ashamed. I regret the choices I made. I am ashamed because the deaths followed me like a shadow. I am ashamed because those I loved were the faces on the snake, and I think of how their lives ended after my bargain. If only someone had told me the whole truth. If only the old lady had said everything she kept hidden. If only I had been brave enough to say no.

This is my confession. I cannot change what I did. I can only tell you so that if you ever meet someone who offers you easy answers and secret bargains, you will think twice. Be careful with people who say they control luck and death. Be careful with promises that come without full truth.

I do not know what will happen to me next. Some nights the snake does not come and I breathe again. Other nights I see a face I recognize, and the house hums with something I can’t name. I am learning to live with the fear, step by slow step. I am writing this because I want the shame to leave my chest. I want the world to know that bargains have prices — prices that are paid in ways you cannot imagine.

If you pray, please pray for those whose faces I saw on the snake. Pray for me too. I will keep telling my story until I feel lighter. Maybe one day I will find peace again. Maybe one day the snake will stop coming. Until then, I carry this truth like a small, heavy stone in my hands.