Don’t Go Home Tomorrow

Don’t Go Home Tomorrow

Christmas isn’t supposed to start with a warning.

But mine did.

At exactly 12:01 a.m. on Christmas Eve, while the town slept beneath harmattan air and half-lit decorations, my phone vibrated beside me.

One message.

Don’t go home tomorrow.

I frowned at the screen, annoyance giving way to confusion. The number was unknown. No name. No country code I recognised.

Then I noticed the wallpaper behind the text.

My breath caught.

It was a wall I hadn’t seen in three years—sunflower yellow, slightly uneven near the corner. My mother’s old living room wall. The one we painted together the week before her accident, laughing when the paint dripped onto the floor tiles.

My heart began to race.

My mother had been dead for three years.

I sat up immediately, the room suddenly too quiet. Christmas lights blinked lazily across the street outside my window, cheerful and wrong.

Another message came in.

Someone will come there looking for you.

My hands started to shake.

Who would come looking for me?

Why tonight?

And how did they have that wallpaper?

I typed back quickly—Who is this?—but the message never delivered.

The number went off instantly, like it had never existed.

There was only one person in my life who believed messages could come from beyond logic.

My grandmother.

I slipped out of bed, barefoot, moving toward her room at the end of the corridor. The old house creaked softly beneath me, every sound exaggerated by fear.

Then I heard it.

Footsteps.

Outside.

Slow. Heavy. Deliberate.

I froze.

They stopped.

Right beneath my window.

My stomach dropped.

I turned back instinctively, backing away, when a voice whispered through the glass.

“Ama.”

My name.

“I’m here for you.”

My chest tightened so hard it hurt to breathe.

I rushed to the small wooden table beside my bed, grabbing my grandmother’s old Bible with trembling hands. It fell open somewhere in Psalms. I didn’t read—I just held it.

Then I dialed Kwesi.

He answered on the first ring.

“Ama,” he whispered immediately, his voice tight. “Stay away from the window. Don’t open it. Not tonight.”

Something in his tone scared me more than the voice outside.

“You know something,” I said, barely louder than a breath.

Silence.

Then, “Please,” he said. “Just listen to me.”

But curiosity—or something darker—pulled at me. Slowly, against my better judgment, I stepped closer to the window and peeped through the curtain.

A tall figure stood outside.

Too tall.

Its face was hidden in shadow, as if the light refused to touch it. Around its neck was a red Christmas scarf.

My mother’s scarf.

She had knitted it years ago, humming old hymns as she worked, promising to finish it before Christmas.

Kwesi gasped on the phone.

“Ama,” he said urgently. “Don’t look at it directly. Whatever you do—”

The line went dead.

At the same moment, the lights in my room flickered once… twice… then steadied.

The figure moved.

Slowly, it raised its hand.

It was holding something.

A letter.

White. Slightly folded at the edges.

On the front, written in familiar handwriting, was my name.

Ama.

Tears filled my eyes before I could stop them.

The figure didn’t speak again. It only pressed the letter against the glass, gently, like a reminder.

Then the footsteps retreated.

By morning, the scarf was gone.

The window was empty.

The town woke up to Christmas.

But the letter remained on my windowsill.

I didn’t go home that day.

And I haven’t opened the letter yet.

Some warnings aren’t meant to be understood immediately.

Some are meant to save you.