01/03/2026
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🌿Familiar Voices: Don't Answer - Princes Town, 1984.....................................................
Mrs. Anne Samaroo settled into her chair, her gaze distant as she prepared to share a story that had stained her memory for decades. It involved a few unsettling experiences over a short span during the nineteen eighties in Princes Town. ...................................................
Life, though simple, had taken on an ominous edge after the neighbours held a revival crusade. It was a three-day affair where a portion of their yard became a tented church, filled with voices crying out to the heavens, hands raised in praise, bodies trembling under the weight of deliverance.
People came, bringing their sins, their sicknesses, their burdens. A revival meant to save and deliver... but Anne sometimes wondered whether it had opened the door to something far more troubling.
It was the night after the crusade ended when it began. Anne was eleven then, the youngest of three sisters. Her father, once strong and broad-shouldered, was now a shadow of himself, bedridden after losing a leg to diabetes. He hardly spoke anymore, his voice a rasp that came sparingly.
Yet that night, as Anne sat on the floor of the small living room sketching in her notebook, she heard him.
“Dolly-cakes... Dolly-cakes.”
The voice was unmistakable... her father’s gruff tone. It was the way he used her nickname when he needed her to bring his tea or fetch his food. His voice came from outside, and that froze her.
"De problem was," Anne insists, "Papa was inside in he room."
Anne turned toward the open door, where the soft hum of crickets and the dim light of the moon spilt in. The call came again.
“Dolly-cakes...”
This time, the voice seemed to have slithered even closer.
A sharp flutter seized her chest. Slowly, she rose and turned towards her father’s room. The floorboard creaked beneath her feet.
Peering around the door, she saw him lying exactly where he always was, his body heavy against the mattress, his chest rising and falling in shallow rhythm. He hadn’t moved.
"Dolly-cakes!”
The voice was sharper now, more urgent.
It was coming from the yard, directly behind her through the open door.
Anne’s breath paused as she remembered she was alone with her father in the house. Her mother and sisters had gone to visit a neighbour a few houses away.
“Dolly-cakes.”
The voice was closer now.
Too close.
Suddenly, the voice pierced the silence once more... this time, from the kitchen.
Panic gripped her. Anne spun and bolted to the bedroom she shared with her sisters. A heavy, creaking thing they called a wardrobe was her only refuge. She shoved herself inside, pulling the door shut. Her breath came shallow bursts as she sat curled in the darkness, her knees tucked under her chin.
And then... silence.
Minutes crawled by like hours. Her muscles cramped, her hands trembled, but she didn’t move.
After what felt like an hour, she finally heard her mother and sisters returning home. She rushed out, tears streaming down her face as she recounted everything to her mother.
Her mother’s expression hardened. She sat Anne down and said firmly,
“If yuh ever hear somebody callin' yuh name an' yuh doh see dem, doh answer. Make sure you know who callin' you. Yuh hear me? Doh ever answer wat yuh cyah see!”
A week passed, and the tension in the house seemed to have subsided. Anne thought it was over, that maybe her mother’s warning had scared it off. But then it happened again.
It was early morning this time, just before dawn. The house was quiet except for the sound of her parents’ steady snores in the next room. Anne lay in bed, half-asleep, when she heard it again.
“Dolly-cakes...”
Her eyes snapped open. She lay still, her heart stuttering.
“Dolly-cakes!”
That familiar voice was insistent. Her sister Cathy stirred in the bed beside her and sat up groggily.
“You hear dat?” Cathy whispered, “How dat sound like papa so?”
Anne nodded, gripping her sister’s arm.
The two crept out of bed and into the hall, the boards creaking beneath their weight. The air felt heavy, thick, like the house was holding its breath.
“Dolly-cakes...”
The voice came again, from outside. Cathy’s eyes now widened in fear as she clutched Anne’s shoulder.
The door to her parents' room swung open, and her mother stepped out, her face pale but resolute.
“Geh back inside,” she ordered. She heard it too. The sound was clear beyond question.
“Ma didn’t make joke," Anne continued, "she gone an’ smoke out de house one time! Me eh kno what she was burnin' in ah bowl dat she walk all through de house wit'. She was sayin’ she prayers same time. She didn’t fraid nothin'. Dem jumbie mussee was sorry deh bonks she up.”
The voice never returned after that day. Still, Anne never shook the feeling that something had entered their home that night. Something dark, something unsettled. She thought maybe it had been brought by someone attending the crusade, a shadow that got left behind.
“People does carry roun' ting wit' dem, yuh hadda be careful who comin’ in yuh house, be careful who comin' in yuh yard. Meh aunt used to say dat it have ting for de house an ting for de road. Know wat yuh doin.”
Anne concluded her story with a long sigh. She maintained that, as vivid and unnerving as the day it was spoken, her mother’s warning still lingers in her mind,
“Doh ever answer wat yuh cyah see!"
………………………………………………
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