“O’u gini?” Grandma shouted from the top of the stairs. She barely had her blue rapa wrapped around her waist and she looked much older than her eighty years. Auntie Ama probably was still sleeping, as she remained upstairs. Grandma looked at the door and then met my eyes. “Were you outside?” she asked.
I shook my head, trying to get up. Both my hands felt numb, though the boy had only touched one.
“But you opened the door,” she said, still looking at the door like she expected armed robbers to burst in.
I didn’t answer. So much adrenaline was flooding my system that I’d begun to feel faint.
“Who was at the door?” she demanded. When I didn’t answer, she narrowed her eyes at me, sucked her teeth and said, “Stupid, stupid girl.”
Three days before, it had started raining cats and dogs. Out of nowhere. Thunder rolled in the skies, lightning crashed. The wind shook the trees and turned the red dirt to red mud. Three days of steady rain. It had stopped only minutes before the boy showed up at the door. This kind of weather never happened in this part of Nigeria during this time of the year. But who was I to question the doings of nature? Who was I?
I’d laughed to myself thinking, of course, it just has to happen right when I arrive. I was only going to be in the village visiting my grandmother and grand aunt for two weeks and now the entire first week was going to be a guaranteed mud and mosquito fest. Little did I know that this was the least of my worries.
I told my grandmother everything. Without a word, she frowned and walked outside into the rain. I followed her. Squishing through the mud, we looked all over the yard for that creepy boy. Grandma even looked in the chicken coop and behind the noisy generator. We didn’t find a trace of him. Even his footprints had disappeared in the mud. Above, the sky churned with exiting rain clouds. Already I could see peeks of sunlight but I was too bothered to be happy about it.
We went back inside. I took off my muddy shoes, picked up the two vase pieces and plopped down on a kitchen chair, rubbing my lower back and forehead. I was sore but I actually felt okay. I didn’t mysteriously grow sick or break out in blue hives or start speaking in tongues. I was fine.
“Grandma, he should have been dead,” I said yet again, pressing the pieces of vase together, as if that’s all it would take to put it back together. “I saw brain. Who would do that to a child? And where the heck would he go? This is so weird.”
“Why were you stupid enough to open the door the second time?” she suddenly asked, crossing her arms over her chest, irritated. “If you see a monster at your doorstep, the wise thing to do is shut the door.” She sucked her teeth and shook her head. “You Americanized Nigerians. No instinct.”
“He was hurt,” I insisted. “You can’t just . . . ”
“You knew better,” she said, waving her hand dismissively at me. “Deep down, you knew not to open that door.”
Okay, so she was right. I don’t know why I opened the door again. It was like my hand had a mind of its own. Or maybe it was some sort of grim fascination? I put the vase pieces down.
“You feel alright?” Grandma asked.
I nodded, rubbing my hands together. They still felt a little numb.
She sighed. “We’ll have to keep an eye on you.”
“Have you ever . . . ”
She held up a hand. “We speak of it no more,” she said. “The mud is still wet.”
Whatever that means, I thought. I got up, went to the bathroom and shut the door behind me. A large black wall spider occupied the ceiling corner above the toilet. A tiny pink wall gecko eyed it from the other corner. I chuckled despite myself. In the village, one is rarely ever truly alone. Not even in the bathroom.
I wiped my face with a towel and stared at myself in the mirror. I patted down my short ’fro and used some toilet paper to wipe the sweat from my brow. I laughed and said, “Chioma, you’re fine.” Just some weird shit, that’s all, I thought. Maybe the boy’s head wasn’t as bad as it looked.
I froze, the smile dropping from my lips. I smelled something. I sniffed at my clothes and my skin. No, it wasn’t coming from those either. Not from me. But close to me. Like something unnatural breathing down my neck. Movement on the ceiling caught my eye. The wall gecko was slowly moving in on the spider. I quickly left the bathroom and sought out Grandma. She was sitting in the living room with my grand Auntie Amaka.
They both wore the same blue rapas but Grandma wore a t-shirt that I’d brought her from America and Auntie Amaka wore a white blouse. Their rough wide feet dangled from the couch; their smallness always gives me pause as I’m over six feet tall. They looked at me with furrowed brows. Two old Igbo women with wrinkles so deep their eyes almost disappeared under the folds of skin whenever they made any facial expression.
“I’m fine.” I assured them.
They knew I was lying. Yet they said nothing.
I laugh about it now. Of course they wouldn’t have said anything.
That boy set something upon me. I was sure of it. Shit like that didn’t just happen and that was it. Plus, I could still smell that weirdness in the air. Only I seemed to notice. It was like a bit of foulness. Something unpleasant definitely still lingered. Something unpleasant stayed.
The first few days, it was just that smell and odd shifts in the air. I’d be on my way to the bathroom and the leaves of the faux houseplant behind me would quiver softly. I’d turn around to see if someone was there. No one ever was. But that smell lingered a bit before fading away like an old fart. I started hearing whispers behind me, especially when I was the only one home. These were also accompanied by that smell and the sound of footsteps outside the house, loudly squelching in the drying mud. Not something you want to hear while in a rural village deep in southeast Nigeria. You’re basically cut off from the rest of the world here. And then there were the lizards.
Normally, they ran about like squirrels, especially the large pine green and orange ones. They’d run up the cement block walls that surrounded the house, weaving between the protective shards of glass and razor wire at the top. They’d stop and do their lizardly push-ups. They were like little foul-tempered dragons. Corner one and you’d get to see just how wild and dragon-like they could get. I’d once seen one accidentally run into a plastic bag. The thing went temporarily insane when it couldn’t figure out how to get out. Normally, the lizards of Nigeria were a source of hilarity for me.
When they started showing up everywhere accompanied by that unpleasant smell, they weren’t so funny. I’d sit on the porch and three would show up and just look at me. If I stayed in one place for too long, those three lizards were joined by another seven. They’d scramble close. Watching me. As if they were waiting for something spectacular to happen. They only left me alone when I went in the house.
Being police, I know how to observe and listen. I’m always aware of my surroundings. I know when I’m being followed. Even when I’m on vacation in my mother’s village visiting my grandmother and grandaunt. Dammit, I wish I brought my gun, I thought. How silly I was.
Days after the encounter with the boy, I had the shock of my life.
Upon my grandmother’s request, we went with Auntie Amaka to the village market. I was glad to get out of the house. Even if the “mud was still wet,” whatever that meant. It was your usual affair. Piles of tomatoes here, piles of peppers there, boiled eggs, sacks of groundnut, stacks of hugely overpriced cell phone cards, bunches of plantains, pungent dried fish, flies, women in traditional or European style clothes with their nosy eyes and ears and sharp-tongues, dodging the hot mufflers of overzealous shortcut-seeking okada drivers. I’d normally have enjoyed this, but I kept noticing lizards lurking too close to me and the boy was still on my mind.
I closely followed my grandmother and auntie as they bought dried crayfish, plantain, oranges, and so on. I guess we were going to have a feast tonight or something. As we walked, I felt like I was being watched again. When the feeling grew too intense, I whirled aro
und, my hand going to my hip for the gun that wasn’t there. I saw nothing but people going about their business. I sucked my teeth, my nerves sparking.
“Shit,” I whispered. “This has got to stop, man. It’s driving me nuts.” Being this jumpy was so unlike me. We were standing at the booth of a fruit seller when I caught a whiff of sugariness, sweet and flammable. I turned my head toward the scent and met the eyes of a scruffy-looking palm wine seller.
“Good afternoon,” he said, leaning on his ancient-looking dusty bicycle. His large brown gourds full of palm wine dangled from each handlebar. A basket of filled and empty green glass bottles hung from the front of the bars.
“Good afternoon,” I responded, still preoccupied. I turned the other way and there he was, standing in the road. The boy who should have been dead. He wore a spotless pair of navy blue pants and a white pressed shirt. It was tucked in. And his head was shaven close. Nothing but a slightly gnarled grey brown scar ran down the middle of his head. He looked like a perfectly normal kid. Except for the knowing way he smiled at me. I stared back. He nodded, laughed, and continued on his way, school books in the crook of his arm. No cars came down or from up the road. A lizard scrambled across the street feet from him.
“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself.
The palm wine seller laughed and elbowed me. He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “That boy’s probably going to be the smartest kid in this village’s history.”
“W . . . why do you say that?” I asked, glancing at my auntie and grandmother. They were haggling hard with some old man over a large pineapple.
“You saw him, right?” he said. He pointed at me with a well-calloused finger. “It was you. Least that’s what people are saying.”
I wanted to ask, “What people?” Instead I just asked, “How can he be okay?”
The man nodded. “They took him into the forest.”
“Not the hospital?” I asked, frowning.
“The hospital would have been no good for that boy.”
“Who took him?”
“The women, of course.” He kicked at a man inspecting his gourds of wine. “You buying or not?”
As the seller haggled with the customer, I watched the boy walk into the market crowd across the road. I watched until I couldn’t see him anymore. I felt something cool against my hand and looked down. The tapper smiled, pressing it into my hand. A green bottle of palm wine. “On the house. You’ll need it soon. One for the road.”
I smiled uncomfortably, taking the bottle. “Uh . . . thanks.” I had no intention of drinking it or anything else offered by a stranger that wasn’t properly sealed. I mentally patted myself on the back again for thinking to bring all those packets of ramen noodles, my jar of peanut butter, and canned salmon.
“What . . . what happened in the forest?” I asked him, lowering my voice and grasping the bottle.
He paused then only shook his head as he laughed. “You ask too many questions. Go and drink that while you can.”
That night, I tried to just go to bed and forget about the whole thing. Of course, I couldn’t sleep. Outside, the warm wind blew hard. It should have been soothing but it wasn’t. I could hear wet footsteps underneath the sound of the wind, squishing just below my window. Though my room was on the second floor of the house, I didn’t dare look out.
I considered closing the window but that would have been like shutting myself inside a furnace. Squish, squish, squish. Someone was definitely just below my window. And was the ground that muddy? When I could take it no more, I grabbed a can of beef ravioli from my suitcase and went to the open window. Any weird shit I saw out there was going to get hit with that can.
I saw nothing but deep darkness. The power had been turned off an hour ago. Still, that piercing sensation of being watched increased tenfold. I stepped back and pulled the curtains closed. Of course that didn’t help. The wind made the curtains billow out like ghosts. I pulled them back open and spent the rest of the night huddled in my bed, staring at the window, the can in my lap, knowing whatever had smashed that boy’s skull in was still out there. And now it was interested in me.
“What’s wrong with you?” Grandma asked as I dragged myself into the kitchen. I felt sluggish but it was the kind of sluggish you feel after hours and hours of deep sleep. I was so rested. I’d finally fallen asleep near daybreak and now it was late evening. I’d slept the entire day away. It wasn’t jetlag; I’d gotten over that by my second day there. Something else had made me sleep for over twelve hours.
My belly grumbled with hunger. My grand Auntie Amaka was just walking in. She looked me up and down with way more scrutiny than I was willing to tolerate when I was so hungry. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. She loudly sucked her few uneven white teeth.
“What?” I snapped, as I ladled some freshly made stew over the plate of steaming white rice my grandmother handed me. I loved my Auntie Amaka. She talked a lot of shit about everyone. But once in a while her scrutinizing eye turned to me. Like now. The woman hadn’t even finished walking in.
“She’s looking thin,” she told my grandma in Igbo, ignoring me. As if I couldn’t understand the language.
I scoffed. Maybe I’d lost a pound or two since getting here but I was still my usual thick-bodied Amazon build. My nicknames in the village were “giant” and “iroko tree.”
Grandma nodded. “Like it’s hollowing her out.”
“So it can fill her up,” Auntie Amaka finished.
“I don’t think I’ve lost a pound,” I said, sitting down with my huge mound of rice and stew. My mouth watered. Gosh, I do feel empty, though, I thought. But I’m about to solve that problem. I dug my spoon in, inhaling the smell of the spicy red stew and fragrant rice.
“Not physically,” Grandma said.
I shook my head. “Whatever,” I said, the spoon halfway to my mouth.
A loud bump came from the back of the house. Then a crash. I put the spoon of uneaten rice down. “What the . . . ” Then a great roar that made me nearly jump out of my skin. About ten large brown, black, and orange lizards skittered into the room, from the hallway, their tiny claws whispering on the wooden floor. Some climbed the walls, others scuttled across the floor. Neither grandma nor auntie moved. My eye sought the nearest weapon. There. A large knife in the sink. My grandma had used it to chop meat. I jumped up and grabbed it.
A horrified look on her face, grandma grabbed auntie’s shoulder and started speaking in rapid Efik, a language they only spoke when they didn’t want me to understand. I frowned at them, but I was more concerned with whatever the hell was in the house.
The deep guttural roar came again, this time closer, from down the hall. The sound touched my very being. I held the knife more tightly, trying to think. I knew this was the thing that had been following me, biding its time. This was the thing that had smashed that boy’s head open.
The movement of a black lizard on the wall caught my eye. I held the large knife more tightly, ignoring my grandmother and auntie’s now angry and loud argument. I only vaguely wondered what the hell they were shouting about. Slowly, knife held before me, I moved toward the hallway. I could see a large shadow creeping forth. Whatever it was was breathing deep and hard. The air grew warm and took on the smell of tar. I realized that this was what that weird smell reminded me off. Tar and maybe soil or crushed leaves?
I glanced at the front door. Still open. I ran for it. This thing meant to take me. On instinct, I knew this. I ran out of the house. It was after me, not my grandmother and auntie. At least I could save them. I surprised myself. I really was one of those people who would happily die to save the ones they loved.
I ran onto the dirt road. At some point, I must have dropped the knife. It was pitch dark out there. People were awake most likely. Deep in their homes. But tonight, no one played cards on the porch. No one stood in the doorway, smoking a cigarette. I think people sensed it was a bad time to be out. So I ran and I ran alone. I wasn’t even wearing
flip flops.
I could hear it coming. Slobbering. Wheezing. Blowing a strange wind. The smell of broken leaves and tar in the air. The half moon in the sky gave a little light. I could have sworn there were hundreds of lizards running with me, some crisscrossing my path. It felt like I stepped on some as I ran. I only managed to stay on my feet because I knew the shape of the dirt road.
I passed the last home and entered the stretch of palm trees.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I’m going to die out here, I knew. Just as the boy should have. A burning heat descended on me from behind. I fell to the dirt road, coughing as I inhaled its dust. Lizards scampered over me like ants on a mound of sugar. I felt their rough feet and claws nipping at my skin. Something grabbed my hands as a great shadow fell on me. Yes, a shadow in the darkness. It was blacker than black.
The air was sucked from my lungs.
My eyes stung with dust.
The road beneath me grew hard as stone, as concrete.
My arms were pulled over my head and ground into the concrete beneath me.
First the left hand and then the right. At the wrist. Something bit right through. I felt painful pressure then tendons, bone, blood vessels snapping and cracking and then separating. I heard it; the sound was brittle and sharp. Then the wet spattering and squirting of my blood. I only smelled warm paved road. A pause. Then bright white pain flashed through me, blinding the rest of my senses. Like Che Guevara, I thought feebly. Now no one will know who I am.
Time passed. I remember none of it clearly.
The sound of grass and twigs bending and snapping roused me, the feeling of hands roughly grasping me. I dared to open my eyes. They carried me. One woman carried my hands, like two dead doves. I almost blacked out again from the sight but I held on.
“Hurry,” one of the women said quietly. “She’s going to die.”
“It takes what it will,” another woman said.
“She’ll be fine.” This was my grandmother’s voice. My own grandmother was one of these women!
“It’s still best to move faster.” Auntie Amaka?