So there the five of us were. I saw all of them as my friends because Adebayo was my friend and they were his friends. I paid for all the food. It was a lot of money for me, but I had it. You know me, if I have it, then I spend it and when I don’t have it, I don’t miss it. Plus, I was in a good mood. These guys wanted to help me fold smoothly into university life. I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together at the time. I do not know. Maybe I was blinded by hope.
Anyway, by the time we finished, it was almost eight o’clock and getting dark. We walked down the street about a half mile. The area was mainly occupied by the other two-story satellite hostels, the occasional tree. It is not a busy street. As a matter of fact, the street was so empty that we only met a few people along the way and there were no cars. It was a warm night, so because I’d recently worked out and then eaten, I was sweating. Eventually, they stopped under a low shaded mango tree. By this time it was completely dark and under that tree, no one could see us. Still, I wasn’t scared. Adebayo was with me, and I just knew I could handle the other three if I needed to… if they turned out to not be so friendly.
One of them flicked on a torch and flashed it into the leaves above.
“Look, we’ve been watching you,” the tall one said. “We have something important to tell you.” At this point I glanced at Adebayo, and in the dim light that reflected from the flashlight, I saw him look away. “You’re a strong guy, physically. Smart, get good grades, you were near the top of your high school class, the ladies like you…” He paused. “And we hear your little sister is albeeno, maybe even one of those child witches you hear about.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “She’s not…”
“No, no, relax. It’s good. A child witch is power. We like what we see when we see you,” he said, holding a hand up for me to stop talking. “We want only your success. And you will have all the advantages in school if you join us.”
“Huh? How… Where? Be clear, I’m not understanding,” I stammered. My mouth suddenly felt dry. Sunny, it was only at this time that I realised what was really going on, and it was something I heard was very common, but I never imagined would happen to me.
“We are the Great Red Sharks,” he said.
Damn, I thought. You’ve probably even heard of them. “Fine… good,” I said, still not sure what to say or think.
“Do you understand? The Red Sharks is one of the strongest confraternities in Nigeria.”
He’d confirmed it. Now I was scared. Dad warned me about all this confraternity nonsense before I left. You and Ugonna have heard the stories of students going missing or getting killed in fights. It’s scarier and more common than all that Black Hat stuff from last year. Dad said they’d approach me and that I was to always say no. But it’s not the same when you are right there looking into their eyes and they are looking into yours and they know who you are. My best friend, Adebayo, was in the Red Sharks. And that meant they knew everything about me already, because he did. How had he kept this kind of secret from me for so many weeks?! I didn’t even notice any change in his behaviour. I saw him often enough that I didn’t know he snuck off anywhere else. But then again, it’s a known fact that all confraternity meetings happen in the night.
I almost ran. I considered it with every part of my being. I must have tensed up because Adebayo grabbed my arm and held it tightly. “Calm down,” he said. “It’s not what you think. You’ll have a chance to get any grade you want. You’ll get to be a lecturer! No one can harm you. You want money? Many of the Red Shark members are from filthy-rich families. They’ll happily blow their wealth on you if you join.”
I admit, I was a little dazzled. Especially by the idea of being a lecturer. I could already see the pride on Daddy’s face when I told him about it. You know how he is. “I’ll think about it,” I said.
“You have three days,” the tall one said.
For three days, I thought about it. I went out that night, met up with the girls, and partied. I studied hard the entire weekend. I worked out at the gym with Adebayo, and we acted like nothing was happening. Come Monday morning, they showed up at my room. Adebayo wasn’t there. It was the tall one and one of the others.
“What is your response?” the tall one asked.
I asked them to explain exactly what they wanted again, and he didn’t hesitate or get irritated. The tall one pulled me into the hallway and quietly told me that this was an invitation to join the Red Sharks. Then he and the other guy waited.
I laughed and nodded. “Okay.”
They both smiled and we all shook hands, snapping fingers at the end. I began to relax again. Maybe Adebayo is right, I thought. Maybe it isn’t so bad.
“We’ll come back tonight,” the tall one said.
At 1:30am, the tall one pounded on my door. The noise woke and angered my roommates; they got even angrier when they learned that it was for me. I quickly dressed and left with the tall guy. When I got outside, it was dark because the power had gone out. But there were three sets of eyes in the dark, and they belonged to three big guys. “You must agree to join the others,” the tall guy said.
I nodded. They blindfolded me with a red handkerchief and tied my hands. At this point, so much was going through my head. I was thinking I’d made a terrible mistake. Sunny, I kept seeing you, Mummy, Daddy, Ugonna, everyone. I kept wishing I were with you all and not where I was. I started wondering if I’d ever see any of you again!
We must have walked about three miles. It felt like it. It was a long way. When they took the blindfold off me, we were in the bush. One that I didn’t recognise. They untied my hands. I looked around. Someone had a lamp, and I could see faces now. There were ten guys. Three of them were my professors, two of them were classmates, Adebayo was one of them, too.
They were all wearing red shirts, black trousers, black caps, and red armbands. One of them was singing some native song, and some were dancing and clapping to it. They were all older than me, except for Adebayo, but none was swollen like me and I was sure none of them knew how to box. If I had to fight, I would.
“What is your name?” a stocky guy of about nineteen asked me. He was light-skinned, probably Igbo, and had several raised scars, or keloids, on his chin nestled in his slight beard.
“Chukwu,” I said.
The man turned to the others. “His name is Chukwu.”
They all stepped closer and grunted that they’d heard him. I tried to make eye contact with Adebayo, but he wouldn’t look at my face. Neither would my professors and friends. It was like they were pretending not to know me.
“I am the leader, the Capo,” the man with the keloids said.
“Okay,” I said.
“Lie down,” Capo said.
“Why?” I asked, surprised.
Before I knew it Adebayo, my best friend, stepped up to me and slapped me hard across the face. I didn’t even think; I hit him right back with a powerful uppercut blow. He fell to the ground. I know how to take a man out. Adebayo is my best friend, but I was terrified and angry as hell. No one slaps me!
They all jumped on me then. All ten of them, kicking, punching, stomping. I curled myself into a ball, trying to protect my body as much as I could. I remember being horrified but also very, very angry. I kept thinking, I’m going to get out of here. When I do, I’ll beat them down one after the other. Just need to get out from under them. But I couldn’t, Sunny! When ten people attack you… you have no chance. The strikes, the weight, the pain, you CAN’T BREATHE!
They beat you like that so that you will have no mercy in the future. What I later learned is that in the bush, if an initiate died from the beating, he was buried right then and there. That place was full of bones. It’s haunted. How many dead students were watching me, wondering if I would join them in the spirit world that night? When you hear about students disappearing, this is one of the places where many of them go.
Those guys beat me until I was barely able to gasp for air. Everything was silver blue red, but somehow I d
idn’t lose consciousness. I felt that if I did fall into the darkness that was calling me, I’d never return. I thought of you all. If I died, I’d be putting you in danger because Mummy and Daddy would come looking for me, asking questions. Who knows what the Red Sharks would do to them if they got too close to the truth? So I stayed awake. I watched them start walking away, one after the other. Capo was the first to leave. “Let the devil that led you here guide you,” he whispered into my ear. He firmly took Adebayo by the arm, dragging him away. Then the others left one by one. No one did a thing to help me.
I lay there, wheezing, painfully coughing, feeling the blood and sweat seep from me, mosquitoes coming in droves to bite me and drink my draining blood. I couldn’t believe what had happened to me. It’s one thing to take a few hits in a boxing match or a hard kick on the soccer field, it’s another to be beaten down by ten big men. No mercy. No care for vital or sensitive organs. No rescue. I didn’t know where I was and I was in the dark. In the bush. I was alone, Sunny. So alone.
I don’t know how long I lay there. Maybe about a half hour. Sometimes things were very dim; other times, I was wide awake with terrible throbbing pain. Then I heard rustling and footsteps. Someone was beside me. That someone put his hands beneath my body and helped me stand up. I groaned and whimpered. I must have sounded like a dying old man. But at that time, I didn’t care. I was barely conscious. The world was swimming, and I didn’t know up from down. My chest was a knot of pain. My legs were numb. I felt wet all over. I could smell myself… I may have… there was more than the reek of sweat and blood on me. Slowly, we started walking.
“Never let anyone know I helped you,” he said. I started weeping. He helped me get to my hostel. It was almost 4am. “That was the first phase of initiation,” Adebayo said, looking at me gravely. “The next will be tomorrow night. It will go up to seven days.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“Remember when I said I was robbed by those guys that first week we were here?”
When I realised, I gasped. “You were all bloody.”
He nodded.
“And cut up. Your arms were… That was them?”
“If I can survive it,” he said, “you can.”
“No,” I said. We stood outside my room whispering like devils in the night. Inside, my hostel mates were all asleep.
“There’s nothing you can do to stop it now,” he said. “You either make it through or you die. Now you know everyone’s face. You can betray us.” He gave me a first-aid kit and quickly left. That was the first initiation.
I cleaned myself up as best I could. I was aching all over, bleeding, cut. My hostel mates looked at me with fear, but none of them asked me a thing. I went to class that next day. No one was going to keep me down, I decided. I limped into class and stared my professor in the face as he lectured about mathematics. He acted like he was just my professor and I was just his student. He pretended that he was not one of the Red Shark members who’d tried to kill me the night before. Adebayo and I went to the Cholera Joint together for lunch. He, too, acted like nothing happened. He said nothing about my limping, but he did slow his walk for me.
Night fell. It had rained during the day, so it was cooler. My skin was itchy from mosquito bites and from scabbing skin. I felt inflamed all over. Again, I nearly ran. I wanted to jump in my Jeep and just drive. But… I don’t know. I stayed. What could be worse than last night? I thought. I wasn’t going to run from anybody.
They came at three o’clock. They didn’t blindfold me or tie my hands. I knew where the place was, anyway. And I hadn’t run, so to them I had resigned myself to my fate. I wasn’t afraid. They brought me to the haunted bush where everyone was waiting for me. More than ten guys this time. Probably closer to thirty. All in red and black.
They introduced me to “the family” from Capo to me; my new name was Yung C. Then Capo asked me to step up. When I did, Capo grabbed my shoulders. I immediately tensed up, a thousand different flares of still-raw pain went through me. But I stayed calm. Some guys came up behind and beside me and held my arms.
One of the members stepped up beside Capo with something in his hand. Another member shined a flashlight on my other hand. Those guys holding me began to push me down. “Don’t fight,” one of them said, straining as I resisted. Another guy joined them, and they eventually wrestled me to the ground and… and Capo brought these clamps out of his pocket. They were holding me down, and two more guys came and held my head down. One of them squeezed my cheeks hard and said, “Open! Open your mouth!” After a while, the pain was so much that I did.
Capo knelt over me with those clamps, and I understood exactly what was about to happen. I started bucking and trying to free myself. But there were so many guys, I was trapped.
“One of a Red Shark’s teeth must be taken to signify he is one with the Sharks.”
“You bite him and we kill you,” the one squeezing my mouth open growled. The guy was serious. And he looked like he was hoping to have to do it.
“We take one of the ones near the back,” Capo said. He was grinning, enjoying himself. How many times had he done this? I think he wanted me to give him a reason to bash my face with those clamps before pulling my tooth, anyway. I could see it in his eyes. So I stopped struggling. He took the one on the bottom right in the back. See the hole? I nearly blacked out. He pulled and pulled. Then I heard it rip. I whimpered with pain, saliva and blood filling my mouth.
“There it goes. Got it,” he said. He didn’t even wipe it off as he jiggled it about in his hand, laughing almost hysterically. Then he brought something out of his pocket and added it to my tooth in his hand. He shook them and together they made a clinking sound. Then he blew hard into his hand. When he shook it, there was no clinking sound. And when he opened his hand, my tooth was replaced with a larger, pointier yellow tooth—a shark tooth.
Several of the members gasped at his cheap magic trick. They all let go of me and I just lay there, feeling the mosquitoes biting me—my own bite one tooth less. I glared at Capo as he grinned down at me. That Capo. He is an evil man. Him, in particular.
I was exhausted, but there was more to come. They sat me up.
“You see this?” Capo said, kneeling before me, holding the shark tooth to my face. “This was your tooth. You have become a Red Shark like the rest of us now.” The smile dropped from his face. “Hold out your hand.”
The shark tooth looked sharp as hell. They had to grab me again and force my hand open. They cut me deeply on my hand. I didn’t scream, but I stamped my foot really hard and fought not to struggle. If I did, the guys holding me would hold me tighter and I didn’t want that. I breathed through my nostrils and tears bled from my eyes as a clay pot was held beneath my bleeding hand. My blood mixed with the blood of the other confraternity members who’d all done the same thing for their initiation.
“This is a symbol of our love for one another,” Capo said. “Blood is blood.”
The pact was sealed. Afterwards, there was no beating. They sang traditional songs and gave speeches of welcome. I heard none of it. I only had one thing in my head at this point.
The Capo was always the first to leave. Then it was in order of rank. With Adebayo and I leaving together last. He told me that the next night, I’d be given three tasks to complete. But, Sunny, there was no way in hell that I was going to stick around for any of it. I was sure one of those tasks was going to be that I hurt or kill someone! They are looking for me right now. Probably turning my entire hostel room upside down. I feel sorry for my roommates. I took all my things, though. I didn’t tell Adebayo. How could I trust him? He’s the one who told them about me. You see this? A medical student friend of mine gave me these stitches just before I left. I was lucky he helped me. Otherwise, my hand would probably be infected. I’ve been staying with lady friends, one night here, another night there, since Thursday.
So there it is, Sunny, I… I am a member of a secret society of the most dangerous kind
and I’ve just gone AWOL, I’ve deserted, run off. They will want to kill me. But if I stay…
Sunny just gazed at her brother as he looked away, shaking his head. “If I stay, they’ll turn me into a monster,” he said.
She needed a moment to get her mind around it. Her oldest brother, Chukwu, was in a secret society… just as she was. He’d been through an initiation as she had been. But it wasn’t the same. She loved her society; he was running from his. He could speak about it, but she could not. She blinked away tears as she felt something hard and hot in her chest. Rage. Her brother had been one of the banes of her existence for most of her childhood, though since she’d become a Leopard Person, their relationship had improved. Nonetheless, she could not ever, ever, ever bear anyone harming him. This realisation surprised her as much as the intensity of her rage did.
“I have to go,” he suddenly said.
“Where?” she asked, grabbing his arm.
Her brother frowned, looking at her hand gripping the flesh of his upper arm. “I have a lady friend in Aba who I can stay with for a few days. Then… I don’t know.”
Sunny’s mind was so awash with anger and the pain of his story that she was finding it hard to focus. His face was so battered that he barely looked like her brother. Every motion he made was hindered by pain. On top of this, those idiots were robbing him of his future by scaring him away from school.
Her brother got up. Slowly.
“Wait,” she said, running to her underwear drawer. She took out the plastic box where she kept the little naira she had and twenty American dollars from when they’d moved back from New York years ago. “Here,” she said, shoving it in his hands. “Take this.”
“I can’t…”
“Yes, you can,” she said. The wheels in her head had begun to turn. She wouldn’t tell her parents. Not yet. “You have your phone?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Okay… stay with your friend for now,” she said. “But you’re going to go back to school soon.”