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*****

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School was over for the day and the children were heading home. Ala-onwu's government was known for their gross incompetence. The primary school they had built after years of monarchy was a single bungalow that stretched for miles long and was slowly looking dilapidated for lack of due renovations. Most of its louvres were missing and there were multiple holes in the roof which leaked water. In short, you had to look twice to be sure it was a school and not a dumpsite.

It was that bad.

Dike was still in class looking around. He was a dark skinned young boy of eight who glowed in the sun, was masked with childish purity and never failed to be afraid of almost everything. He should have rushed home like he usually did but he decided to wait for the road to be filled with students before he joined because his overworked brain had managed to convince him once again that he was being followed and of course, by an evil spirit.

And he truly believed it.

He heard a thump and a low huff before him and on raising his head from his arms which he'd folded on his desk, he saw nothing. He had been so lost in forming a snuggling-curve ball position that he did not realize when all his mates had piled out.

And now, the road was almost empty, heightening his fear.

Unlike other kids whose parents usually came for them, Dike had learned a long time to be self sufficient but it still was not enough.

Since yesterday, anytime he hit the road to go home, his memory would bring up an image of him, bound and gagged with blood slipping down his hairline, and chubby demonic hands covering his face.

Till now, he tagged it all as fragments of his imagination and would have shelved it to the back of his mind if his brain had allowed it. His coping mechanism: walking with crowds, praying and not making friends had been helping so far until now, when he just managed to let the bodies of student disappear before hitting the road. So he took what he could, hands gripping his patched school bag in fear until he made it out to the open market air.

It was Eke market day: tribe women chatted about the latest ongoing in their 6umunna, freshly tapped palm wines were sealed in bottles and on display under hay shades, rare crops were also on exhibit to be sold and buyers were all situated at the stalls of whatever caught their eyes. Since market days were the days when goods were sold at a cheaper rate, mostly because of uneven competition, it was mostly crowded.

As Dike walked, the sun burned his green cap. So far, there had not been a sign of anything extraordinary but he still found it hard to relax. He was out of the market square and on a narrow path. The grasses crunched beneath his feet, the air made irregular noises and then, he was alerted. Something wrong was happening. Intuitively, he could feel it and physically he could see it, especially when he looked behind him. The sounds of grasses crunching were not in sync with his steps and the shadow behind him proved that he was being followed. The shadow moved like a mist; a formless thing it was. He'd never seen a thing like that in his life.

Without turning back, he burst into a sprint. There was no time to remove his sandals so they disturbed him. Twigs snapped beneath his feet but all of it could not derail him. He did not check if the stalker was still on his tail. His focus was on getting home, safe and sound without turning prey to a demon.

How he wished his mother could have just listened to his pleas and picked him from school for once. That was a far-fetched dream though. It'll never happen.

The sprint continued till he proceeded to look behind him, still running, and ended up tripping into a hole piled with twigs and broken branches. He inhaled. The stings hurt but fear didn't let him cry out in pain. He definitely wouldn't cry. He inhaled again, his brain taunted him. Pitch black, the hole was pitch black. He could taste the impure metal, his blood was tainted with dirt... and his demons love blood. Nope, it was ghost not demon. The ghosts chasing him love blood and the thought of them in a hole far out of sight of any breathing human made him afraid, enough to rascally removed a twig that was hanging on his shirt, believing it was an evil spirit grabbing him.

He moved his arms and winced, hands clutching the places that hurt and his eyes focused on the not-so-promising sky, patiently studying the aftermath of the ruckus above: the dust that his resettlement had raised were now settled, the atmosphere was back to the nice shade of foggy white and golden rays, the dancing leaves of trees were the new rainbow and they brought renewed hope for him- Dike had to get out of that hole, anyway and by any means.

So he started, digging up from the ground, panting and sweating and occasionally inhaling harshly when sweat got mixed up with his wounds. From kicking loose earth to dividing the twigs beneath with his weight and using one as a pole, he finally made it up to see that the world was approaching dusk, which coincidentally meant that if he wasn't home before evening, he would be unprotected from snares of his brain which would lead him to the peak insanity and there would be no one to comfort him. Of course, Dike would have to get back to sanity all by his own all because of fear of the dark and of being alone, his two worst fears which he tried so hard to avoid.

He turned his neck from left to right, studying the surrounding- it was serene and with the last embers of light present, he observed his appearance. His green and white stripped uniform was covered in clay soil and brown rots, brown threadbare shoes re-polished as black and then, there was his baseball cap lost somewhere at the bottom of the hole. Men, he'd seen better days! He tried grabbing the lapels of his school bag and winced. One of his arm, the left one, was dislocated and facing an awkward angle.

Twisting it back to its original position was impossible at that instant because of the pain but he kept going, trying, until suddenly, among the clattering of a bird's wing above, and the gentle rustle of thick, evergreen leaves, he still managed to hear a distant sound, faint like someone had been waiting for him and was now ready to set out his mark. He could not be anyone's meal though. Bad people do not feed on traumatized things, not in history and not in the present.

Dike turned to the deeper part of the forest, eyes cast on the overgrown, bushy, foggy path. He saw a shadow, like mist, moving freely as if it was air. From here to there, the shadow swayed. It was amorphous.

"Good morning," the shadow said. Its voice, powerful and captivating made Dike strain his ears to hear more. How had it moved so close and still sounded distant.

"Who are you?" the young child asked, his limbs heavy and exhaustion coating him. He could swear that talking felt hard like there was lead stuck in his throat.

"Child," the voice called out in a sing-song voice which lacked the local accent. "I'm your dream come true."

Then he heard a whizzing sound and turbulent wind took over the whole earth, raising whatever it could while abstaining from falling trees. It did not take Dike a minute to flee the area, leaving behind him a trail of dust and the smell of blood which leaked from his shoe.

He ran till his feet could not carry him anymore, then he collapsed against a brick building. Though on a closer look, he realized that it was a structure, a shrine to be precise. The structure had only one wall which lacked paint and was cracking in multiple places. A railing made for the other three corners of the structure and when Dike turned round the building, he was face first with the rusted railings which he leaned on for support. Cocooned by the railing was a bronze statue, covered in dust. Dike looked left and right, he couldn't shield the fear again and then, he collapsed, clutching the railing, whimpers leaving his lips in puffs. He had been strong for too long. He could not hold it anymore.

Tears streamed down his face, forming a transparent ring on the floor. It was made from marble, the shiny type which glinted in the moonlight. Dike was a blubbering mess. He heard sounds and tried standing but he could not. To a normal person, they might think it was the random whoosh of the wind. Dike would always think otherwise. He always referred to the sound of the wind as the sign of restless spirits moving in the night in search for solace. If he could, he would die during the nights and be alive by day again. But it was impossible. As much as he would love to, he could not escape his fears.

He covered his ears but the sounds would not disappear. They would not stop. He could not even say which was more traumatizing, the fear of spirits or the wild roar of the wind. So, he found that strength to look up and observe. He willed the brain-squelching fear to the back of his mind to just concentrate. And he saw it, the statue, in all its glory.

Dike remembered the image from a textbook. They had sketched him during Fine-arts. Unfortunately, this particular god never visited anymore. Most gods did not visit again and humans had been trying to replicate them using scary masquerades which was sad.

Hope blossomed in his chest as he recalled the story Anwulika told him of the god of the innocent who was nothing but huge god loyal to his subject. How could someone be so selfless? A question that had been asked for years without yielding an answer.

His lips parted as he stared at the marvelous statue. Kwento would definitely protect him. He had to.

So he searched for his sketchbook. Every movement hurt but he persevered and when he saw it, he took it with his right hand and placed before Kwento's statue. "Muonanu are you there? Can you save me from this monster please? Here's a gift, please do this! Just do this for me," he muttered in a babbled monologue. "I don't just know why they keep following me about. They keep stalking me! I didn't do anything to them. I don't know them. Muonanu please..."

The ground shook, thunder boomed and the clouds shielded the sun in a haste. Dike could already see signs of the heavy downpour to come and although he wasn't in the right state to be walking home alone in the rain, he was not dissuaded. He planned to leave his sketchbook on the floor of the shrine, it would get wet anyway, besides it was his own gift for his protector.

As he stood up, a flash of lighting illuminated the statue; it's defined cheekbones and bald head were on the light. It was basically a sight to behold, almost like the first time Dike had seen lightning flash, translucent like a wet mirror.

Dike was relaxed. He'd prayed to Kwento. There was nothing that those spirits would try. As he walked past the first onset of raindrops which started mildly, he came face first with a searchlight pointed against his face from a shade half a meter away.

He did not really know his current neighborhood.

So, he was surprised when one of them under the shade, a chubby woman in wrapper and a t-shirt, jumped out to come embrace him, shouting "Adaeze! Adaeze! Where did you go?"

Dike, waking from the shock, winced while adjusting his arm, "I'm not Adaeze."

The wife was in doubt, forehead wrinkled in thought. You could almost imagine what was running through her head.

The heavy rain had made the sky darker so that it was now a full blown downpour.

Then an older man, her husband, in shorts and a dark coloured t-shirt followed behind his wife and after a moment of appraisal decided to inform her that Dike was indeed not Adaeze. He was holding an umbrella and a searchlight, so he used it to observe Dike's rumpled appearance and half the concern he had over his daughter's disappearance flew when he saw how battered Dike was.

"Little boy, where are you coming from?"

Dike could not answer. The woman, dumbfounded, looked between her husband and the strange child and she asked, "Boy? He's a boy?"

Her husband remain silent.

"Son, sorry for crushing you. I guess it is a misidentification." She was not that tall so need not bend to speak to Dike unlike her husband. "Have you seen a girl child about your age in a blue gown?"

Her husband brought their child's picture out and Dike never failed to notice that the gown was not blue but brown. Then, when he saw the girl's face, an image of a similar child with blood matted braids and fright on her face filled his memory. He could not look at the picture for a second more. He felt like he knew
her but he did not. At least, not while she was alive. They did not even attend same school.

"No," he said as an answer to her question, winced then coughed, "I haven't seen her."

As he left her parents, limping all the way home in a damp shirt, rain draining the remaining blood from him and causing the tear on his cheek to sting, he instantly knew that the amount of pain seeping off his bones would not be enough to erase that girl's picture from his mind and it was not the first time he'd had a nightmare and he was sure that it would not be the last.

"I've to stop thinking about her," he muttered, ignoring the gaze of the villagers who came out to stare at the sky in awe. They were the least of his worries. Fun fact was that he was not even topping theirs. For the first time in a millennium, Ala-ọnwụ's sunny-days' circle was broken by such a heavy rainfall. Rain rarely fell and if it ever did, it ended before two hours and fell at the last hour of the day. This was an abnormal rain, falling before midnight and not just falling, but breaking trees and flooding villages of low sloped landmass.

At that, the people believed that the gods were at work. There was nothing else they could place it on.

*****

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