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Midnight Is The Carnival Of A Dead Man
Until G-boy pleaded with Kpakogi to help him with an urgent task, Kpakogi had been a menial labourer in Bacita. He loaded sacks of grain for traders with his wheelbarrow on market days and earned a living. He also worked as a bricklayer, packing sand for the builders to gather enough money for his education. An orphan who lived and fended for himself in his uncle’s house. It had been two years already since he graduated from secondary school, yet he had no one to sponsor his university education.
So when G-boy, his rugged friend who had just returned from Shagamu, visited him on a Saturday night and sought his help with an urgent task that would yield a lot of money, he followed him without hesitation. G-boy took him to a rich man’s house in Mamu. Alhaji NdaRubua, was the man’s name. G-boy parked his motorcycle outside a tall fence and led him inside. Although Kpakogi passed by the house during daylight, he hadn’t imagined its opulence until that night.
Wild patches of flowers festooned either side of the doorway. A short tangerine tree stood in the front yard. An orchard of two orange trees, four big banana trunks, and a thin palm tree stretched towards the backyard. Two lamp posts stood like sentries on either side of the marble walkway. The sloshing of water from a water tank in the backyard reached them.
The parlour was very large and lit with white 80-watt bulbs. Four green, stodgy sofas sat in a square in the centre. An enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling, dazzling with colourful lights. The marble tiles were cold to the feet. The walls glistened and reflected them as they walked past. A large plasma TV hung on the front wall. Large photo frames of Alhaji NdaRubua adorned the upper reaches of the wall.
Kpakogi had never known that such a beautiful house existed in Mamu village. Still unsure of the urgent assignment, he sat like a small boy on a one-seater sofa beside his confident friend. They were both silent because G-boy had told him never to worry when he asked him on the way about the assignment.
It took no long for the slim, rich man to come out into the parlour from one of the rooms. They both greeted him. He sat on the two-seater sofa opposite them. Then, he and G-boy began to discuss.
“It’s already in the car,” Alhaji NdaRubua said.
“Which of your cars?”
“The Mercedes-Benz.”
“Alright.”
Alhaji ran his eyes over Kpakogi. “Do you trust him?” he asked G-boy.
G-boy smiled and responded, “He is my comrade. I trust him.”
“Have you told him about it?”
“No.”
“Good. He will find out for himself.”
“Sure.”
With this, he stood and walked back nonchalantly into the room.
G-boy smiled nervously and stood up. He picked a car key from the centre table and led Kpakogi out of the parlour. Outside, he walked towards an open-roofed garage. Six big cars were parked inside it. G-boy entered one of the cars. Kpakogi followed. G-boy drove it out of the garage, stepped out and opened the gate, drove it outside, stepped out again and closed the gate, then raced out of the precincts towards the Buke road.
“Where are we going?” Kpakogi was sweating in fear.
“Somewhere. Don’t worry,” G-boy assured him.
G-boy drove the car on the Buke road. The road was serenaded with nocturnal cries. The car light flashed straight and illuminated the clump of trees that lined the roadside.
G-boy didn’t show an ounce of fear.
He drove down a hilly terrain. The car bumped along the clay-red road that led to Gulufu. G-boy veered on the track towards the Gulufu woods, and Kpakogi’s fear rose, but he didn’t say anything; he trusted G-boy.
He parked the car in front of the thick woods and got out. It was very dark. The walls of trees stood over them like black spirits. Strange birds and animals warbled and brayed inside them. Kpakogi didn’t get out of the car. G-boy tapped the windscreen and told him to come out. Shivering, he walked out of the car and stood by it. He looked about himself and nearly urinated in his trousers. The trees were darker than the darkness itself. G-boy switched on his phone torch and opened the boot. Kpakogi prowled to look at what was in there. He nearly screamed when he saw a girl’s body lying inside it. She was bound with thick ropes and in a blue school uniform. A crimson wound stood on her neck.
“What is this?” he bawled.
“Shhhh. Don’t shout.” G-boy turned off the torch.
“I mean, what is this body doing here?” He was trembling.
“Just help me carry it out.”
“Never. Why did I follow you? What if we get caught?”
G-boy didn’t respond to him but instead took the body out, breathing laboriously. He dropped it on the ground and switched on the torch.
“Stop this, guy. Help me carry am.”
Kpakogi trembled in fear, listless. He rubbed his two eyes to confirm if he was dreaming.
“Just help me. Money dey for dis work.”
Kpakogi hissed and walked away. A few metres from the car, he turned back as he confronted a bottomless darkness filled with dark secrets, waiting for him. Hopeless and with no other choice, he helped G-boy lift the dead body. They took it into the trees. Spindly cobwebs slammed against their faces as they trudged deeper. They threw the dead body inside a pool and ran back into the car. G-boy drove out of the woods and onto the track.
“What did we just do?” Kpakogi asked with a shaking voice.
“The reward that comes with it is 2 million naira, guy.” G-boy scrunched the tyres on the twigs that lay strewn on the track.
“You should have told me, and I wouldn’t have come.”
“I shouldn’t have told you, and you would remain poor forever.”
Till the end of the journey back to Mamu, the two friends didn’t talk to each other again.
***
Kpakogi started law school at UNN a year after the escapade in the Gulufu woods. Having waited all his life to further his education, his wage of 1 million naira from the dumping of a dead girl for Alhaji NdaRubua came at the right time.
He lived a life filled with dark dreams for months after the incident, but he moved on nonetheless. One such dream was the one he had a day after the dumping, in which he saw the dead little girl floating inside the woods, bright blue and luminous against the darkness.
Two years after Kparogi started law school, G-boy died. G-boy opened a boutique and was prospering. He travelled to Ilorin every weekend to stock his shop. Then one day, while on a business journey with his Mazda, he had an accident and died. Afterwards, witnesses would recount that no car had chased him or attacked him. He had lurched into a shallow roadside ditch and gotten the car stuck. The car was badly battered, and his body was pulverized.
Kpakogi felt sad at his friend’s tragic death. He was afraid of losing his life too. He couldn’t figure out where such a grimy portent had sprung from other than his dark nightmares. One night, he had a very scary nightmare: He saw himself standing in the middle of the Gulufu woods. The tall, dark trees towered over him and enclosed him in their belly. He saw nothing in the darkness but the floating blue, luminous body of the schoolgirl, spitting wads of naira notes which were smeared with blood. He tried to pick up the notes but found himself wading through thick mud instead. Humid vapours swam around him. When he finally picked up and hid one note in his pocket, the blue schoolgirl ran after him in the woods. He cried out for help but got none. He ran into thorns and tore his feet, then fell into a hole. The girl grabbed him by the neck. He woke up, gasping.
He stood up and flashed his torch at the wall clock. The time was half past three. He ran outside and performed ablution. He performed six raka’ahs of tahajjud to shield himself from the breathing evils of the night. He couldn’t sleep after the prayer. For two months afterwards, he didn’t have bad dreams. He lived freshly and prospered academically. He stayed mostly at school and went home to sleep at night. But the dreams returned during his exam month. One morning, while trying to read for his 200-level second-semester exam, he heard a sharp cry outside his lodging.
He went outside to confirm but saw no one. The flower-edged courtyard of the students’ quadrangle was empty. He looked across the rows of buildings and saw nothing but a blue water drum, a broken window shutter, a bird pecking the veranda for food crumbs, and a clothesline drooping with washed laundry. He walked back inside, closed the door, drew the curtains, and sat on the chair to read. He couldn’t explain how, but he could swear he saw the blue, luminous schoolgirl walking around the courtyard as he began to doze. He was dazed throughout the exam period. Bells tingled in his head while he wrote. He had sharp visions in which the blue luminous schoolgirl held a dagger and hacked him.He survived all these notwithstanding. He knew that in the coming year, he’d start taking legal research and case analysis programs, which entailed firsthand intelligence. He had started practising how to draft coursework essays, and he wouldn’t allow a stupid nightmare about a blue schoolgirl to cut him off after all his exertions.
The second semester exams ended, and Kpakogi travelled down to Bacita. He hoped his change of location would stall the haunting dreams, not knowing they would only increase.
Back in Bacita, he felt happy. For two years, he had been in Enugu. Now his presence at home was celebrated.
He went into his room and found it in disarray. The wooden cupboard, which was stacked with his secondary school books, was empty and had lost one of its door hinges. The hanger drooped under Abu’s dirty clothes. The large mattress was ripped in the centre, and its cinnamon foam lay bare in a wide circle like a dirty pool surrounded by white flat plains.
Abu had messed up his room. He was his uncle’s first and only son, a thirteen-year-old boy who didn’t respect him. He lay flat on the mattress. Dust rose from it, and he coughed. He fell asleep and had a dream about the blue, luminous schoolgirl. She was hanging down the limb of a big kuka tree. The surrounding trees were covered halfway up with fog. He wasn’t in the dream, but an audience. He watched the girl drop down from the tree and bury herself inside the thick fog. He woke up panting and sweating.
During his stay in Bacita, he made brief excursions to the many streets that formed the community. From Bacita camp to Egbangi, Shishita, Housing Estate, Niaco Quarters and Site, he took pictures of bungalows with colourful corrugated sheets, fenced vegetable gardens, peeling churches and mosques, dusty trees, clear blue skies, and all things that caught his interest. His spirit was free, and he had no dreams about the girl again.
He spent two weeks of a one-month holiday in Bacita before receiving a message that he had to resume school for an important faculty briefing coming up in three days. He left for Nsukka, where the foundation of his dark dreams lay, waiting for him. He found out later in Nsukka that his dreams had turned into hallucinations. He crawled through the remaining holiday week like a snail. He stopped seeing friends and hid in his room, where he lay all day, anguishing over the spirit of a blue schoolgirl.
The closest to his sanity was when he visited Ekpo Refectory to have a breath of fresh air. Without ordering anything, he sat on a chair in the corner and looked around at the students dining and discussing. He looked gentle and didn’t have anything on his mind except the thought of G-boy’s ghastly accident. He saw photos of the accident, and even a madman would know that it was more likely a strange glitch in the computing of worldly affairs.
The car lay as squeezed as a Coca-Cola can inside the ditch. The windows were broken. Strangely, G-boy’s body lay outside the ditch. His forehead was broken and blood-soaked. A big metal rod sank deep into his throat. Who knows, Kpakogi thought, whether the schoolgirl whom Alhaji NdaRubua used to enrich his wealth three years ago is behind his death? Who knows?
He felt sick when he reached home that night. He had grown accustomed to seeing the ghost of the girl. He began to anticipate it and wouldn’t bulge when it appeared. He had believed his hallucinations were the result of dark thoughts, but now, he knew the ghost sightings were real.
If he needed to be fair, he knew he and G-boy had wronged the girl. And her ghost had killed G-boy. It was common sense that she was coming for him, too, but he wasn’t ready to die. He was using the girl’s blood for his education.
School was to begin in two days, and his fever lessened. He was used to bouts of sickness, but couldn’t help feeling that his end was imminent as the ghost grew more troubling. He kept himself busy with the Legal Research assignment, which was to be submitted four days after resumption, and which he hadn’t completed but was about to. Working through this one Wednesday night, on the official day of resumption, he heard a knock on his door. It was late, and everywhere was silent. In fear, he stood up from the mattress and opened the door. Outside the door was a fair lady wearing a crop top and a short skirt. Her navel was pierced, and she looked like a prostitute.
“How may I help you?” he asked her, his heartbeat racing.
“Let me in before asking me questions.” Her audacity shook him.
He opened the door wide, and she entered his apartment. Under the light of the bulb, he studied her and concluded he had never seen her before. He had brought home female students to sleep with, but he could swear he hadn’t seen this particular one before. She was very fair, skinny, and beautiful. She wrapped her bushy hair in a freckled brown-and-white bandanna. There was a ring in her nose. She wore anklets. Her face shone in rich mascara. Her eyelids were delicately brushed. Her breasts were two drooping melons poking against the woollen crop top. She looked sexy. Kparogi stood by the door and watched her sit on his mattress. She placed her handbag beside her and looked at him.
“Come and sit down,” she said.
“Excuse me. I don’t know you.“ He was still standing by the door.
“How would you know me?”
“Ehn?”
“You wouldn’t know me because you take in many girls.”
“I can swear with everything that I haven’t seen you before.” He drew closer and stood over her.
“You are a liar.”
“I am serious.”
He tried to remember her face, but couldn’t. He told her again that he hadn’t seen her before.
“You used me, Kparogi.” She looked up at him accusingly. The light of the bulb sparked in her eyes.
“How?” He was shocked that she knew his name.
“How have you been using other schoolgirls?”
“I don’t use schoolgirls. I pay them for their service, and they go away.”
“You are a liar.”
He turned silent, unable to articulate the situation. If anything, he had to test the waters first.
“Who are you?” he asked her.
“I don’t need to tell you.” She lowered her head and settled properly on the mattress.
The apartment was filled with the fruity scent of her perfume.
“Please, who are you?” His voice was low and shivering.
“I have been in this school with you. I have watched you everywhere. So I don’t know why you don’t know me.”
He never took his gaze off her. He was searching her body for hints of familiarity. Again, he couldn’t remember seeing her anywhere.
“Okay then, please, what is your name?”
“You are Kparogi. A 300-level Law student. Professor Chris’s toy boy. I know you very well. It feels stupid that you don’t know me.”
Her voice was harsh. Now, she was smiling and looking at him. He couldn’t help but think that she was a stalker, trying to entice or entrap him.
“Get out of my room.” His voice was thundering.
The lady didn’t flinch but kept smiling.
He lowered his voice and pleaded with her, “Please, get out. I didn’t know you before. Just tell me what you want and get out.”
“I don’t want anything.” The lady stood up seductively.
Her body was sweaty and sensually hot. Her red underpants were peeking from the rim of her skirt. She stood still and faced him. He was three inches taller than she. Now that she was close, he couldn’t help getting enticed by the glow of her face.
“You used me.”
He didn’t argue.
“And you must use me today again.”
He frowned.
“I know you, Kparogi.”
He nodded in pretense.
“I have been in this school with you since 100 Level.”
“Are you a Law student, too?”
She wasn’t done talking. “I have watched you walk around the school with your friends.”
He swallowed saliva.
“I have watched you bring girls into this apartment to fornicate with.”
“Just tell me what you want.”
“I want you.”
He looked around pensively.
“You have used me.”
“I didn’t know you before,” he barked vehemently.
From outside, a slow traditional music sounded from a student’s JBL speaker.
“I live in this room with you all day,” she added.
Her words fell into him, and he staggered backwards. This wasn’t the petite eleven-year-old girl they had dumped for Alhaji NdaRubua, he believed. Before him was a mature lady, around nineteen years old. Clarity came when the lady removed an iron rod from her handbag. He stormed out of the room and into the dark yard. The windows of the bungalows were silvery squares. Dark shadows sliced across them and dipped. He wondered whether his fellow students had heard him bang his door or not. But he couldn’t wait to confirm; he had to run.
He ran in the darkness, far away from the quadrangle and past the dark alleys, navigating the gullies and ditches absentmindedly. He was on the campus track with thick bushes on either side. Ahead of him, rings of light dotted the darkness, marking the departmental buildings.
He stopped running. No one was out, and everywhere was silent. Then, the fruity scent of the strange lady wafted towards him. He ran on again. The scent overpowered him, and he lunged into the bushes. He ran inside the chest-high grasses. Woody tridax crippled him, and he rolled down a slope.
The scent followed him. His neck was pierced by an iron rod. He looked up from the ground and saw the strange lady standing before him. Before he died, he took time to look at the iron rod she held from his neck. Blood dripped from it down her fingers. He coughed up blood and fell flat to the ground. The air felt woozy in his ear. He couldn’t talk again but could hear her wavy voice.
“You drowned the body of a schoolgirl for a rich man. I still wonder why you think you can ever be free when you use my body to feed yourself.”
Blood tasted sharp and sour on his tongue. He felt weak and closed his eyes carefully. He heard the demonic laughter of the spirit. Her fruity scent subsumed him. He felt himself swimming in a turbid pool.
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