In all my five years as a cop on the south side of Chicago I'd never seen anything like this. Never. The boy laughed and spoke to me in Igbo, water dripping from his lips. "You, too," he said, his voice so much like that of the little boy that he was. "Me and you."
"You need… help," I whispered. I was about to reach out, despite my repulsion. I'd seen plenty of dead, mutilated, bleeding bodies. A year ago, I'd had a boy's life blood run over my hands as he stared sadly into my eyes. He'd been stabbed five times. His blood had been so warm on my hands and it remained under my nails for days. And that wasn't even my worst encounter with death. So I wasn't easily shaken. But this boy standing before me shook the hell out of me. He should have been dead or dying; not knocking hard on the door, smiling and saying ominous things.
Before I could reach for him, he reached for me. Lightning fast. He tapped my right hand. Just before it happened, I had a flashback of when I used to play tag in grade school. I loved playing tag.
"You're it," the boy said in Igbo. He laughed again.
The touch of his finger burned like a hot rough metal poker. I yelped. Then it was as if my very being was repulsed. I flew back about five feet before landing hard on my ass, the air knocked from my chest, my teeth rattling. Sharp pain shot all the way to my fingertips and toenails. I hit the coffee table and groaned as the clay vase on it fell to the floor and broke in two.
I heard footsteps upstairs. I looked at the door. The boy was gone.
"O'u gini?" Grandma shouted from the top of the stairs. She barely had her blue wrapper wrapped around her waist and she looked much older than her eighty years. Auntie Amaka was probably 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. 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 ok. 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 fix it. "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."
Ok, 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. "Chioma, you're fine," I said with a laugh. 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 closing 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 wrappers 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.