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 around, 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 gray 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 ok?"
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. 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 too 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," 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 eyes 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.