Who Will Save Our Children? (Short fiction by Ndakotsu Abubakar)
The first time the spirit possession happened, the women of Mangorotagi gathered in the centre of the village and wailed in amazement. Though they had all seen different kinds of spirit possessions before, that kind was different. It happened in the afternoon when the spirits should normally be resting in their domains and not roaming around, and it was so powerful that the victim of the possession, Kaka, the daughter of Gbere, ran deep into the woods in the village and was afterwards found lying on the leaf-matted ground, face foremost, carefully transforming into a dark trunk of a tree. Another time it happened again, the victim that was possessed, a small boy, transformed into a stone, throwing the village into fear. And now?
The spirits had caught Nna Kula's daughter, making her the third victim. But this time around, they did not possess her in the open like they did Kaka and the boy; they possessed her when she had had her night meal and was already sleeping on the mat, inside the hut.
Nna Kula was entering the room from outside when she saw her daughter convulsing. Froths of saliva slithered down her mouth to the ground, and her body was cold when she touched her. She knew then that if she did not take quick action, the girl would transform into one of those lifeless things because such symptoms were that of a spiritual possession.
She did not waste her time; she pulled out a thin veil from the collection of clothes that hung on the wall, put the girl on her back, and stepped out into the night. She needed to see the herbalist of the village.
She made her way to the herbalist’s house through an unclear path, bursting into the darkness because the moon was just a dot in the sky.
The herbalist's hut was stumpy and was built of hay. It crouched at the mouth of the woods that bordered the village on the west.
Standing outside the door of the hut, she passed a greeting to the old herbalist, breathing hard. For a while, her voice echoed into the space and the whine of some strange nocturnal animal accompanied it, before the old man answered her from inside.
She knew it would be better if she had let Ndazhitsu, the village head, know about the spirit possession before taking any action. But she would not wait till the next day and watch her daughter moan in pain and moult her skin and transform into a thing.
When she was finally inside the hut, she watched the old herbalist do things dramatically. He ordered her to sit on the ground, and, for moments, he stared at the body of the sick girl as she lay in their middle.
For seconds, no one spoke, until the old man opened up:
“You came on time.” His voice was small, and it seemed that the corroding walls of the hut made it tight. “When did she turn this way?”
“Not so long,” she answered slowly.
“Then, why did you allow her to go to the riverbank?”
She revealed that the girl went there without her knowledge.
The old man suddenly became silent, looked about himself, and hung his gaze on the portion of the room where an aggregate of calabashes sat. Then, he said,
“There is no problem. This problem has a way out.”
He stood up slowly and walked to the calabashes. He shook them for some seconds, before coming back with a wrapped nylon.
He told her that the nylon held a potent lotion. He told her to rub the lotion on the skin of the possessed girl the following day, wash her skin clean with water afterwards and collect the slimy water in a bowl, then throw the whole thing into the river around where the red termite mound stood.
“If you don't do this, I am afraid your daughter will turn into the seed of a mango tomorrow afternoon,” the old man warned.
As Nna Kula stepped out of the house, she blamed herself for going to the market that day. If she had been around, she thought, she would have stopped the girl from going to the riverbank where the tall termite mound sat, filled with spirits.
The tall termite mound was a curse in the village— it was discovered after the first and second spirit possession occurred to contain the spirits that used to possess the children who played near it. This way, the river entirely was declared off-limits by the village head.
The cocks were still crowing when Nna Kula woke up the following day. Her daughter lay in the corner of the room, her body still apoplectic as it had been since when the spirits possessed her.
She opened the small window of her room to allow air to enter. Outside, the world was still dark and patchy. There was a stray light flitting in the darkness from some house adjacent to hers.
She brought out the lotion from the small pot that sat at the mouth of the door. She then trotted towards her daughter, who still lay on the mat, cold and scrawny. She sat beside the girl and examined her for a while. The skin around her chest had begun to peel, and her thighs were spotted with white-greyish patches.
The thought of her daughter turning into a seed entered her mind and she had the sudden urge to make the ritual.
She rubbed the lotion on the body of the possessed girl, making sure that no place was left out. She did the ritual as she was told.
The sky was getting bright, and the distant trees, when she looked out of the window, looked ashen. Then, she knew that she had to be fast.
She tied her wrapper to her chest, got a thick piece of kpasa from the clothes hanging on the wall, and held the bowl of the collected water in her hand. She stepped out of the house and locked the short door.
It was cold outside, and she was able to make out the road that would lead her to the river in the faint darkness.
Even though the road looked unclear and curved into the dense grove of trees that stood a few yards away from her house, she made up her mind to pass through it. She did not want the day to break; she did not want to be seen.
The river had become wide over the days, and deep valleys sprouted on either side to make the landform look like a gulch.
The termite mound, in which the spirits are contained, stood tall at one side. As she walked past it, trying to gain the crest and loop of the river where a proper projection would be made, her heart skipped a beat or two.
She stood at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the river. The day was gradually opening, and an army of birds had begun to sing in the pack of trees that hedged the river on the north.
But, she did not budge.
She threw the bowl of water into the river, chanting the words the old man ordered her to chant: the macabre song that pleaded with the spirits not to possess her child again, not to eat her.
She felt light when she was finally done with the ritual. It was as if she had been eased off her burden.
She made her way back home, carefully capitulating to the belief that even the spirit of her husband would be happy wherever it was.
As she came upon her small hut, crouching among the neighbouring huts, a rod of fear dropped into her mind. She began to doubt her ritual— she felt something was off.
She made her way carefully into the hut, walking with an unsettled mind.
When she entered the hut, the open room was still dark but not as before. A good fraction of sunlight had spread in it, giving the bare floor light. She was able to see everything that surrounded her.
This way, she did not stress herself to scamper about to look for her child; the child she just left behind some minutes ago. She did not go to the tail of the room which was still dark and filmy to look for her; she did not scream for the girl's name; she did not bother to crawl to the corner where she left her, to verify whether she was still there or not; she simply walked to the spot she left her on, bent down, and took the seed of mango her daughter had become
About The Author
Ndakotsu Abubakar is a Nigerian writer. He is a member of the Hill Top Creative Arts Foundation. He was shortlisted for the Sandra Whiteley Prize, 2021 and the Nigeria Prize for Teen Authors, 2022; long listed for the African Writers Award, 2022 and 2023. His short story, The Heart of the Earth, was published in the MyRainbowBooksForChildren, Vol.8. When he is not writing, he can be found reading novels, poems, essays and science books.