After Nneka's father almost loses his life and farm, her mother mysteriously vanishes. She then moves to Lagos to live with her grandmother, but she soon finds there's more to her grandmother's life than she knows.
While hawking, she meets a boy...
A fat man stood before her, holding a large stick in his right hand. Sweat ran down his bald, greasy head. "Today, I will finally have child for sacrifice." The man lunged for her foot, but she kicked dust in his face.It became a sharp-tipped rock that hit his forehead. His body swayed and fell on its back, with a bloody rock sticking out of his head. Nneka snatched a black bag swung over his shoulder and ran inside. Mama Agnes was at the market to buy things for them. She bolted the door, ran into her room, and threw the bag on the floor. The mad man always walked around her house at this time, so she peered out the window, waiting for him so she could call him. Three minutes later, the mad man came around. "Sir!! Please come! Sir!" He turned back and saw the man's corpse. He bolted to the window, holding his worn-out slippers in his right hand. "Nne, come outside! Come outside!" Nneka ran out with the black bag; he dragged her to a secret, safe place.
They went into an abandoned shack. Nneka handed him the bag. Before he opened it, he spat on his middle fingers. He opened the front flap of the bag and turned it upside down. Nneka jumped back, clutching her chest. The fat man carried a child's corpse, a small but bloodied machete, a bottle of kerosene, and a box of matches. "You have escape this one. If not for your power, you for die. He wan kill you then burn your house." He pointed to a large gash on the copses' neck. Its head wobbled off its shoulders. She looked up at him, and he tied his long kaftan around his waist with a piece of rope on the floor. "Oya, remove your slipper. We will do a very long lesson today." He never told her, but he suspected that his sister sent the man. He must have come for her grandmother, but seeing Nnkea, he wanted to kidnap her for his side hustle. Landlady always sent someone to scare and extort her underlings. He was very sure that if she did not have her powers, she would have died.
Those lessons with the mad man paid off eventually. In a few weeks, she was able to surpass his skill set and unlock many secrets. Her biggest failure during training was turning rocks into powder. The rocks turned into tiny pebbles, but never powder. "Don't be sad. Only the best juju men have this problem. It is nothing major, I just wanted to test you." When they were done with the lessons, the mad man continued being mad.
He forced himself to become sane so he could teach her properly.
Her first task was to steal tainted Tilapia fish from her neighbor. The man, a calm Igbo English teacher, ran a shady business at night. In school, he was known as a disciplined, polite, and trustworthy man. Nneka heard from some of the kids that he raped girls every week. He made the entire school swear into silence, threatening to kill them if they talked. He lured the schoolgirls with a promise of a scholarship in a foreign country, but he demanded that they had to visit him first. He targeted a boy, but he stopped last-minute because the boy was the son of a cultist.
When they entered his house, he drugged them, raped them, and killed them. He delivered their bodies to his boss. This happened for eight weeks. When the girls' parents tried to confront him, the man fed them-or forced them to eat-the tainted fish. The fish turned their insides rotten, withered their hands and feet, and made their tongues fall off. They were still alive when he butchered their bodies to sell to the black market. This way, he could lie that the family moved away because of shame and that the girls went missing because they ran away with strange men.
He used promiscuity and sex to paint the girls in a negative light; all the girls he targeted were intelligent, pretty, and were very good with art. The fair, fat woman that hired him promised him abundant sex if he sent her butchered corpses all year round. Nneka managed to steal the fish from him, but not before slicing his manhood into eight pieces. He lay on the floor, groaning in pain, unable to lift his hand-she sliced it off with a blunt knife. "Eight slices for eight girls. Eight flames for eight weeks." As soon as she finished talking, eight small flames ignited in the room. He tried to scream, but a large porcelain vase fell on his jaw and smashed it. In his last moments, he saw the ghosts of his victims walking towards him with flaming daggers in their hands. They stabbed him mercilessly, watching blood spurt out and pass through their transparent bodies. His soul bled and shattered with every strike.
The fire slowly grew until Nneka walked out. Three steps out of the house, there was an explosion from the inside. She walked out with thirty tainted fish and a clean conscience for avenging the innocent girls.
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No one would ever know what happened to them and their families, but she was very sure that she heard whispers around her as she walked home. "Thank you." "God bless you." "We are grateful." The girls, and possibly their family members, were eternally grateful to the brave young girl that allowed them to leave Earth in peace. They would never leave Nneka, protecting her from the dangers she eventually faced in the future. The mad man once told her, "Even the most powerful juju people need a strong spiritual hand to help them." The girls led Nneka out of the dream with Nana and herself as a baby. They also rescued her from the nightmare she had with the strange, scary woman.
Landlady had her own dark secrets to tell Mama Agnes. She and Mama Agnes ate dinner at her house. To Mama Agnes's pleasure, she ordered a bucket of KFC from a nearby restaurant.
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They needed to finish all this!
Landlady's kitchen could make soldiers stop fighting a war. It was covered in blood, animal and human feces, and trash. Ten small rats lay dead across the cooker. A discarded pot at the corner of the room was filled with a moldy stew. The stench of rotting tomatoes, decomposing rats and old food were overpowering. If this was the first time she visited one of Landlady's homes, she would have lost her appetite. She would have to go on another mission, and she needed all her energy.
"You must be wondering about my brother." Mama Agnes's head shot up. She wondered why Landlady sent Bilkis to poison him that day. Bilkis gave him a beer with cyanide in it. If he was still sane on that day, he would have been able to avoid his fate. He died immediately, coughing and salivating until he stopped breathing. It was such a gruesome death that Bilkis ran away from the corpse. One of Landlady's cleaners stayed behind and disposed of his body. Luckily for the mad man, his body parts were buried 6 feet underground, instead of being thrown into a bowl of blood for ritual money. "I killed him because I heard that he was tutoring an upcoming juju practitioner. My sources could not determine the person or their location. If I find that person, they will die. You better eat six pieces of chicken. We will enter the house for another ritual very soon. Make sure you have eaten at least five bones."
Hey there! I hope you're good! These days are quite uncertain...updates are a slowed down. Be patient with me as I try to get the last few chapters out to put this book to rest. Please vote, comment, and share! 🦆🦆❤❤❤Thanks for stopping by!
