GHOST (The Shadow in the Dark)

Part Two

              I was at his mercy. I felt his breath on my neck. It was warm, then hot, then liquid because it flowed down to my stomach and below. Something I had never felt before. It was sweet and wrong. I knew it was wrong, Grandma had trained me enough to avoid males and to avoid ending up like her and my mother who died after giving birth to me at nineteen exactly my current age. My father was also nineteen then, and my grandma had also gotten pregnant at nineteen. She was always mistaken as my mother because she was still young. She had always told me to be the one to break the chain.
“Don’t let a male touch you. You can live different from me and your mother and your father.  Your body belongs to only your husband” she had said to me every day till she died and I had succeeded in escaping the nineteen years curse as she called it.
The day she had seen me talking with a new neighbor, she had told me if I continued I would end up like her. I knew about sex because I was not living in a stone age. There were lots of books to read, I had also read descriptions of the feeling of the characters but I had not experienced it. I was not going to delude myself into believing the feeling I was having was something else and not sexual urge but it was not supposed to be. I was not supposed to experience this with a killer, with someone I could not see, with someone I dreaded, with a ghost. I could still taste dread but that sensation was already mixed up with the dread. He had not moved away, neither had he done anything else. I tried to wriggle away for the fifth time but nothing. He was just too strong and he was not letting me go.
“What do you want from me?” I mumbled hoping he would hear me or understand what I was trying to say.
There was no response but he still held me, heating me up, filling my icy pores with a hot sensation. I was beginning to feel faint from being enclosed and I struggled again to free myself. He had loosened up and I could move my body. He allowed me struggle but still kept me in his grasp almost like he was having fun with my futile attempts. If only I could twist my body for a second, I would at least see his face, I would know my killer but I just knew he did not forget to cover my eyes. He must have felt it was not necessary. I froze when his hands held my waist and his lips touched my ears, I found myself breathing in gasp anticipating what I had no idea of. My breathing increased when his lips moved to my neck and I found myself surrendering to the feeling that went way down to where I could not mention, to where Grandma called sacred. The thought of Grandma brought my sanity back. I tried to push him away but there was no need because he was gone. I spun fast to catch up with him but nothing, nobody. I did not even hear the sound of a footstep to show someone was walking or running. He was completely gone because I could no longer feel his presence. I immediately ran out and found myself on the spot we were attacked. There were crowd but no police officer. People were discussing in groups. I walked up to a group of three girls.
“What happened?”
“Somebody died” one of them answered.
“Where and how?”
They looked at me like I was asking a dumb question.
“Here now, and how will I know how?” the second one answered.
“Sorry, I meant the person that died, is the body…”
“They just carried him away. Please let’s go back” the third one answered.
  They walked towards Newton Street and as I watched others, I understood why he held me for long. He only released me when the policemen had carried the dead body of the man he had killed.
        I cried as I walked to my hostel. Not too long ago, that man had been talking to a friend, he had been alive and he would have still been alive if I had not asked for help, if I had faced him alone. At the end, he had what he wanted and a policeman was dead, the third one dying because of me. At least he was gone and only had my number but had no idea of where I lived, so I thought until I opened my door and saw my bed had been made and the clothes I had dropped while trying to choose the best one for the day were no longer on my bed. He already knew where I had moved to, he knew where I stay.
My body shook from the knowledge and at same time my phone blinked. I knew it must be him. I brought out my phone and opened the message box.
‘The more you talk the more somebody dies’ was written in capital letter.
So that was it, that was the game he was playing. He was not planning to kill me until he got the document he was looking for, instead he would be killing those sent to protect me. And it was so easy for him to render six policemen useless in less than ten seconds.
‘What do you want?’ I sent back.
‘There is a file with you. The last place your dad visited was Ozoro and you are the only lead to get it.’
That was what the DPO said. He told me many people were hunting for the file because it was not only Umaru and Abdul that were involved in my father’s death, that there were more people in high places and had hired assassins to get it hence the first people I had seen who had confessed one Mohammed a Senator sent them. But the DPO said he had no idea who this killer was working for and even Mohammed could not be arrested because there was no proof. Only the file had the proof and they all believed I knew where my dad must have kept the file. I had told the DPO where to take our house key. He had called back that there was nothing that I should think hard because I would be safe once the file was found and the perpetrators were brought to book and I had been thinking since I moved to my new hostel but I had relaxed because he never showed up again until now. He wanted to take the file that could bring justice to not just my family but the other families that were murdered.
‘I don’t have any file and you will still kill me anyway.’
‘You forgot to add all the people following you. Keep talking to the DPO and they will keep dying.’
He knew how to play dirty, he was using them to blackmail me. Either I died alone or I took so many lives along with me with three deaths already recorded because of me.
‘Leave them alone, they have nothing to do with this.’
‘The file Ella.’
I wished I knew where the file was, I would just send it straight to the DPO, even if I would die, there was no way I was going to allow those murderers walk free.
‘Don’t even think about it. From now on, if you answer the DPO, one of them dies.’
How did he know what I was thinking? My phone started ringing making me jump. I was that much afraid. It was the DPO.
“Are you okay? I got report of what happened” the DPO said.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry for your loss” I stammered.
“Hmm, did you see him?”
“No.”
“What of the file?”
“No.”
“Ella you need to think, think fast, that file is important. Once you find it, call me. This will be over if you can find that file.”
“I will try” I stammered.
“Make sure you stay clear of dark places. Take care Ella, this will soon be over.”
“Okay Sir but…” but he had already cut off the call.
The reality of my situation immediately became glaring. Three police officers were gone and more would die because of me, because he believed I had a file, a stupid file. I could not have more men die just to get justice for the dead. I was his main target, he was going to kill me and it was not okay for me to take innocent people along with me.
I wanted to tell the DPO about my plans, to play along, to still use my phone and my SIM, to still stay in my hostel so the killer would stop attacking the police officers, then tell him once I discovered the file while deceiving the killer but he had cut the call.

‘Don’t kill anybody, I will get you the file, do anything you want with me but stop killing them’ I sent another message.
‘Do you really understand your message?’ he replied almost immediately.
I scrolled up to read my message and just when I grasped what he meant, another message came.
‘Deal. I have a thousand and one things I want to do with you as I wait for the file. Be warned! Once a deal is made with me, it cannot be broken. See you tomorrow-Ghost’
Panic gripped me as I quickly wrote another message.
‘That was not what I meant. I meant I will cooperate with you not you doing anything to me…..that’s not the deal.’
But the message bounced back and there was a glaring ‘message not sent’ with a red color on my phone screen.
I had just made a deal with a merciless killer, a predator and a ghost.