The rise of divineries was a natural result of The Falling. Not like they’ve never been there—men calling out a string of ailments and hailing their cure-all elixirs as sent-from-heaven have been as much a staple of Lagos as yellow danfos. A decade later though, and everyone suddenly accepts the existence of something beyond their comprehension. Yes, the religious institutions tried to capitalise on it all to spew prophecies and talks of Armaggeddon, but it was the divineries who offered practical solutions. Rub this on your skin, and they won’t see you. Use this chalk to draw around your house, and nothing go disturb you for night. Drink this, and the gods can’t touch you.
Of course 99% of them are scams, but people need a solution they can touch.
Typical Lagos morning in the days before The Falling, and I might’ve not been able to make it down this route, which would’ve been packed with cars stuffed with workers, their windows rolled up, crawling in early-morning traffic on their commute from the mainland to the island. These days, however, no one goes this route anymore. In fact, no one who works on the island lives on the mainland anymore, or if they do, they find some alternative route that’s not already laden with highway robbers. Or police, who’re pretty much the same thing.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I check it: Ajala. No message, but I’m pretty sure he wants to know if I’ve made a decision. When the next call comes, I let it vibrate to voicemail in my pocket.
At the entrance to the divinery, I encounter a sizeable number of touts lingering about even this early, their sunburnt skins cracked and scarred by gutterside brawls, bottle daggers and squalor. Most folks around here know me, but these boys seem like a fresh squirt from the mainland’s slums. Their eyes, red from smoking weed, take me in, wondering if I’m prey. Maybe because I don’t drive a car, or they decide my skin is not soft enough, but they bare their teeth at me and let me go by.
The buildings themselves, rows of three-storey shops, closed a long time before The Falling for lack of business, but since the clearout of Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó (and a sudden availability of illegally rent-free shops), Sura Shopping Complex quickly became the commercial hub for all the things no one wants to buy or rent. Like a godhunter, for instance.
I park the bike in the empty parking lot and stroll in. Most stores here sell recipes: herbal, alchemical or godessence-fuelled. Of all three known ways to make use of godessence to affect things, recipes are the least difficult: you tap into the godessence inherent in all living substances, following very specific procedures to create powerful combinations that can do anything from forcing a god to materialise to breaking spiritual barriers. And no, I’m not talking about reading a grimoire or instruction book for wizards (there are those, and it’s not wizards who wrote them, trust me). I’m talking of arcane recipes that’ve been passed down orally for generations. What these people sell here are mostly herbal remedies and scams, one-hit-wonder dusts and elixirs. Papa Udi and his ilk are the ones who know the real deal, and they never rent shopfronts and put up signs.
As for the other two ways of wielding godessence, let’s just say performing a ritual is something only people exquisitely skilled in it should do (or else could easily end up harming the wrong person, if not themselves); and charmcasting—well, currently no human is known to have cast a charm out of their own godessence without running mad or self-combusting on the spot. They simply don’t have enough of it in them, and you can’t cast a charm out of someone else’s godessence.
Muiz’s Place is on the second floor of the third building, right past the stairs at the far end. The store itself is locked, but I know Muiz has never left it. Unlike all the illegal occupants here (whom the police raid every now-and-then), Muiz has lived here since the old days, along with the bales of àdìrẹ̀ and ankara fabric he used to sell and got poor on when everyone stopped coming. His real job now, as with many others here, is as an agent: he gets a freelancer like me work, he gets a cut.
I rattle the gate a couple of times. “Muiz!”
An oblong head pokes out behind the bales of clothing.
“Who be that?” Muiz’s voice betrays a tickle in the back of his throat.
“David.”
Muiz comes to the gate, the frown of sleep unsettling his smooth forehead. He’s a slight boy who only managed to finish secondary school before taking on the textile business to support his family. Sometimes, I suspect this is the reason he won’t return to the mainland—too much shame to contend with.
He unlocks the gate and swings it open. “Oga David. Kaarọ sah.”
“Yes, yes, kaarọ to you too,” I say. “Look, any work don show? I need something bad.”
“Ah yes, yes.” He retrieves the hardback notebook he uses as a register, licks a finger, flips. “Ah yes, Boss, one of my guys na gateman for Ibeju Lekki. Him oyibo oga say something dey make noise inside their tank.”
An immigrant. I can’t believe my luck. “How much?”
“Fifty grand.”
The oyibo is Frieda Lange, a young German lady who turns out to be the spokesperson for all the immigrants in a row of five terraced duplexes in uptown Upper Island, close to the Lagos-Ogun boundary. She hugs her slight frame, presses her thin lips together, and says she will go nowhere near the gate. The sounds have been intermittent, she tells me, so she doesn’t know for sure if whatever-that-thing-is is in there right now, but they think it comes to sleep at night after emptying the water through a hole in the tank.
Immigrants are the best customers. In a foreign land, dealing with foreign gods; you can literally charge these oyibos anything. Problem is, they’re so few and they mostly live in Upper Island, so I only get gigs once in a blue moon.
“Two hundred grand and I take it out now,” I tell her.
Frieda studies me through narrow eyes, wrinkling her nose as if I smell. Every single family has moved out of the house, she says, and is currently wearing down the company with hotel bills. An additional fifty can be argued relative to the hotel bills, but a 300% increase? Don’t be stupid. She hands me the first fifty in cash. Go in there, get that thing out, and I give you another fifty and that’s that.
The affected plastic water tank is behind the house, occupying the second level of a triple-platform steel scaffolding as high as the roof. I’ve seen lots of these kinds—godlings wandering so far out of Èkó Ìsàlẹ̀ that they end up disoriented and need somewhere to perch. They’re crude and simple-minded, operating mostly on instinct and emotion. An upset godling is as dangerous as a rabid dog; worse, when it’s still immaterial.
I climb the metal ladder welded onto the platform and tap the tank. Frieda says there’s no water, but it doesn’t sound hollow, so my guy is definitely inside. I can feel him, sense the godling signature. The top is still screwed on, and the tank has scratches, telltale signs of an earlier scuffle—someone tried to flush this roach earlier, and obviously didn’t succeed. I tap it again, hoping for a response, some movement. Nothing.
I climb down, lay down my bag and pull out a length of slim chains, the kinds used to leash mongrels, except these have been soaked in Papa Udi’s ebo.
Then I push the tank down.
It’s too easy. The cover pops off as the tank hits the ground, and the godling comes wriggling out, scrambling to its feet. This one has strayed much too far from its epicentre, and been forced to take on material form. It has chosen a naked, malnourished boy—for the convenience of fitting into the tank, I suppose. It lets out a high-pitched howl and a string of syllables that sound like all the languages of the world put together. The thing plants down on all fours and stares back at me with the soft eyes of a teenage boy.
No, no, don’t do that, no.
It makes a loping move, ready to hightail it. I already have the chain wound around one hand. I whip it out and catch the godling’s calf. It screeches, a sound that has no business in a human throat. The chain goes around, slides down to its ankle, hooks. The godling pulls and whines aloud, a dog on a leash. I pull back.
&
nbsp; Of course I win, I’m a demigod.
Damn, I should’ve asked for more money.
After I’ve gagged the godling’s mouth to prevent that hair-raising embarrassment to the ears, I lash it across the back seat of my okada with the chains, cover it with some tarpaulin, and leave it to get tired of struggling. Frieda, who’d gone to withdraw my balance from the ATM earlier, hands me the remaining fifty.
Inside my pocket, my phone is vibrating.
THE SUN IS well in form when I brave the afternoon traffic back from Upper Island. Bearing a demigod and a godling for twenty-five kilometres of the Lekki-Epe Expressway turns out to be too much on my okada, which overheats. I turn off to Ahmadu Bello and park by the bridge interchange to let the bike cool off, and sit by the silent roadside to eat some fried yam and sauce I’d bought off a streetside seller. I call Papa Udi to find out if he’s eaten, but he doesn’t pick up. Typical. I leave some food for him.
My phone vibrates. It’s not Payu calling back, but Ajala. I put it away.
Once the bike’s cooled off a bit and I’ve fed the radiator some water, I’m ready to gun it back to Sura, but voilà: as I turn the interchange, I run into a police roadblock.
The Nigerian police are a fucking menace. There’s five of them here, dressed in the customary black combats and ratty boots, each hoisting a rifle. They’ve blocked half the road with their van and a couple of tyres. They flag me down instantly.
Now, what I do isn’t entirely illegal. Yes, technically, the government—specifically, LASPAC—are there to deal with stray deities, so technically black market godhunters like me shouldn’t exist. It’s never a fun run-in with the police for me.
So when the first thing a policeman does is rip open the tarpaulin across the back seat to find a teenage boy bound and gagged there, imagine what it looks like.
The five of them cock their guns and train the barrels at my head.
“Good afternoon, officers,” I say, smiling brightly. “Great day, yes?”
“Shut up,” says the one close to me—his badge reads Ibrahim Momodu. “Identify yourself and what you’re carrying.”
“David Mogo,” I say. “Godhunter.” I tap the godling just enough for it to make its clearly inhuman sounds. “And this, right here, is something you don’t want on your hands.”
The men look at each other, and an understanding passes between them.
“Get down from this bike,” Ibrahim says. “We need to search you.”
This is all pointless shit. They know who I am and what I do; they’ve heard stories. They’re not looking to keep the peace. See, this is one of those times I wish I could speak Yoruba, convince the man in his native tongue. Too bad I never got around to it.
“Look, officers,” I say, planting myself firmly on the bike, “I don’t need any trouble. I’m just doing my work.”
“My friend, get down,” Ibrahim says. “Don’t you know your work is illegal? Everything about you is illegal—no ID, no visible source of income, loitering Èkó axis without aim. You are illegal just standing here.” He hoists the gun higher. “I said, get down.”
I’ve been shot once before. By the police, actually. It hurt, but not much. It healed quickly too, even before Payu’s recipes hastened the process. I’ve never been shot by five people at once, though, and I don’t know what that will do to me. Even so, I’m still thinking I can take them. I mean, it’s the Nigerian police—they’re as useless as shit. All five will be kissing the dust before anyone can fire two shots. And the first one will definitely miss.
But then I’m looking at Papa Udi’s food in front of me and thinking he won’t get to eat if I don’t get home tonight. So I get down from the bike.
Ibrahim just pokes around, really. More a performance than a real search. When he opens my bag and finds my tools, I see him shiver a bit. Then his eyes light up when he spots the hundred grand in cash. He turns about to me.
“We’re confiscating your bike until we can ascertain that you’re not a danger to the public,” he pronounces finally. “Let’s go to the station.”
I laugh. This is just ridiculous.
“Are you laughing? I’m not afraid of your useless juju oh.”
I laugh even more. That’s what people say when they’re afraid.
“Oya drag him,” Ibrahim says, waving to his boys. None of them move an inch. In fact, they’ve all lowered their rifles.
“I said drag him!” When no one obeys, Ibrahim turns to me and grabs my upper arm. It takes all the restraint in my bones to let him. Assaulting weaklings has never really been my forte. But does that mean I have to move? No.
This guy tries to shove me, first with one arm, then with two. He would have better luck pushing a brick wall.
After a minute of futility, he steps back and stares at me for a bit. “You can go,” he says finally, panting. “But your bike is not leaving here until—until you give your—your boys something for pure water.”
Forty grand. That’s how much they take from me, after threatening multiple times to shoot me in the ankle so I can’t make it home. I let them have it, if for no other reason than so I don’t end up killing anybody. I’m so pissed when I leave the checkpoint that I wish maybe I should’ve just beaten them all.
Muiz’s agency fees eat another fifteen grand into my paycheck, so at the end of the day my pot of gold is only forty-five grand strong. Take out the cost of supplies and petrol for the next couple of weeks, and I’m left with maybe ten grand. Just 190 grand left for our roof: nineteen more jobs or two new immigrant jobs, neither of which is going to happen anytime soon.
Great stuff.
Before I turn into Simpson, I park and release the godling as I always do, taking off the gag. It’s quiet now, watching me with those soft eyes, as if asking permission to go.
“Shoo.” I wave at it.
I watch the thing lope away, into the graveyard of buildings silhouetted against the evening sun.
The phone in my pocket vibrates. I look at the screen and sigh at the name, then press the green button.
“Hello, sir. David Mogo at your service. Yes, yes, I’ve decided. I’ll do it.”
Chapter Three
IF ANYONE WANTS to hunt a deity in Lagos, the most sensible place to begin is the stretch of city between Broad Street and Marina Road. This is because the very first place where a god fell was right on the roundabout at the end of Marina, in front of the former United Bank for Africa Tower, the most distinctive building to catch the eye upon stepping on the Third Mainland Bridge.
This is where I start.
It’s nearing evening when I arrive at Broad Street on my Bajaj. I don’t know if it’s preparing to rain: November should be all dry season, but the clouds above look moody. If you’ve ever witnessed a storm this side of Lagos, you’d know to trust the clouds, harmattan season or not.
The streets are a rapture. Since the pandemonium of The Falling and ensuing evacuation, Èkó Ìsàlẹ̀ has quickly settled into godland; meaning black, cold and dying for human warmth. A lonely crossing guard’s post stands at the intersection of First Baptist Church. A Pep shop is half-secured by a mucky chain, as if the owners decided last-minute their goods weren’t worth it. A chubby sewage rat perches on the chain and doesn’t move, even when I pass by, too busy munching on its business. Dry season dust blows about the unlit streets, coating sidewalks that haven’t known human feet for a long time.
In the darkness beyond, shadows move.
While no one can attest to ever seeing two high gods in any one place (those who see even one high god are damn lucky), Lukmon Ajala was very specific about my search zone: he thinks Ibeji—the twins, Taiwo and Kehinde—are right in that band, on a link road between Broad Street and Marina. Google Maps lists about ten of these: Brook to the east, through Joseph Harden and Kakawa, and ending at Balogun on the west, right under the looming UBA tower. My plan is to ride down Broad, circle about the tower, then ride down Marina back here, all the while scanning for divine
signatures.
Unlike human mothers who harbour the regular amount of human godessence—which is only slightly more than the average plant or animal (except cats, of course)—my mother is a high god—well, was; I’ve never been sure which to use. Anyway, this means I stock more than your average guy, if slightly less than a high god. The other catch, however, is that mine doesn’t sit in the bottom of my belly like everyone else’s. Mine is ingrained in my flesh and bones, my physical. So while others have to reach into themselves to cast a charm and affect the corporeal world, I come factory-fitted, always constantly interfacing between the corporeal and spiritual, even when I’m not conscious of it. Very much like peripheral vision.
No one tells you that when you combine a god and a human, you get wacky results.
My skin carries a sort of extra-sensory perception—an esper as Papa Udi calls it. If you need to find anything with a good dose of divine, I’m your walking radar (I should put that on a flyer).
I ease my bike along, slinging the bag with Ajala’s spirit mask across my torso and hanging the Yasal bottle from a line on my neck. My daggers are sheathed at either hip on my belt. I tap to check they’re secure, and the smell of garlic mixed with local scentleaf—the principal ingredients of ebo—hits me. Papa Udi happily made me some after eating that fried yam.
Unfiltered evening breeze from the sea on the far side of the marina caresses my face. I ride without looking left or right, scanning for divine signatures. I’m picking up a good number of them as I near the fifth intersection. They register as hotspots across my collarbone, low lightbulbs, if lightbulbs were icy; like intuition, if intuition gave you clear, exact numbers. Sometimes, these things come with smell or taste, sometimes with sound.
The signatures are weak—godlings. I can’t normally sense humans at all (they don’t have enough to pick up), and the signature of a high god is much, much stronger.
I met a high god once, at the parking lot of the Onikan Museum, while on a job to retrieve an abandoned artefact for a client. His signature was a white hot core, burning bright, but with a fire like ice. I couldn’t see him, he never told me his name, we never spoke; but I could sense so much of his godessence that I could almost say I knew him, that there was a kinship between us; the way you know when you stumble upon a kinsman in a foreign place. One more minute, and I might’ve even known his name.
David Mogo Godhunter Page 2
