But when voices do indeed return, it is not Aziza. Two women’s voices. It takes me a while to recognise Femi Onipede’s voice, cracked and hoarse from a lot of screaming.
“Ifelola,” she is saying, Shonuga’s first name. “Ife, please answer me.”
There is a weak groan in response, and I realise Shonuga’s trying to speak. I listen closer. The voice, reduced by pain to a small, wheezing thing, is repeating, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
The cycle goes on and on, interspersed with moments of silent weeping, first by one party and then by the other, and then Femi is screaming, and though I cannot hear her thrashing about and banging on something, I imagine her doing so. Once, Femi says: “Stop hurting her, please. Stop. I’ll do anything you want, just stop, please!”
I listen to this over and over until it becomes background noise, and I don’t even know when it stops. I only become aware when the voice changes, then I’m hearing the same thing play out between Kehinde and Taiwo, with Taiwo being tortured in some way, and Kehinde pining and screaming. Kehinde is calm at first, as if trying to contain the effects of the torture, then snaps suddenly and becomes completely feral, screaming her lungs off as her brother whimpers and yells and weeps.
I find myself wondering why I am not going through the same thing, why I have not been earmarked for torture. I am the lead instigator, leader of the resistance. If anyone should suffer, it should be me.
I can take it. Give me the pain, I can take it.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND now?” Aganju says the next time he pulls me out of the prison of darkness in my head. “Do you understand what it’s like to stand by and listen to everyone suffer? To watch everything unfold before your ears, but you can neither see nor touch nor help?”
“Please stop it,” I find myself saying, kneeling in front of him in that throne boardroom. I’ve spent so long—Days? Weeks? Months?—in that darkness that I no longer know the difference between imaginings and reality. I believe this must be real.
“Stop making them suffer. Make me suffer instead. I’m the cause of it all. I hunted your godlings. I killed your wizard. I killed your brother. Take it out on me. Please.”
“Oh, but I am,” he says, smiling, showing his pointed canines. “I am making you suffer.”
He comes close, puts his face to mine. Being so close stirs up something in me, a faraway response from my esper long gone. I cannot even feel his breath on my face.
“Don’t you know that the best way to make someone lose all hope in life and existence is to remove everything worth fighting for? That is what you almost did to me, David Mogo. You took away my first chance to return to this world when you killed Ajala. I was stuck in a void, a realm of nothingness just like the one you’re stuck in now. Ajala was how I interacted with this realm, with the corporeal world, and you took that away from me. Then you and your friends locked up my lifetime project and took away the key. Same project that I lost my home and my loved ones over, that I was ridiculed for and branded a usurper. I lost everything, David Mogo. If I hadn’t found a way to get out of that place, I would’ve given in to despair.”
He walks around the room, hands akimbo. “Then, as if that was not enough, you went and killed my brother.”
“He tried to kill my father and sister,” I find myself saying.
“Yes, he did,” Aganju replies. “Because you would not leave me alone. You had to be removed.”
We stare at one another for a moment.
“I know exactly how you feel, David Mogo.” Aganju’s voice is now soft, placating, very reminiscent of Taiwo when he’s lecturing me. “I’m not doing anything to you that I haven’t already experienced. But I want you to see it for yourself, see that it’s not always about you. I want you to know what it feels like to be a fallen god.”
He leaves me in the room. I find myself staring at the empty throne of faces, wishing that I could see a face, just one, that I can recognise—my mother, Papa Udi, Fati, Femi and Shonuga, Ibeji, Aziza; hell, anyone at all from the airport.
I realise that, without knowing it, I have already built a family, already built something worth saving. I was just too busy trying to save a whole world to notice it. If I could take it back, I would focus on protecting what I have, trying to live my life in peace, in my own slice of the world, instead of clinging on to power and the thirst for chaos.
I failed on all counts. I’m done and over. And so is my family and Lagos.
Or, perhaps, I did succeed.
I succeeded in destroying everything.
THE CAROUSEL OF tortured voices continues.
When Aganju brings me out for the last time, I’m already spent. I have no words left, no more spittle to make them. My throat is too parched. My head is too heavy, my heart too light, my soul too empty.
“This is good,” Aganju says. “I don’t like blood, you know? I can hurt you, yes, but I don’t like to see your humanity spilling onto the floor. I’m a thinker, not a brute.”
I bow my head, and thick spittle dribbles over my lower lip.
“That shard in your side, it’s the same as my brother’s thunderstone. Remember the axe that dissolved with him into nothingness? Well, this one isn’t going anywhere. This one will remain buried in your body, will offer me control of you for as long as I want, as I have had over so many people. So get comfortable, David Mogo. Consider yourself fallen forever.”
He stops short then, listens for something. The three Eyos are suddenly standing there in front of him, silent, but their postures tense. Aganju stares at them for a beat, as if communicating telepathically, then the three of them leave the room, though I’m not sure how.
I might as well have been in the darkness because I do not know how much time has passed of if anyone else enters or leaves. Which is why, when I hear my mother’s voice whisper in my head, I’m not sure what to make of it.
“Wake up, David,” she is saying. “Wake up.”
No. Not you too.
“Shut up,” she says. “Wake up!”
Then I hear a familiar voice, whose owner I knew so long ago that I no longer remember.
“Get up, David,” it says. “You can do it.”
I strain my body, my mind, trying to fix on the voice, reach for it with my esper which is so far, so far away.
“Come on, David,” it repeats. “Try. Try.”
“Get up!” Ogun screams.
I strain, so far that I feel like I am separating my soul from self, and then there it is, my esper, just within reach.
The faint smell of black pepper stings my eyes and hits my nose. I sneeze.
Eshu. The voice is Eshu.
What the fuck is happening?
“We’re coming, is what,” Eshu says, and then the walls and the air-conditioning and the boardroom table and the throne collapse in front of my eyes and suddenly the whole room is filled with thick, black smoke, pouring right into my lungs and choking me to the ends of the earth. I fall to the ground coughing. In the distance, I can hear pandemonium, shouts and running and gunshots and impact sounds. Fire crackles around me, eating up fabric, iron, wood, cement, concrete; eating up the State House and everything in it.
Chapter Thirty-Six
GETTING UP IS difficult. My limbs feel like they have not been used in ages, and there are pinpricks in my muscles each time I move. But I keep remembering my mother’s voice, Get up, David! Get up! and Shonuga saying, I love you, I love you, I love you, and I know I have to get up, I have to.
I’m trying, but my limbs are like lead and my joints are too stiff.
There’s a noise, and hands are soon on me, lifting me. I’m too weak to resist. Smoke obscures everything. The hands drag me along what used to be a hallway, now falling apart with flaming rubble raining down from above. They stop once or twice to ward off attackers, then pick me up again. Finally we’re outdoors, in the open, where we’re greeted by a colossal racket, clanging and smacking and thudding. I’m dropped on the ground and abandoned. P
rojectiles fly, there are shouts and cries, and I hear the familiar sound of the shadow-things wailing and dying.
It all dies down soon. There is the shuffling of feet as dust and smoke settle. I’m still lying on the ground. Someone lifts my arm and places something in it—a cold piece of metal.
My blood stirs.
Another piece of iron in my other hand. I recognise this one—a chain.
My esper responds to the iron like a long-distance phone call, slowly returning to me.
There’s a sharp slice on my palm, and the other palm, and the warm flow of blood follows. Then the hand clasps mine over the weapons.
My chest ignites. Warmth and life spreads over my veins, my skin, my bones. All the darkness, all the gloom, burn away.
I rise. I blaze.
Ogun steps up to me, venturing into my sphere of flame. She is still holding a machete and her shield. She seems to have shed all glamour, all form. She is still bald-headed, and has the tattoos on her arms from the night at the airport, which move and wriggle like the faces on Aganju’s throne. There is black dust in her hair, mixed with the sweat on her smudged face, where a wry smile is plastered.
“The phoenix, David,” she says. “They rise in fire.”
I breathe and simmer down, and the haze from the fire clears. Around me is death and dust. There is an amount of humans dead that I last saw on TV back when Boko Haram and groups like them were rampant in Nigeria. Blood everywhere, in splatters and pools in the concrete. There have been rumours for years, that these men and women served the gods willingly, but I never thought they were this many or would go this far; fighting against the very people who sought to liberate them. The sight makes me sick. It’s an odd feeling: repulsed by death and joyful for life, at the same time.
Someone runs over and embraces me, then leans back. Fati.
“They say you die,” she says. Her long knife is stained with black dust and drips blood and ebo; the garlic stings my eyes even in the smoke. I blink my teary eyes and see Papa Udi too, behind her. He is smiling, his crow’s feet prominent, his War Chest strapped to his back like a backpack. Behind them both, over a hundred iterations of Eshu grin back at me. There’s a large number of people around that I don’t recognise; they’re dressed in very old clothes, too raggedy to be from my airport bunch.
I see a splash of colour, and two people step away from the group.
“Godhunter,” Justice says. He carries a hefty, misshapen club, splattered with black dust and dripping with blood as well. Beside him, Hafiz, still in his orange ankara, is similarly armed and plastered with gore. Justice and Hafiz bow together, and the rest of what I now realise is the survivors of the Makoko community bows with them.
“How…?” is all I can muster, looking back at my mother.
“No time,” all the Eshus say together, in that creepy groupspeak. They’re coming.”
“The others…” Ogun says to me.
“I don’t know where they are,” I say.
“We split as before,” Ogun says, taking the lead. “Eshu, find them. Meet us in front. The rest of us, we press our way out.”
The Eshus snap back into the one, and the white god nods, then slips out of what I now realise is a semi-courtyard. We’re still inside the State House.
“Come,” my mother says. “Let’s survive.”
ONE THING ABOUT the new State House in Upper Island: it’s a complete replica of the one once used by the Federal Government back when Lagos was the national capital (school excursions will do that—my history class visited the house back in King’s College). The original was a British colonial-style three-storey affair with no basement; a central Victorian façade sporting the Nigerian coat of arms flanked by two long wings, housing offices and meeting rooms. This one has all the exact trappings: if I’m right, that puts our courtyard right in the middle of the building. Navigating our way out of the building should be easy, through the neat grid of the corridors. The large grounds outside might pose more of a challenge.
The smoke is everywhere, and we get turned around once or twice, blocked by fire and falling debris. We run into a group of godling-shadows—weird beings caught mid-transformation so that they have the darting, pleading eyes of godlings, but their skin is already turning black and they have the ability to absorb godessence with their touch—and have to go through them.
The battle is short and intense, lacking space and packed with heat. There’s grappling, stabbing, swiping. One of the shadows breaks loose from the fracas and heads for me, screaming and stretching out a spindly arm. I backtrack, rolling my chain but not swinging it. The thing advances, caring too little about its own wellbeing, running to death.
“David!” My mother’s voice. I know she’s calling on me to swing, but I’m suddenly no longer thirsty to feed my iron. I’m no longer chaos defined.
“David!”
I swing. The chain catches the creature in the neck. My bones respond and my teeth and blood chime, urging me on. Fire awakens in my belly, antsy, happy to be summoned.
The thing howls, clutching at the chain, still reaching out, grasping my arm, and suddenly my body is screaming,calling out for help. I hear myself howling like the shadows, and I hurt exactly like I did with Sango’s lightning strike.
I pull back my machete and plunge it into the godling-shadow’s body. Its hand leaves my neck, and the fire in me responds, igniting the machete and consuming the creature as it falls to the ground.
Ogun hurries over to me.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I’m okay.”
“Don’t hesitate, David,” my mother says quietly, placing a hand on mine. “It’s kill or be killed.”
“I know,” I say, sighing. “I know.”
We move, slower now, all of us feeling the exertions of battle, spent godessence and torture. Surprisingly, we meet no more resistance: Aganju’s human allies are no doubt fleeing for their lives, and the rest of his shadows are nowhere to be seen.
We come out into open air soon enough, happy to breathe fresh air that isn’t tainted by smoke. We’re to the east of the front façade, where a water fountain gushes water in the centre of a roundabout, the broken pieces of a statue half-fallen into the water. If memory serves me right, that should be the statue of Herbert Macaulay, one of Nigeria’s pioneer fathers. Something tells me Aganju ordered it taken down.
There’s movement to our far right, and we form a cluster, poised for another skirmish. Then, out of a cluster of tall palm trees, we first see Eshu—just one of him—then Kehinde and Taiwo, holding on to one another, coughing. Femi and Shonuga follow behind them, doing the same. Eshu has a long face.
Fati runs over to Ibeji and embraces them tight. I nod at Femi and she nods back.
“I thought you were dead,” Kehinde says, looking at the group. “All of you.”
“Me, too,” Ogun says. “Where is Aziza?”
Eshu, for the first time, looks serious. It’s an odd look on the white god. He shakes his head slowly and looks away.
“No,” Papa Udi and my mother say together. Papa Udi buries his face in his palms. Ogun curses loudly—I don’t understand the language, but swearing sounds the same in all languages.
“He’s gone—for good,” Eshu says. “I can no longer feel him.”
We stand about awkwardly, avoiding each other’s eyes, unsure how to feel about the news. The only sounds are the crackling flames within the State House, and the occasional crash of falling debris. I watch my mother’s face, devoid of any expression, and wonder if I’d be the same if any one of us died today.
There’s a large splash behind me and I turn again, and there stands Olokun, their body gleaming in the late afternoon sun, glowing water stones in their dreadlocked hair. They cock their head and fish-blink at us, their àshẹ like a panther’s eyes if they shone at noon. The Makoko people gasp together, lay down their weapons and hunker down, averting their gaze and mumbling praise.
“Seriously, though!” I say. “Will someon
e tell me what the hell is going on?” I point to Olokun. “How are you even alive? I saw you attacked.”
“It was in the plan,” my mother says. “We needed an infiltrator in their ranks, and we needed them to think we were dead. That was the only way they would lay down their guard.”
Everyone looks at Eshu, who gives us a sad smile. I return to Ogun. “So we were pawns?”
“No,” she says, looking away from me. “I didn’t think they were going to capture you. I just wanted us to look defeated.”
“That was why you went missing during the battle,” I say, getting infuriated. “That was why we got overrun.”
“I didn’t go missing,” she says. “I had Olokun hide Aziza and me. Only us three and Eshu knew of the plan. That was the only way to make it look authentic.”
“You sacrificed us? People died because of this!”
“It was the only way!” Ogun snaps back. “If they didn’t believe they’d defeated us, they were never going to leave the airport community alone. More people would’ve died.”
“We could’ve won. We could’ve fought and won.”
“And what do you know about war that tells you so?” she says, stepping up to me. “What did we have over them that tells you we could’ve beaten them, once and for all, on that bridge?”
I stare at her. The whole group watches us, anxious.
“Aziza is dead. Because of you.”
“Aziza understood the sacrifice. He chose to give himself up.”
“How can you be this calm?” I step closer to her. “How can you be okay with this?”
“Because we’re all the same, all of us,” someone says.
We turn towards the voice. Aganju, flanked by the three Eyos, is standing by another cluster of palms and mangoes, overhanging the road to the exit. There are no other gods with him, and no humans at all.
“You and me, what’s the difference?” Aganju says, waving his hand at us, ambling forward. “You kill people and burn them, for a greater good. You sacrifice people, for a greater good. But when I do it, it’s evil.” He chuckles, wags a finger. “All of us, we do whatever it takes to make home, to keep it safe.”
David Mogo Godhunter Page 25
