I did not remember getting to
the woods no matter how I racked my brain to think, which, what it managed to
do, was pump adrenalin into my body. I darted my eyes in all directions looking
for some landmark to tell me where I was, or show me the way home. I did not
even know whether it was Karura or Lang’ata forest in Nairobi. I figured that
being in the woods was a nightmare I was waking up to, but I was not a member
of the Night Runners Association of Kenya. Bodies were everywhere. Human bodies
tied to trees, nailed to X crosses,
stakes driven through their hearts, sprawled spread-eagle on the forest floor
at odd angles. People painfully resting in peace.
When I commanded my limbs to
move they disobeyed my orders. I felt like a commander in the battlefield whose
soldiers had refused to take his orders. I then decided to do whatever I wanted
my limbs to do myself. I couldn’t. I was bound, hands and legs. Plan A failed.
Plan B was to scream my lungs off but when I opened my mouth I felt as though I
had swallowed coir. What came out was a wheezing sound of my lungs expanding
and contrasting.
I tried to lift my head. I had
forgotten how to do such basic human body things. I was in the Seventh Circle
of hell. Or what else could explain the violence. The stench
was overpowering. I finished taking stock and I lay back down, limp, lost in shock,
horror, and fear. Was it someone’s idea of an April fool’s day prank? My
friends trying to spook me on my birthday? Halloween night?
But there was no answers to my
questions. How could there be if those who were supposed to answer them were pitifully
dead and roasting in the hell of the assassins, the tyrants, and the
war-mongers? I could as well see foul birdlike creatures with human faces
making their nests.
Perhaps I entered into a catatonic
state or I just died before the cool night breeze resuscitated me. When I came
to, I could hear whispers of people around me, imaginary footsteps in the eerie
darkness. Perhaps I was in a tomb and fellow ghosts were trying to have a conversation
with me to kill time but I was not understanding their ghost-speak.
However, my eyes managed to
slit open to a wide panoply of stars and luminous darkness and a familiar
stench. The eyes wandered in the darkness and explored the night sky. I prayed
to the stars to illuminate the way for somebody to the woods to find me just in
case they were searching for me and were stuck somewhere in the night and wanted
to give up. I felt lost and small, my mind and body shrinking and alone on a
globe forever spinning like there was nothing going on; the stars moving
according to the physical laws of nature, their dim brilliance only in my mind,
a mind that was a concoction of fear, horror, and confusion.
The wind began to blow. Clouds
were on the move. Some were dark, blowing themselves up like froth. They intermingled
with greyish ominous whirlwinds of heavy clouds not enough to make rain. It
seemed as though it was going to rain. It got darker and darker. Then, the clouds formed a larger monster
cloud that went across the night sky swallowing other clouds up. It looked like
a dragon. I watched the dragon in the sky eat up everything on its way. There
seemed to be no answer for my prayers anywhere: no one was looking for me. Maybe
they had given up on the search and decided I was a statistic of those who went
missing every other day, or I had eloped with a lover? Was I in a ‘Missing
Persons’ report at Muthaiga police station?
I heard a twig break, and the
imaginary footsteps materialize taking the form of light ghosts. I knew then
that I was going to be thrown into the furnace of hot brimstone and prepared to
gnash my teeth for eternity, but I felt hands on my shoulder, and my heart
exploded.
***
“I don’t even know why I give
these stupid interviews as though repeating what I always tell you will undo
what happened to me…”
“Jenny, it’s therapeutic. It
helps in healing…” Doctor Oloo coughs and swallows the phlegm. “You are the
only survivor of the ritual killings that have been going on in Nairobi. You
have no one else to talk to, that’s why I’m here…”
I swallow hard. I don’t need
to be told how to deal with the trauma. If anything reliving it makes it worse.
Why can’t they just let me be? Fighting my own ghosts is what I should do. What
commander goes to war and let’s his soldiers fight alone? I’m alive, that’s
what matters.
“Jeez, you people suck,” I snort before getting up to go.
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